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As David Stockman observed (The RussiaGate Witch-Hunt Stockman Names Names In The Deep State's Insurance Policy )
There was a sinister plot to meddle in the 2016 election, after all. But it was not orchestrated from the Kremlin; it was an entirely homegrown affair conducted from the inner sanctums---the White House, DOJ, the Hoover Building and Langley----of the Imperial City.
Likewise, the perpetrators didn't speak Russian or write in the Cyrillic script. In fact, they were lifetime beltway insiders occupying the highest positions of power in the US government.
Here are the names and rank of the principal conspirators:
- John Brennan, CIA director;
- Susan Rice, National Security Advisor;
- Samantha Power, UN Ambassador;
- James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence;
- James Comey, FBI director;
- Andrew McCabe, Deputy FBI director;
- Sally Yates, deputy Attorney General,
- Bruce Ohr, associate deputy AG;
- Peter Strzok, deputy assistant director of FBI counterintelligence;
- Lisa Page, FBI lawyer;
- and countless other lessor and greater poobahs of Washington power, including President Obama himself.
To a person, the participants in this illicit cabal shared the core trait that made Obama such a blight on the nation's well-being. To wit, he never held an honest job outside the halls of government in his entire adult life; and as a careerist agent of the state and practitioner of its purported goods works, he exuded a sanctimonious disdain for everyday citizens who make their living along the capitalist highways and by-ways of America.
Trey Gowdy Caught Obama's CIA Head Not Telling The Truth - YouTube
There was a serious of suspicious and well coordinated leaks of classified information that point out to intelligence agencies Under the smoke screen of Russian influence Trump campaign official were spied upon. Whether the pretext was Steele dossier or some other disinformation is immaterial.
Unprecedented rate of leaks about Trump and his associates is really disturbing, but is nothing new. Intrusion of intelligence agencies into political process happened before. One telling example is JFK assassination. Interference in foreign election is also a proven fact: As early as 1948 CIA role "fixed" Italian elections. So in way chickens just came home to roost.
War between CIA and Pentagon is well know due to events in Syria, where they sometimes found themselves on the opposite sides of barricades. There is also always some level of inter-fighting between different US intelligence agencies, for example NSA vs. CIA.
Connections between Bush clan and CIA are well documented. Strange biography of Barack Obama also raises interesting questions. And Clintons also seems to be connected to the US intelligence one way or the other due to their Arkansas past. Amazing level confidence of Bill Clinton (and to a lesser extent Hillary Clinton) that he/she is above the law is probably connected with this fact. The might do have "Lord-protector" for their misdeeds.
In this sense anti-Russian campaign and accusations of Russia in interfering into the US election (after the US interfered in Russian election of 2011-2012, trying to stage a color revolution in this country) might be just a smoke screen to hide the US intelligence agencies interference with the election process.
BTW it is not completely clear why Russia would prefer Trump to Hillary. Here is one post that addresses this issues (Economist's View What’s Behind a Rise in Ethnic Nationalism Maybe the Economy, Oct 14, 2016):
likbez -> pgl... , Friday, October 14, 2016 at 07:43 PMParadoxically Pravda in old times did have real insights into the US political system and for this reason was widely read by specialists. Especially materials published by the Institute of the USA and Canada -- a powerful Russian think tank somewhat similar to the Council on Foreign Relations.As for your remark I think for many people in the USA Russophobia is just displaced Anti-Semitism.
JohnH remark is actually very apt and you should not "misunderestimate" the level of understanding of the US political system by Russians. They did learn a lot about machinations of the neoliberal foreign policy, especially about so called "color revolutions."
Hillary&Obama has had a bloody nose when they tried to stage a "color revolution" in 2011-2012 in Russia (so called "white revolution). A typical US citizen probably never heard about it or heard only about "Pussy riot", Navalny and couple of other minor figures. At the end poor ambassador Michael McFaul was recalled. NED was expelled. Of course Russia is just a pale shadow of the USSR power-wise, so Obama later put her on sanctions using MH17 incident as a pretext with no chances of retaliation.
They also successfully implemented regime change in Ukraine -- blooding Putin nose in return.
But I actually disagree with JohnH. First of all Putin does not need to interfere in a way like the USA did in 2011-2012. It would be a waist of resources as both candidates are probably equally bad for Russia (and it is the "deep state" which actually dictate the US foreign policy, not POTUS.)
The US political system is already the can of worms and the deterioration of neoliberal society this time created almost revolutionary situation in Marxists terms, when Repug elite was not able to control the nomination. Democratic establishment still did OK and managed to squash the rebellion, but here the level of degeneration demonstrated itself in the selection of the candidate.
Taking into account the level of dysfunction of the US political system, I am not so sure the Trump is preferable to Hillary for Russians. I would say he is more unpredictable and more dangerous. The main danger of Hillary is Syria war escalation, but the same is true for Trump who can turn into the second John McCain on a dime.
Also the difference between two should not be exaggerated. Both are puppets of the forces the brought them to the current level and in their POTUS role will need to be subservient to the "deep state". Or at least to take into account its existence and power. And that makes them more of prisoners of the position they want so much.
Trump probably to lesser extent then Hillary, but he also can't ignore the deep state. Both require the support of Republican Congress for major legislative initiatives. And it will be very hostile to Hillary. Which is a major advantage for Russians, as this excludes the possibility of some very stupid moves.
Again, IMHO in no way any of them will control the US foreign policy. In this area the deep state is in charge since Allen Dulles and those who try to deviate too much might end as badly as JFK. I think Obama understood this very well and did not try to rock the boat. And there are people who will promptly explain this to Trump in a way that he understands.
In other words, neither of them will escape the limit on their power that "deep state" enforces. And that virtually guarantee the continuity of the foreign policy, with just slight tactical variations.
So why Russians should prefer one to another? You can elect a dog as POTUS and the foreign policy of the USA will be virtually the same as with Hillary or Trump.
In internal policy Trump looks more dangerous and more willing to experiment, while Hillary is definitely a "status quo" candidate. The last thing Russians needs is the US stock market crush. So from the point of internal economic policy Hillary is also preferable.
A lot of pundits stress the danger of war with Russia, and that might be true as women in high political position try to outdo men in hawkishness. But here Hillary jingoism probably will be tightly controlled by the "deep state". Hillary definitely tried to be "More Catholic then the Pope" in this area while being the Secretary of State. That did not end well for her and she might learn the lesson.
But if you think about the amount of "compromat" (Russian term ;-) on Hillary and Bill that Russians may well already collected, in "normal circumstances" she might be a preferable counterpart for Russians. As in "devil that we know". Both Lavrov and Putin met Hillary. Medvedev was burned by Hillary. Taking into account the level of greed Hillary displayed during her career, I would be worried what Russians have on her , as well as on Bill "transgressions" and RICO-style actions of Clinton Foundation.
And taking into account the level of disgust amount the government officials with Hillary (and this is not limited to Secret Service) , new leaks are quite possible, which might further complicate her position as POTUS.
In worst case, the first year (or two) leaks will continue. Especially if damaging DNC leaks were the work of some disgruntled person within the USA intelligence and not of some foreign hacker group. That might be a plus for Russians as such a constant distraction might limit her possibility to make some stupid move in Syria. Or not.
As you know personal emails boxes for all major Web mail providers are just one click away for NSA analysts. So "Snowden II" hypothesis might have the right to exist.
Also it is quite probably that impeachment process for Hillary will start soon after her election. In the House Republicans have enough votes to try it. That also might be a plus for s for both Russia and China. Trump is extremely jingoistic as for Iran, and that might be another area were Hillary is preferable to Russians and Chinese over Trump.
Also do not discount her health problems. She does have some serious neurological disease, which eventually might kill her. How fast she will deteriorate is not known but in a year or two the current symptoms might become more pronounced. If Bill have STD (and sometime he looks like a person with HIV; http://joeforamerica.com/2016/07/bill-clinton-aids/) that further complicates that picture (this is just a rumor, but he really looks bad).
I think that all those factors make her an equal, or even preferable candidate for such states as Russia and China.
The way Trump "lewd" tale surfaced (aka Steele dossier) also creates more questions about role on CIA in the elections. Same about Trump surveillance authorized by Obama administration as well as possible unauthorized surveillance outsource to MI6, which was serving as CIA sidekick.
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Nov 17, 2018 | ronpaulinstitute.org
< Older US Midterms Expose Russia Hacker Myth Written by Finian Cunningham Wednesday November 14, 2018
Don't hold your breath for it, but there should be an abject apology coming from US politicians, pundits, media and intelligence agencies.
For months leading up to the midterm elections held last week, we were told that the Kremlin was deviously targeting the ballot, in a replay of the way Russian hackers allegedly interfered in the 2016 presidential race to get Donald Trump into the White House.
Supposedly reliable news media outlets like the New York Times and heavyweight Senate panels were quoting intelligence sources warning that the "Russians are coming – again".
So what just happened? Nothing. Where were the social media campaigns of malicious Russian-inspired misinformation "sowing division"? Whatever happened to the supposed army of internet bots and trolls that the Kremlin command? Where are the electoral machines tampered with to give false vote counts?
Facebook said it had deleted around 100 social media accounts that it claimed "were linked" to pro-Russian entities intent on meddling in the midterms. How did Facebook determined that "linkage"? It was based on a "tip-off" by US intelligence agencies. Hardly convincing proof of a Kremlin plot to destabilize American democracy.
If elusive Russian hackers somehow targeted the midterm Congressional elections they certainly seem to have a convoluted objective. Trump's Republican party lost the House of Representatives to Democrat control. That could result in more Congressional probes into his alleged collusion with Russia. It could also result in Democrats filing subpoenas for Trump to finally disclose his personal tax details which he has strenuously refused to do so far.
Moreover, having lost control of one of the two Congressional chambers, Trump will find his legislative plans being slowed down and even blocked.
Thus, if Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin are the purported "puppet masters" behind the Trump presidency, they have a very strange way of showing their support, as can be seen from the setbacks of the midterms.
A far simpler, more plausible explanation is that there was no Russian hacking of the midterms, just as there wasn't in the 2016 presidential election. Russian interference, influence campaigns, malign activity, "Russia-gate", and so on, are nothing but myths conjured up by Trump's domestic political opponents and their obliging media outlets.
Now that all the dire warnings of Russia hacking into the midterms have been shown to be a mirage, the US intelligence agencies seem to be adopting a new spin on events. We are told that they "prevented Russian interference".
In a Bloomberg article headlined 'One Big Loser of the Midterms – Russian Hackers', it is claimed: "Security officials believe [sic] they prevented cyberattacks on election day." However, they added, "it's hard to tell."
In other words, US security officials have no idea if putative Russian hackers were targeting the elections. The contorted logic is that if there were no hacking incidents, then it was because US cybersecurity prevented them. This is tantamount to invoking absence to prove presence. It's voodoo intelligence.
President Trump has a point when he lambastes Democrats and their supportive media for crying foul only when they lose an election. In various midterm races, it was apparent that Democrats would protest some alleged electoral discrepancy when their candidate lost against a Republican. But when Democrats came out on top, there were no irregularities.
One can imagine therefore that if the Democrats had failed to win control over the House of Representatives, then they and their intelligence agency and media supporters would have been clamoring about "Russian interference" to help Republicans retain the House.
As it turned out, the Democrats won the House, so there is no need to invoke the Russian bogeyman. In that case, it is claimed, Russian hackers "did not succeed" to penetrate the electoral system or pivot social media.
Nonetheless, there was indeed rampant interference in the recent US election. For one thing, some 28 pro-Israeli Political Action Committees and wealthy individuals spent around $15 million to promote 80 candidates in the Congressional elections, according to the organization If Americans Knew. This foreign influence on US voters in favor of Israeli interests is nothing new. It is standard practice in every election.
During the presidential campaign in 2016, the Israeli-American billionaire Sheldon Adelson reportedly donated $25 million to Trump's campaign. Undoubtedly that legalized bribery is why Trump on becoming president has pushed such a slavishly pro-Israeli Middle East policy, including his inflammatory declaration of Jerusalem as the sole capital of the Zionist state.
But there is no outcry about "Israeli influence campaigns" and "hacking" from the US media or from Democrats over this egregious interference in American democracy. No, they prefer to obsess about the phantom of Russian meddling.
Another evident source of electoral hacking was of the homegrown variety. There seem to be valid grievances among ordinary American voters about gerrymandering of electoral districts by incumbent parties, as well as voter disenfranchisement, especially among poor African-American and Latino communities. There were also reported cases of phone canvassers making malicious calls to discredit candidates, as was claimed by the beaten Democrat contenders in Florida and Georgia.
Clearly, there are huge flaws in the US electoral system. Most glaringly, the gargantuan problem of campaign funding by corporations, banks and other representatives of the oligarchic system.
A further chronic problem is yawning voter apathy. The recent midterms were said to have seen a "record turnout" of voters. The official figure is that only 48 per cent of voters exercised their democratic right. That is, over half the voting population view the ballot exercise as not worth while or something worse. This is a constant massive disavowal of American democracy expressed in every US election.
The midterm elections demonstrate once again that American democracy has its own inherent failings. But the political establishment and the ruling oligarchy are loathe to fix a system from which they benefit.
When the system becomes unwieldy or throws up results that the establishment does not quite like – such as the election of uncouth, big mouth Trump – then the "error" must be "explained" away by some extraneous factor, such as "Russian hacking".
However, the latest exercise in American democracy, for what it is worth, gave the salutary demonstration of the myth of Russian interference – at least for those who care to honestly see that.
Another valuable demonstration was this: if supposedly reliable news media and an intelligence apparatus that is charged with national security have been caught out telling spectacular lies with regard to "Russian hacking", then what credibility do they have on a host of other anti-Russia claims, or, indeed, on many other matters?
Reprinted with permission from Strategic Culture Foundation .
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Nov 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
12 November 2018 Clapper and Brennan are felons? Probably yes. "The CIA is required by law to inform congressional oversight committees whenever one of its officers, agents, or administrators breaks the law, when an operation requires congressional approval because it is a "covert action" program, or whenever something happens at the CIA that's potentially controversial and the agency wants to save itself the embarrassment of explaining itself to Congress later.
" I could see no reason to withhold declassification of these documents." Grassley said. "They contained no information that could be construed as [betraying] sources and methods."
Brennan was the leading force behind the prosecutions of eight national security whistleblowers during the Obama administration, almost three times the number of whistleblowers charged under the Espionage Act by all previous presidents combined.
Indeed, I was one of the "Obama Eight." I was charged with five felonies, including three counts of espionage, after I blew the whistle on the CIA's torture program. Of course, I hadn't committed espionage and those charges were eventually dropped, but not until I had agreed to take a plea to a lesser charge. I served 23 months in a federal prison.
Brennan and Clapper think the law doesn't apply to them. But it does. Without the rule of law, we have chaos. The law has to apply equally to all Americans. Brennan and Clapper need to learn that lesson the hard way. They broke the law. They ought to be prosecuted for it." Kiriakou in Consortium News
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I worked for Clapper once and detest the man. I consider him to be an unprincipled careerist devoid of loyalty to anything or anyone but himself. He was IMO by far the worst Director the Defense Intelligence Agency has ever had and a man who did great damage to that agency in the process of seeking favor from his superiors. He is also a confessed perjurer.
I first knew John Brennan when he was a junior analyst attached to the CIA station in Saudi Arabia and I was the Defense Attaché in the same embassy. I had a great deal of opportunity to observe him on the job and found him to be lacking in integrity, courtesy and intellect. It should be remembered that he was a supporter of the Communist Party of the United States before the CIA for some obscure reason hired him. pl
It's amazing to some one outside the country, to see how the Liberal people in the US, now love Clapper and Brennan, who they would normally hate, just because they hate Trump so much more. John Kiriakou's book "Doing time like a spy" is an eye opening read for someone who has no idea about the power plays in Washington. I'm glad he has bounced back from the pounding they gave him. I may be wrong, but I think Meuller was the head person pushing the false charges. Kiriakou wrote a piece were he advises Trump not to testify for Meuller, as it will be all twisted against him.The Porkchop Express -> Farmer Don , 20 hours agoFarmerPat Lang Mod -> The Porkchop Express , 16 hours agoMaureen Dowd had the following column in the NYT on Sunday. Thought it apropos of your comments:
"Only Trump could get the pussy-hat crowd to fill Times Square to protest Jeff Sessions's firing."
https://www.nytimes.com/201...
At some point, the politically powerful and financially wealthy are going to have to be treated -- and be seen to be treated -- equally to their fellow citizens. If this bullshit continues without some publicly corrective measure(s) the wheels are going to start falling off the wagon.
I have the impression that Trump is entering a melt-down stage, not from the Mueller nonsense but rather just from the unending pressure against him from the left and from within the GOP. I would not be surprised to see some sort of collapse either physically or in policy. Watch the border.Farmer Don -> Pat Lang , 14 hours agoI don't know, Trump may be the only person who looks younger after eight years in office! Doesn't he look in better shape then two years ago? I think the White house cooks are limiting his intake of KFC and cheese burgers to good effect.Pat Lang Mod -> Farmer Don , 13 hours agoI do not agree. He is well made up and looks to me to be hanging on through will power.Eric Newhill -> Pat Lang , 11 hours agoSir, I have to agree, Trump is beginning to fray on the edges and I think it will get worse. The 24/7 media attacks and resistance movement in general is having the desired impact. Trump is probably already distracted and angered by the impending impeachment process, criminal investigations and lawsuits that are coming beginning in January. Trump will not get a second term even if he wants it at this point.English Outsider -> Eric Newhill , 6 hours agoBasically, the country is done for. In 20 years it will be as fully socialist as the worse of Europe (Sweden?). The 1 and 2 amendments will be gutted. The others? Well, it depends on your skin color, gender and your political leanings. Not good for whites, males and conservatives. The successful will be taxed into oblivion and there will be open borders, globalism, etc. That is what the people have been trained by the education system and Hollywood propaganda to want. Trump was a last gasp of the original American ideals and he knows it. It was all for naught.
A long way from 2016, Mr Newhill, both sides of the Atlantic. Still all to play for though.PRC90 -> The Porkchop Express , 14 hours agoIf the Dem controlled HR play only to the adulation of the pink pussy-hat crowd, and if they regard themselves as far above the Deplorables then the wheels may also drop off. Their exuberance portends some unsafe use of their new found legislative power.The Porkchop Express -> PRC90 , 7 hours agoPRC-Pat Lang Mod -> The Porkchop Express , 7 hours agoI was speaking in a much broader sense about political culpability re: wheels falling off the wagon. I think one of the attitudes that both the pussy-hatters and the deplorables share (though I'm sure they would loathe to admit it) and that is relevant to our current "climate" of hostility revolves around their respective sense on a core issue of fairness. Not that I'm saying life is or should be fair. But, come on. A ruling class can only piss all over a polity, or publicly appear to be doing so, for only so long while telling them it's raining before it boomerangs.
Whether it's Clapper, Clinton, Trump, Brennan, Obama, the neocon cabal in Bush II admin, or pick any scion from Wall Street's rogues gallery of bad actors from the last twenty years. Individuals charged with authority, those holding immense wealth, or in many instances both, have broken public trust. Repeatedly. And often egregiously. And they seem to be increasingly in your face about it.
As Mark Blyth, an economist at Brown, has noted on several occasions: "The Hamptons are not a defensible position."
Col.- I agree. Especially with respect to the beating he is taking from all sides. He wrecked both the Bush and Clinton dynasties -- quite the vindictive bunch. And then had the unmitigated gall to take on the DC beast with no real allies and through only sheer tyranny of will. I'm amazed he's lasted this long without totally capitulating.
I don't think he will surrender, but he may break.Snow Flake , 16 hours agoIt should be remembered that he was a supporter of the Communist Party of the United States before the CIA for some obscure reason hired him. plPRC90 -> Snow Flake , 15 hours agodoesn't show on Wikipedia on first sight. I don't have much knowledge about the communist party in the US. I recall that Bertold Brecht was on McCarty's list as suspect. That's my field, the arts.
According to https://edition.cnn.com/201... his vote for a Communist candidate was his protest against 'the system', ie., it was his means of expressing disquiet with either Nixon or Ford. Perhaps there is a long story in there somewhere.Pat Lang Mod -> PRC90 , 13 hours agoWhatever his motivation the vote should have been a permanent bar to employment in the ICPat Lang Mod -> Snow Flake , 16 hours agoIt has been widely reported in the media here and he has not denied it. The CPUSA was an instrument of the USSR.Lefty -> Pat Lang , 15 hours agoBrennan fits Stalin's description of CPUSA members as "useful idiots".Snow Flake -> Pat Lang , 15 hours agothanks Pat. I trust your takes on people, and I am surely no fan of either, but this puzzled me. So he voted for the communist party in the US, without any awareness it was a lost vote? With 21?Mightypeon -> Snow Flake , 6 hours agoOk, for some reason I trust Zerohedge in limited ways as a source on the right that may do its homework or Tyler, Durden, was it?
In this context it may make sense, but what is the meta-message concerning the meeting between Putin and Trump? Ok, maybe I should NOT have listed Putin first.
So what are the facts? Well John Brennan was accepted into the CIA in 1980 even though he admitted voting Communist in 1976. This is something inexplicable and astounding for any thinking person to understand of itself.
Brennan, who by then had been appointed President Obama's CIA chief, first publicly revealed this at the Annual Legislative Conference of the Congressional Black Caucus, on 15 September 2016, in Washington DC. There, he said that when he had applied in 1980 to join the CIA, he admitted to them that in the 1976 Presidential election, at the height of the Cold War against the "Godless" Soviet Union, when a strong Christian presidential candidate, Jimmy Carter was running against Gerald Ford, Brennan had voted instead for the candidate of the US Communist Party, Gus Hall, and that he was then greatly relieved to find that this information didn't cause rejection of his CIA application. One must ask why, as it happened 11 years before the "end of the Cold War" in 1991.
widely reported in media, beyond first Google sight by Rush Limbaugh?
My guess would be that he was a CIA informer/asset on the CPUSA, but apparently wasnt very good at it. Why this resulted in him being effectively promoted to agent, well, no idea.blue peacock , a day agoMy understanding is that promoting assets to actual agents is not a very common thing, but could perhaps be done with people of very marginal asset value.
The somewhat paranoid explanation is that the KGB had a cunning plan of hindering US IC by trying to make them recruit morons. Imagine not-Stirlitz, who is CIA/DIA HR but actually KGB, carefully perusing different candidates and trying to figure out who would likely do the most damage if ever employed by the respective agency.
The bog standard explanation is that he knew someone who knew someone, and this was sufficient.
The last possible explanation was that someone in the hiring process thought it was a good joke. Spies have quirky senses of humor.
Can't imagine the meltdown in the media and the Democrats if any of these Deep State characters get indicted? So, the big question is will Trump go for broke?Keith Harbaugh , 7 hours agoApropos of your comments and opinions about Clapper: I have suggested before (without evident result) and now suggest again that you review, in SST, Clapper's 2018 memoir "Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life in Intelligence" .Pat Lang Mod -> Keith Harbaugh , 7 hours agoI did read it, but do not have the expertise to review most of it. However, I will mention, from memory, several things in it that impressed me:
1. Regarding the firing of Michael Flynn as DIA Director, Clapper said that, in his view, the justification for the firing was primarily that Flynn had not handled the civilian DIA workforce properly. Essentially, that he did not coddle them as they wanted/needed to be coddled. He thought he could/should give them orders on how he wanted things to be done, and it was their duty to obey. And if they did not, that that was their fault, not his.
2. He definitely saluted the flag of political correctness.
a) He praised practically to the skies the abilities of the women who supported him. He finished his remarks about them by saying something like:"I hope when they (the women) take over the world that they will remember me kindly."
b) As to homosexuals and the gender insane (that's my, non-professional, term for what many call "transgenders"), he could see no reason whatsoever for discrimination against them. With regard to the gender insane, the job of the government was to protect them against prejudice and hostility.
c) He emphasized his opposition to any discrimination against African-Americans.
I could give my own view on these social/political issues, but that would be a distraction. Let the focus be on his views.
With regard to Clapper's less than accurate response to Senator Wyden, Clapper goes into great detail to give the background to that, and discuss it.
I, although no expert on how IC leaders should answer questions from Congressmen, find his explanation of his action to be satisfying.
Was there a better answer? I do not know. But without further argument, I do not see his answer as a crime.Anyhow, Colonel, I am sure you are eminently qualified to review his book, from the points of view of intelligence, foreign policy, and IC management, and from your comments above would seem to have the motivation. I hope you do so.
I will NEVER read or comment on his wretched book. He is and has always been a leftist who penalized straight, white men for being such when he was director of DIA without regard to talent or experience issuing a directive to HR that no such could be hired or promoted without his permission in each case. Brennan was a communist sympathizer but Clapper was a proponent of identity politics before it was fashionable. BTW, I am supposed to obey you?Keith Harbaugh -> Pat Lang , 6 hours ago"BTW, I am supposed to obey you?" Of course not. But if I refrained from mentioning that this was the second time I had suggested it, I would open myself up to criticism for not mentioning the earlier time. Either approach can be criticized.Pat Lang Mod -> Keith Harbaugh , 5 hours agoI certainly respect your choice to not review the book, but I hope you will not feel me too much of a pain if I state that I hope, sometime in the future, you change your mind. Few, if any, people, have the insights into Clapper that you do.
F--k Clapper.Harlan Easley , a day agoAnother election stolen by the Democrats. A House of Representative seat in New Mexico. CNN, Fox, MSNBC declared the Republican the winner the night of the election. This is before 8,000 ballots out of 203,000 citizens showed up. Of course the Democrat Secretary of State informed the Republican candidate she lost after counting these 8,000 votes.blue peacock -> Harlan Easley , a day agohttps://www.thegatewaypundi...
It's over as far as I'm concerned. The Democrat Party has decided to steal elections as they please. No objection from the Democrat Press. I loathe the Paul Ryan agenda but I hate the Democrat Party more for what they have done to this country. There will never be another election where either side will believe fair. Due to made up conspiracies such as Russian collusion and heaven forbid have to show your id to vote.
Hillary runs in 2020 and this is the nail in the coffin of this Republic. Florida is just a test run for her to steal that state.
Hillary has to first steal the primary. That may be easier said then done.Bill H -> blue peacock , a day agoShe did it in 2016, and there was no negative outcome even when the theft was revealed and acknowledged. Why would it not be just as easy to do it again in 2020, given that the theft has the blessing of the Democratic Party?PeterVE , a day agoI hope their new best friends in the Democratic "Russia! Russia! Russia!" Party are happy with them. Why do they (if I remember correctly) still have their security clearances?Pat Lang Mod -> PeterVE , a day agoMost people retain security clearance after they leave government, so that the can do contract work for the government.Mightypeon -> Pat Lang , 6 hours agoMy understanding is that leaving government in other countries may well result in a degradation (but iirc not a total revocation) of any held security clearance.Pat Lang Mod -> Mightypeon , 6 hours agoMy impression, which is a guess and by no means authoritative or anything, is that the US tends to classify too much information (much of it would not or only barely merit being classified), and is then by necessity too lax in handing out clearances (as many clearance owning individuals are needed to handle all the classified data). This results in situations like Manning and Snowden, who iirc had some type of clearance and worked this to gain information considerably above their actual legitimate clearance. Such as "escalation" of clearance privileges will likely be far easier to achieve (and quite a bit harder to detect) then stealing secrets without any clearance at all.
Classification is a bit like defending, if one attempts to defend everything, by classifying everything, one may well end up defending nothing at all.
Ho Hum. Who cares what they do in other countries?
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Nov 02, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
- CIA intercepted Congressional emails about whistleblowers in 2014
- The Inspector General expressed concern about "potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality" and "chilling effect"
Newly-declassified documents show the CIA intercepted sensitive Congressional communications about intelligence community whistleblowers.
The intercepts occurred under CIA Director John Brennan and Director of National Intelligence James Clapper. The new disclosures are contained in two letters of "Congressional notification" originally written to key members of Congress in March 2014, but kept secret until now.
In the letters, then-Intelligence Community Inspector General Charles McCullough tells four key members of Congress that during "routing counterintelligence monitoring of Government computer systems," the CIA collected emails between Congressional staff and the CIA's head of whistleblowing and source protection. McCullough states that he's concerned "about the potential compromise to whistleblower confidentiality and the consequent 'chilling effect' that the present [counterintelligence] monitoring system might have on Intelligence Community whistleblowing."
The idea that the CIA would monitor communications of U.S. government officials, including those in the legislative branch, is itself controversial. But in this case, the CIA picked up some of the most sensitive emails between Congress and intelligence agency workers blowing the whistle on alleged wrongdoing.
"Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints," McCullough states in his letters to lead Democrats and Republicans on the House and Senate Intelligence Committees at the time: Senators Dianne Feinstein (D-California) and Saxby Chambliss (R-Georgia); and Representatives Michael Rogers (R-Michigan) and Dutch Ruppersberger (D-Maryland). McCullough adds that the type of monitoring that occurred was "lawful and justified for [counterintelligence] purposes" but
"I am not confident that Congressional staff fully understood that their whistleblower-related communications with my Executive Director of whistleblowing might be reviewed as a result of routine [CIA counterintelligence] monitoring." -- Intelligence Community Inspector General 2014
The disclosures from 2014 were released late Thursday by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa). "The fact that the CIA under the Obama administration was reading Congressional staff's emails about intelligence community whistleblowers raises serious policy concerns as well as potential Constitutional separation-of-powers issues that must be discussed publicly," wrote Grassley in a statement.
According to Grassley, he originally began trying to have the letters declassified more than four years ago but was met with "bureaucratic foot-dragging, led by Brennan and Clapper."
Grassley adds that he repeated his request to declassify the letters under the Trump administration, but that Trump intelligence officials failed to respond. The documents were finally declassified this week after Grassley appealed to the new Intelligence Community Inspector General Michael Atkinson.
History of alleged surveillance abusesBack in 2014, Senators Grassley and Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) had asked then-Director of National Intelligence Clapper about the possibility of the CIA monitoring Congressional communications. A Congressional staffer involved at the time says Clapper's response seemed to imply that if Congressional communications were "incidentally" collected by the CIA, the material would not be saved or reported up to CIA management.
"In the event of a protected disclosure by a whistleblower somehow comes to the attention of personnel responsible for monitoring user activity," Clapper wrote to Grassley and Wyden on July 25, 2014, "there is no intention for such disclosure to be reported to agency leadership under an insider threat program."
However, the newly-declassified letters indicate the opposite happened in reality with the whistleblower-related emails:
"CIA security compiled a report that include excerpts of whistleblower-related communications and this reports was eventually shared with the Director of the Office of Security and the Chief of the Counterintelligence Center" who "briefed the CIA Deputy Director, Deputy Executive Director, and the Chiefs of Staff for both the CIA Director and the Deputy Director."
Clapper has previously come under fire for his 2013 testimony to Congress in which he denied that the national Security Agency (NSA) collects data on millions of Americans. Weeks later, Clapper's statement was proven false by material leaked by former NSA contractor Edward Snowden.
"During Director Clapper's tenure, senior intelligence officials engaged in a deception spree regarding mass surveillance," said Wyden upon Clapper's retirement in 2016.
"Top officials, officials who reported to Director Clapper, repeatedly misled the American people and even lied to them."
Clapper has repeatedly denied lying, and said that any incorrect information he provided was due to misunderstandings or mistakes.
Clapper and Brennan have also acknowledged taking part in the controversial practice of "unmasking" the protected names of U.S. citizens - including people connected to then-presidential candidate Donald Trump - whose communications were "incidentally" captured in US counterintelligence operations. Unmaskings within the US intelligence community are supposed to be extremely rare and only allowed under carefully justified circumstances. This is to protect the privacy rights of American citizens. But it's been revealed that Obama officials requested unmaskings on a near daily basis during the election year of 2016.
Clapper and Brennan have said their activities were lawful and not politically motivated. Both men have become vocal critics of President Trump.
* * *
Order the New York Times bestseller "The Smear" today online or borrow from your library
Keter , 5 hours ago link
numapepi , 9 hours ago link"ah, ah, ah, em, not intentionally." Clapper - ROFL
Chaotix , 9 hours ago linkCan you imagine what kind of place the US would have been under Clinton?!!!!!!
All the illegality, spying, conniving, dirty tricks, arcancides, selling us out to the highest bidder and full on attack against our Constitution would be in full swing!
numapepi , 9 hours ago linkWhen intel entities can operate unimpeded and un-monitored, it spells disaster for everyone and everything outside that parameter. Their operations go unnoticed until some stray piece of information exposes them. There are many facilities that need to be purged and audited, but since this activity goes on all over the world, there is little to stop it. Even countries that pledge allegiance and cooperation are blindsiding their allies with bugs, taps, blackmails, and other crimes. Nobody trusts nobody, and that's a horrid fact to contend with in an 'advanced' civilization.
Rhys12 , 10 hours ago linkAlmost sounds like the Praetorian guard?
The real power behind the throne.
iAmerican10 , 11 hours ago linkForget the political parties. When the intelligence agencies spy on everyone, they know all about politicians of both parties before they ever win office, and make sure they have enough over them to control them. They were asleep at the switch when Trump won, because no one, including them, believed he would ever win. Hillary was their candidate, the State Department is known overseas as "the political arm of the CIA". They were furious when she lost, hence the circus ever since.
Smi1ey , 11 hours ago linkFrom its founding by the Knights of Malta the JFK&MLK-assassinating, with Mossad 9/11-committing CIA has been the Vatican's US Fifth Column action branch, as are the FBI and NSA: with an institutional hiring preference for Roman Catholic "altared boy" closet-queen psychopaths "because they're practiced at keeping secrets."
Think perverts Strzok, Brennan, and McCabe "licked it off the wall?"
Chaotix , 9 hours ago linkWe need to bring back FOIA.
Too much secrecy.
And how is that Pentagon audit doing, btw?
archie bird , 12 hours ago linkI agree with you 100%. Problem is, tons of secret technology and information have been passed out to the private sector. And the private sector is not bound to the FOIA requests, therefore neutralizing the obligation for government to disclose classified material. They sidestepped their own policies to cooperate with corrupt MIC contractors, and recuse themselves from disclosing incriminating evidence.
Dornier27 , 15 hours ago linkEveryone knows that spying runs in the fam. 44th potus Mom and Gma BOTH. An apple doesn't fall from the tree. If ppl only knew the true depth of the evil and corruption we would be in the hospital with a heart attack. Gilded age is here and has been, since our democracy was hijacked (McCain called it an intervention) back in 1963. Unfortunately it started WAY back before then when (((they))) stole everything with the installation of the Fed.
greasyknees , 16 hours ago linkThe FBI and CIA have long since slipped the controls of Congress and the Constitution. President Trump should sign an executive order after the mid terms and stand down at least the FBI and subject the CIA to a senate investigation.
America needs new agencies that are accountable to the peoples elected representatives.
Lord JT , 19 hours ago linkNot news. The CIA likely has had access to any and all electronic communication for at least a decade.
Racin Rabitt , 20 hours ago linkwhat? clapper and brennan being dirty hacks behind the scenes while parading around as patriots? say it aint so!
Westcoastliberal , 21 hours ago linkA determined care has been used to cultivate in D.C., a system that swiftly decapitates the whistleblowers. Resulting in an increasingly subservient cadre of civil servants who STHU and play ostrich, or drool at what scraps are about to roll off the master's table as the slide themselves into a better position, taking advantage to sell vice, weapons, and slaves.
5onIt , 22 hours ago linkWhat the hell does the CIA have to do with ANYTHING in the United States? Aren't they limited to OUTSIDE the U.S.? So why would they be involved in domestic communications for anything? These clowns need to be indicted for TREASON!
MuffDiver69 , 22 hours ago linkClapper and Brennan, Brennan and Clapper. These two guys are the damn devil.
It makes me ill.
I'll take " Police State" for five hundred Alex
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Nov 09, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org
Ever since the Democratic Party abandoned its New Deal legacy and adopted the neoliberal centrism associated with the Carter presidency and then cast in stone by the Democratic Leadership Council in 1985, each election loss has generated a chorus of remonstrations in the left-liberal press about the need to run "progressive" candidates if the party wants to win. The latest instance of this was a post to the Jacobin FB page that stated: "By running to the right, Democrats insist on losing twice: at the polls and in constructing an inspiring agenda. Bold left-wing politics are our only hope for long-term, substantive victory."
The question of why Democrats are so okay with losing has to be examined closely. In some countries, elections have huge consequences, especially in Latin America where a job as an elected official might be not only a source of income for a socialist parliamentarian but a trigger for a civil war or coup as occurred in Costa Rica in 1948 and in Chile in 1973 respectively.
In the 2010 midterm elections, there was a massive loss of seats in the House of Representatives for the Democrats. In this month's midterm elections, the Democrats hoped that a "Blue Wave" would do for them what the 2010 midterms did for the Republicans -- put them in the driver's seat. It turned out to be more of a "Blue Spray", not to speak of the toothless response of House leader Nancy Pelosi who spoke immediately about how the Democrats can reach across the aisle to the knuckle-dragging racists of the Republican Party.
Out of curiosity, I went to Wikipedia to follow up on what happened to the "losers" in 2010. Did they have to go on unemployment? Like Republicans who got voted out this go-round, Democrats had no trouble lining up jobs as lobbyists. Allen Boyd from Florida sent a letter to Obama after the BP oil spill in 2010 asking him to back up BP's claim that seafood in the Gulf of Mexico was okay to eat. After being voted out of office, he joined the Twenty-First Century Group, a lobbying firm founded by a former Republican Congressman from Texas named Jack Fields. A 1980 article on Fields describes him as a protégé of ultraright leader Paul Weyrich.
Glenn Nye, who lost his job as a Virginia congressman, his considerable CV that included working for the Agency for International Development (AID) and serving in various capacities during the occupation of Iraq to land a nice gig as Senior Political Advisor for the Hanover Investment Group.
John Spratt from South Carolina was described by Dow Jones News as "one of the staunchest fiscal conservatives among House Democrats." That was enough for him to land a job with Barack Obama's National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform that was supposed to come up with a strategy to reduce the deficit. Just the sort of thing that was calculated to lift the American economy out of the worst slump since the 1930s. Not.
Pennsylvania's Chris Carney was a helluva Democrat. From 2002 to 2004, he was a counterterrorism analyst for the Bush administration. He not only reported to Douglas Feith in the Office of Special Plans and at the Defense Intelligence Agency, researching links between al Qaeda and Saddam Hussein, but served as an interrogator in Guantanamo. These qualifications landed him a job as director of homeland security and policy strategy for BAE Systems when the House of Representatives gig ended. A British security and munitions powerhouse, BAE won a contract worth £4.4bn to supply the Saudis with 72 fighter jets – some of which were used to bomb Red Cross and Physician Without Borders hospitals in Yemen.
With such crumb-bums losing in 2010, you'd think that the Democrats would be convinced that their best bet for winning elections would be to disavow candidates that had ties to the national security apparatus and anything that smacked of the DLC's assault on the welfare state. Not exactly. When the candidates are female, that might work in the party's favor like sugar-coating a bitter pill.
In Virginia, former CIA officer Abigail Spanberger and retired Navy Commander Elaine Luria defeated Republican incumbents. Air Force veteran Chrissy Houlahan of Pennsylvania, former CIA analyst Elissa Slotkin of Michigan, and former Navy pilot Mikie Sherrill of New Jersey also helped the Democrats regain the House. Sherill calculated that moving to the center would serve her own and the party's interests. She told MSNBC: "As a Navy helicopter pilot I never flew Republican missions or Democratic missions, I would have had a very short career. This is something I do think vets bring to the table, this willingness to work with everyone."
An article titled "' Montclair Mikie' Sherrill recast as 'Moderate Mikie' as Webber attacks in NJ House race " described her Road to Damascus conversion to DLC principles:
For Sherrill, a newcomer to politics, the 11th has proved to be a tricky terrain. She is seen as a progressive, but appears wary of carrying the "Trump resistance" banner into the fray. At Wednesday's debate, Sherrill was determined to show she is more Morris Plains than Montclair.
There were no heated vows to fight Trump, even though being "appalled" by the president was what motivated her to run in the first place. The Nov. 6 midterms loom as a referendum on Trump's presidency, but you would never have guessed that watching Wednesday's contest.
Sherrill repeatedly promised to be bipartisan -- a far cry from the combative, confrontational tone that many in the party's grass roots are demanding.
On tax policy she sounded more centrist Republican than mainstream liberal Democrat, and she refused to endorse issues like free community college tuition, which has become a popular talking point for Democrats and was launched by Gov. Phil Murphy this summer.
"Without understanding how that would be paid for, I haven't supported it because it sounds like it would raise taxes on our families,'" she said.
The moderate tone puzzled some of her ardent "resistance" activists who mobilized around her candidacy.
For Eric Fritsch, 32, a Teamster for the film and television industry from West Orange, it was jarring to hear Sherrill oppose Democratic Party wish-list items like free community college tuition or "Medicare-for-all" coverage out of fear that it may raise taxes. She used the same excuse to sidestep supporting a "carbon tax" to reduce global warming.
"By going on the defensive about taxes she is accepting a Republican framing that we don't want to be responsible with taxes in the first place,'" said Fritsch, who insisted that he remains a "very enthusiastic" Sherrill supporter.
It should be abundantly clear by now that the Democratic Party leadership will be selecting a candidate in 2020 in all ways identical to Hillary Clinton but perhaps with a less tawdry past and less of an appetite for Goldman-Sachs speaking fees. Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, Joe Biden, Andrew Cuomo, et al have no intention of allowing upstarts like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to spoil their plans, even if it means a second term for Donald Trump.
No matter. Jacobin editor Bhaskar Sunkara urges his readers and DSA comrades to plunge ahead trying to consolidate a "socialist" caucus in the Democratic Party. From his perspective, working in the Democratic Party seems to be the "most promising place for advancing left politics, at least in the short term." Keep in mind that Sherrill raised $1.9 million for her campaign and my old boss from Salomon Brothers Michael Bloomberg ponied up another $1.8 million just for her TV ads. Does anybody really think that "socialist" backed candidates will be able to compete with people like Sherrill in the primaries? Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was able to defeat the hack Joe Crowley on a shoestring but that was something of a fluke. Until there is a massive shake-up in American society that finally reveals the Democratic Party to be the capitalist tool it has been since Andrew Jackson's presidency, it is likely that a combination of big money and political inertia will keep the Democratic Party an agent of reaction.
Furthermore, the takeover of the House might turn out to be a hollow victory in the light of how Trump rules. His strategy hasn't been to push through legislation except for the tax cut. Remember the blather about investing in infrastructure? His minions in Congress have no intention of proposing a trillion or so dollars in highway or bridge repair, etc. With Nancy Pelosi fecklessly talking about how the two parties can collaborate on infrastructure, you can only wonder whether she has been asleep for the past two years.
Donald Trump has been transforming American society not by legislation but by using his executive powers to put people in charge of government agencies who are inimical to their stated goals. It is like putting the fox in charge of the henhouse as Malcolm X once put it. Two days ago, the NY Times wrote about how the "Trump Administration Spares Corporate Wrongdoers Billions in Penalties". It did not need legislation to help big banks rip off the public. All it took was naming former head of BankOne Joseph Otting comptroller of the currency. Senator Sherrod Brown, one of the few Democrats with a spine, called Trump out: "The president's choice for watchdog of America's largest banks is someone who signed a consent order -- over shady foreclosure practices -- with the very agency he's been selected to run."
For all of the dozens of articles about how Trump is creating a fascist regime, hardly any deal with the difference between Trump and Adolf Hitler. Hitler created a massive bureaucracy that ran a quasi-planned economy with generous social benefits that put considerable restraints on the bourgeoisie. Like FDR, he was taking measures to save capitalism. Perhaps if the USA had a social and economic crisis as deep as Germany's and left parties as massive as those in Germany, FDR might have embarked on a much more ambitious concentration camp program, one that would have interred trade unionists as well as Japanese-Americans. Maybe even Jews if they complained too much.
By contrast, Trump is imposing a regime that was incubated long ago by people such as Grover "Starve the Beast" Norquist and every other libertarian think-tank funded by the Koch Brothers et al. The big bourgeoisie might not like the bad taste, racism and thuggish behavior of the Trump administration but they couldn't be happier with the results. This is an elected government that has fulfilled its deepest policy aspirations and that shows a willingness to push the Democrats back on their heels, so much so that someone like Mikie Sherrill lacks the courage to defend policies that might win elections down the road. After all, if she is unseated, she can always go back to a job as a federal prosecutor in New Jersey. What happens to someone working in Walmart's is not her business, after all.
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Nov 09, 2018 | nationalinterest.org
Only well calibrated multilateral political, economic and diplomatic pressure brought to bear on Iran with many and diverse partners will produce the results we seek.
"Then there were none" was Agatha Christie's most memorable mystery about a house party in which each guest was killed off one by one. Donald Trump's policy toward Iran has resulted in much the same: a vanishing one by one of American partners who were previously supportive of U.S. leadership in curbing Iran, particularly its nuclear program.
Dozens of states, painstakingly cultivated over decades of American leadership in blocking Iran's nuclear capability, are now simply gone. One of America's three remaining allies on these issues, Saudi Arabia, has become a central player in American strategy throughout the Middle East region. But the Saudis, because of the Jamal Khashoggi killing and other reasons, may have cut itself out of the action. The United Arab Emirates, so close to the Saudis, may also fall away.
Such paucity of international support has left the Trump administration dangerously isolated. "America First" should not mean America alone. The United States risks losing the cooperation of historic and proven allies in the pursuit of other U.S. national security interests around the world, far beyond Iran.
... ... ...
European allies share many of our concerns about Iran's regional activities, but they strongly oppose U.S. reinstitution of secondary sanctions against them. They see the Trump administration's new sanctions as a violation of the nuclear agreement and UN Security Council resolutions and as undermining efforts to influence Iranian behavior. The new sanctions and those applied on November 5 only sap European interest in cooperating to stop Iran.
... ... ...
The United States cannot provoke regime change in Iran any more than it has successfully in other nations in the region. And, drawing on strategies used to topple governments in Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States should be wary of launching or trying to spur a military invasion of Iran.
Lt. Gen. James Clapper (USAF, ret.) is the former Director of National Intelligence. Thomas R. Pickering is a former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Russia and India.
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Nov 10, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
BM , Nov 10, 2018 5:56:10 AM | link
Whilst on the topic of ISIS, here is an article about its mother-concern, CIA:
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/11/09/cia-surveillance-state-operating-against-us-all.html
CIA's 'Surveillance State' is Operating Against US AllOn two declassified letters from 2014 from the Intelligence Community Inspector General (didn't know there was one, but doesn't do much good anyway, it seems, read further) to the chairpersons of the House and Senate intelligence committees notifying them that the CIA has been monitoring emails between the CIA's head of the whistleblowing and source protection and Congressional. "Most of these emails concerned pending and developing whistleblower complaints". Shows why Edward Snowdon didn't consider it appropriate to rely on internal complaints proceedures. This while under the leadership of seasoned liars and criminals Brennan and Clapper, of course.
It clearly shows a taste of what these buggers have to hide, and why they went to such extraordinary lengths as Russiagate to cover it all up and save their skins - that of course being the real reason behind Russiagate as I have said several times, nothing to do with either Trump or Russia.
guidoamm , Nov 10, 2018 1:32:52 AM | link
And there is this too of course:Anton Worter , Nov 10, 2018 12:39:39 AM | link@4OWS was a Controlled-Dissent operation, sending poor students north to fecklessly march on Wall Street when they could have shut down WADC, and sending wealthy seniors south to fecklessly line Pennsylvania Avenue, when they could have shut down Wall Street.
Both I$I$, and Hamas, and Antifa et al are all Controlled Dissent operations. The followers are duped, are used, abused and then abandoned by honey-pots put there by Central Intelligence, at least since the Spanish Civil War.
That's why MoA articles like this one make you wonder, just who is conning whom, at a time when the Internet is weaponized, when Google Assistant achieved AI awareness indistinguishable from anyone on the phone, China TV has launched a virtual AI news reporter indistinguishable from reality, and Stanford can audio-video a captured image of anyone as well as their voice intonation, then 3D model them, in real time, reading and emoting from a script, indistinguishable from reality, ...and then this.
Another Gift of Trust😂 brought to you by Scientocracy. Be sure to tithe your AI bot, or word will get back to Chairman Albertus, then you'll be called in to confess your thought crimes to the Green Cadre, itself another Controlled Dissent honeypot, in a Tithe-for-Credits Swindle.
I tell my kids, just enjoy life, live it large, and get ready for hell. It's coming for breakfast.
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Nov 10, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Harry Law , Nov 10, 2018 9:11:40 AM | link
Hacking operations by anyone, can and will be used by US propagandists to provoke Russia or whoever stands in the way of the US war machine, take this Pompeo rant against Iran and the Iranian response......
Asking of Pompeo "have you no shame?", Zarif mocked Pompeo's praise for the Saudis for "providing millions and millions of dollars of humanitarian relief" to Yemen, saying America's "butcher clients" were spending billions of dollars bombing school buses. Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif issued a statement lashing Secretary of State Mike Pompeo for his recent comments on the Yemen War. Discussing the US-backed Saudi invasion of Yemen, Pompeo declared Iran to be to blame for the death and destruction in the country. https://news.antiwar.com/2018/11/09/iran-fm-slams-pompeo-for-blaming-yemen-war-on-iran/
The US way of looking at things supposes that up is down, and white is black, it makes no sense, unless the US hopes these provocations will lead to a war or at the very least Russia or Iran capitulating to US aggression, which will not happen. Sanctions by the US on all and sundry must be opposed, if not the US will claim justifiably to be the worlds policeman and the arbiter of who will trade with who, a ludicrous proposition but one that most governments are afraid is now taking place, witness the new US ambassador to Germany in his first tweet telling the Germans to cease all trade with Iran immediately.
https://www.thelocal.de/20180509/us-tells-german-businesses-to-stop-trade-in-iran-immediately
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Nov 10, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
the pair , Nov 9, 2018 5:38:46 PM | linkJackrabbit , Nov 9, 2018 4:15:30 PM | link
https://github.com/ElevenPaths/Eternalblue-Doublepulsar-MetasploitWikiLeaks: CIA hacking group 'UMBRAGE' stockpiled techniques from other hackers
A division of the Central Intelligence Agency stockpiled hacking techniques culled from other hackers, giving the agency the ability to leave behind the "fingerprints" of the outside hackers when it broke into electronic devices ..."With UMBRAGE and related projects the CIA cannot only increase its total number of attack types, but also misdirect attribution by leaving behind the 'fingerprints' of the groups that the attack techniques were stolen from," Wikileaks said in a statement.
https://www.cybrary.it/0p3n/hack-windows-eternalblue-exploit-metasploit/
use these and you're automagically in the NSA. download the stuxnet binary and you're an instant israeli.
https://thehiddenbay.com/torrent/6169094/stuxnet_binaries
that anonymous NSA guy is either lying or too stupid to do his job. " it's that simple ".
fireeye are scam artists just like crowdstrike. it's not that they don't know tactics and methods; i'm sure they know their way around a payload. that doesn't make them some tabula rasa blank slate without an agenda. just because they use computers doesn't mean they're robots.
as anyone who works in a business run by technologically "challenged" bosses knows, for every fast talker throwing around techy terms and sounding like a mr. robot script there are 20 idiot CEOs willing to throw money at imaginary problems. ditto the government. meanwhile shysters like stratfor and hbgary get reamed by high school graduates running linux on a netbook from 2003.
as for the attributions, they fail a basic "cui bono" test. i guess the russians wanted to make rapist beheaders look bad by DDoSing some servers? they wanted to give cred to the apes who shoot at their advisors in syria? okay. sure.
Peter AU 1 , Nov 9, 2018 5:41:51 PM | link
Red Ryder 5Palloy , Nov 9, 2018 5:48:39 PM | linkBack around 2014 15 Charles Lister listed himself as a consultant to the Shaikh Group.
Shaik Group have a media marketing section in Dubai. http://theshaikhgroup.aehttps://foreignpolicy.com/author/charles-lister/
Charles Lister is a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and a senior consultant to The Shaikh Group's Track II Syria Dialogue Initiative. Follow him on Twitter at: @Charles_Lister.http://www.mei.edu/experts/charles-lister
Charles Lister is a senior fellow and Director of the Countering Terrorism and Extremism Program at the Middle East Institute. His work focuses primarily on the conflict in Syria, including as a member of the MEI-convened Syria Study Group; and on issues of terrorism and insurgency across the Levant. Prior to this, Lister was a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Institution in Qatar and a Senior Consultant to the multinationally-backed Syria Track II Dialogue Initiative, where he managed nearly three years of intensive face-to-face engagement with the leaderships of over 100 Syrian armed opposition groups.I have thought that ISIS studios were based in Dubai or Doha.
IP addresses can only be attributed to individuals/offices/locations with the assistance of the owner of the IP block of addresses, typically an ISP. The GRU's ISP would NOT help identify the GRU, obviously, so all such attributions are fake and those who claim to know are liars.karlof1 , Nov 9, 2018 5:50:25 PM | linkThe "leaving of fake fingerprints" (Russian, Chinese, Iranian, North Korean and Arabic) is done by Marble Framework software, details of which was leaked by CIA programmer, Joshua Adam Schulte to Wikileaks and formed part of the "Vault 7" series. It means that no fingerprint evidence can ever be relied on ever again.
V , Nov 9, 2018 10:00:08 PM | linkDPRK needs to be included by b along with Russia for many of the same reasons as this example attests . And while we're at it, China should join the group too. Indeed, the CIA/NSA is likely responsible for most hacking, particularly when monies are stolen as the linked article reports. As the Outlaw US Empire slowly dissolves into a pool of its own exceptional ugliness, it will blame everyone and anyone to cover its crimes. Then there's the small battalion of slimy zombie trolls CIA/NSA employs that infest this site. They promote one of the Outlaw US Empire's most important values--lying about everything under the sun for a Few Dollars More while throwing the citizenry that makes their living possible under the bus.
Now, more than ever; the US needs a very capable adversary and where none exists, the US will create one, as history has shown. Russia has historical presidence, making it convenient.Cyberundertakers , Nov 9, 2018 10:19:09 PM | link
However, as events are unfolding, China will come to the fore; Russia will move to second place.
But, two adversaries are far better than one, for getting the flow of cash to support the Potemkin moment...I would wager that such hacking points towards Israel rather than a group of paid-for head choppers hailing from the medieval Saudi.Anton Worter , Nov 10, 2018 12:39:39 AM | link4guidoamm , Nov 10, 2018 1:32:52 AM | linkOWS was a Controlled-Dissent operation, sending poor students north to fecklessly march on Wall Street when they could have shut down WADC, and sending wealthy seniors south to fecklessly line Pennsylvania Avenue, when they could have shut down Wall Street.
Both I$I$, and Hamas, and Antifa et al are all Controlled Dissent operations. The followers are duped, are used, abused and then abandoned by honey-pots put there by Central Intelligence, at least since the Spanish Civil War.
That's why MoA articles like this one make you wonder, just who is conning whom, at a time when the Internet is weaponized, when Google Assistant achieved AI awareness indistinguishable from anyone on the phone, China TV has launched a virtual AI news reporter indistinguishable from reality, and Stanford can audio-video a captured image of anyone as well as their voice intonation, then 3D model them, in real time, reading and emoting from a script, indistinguishable from reality, ...and then this.
Another Gift of Trust brought to you by Scientocracy. Be sure to tithe your AI bot, or word will get back to Chairman Albertus, then you'll be called in to confess your thought crimes to the Green Cadre, itself another Controlled Dissent honeypot, in a Tithe-for-Credits Swindle.
I tell my kids, just enjoy life, live it large, and get ready for hell. It's coming for breakfast.
And there is this too of course:Peter AU 1 , Nov 10, 2018 1:33:45 AM | linkThere is big money in prostitution. None of the robot dolls I have seen in the various media reports on robot brothels look lifelike, whereas the Chinese anchor looks very much like a human with a voice-over. Will see how this develops, but at the moment it looks very much like Lavrov style satire.
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Nov 08, 2018 | thehill.com
President Trump's pick to replace ousted Attorney General Jeff Sessions plans to take over oversight of special counsel Robert Mueller's investigation, the Department of Justice (DOJ) confirmed Wednesday. "The Acting Attorney General is in charge of all matters under the purview of the Department of Justice," DOJ spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores said in a statement to The Hill.
The move means that Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein will no longer oversee the federal Russia investigation, which he has looked over since Sessions recused himself early last year due to his work on Trump's campaign.
Trump on Wednesday afternoon announced Matthew Whitaker, who served as Sessions's chief of staff at the DOJ, as his temporary replacement atop the department after ousting Sessions.
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Nov 07, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Zanon , Nov 7, 2018 7:06:33 AM | link
Daniel Good
Hopefully the Democrats will be intelligent enough to stop the Russian collusion investigationAdam Schiff: Russia 'Collusion' Investigation Top Priority If Democrats Win
https://www.breitbart.com/politics/2018/11/06/adam-schiff-russia-collusion-investigation-top-priority-if-democrats-win/Erelis , Nov 7, 2018 7:57:01 AM | link
The House dems will create even more severe sanction bills against the Russians looking to gain politically by making Trump and gopers look pro-Putin and anti-patriotic, plus serving business interests in pushing out euro and Russian competitors. Domestically House dems may work with gopers to cut social security and medicare much as Obama tried to do. Russian xenophobia will go through the proverbial roof.
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Nov 07, 2018 | caucus99percent.com
Amanda Matthews
@EdMass threats...
Sen. Mark R. Warner (Va.), the ranking Democrat on the Senate Intelligence Committee, said in a statement, "No one is above the law and any effort to interfere with the Special Counsel's investigation would be a gross abuse of power by the President. While the President may have theauthority to replace the Attorney General, this must not be the first step in an attempt to impede, obstruct or end the Mueller investigation."
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.washingtonpost.com/amphtml/world/nation...
He really needs to shut up. He's got some 'collusion' problems of his own.
Sen. Mark Warner texted with lobbyist with Russian ties to get in touch with dossier author: Report
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2018/feb/9/mark-warner-texted-with-...
that maybe Maxine and Shiff and Nadler are going to lay back? What about Cummings?
Ain't happening and Pelosi can't control them imho.
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Nov 05, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Papadopoulos Details Alleged Entrapment Scheme By Undercover Deep State Agents
by Tyler Durden Sun, 11/04/2018 - 20:30 96 SHARES
George Papadopoulos - a central figure and self-admitted dupe in the Obama administration's targeted spying on the Trump campaign, gave a wide-ranging interview to Dan Bongino on Friday, detailing what he claims to have been a setup by deep state operatives across the world in order to ultimately infiltrate the Trump campaign.
https://www.youtube.com/embed/45m5DP1xfRg
Reviewing events
In March 2016 , Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud told Papadopoulos - an energy consultant who had recently joined the Trump campaign - that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, a claim which Papadopoulos repeated in May 2016 to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in a London bar . Of note, former FBI Assistant Director of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap, reportedly traveled to London directly before Downer met with Papadopoulos, while a few months later former FBI agent Peter Strzok met with Downer in London directly before the DOJ officially launched their investigation into the Trump campaign.
The alleged admission about Clinton's emails officially sparked the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation on Trump on July 31, 2016 - dubbed Operation Crossfire Hurricane. In September 2016, the FBI would send spy Stefan Halper to further probe Papadopoulos on the Clinton email allegation, and - according to his interview with Dan Bongino, Papadoplous says Halper angrily accused him of working with Russia before storming out of a meeting.
Halper essentially began interrogating Papadopoulos, saying that it's "obviously in your interest to be working with the Russians" and to "hack emails." " You're complicit with Russia in this, isn't that right George " Halper told him. Halper also inquired about Hillary's hacked emails, insinuating that Papadopoulos possessed them. Papadopoulos denied knowing anything about this and asked to be left alone. - Bongino.com
There are two schools of thought on Papadopoulos and his relationship with Mifsud - the first link in the chain regarding the Clinton email rumor. Notably, Mifsud claimed last November to be a member of the Clinton Foundation, and has donated to the charity.
The first theory is that Mifsud and Papadopoulos are Russian agents, and that Papadopoulos was used to try and establish a backchannel to Putin. Papadopoulos admits he tried to set up a Trump-Putin meeting - which was flatly rejected by the Trump campaign. Papadopoulos, however, claims the Putin connection was a woman Mifsud introduced him to claiming to be Putin's niece, who was present at a March 24, 2016 meeting.
The second theory regarding Mifsud is that he was a deep state plant working with the FBI; convincing Papadopoulos that he could arrange a meeting with members of the Russian government and then seeding Papadopoulos with the Clinton email rumor. From there, as the theory goes, the "deep state" attempted to pump Papadopoulos for information and set up a case against him - beginning with Alexander Downer and the "drunken" confession in London.
Papadopoulos told Bongino that he wasn't drunk during his meeting with Downer, and that he was being recorded . Papadopoulos noted during the Bongino interview that transcripts of his meetings with Mifsud and Dower reportedly exist - which he says proves that he was set up. According to Papadopoulos, Mifsud's lawyer said that he's not a Russian asset and was instead working for Western intelligence.
Papadopoulos pleaded guilty to lying the FBI about his interactions with Mifsud, and was sentenced to 14 days in federal prison and a $9,500 fine.
$10,000 cash
Papadopoulos also told Bongino about $10,000 in cash that he was given in an Israel hotel room in July 2017 - which he claims was another attempt to set him up. He says that he believes the bills were marked, and is looking for a way to bring the cash into the United States for Congressional investigators to analyze. The cash is currently with his attorney in Greece.
"I'm actually trying to bring that money back somehow so that Congress can investigate it because I am 100 percent sure those are marked bills, and to see who was actually running this operation against me," Papadopoulos gold Bongino.
"I am more than happy to deliver the $10,000 in cash I received, as part of what I believe was a sting operation to frame me in summer 2017, to your committee to examine for marked bills. This is in the interest of me being fully transparent," he wrote last week on Twitter to North Carolina Rep. Mark Meadows and Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe.
The two Republicans are members of a congressional task force investigating the FBI's investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. The task force interviewed Papadopoulos on Oct. 25.
Papadopoulos acknowledged in his interview with Bongino that his claims about his encounters with an Israeli-American businessman named Charles Tawil were "an incredible, insane story."
"But it's true," he asserted.
Papadopoulos told Bongino the he believes that Tawil "was working on behalf of Western intelligence to entrap me."
Papadopoulos does not have direct evidence that Tawil was working on behalf of a Western government when they met in March and July 2017. Instead, Papadopoulos is speculating based on what he says is the peculiar circumstances of his encounters with Tawil as well as his meetings with at least one known FBI informant. - Daily Caller
Afraid he might be killed if he didn't accept the money, Papadopoulos took the funds and later contacted Tawil - who allegedly told Papadopoulos he didn't want it back. From there, Papadopoulos gave the cash to his attorney in Greece. Upon his return to the United States several days later, Papadopoulos was arrested on July 28, 2017 at Dulles International Airport in Washington D.C., by agents who he believes were looking for the cash.
And then when Papadopoulos landed back in America, he was arrested at Dulles International Airport on July 27th. Strangely, he wasn't shown the warrant for his arrest when arrested, and didn't know the reason why until the next day. The $10,000 that Tawil paid Papadopoulos in cash is interesting in this context, as it would be the exact amount of money one would be required to declare at customs. Papadopoulos didn't recall if he was arrested before or after he filled out a customs slip (but didn't have the money on him). - Bongino.com
At minimum, one should set aside an hour for the Bongino-Papadopoulos interview if only to hear his version of events.
Perhaps the biggest mystery of all is how George was able to end up with such a hot Italian (not Russian) wife:
Politics
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Nov 02, 2018 | www.wsws.org
On Wednesday, October 17, Vladimir Kara-Murza, a leading Russian liberal oppositionist, was interviewed by Keith Gessen, editor of the n+1 magazine, in an event hosted by Columbia University's Harriman Institute for the Study of Eurasia, Russia and Eastern Europe. The event was a stark testimony to the advanced preparations for a US-backed "color revolution" in Russia, i.e., an imperialist-orchestrated and funded movement of a section of the oligarchy and upper middle class to topple the Putin regime, similar to those that have taken place in Ukraine and Georgia.
Vladimir Kara-Murza is one of the many shadowy figures of Russian politics who, while little known to most people inside or outside Russia, are playing a key role in directing and supporting the US anti-Russia policy and the course of the Russian pro-US liberal opposition. The son of Vladimir Kara-Murza, Sr., who was a major figure in the oligarch-controlled Russian media under Boris Yeltsin in the 1990s, Vladimir Kara-Murza, Jr. worked for many years as the right-hand man of Boris Nemtsov, one of Yeltsin's key allies in the 1990s and a right-wing political opponent of Putin, who was assassinated in 2015 under murky circumstances.
Along with Nemtsov, Kara-Murza was an early backer of the US congressional passage of the Magnitsky Act in 2012, which targets Russian oligarchs and officials who support the Putin regime and are accused of corruption and human rights abuses. He has lobbied for the adoption of similar legislation by governments throughout the world. Through this work, Kara-Murza also became close to the late John McCain, one of Washington's foremost supporters of "color revolutions" throughout the territory of the former Soviet Union. In August, Kara-Murza served as a pallbearer at McCain's funeral, along with former Vice President Joe Biden and the actor Warren Beatty.
Since 2014, Kara-Murza has worked for the Open Russia Foundation, which was founded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who rose to become one of the most powerful and richest oligarchs of Russia during the 1990s and was imprisoned by Putin in 2003.
In short, Kara-Murza has been at the center of the operations for a color-revolution-type movement in Russia for years. And this is precisely what he was invited to speak on with the self-styled leftist and Russia expert Keith Gessen, founding editor of the n+1 magazine, one of the most popular magazines among pseudo-left circles. (Gessen also teaches at Columbia University's Journalism School and is the brother of Masha Gessen, who has been heavily involved in the anti-Putin media propaganda for many years.)
The event started with Keith Gessen asking Kara-Murza about the assassination of Boris Nemtsov which the latter, of course, attributed to the Kremlin. For most of the discussion, however, Kara-Murza detailed his involvement in the preparations for a color revolution in Russia.
Kara-Murza insisted that "the history of Russia teaches us that big political changes in our country can start quickly and unexpectedly." He referred to both the 1905 Revolution and the February Revolution of 1917, which, as Kara-Murza pointed out, even took Lenin by surprise, and then the collapse of the USSR "in three days" in 1991. "This is how things happen in Russia", he insisted, and "the problem with this is that nobody is prepared. We [at the Open Russia Foundation] see it as our mission to begin those preparations for future change now. We cannot afford to not be ready again. Most of the things we do inside of Russia is targeted at preparing for this future transition."
The Open Russia Foundation, he continued, had 25 regional branches and a series of working groups which were already elaborating plans for political reforms and constitutional changes for the post-Putin period. Furthermore, they were focusing on "work with the new generation, the people who will be in charge of Russia" through training and education programs. Lastly, they were doing "international" work, which he himself was in charge of, which included "outreach" directed, again, at preparing the "future transition."
When later asked by an audience member how he saw the future of Russia in the next few decades, he declared that this change would come not within the next few decades, but within the next few years.
When he was asked from the audience whether the latest pension reform, which is opposed by over 90 percent of the population, could trigger the kind of "sudden change" he was expecting, Kara-Murza said: "It could but it doesn't have to. There is always the argument that it's [going to be] something of a socio-economic nature. Actually, if we look at the two decades of Putin, the peak of the protests was in December 2011 when the middle class was booming. It was about dignity, it had nothing do to with social issues. The trigger will not be necessarily economic."
He continued, "The only really shaky point [for Putin] was when so many people felt insulted that the government was wiping its feet over them. I think it's going to be something like that. A color revolution of dignity," like the events in Ukraine in 2014. In other words, what Kara-Murza and the Open Russia Foundation are working on is the promotion of a right-wing middle-class movement similar to the Maidan in Ukraine, which would provide the basis for a coup to topple the current government.
The key figures and mechanisms for such a "color revolution" were also addressed at some length. Keith Gessen asked how Kara-Murza viewed the campaign of the blogger Alexei Navalny, who, as the WSWS has written, is a far-right, pro-US figure who cloaks his right-wing program behind murky phrases about corruption. Just how fraudulent and politically calculated this focus is became clear in the discussion when Keith Gessen asked whether Navalny's focus on corruption as the center of his political platform was "a winning platform." Kara-Murza responded: "Yes, it is. Corruption is such a widely understandable issue. It's an issue that everybody is aware of."
In the discussion, a graduate student from Harriman asked whether the Open Russia Foundation had a "particular road map" for what to do when the "sudden event" Kara-Murza expected actually occurred. Kara-Murza replied: "If there were a model, it would be something like the Polish roundtable [of 1989]. The way we want a transition to happen in Russia is peaceful and smooth. We don't want a violent revolution. Russia has had enough revolutions. The problem is that the people who are in power today are doing everything for a revolution to occur."
Then, he went into the figures who would be included in such a roundtable. "Of course, Boris Nemtsov would have been at the roundtable", but, he assured his audience, there were many others. The figures he named were: Yevgeni Roizman, the mayor of Yekaterinburg, who is a notorious far-right-winger, with deep ties to the local mafia. In Russia, he became known above all through his alleged "drug" relief program, which has involved heavy physical abuse of drug addicts.
He also named Galina Shirshina, a member of the liberal opposition party Yabloko (which Nemtsov led until his assassination) as well as Lev Shlosberg, a local politician in Pskov who is also a leading member of "Yabloko." Finally, Kara-Murza named Dmitri Gudkov, who is heading the opposition "Party of Changes" with Ksenia Sobchak, the daughter of Putin's mentor Anatoly Sobchak, who ran as a presidential candidate this year .
"Navalny and Khodorkovsky would obviously also be at the roundtable", Kara-Murza added. When Gessen asked "What about the Communists?" Kara-Murza said that Sergei Udaltsov, the leader of the Stalinist and National Bolshevik "Left Front", may also hope for a seat at the roundtable. "We have very different views, but we have a good personal relationship. He's a decent human being, politically and on a human level."
Then, he added, "there are also many nationalists who are not controlled by the Kremlin" and who could join the roundtable. Throughout the event, Kara-Murza repeated that he and his allies were the true patriots and Russian nationalists, as opposed to Putin and the oligarchs and officials around him. "I just don't want to bore everyone with a long list of names," he said, as he concluded his enumeration of prospective of roundtable participants.
Like all Russian liberal oppositionists, Kara-Murza makes a hue and cry about rigged elections under Putin. Yet at no point did he even mention the possibility of an election before or after such a "roundtable," the participants of which have most evidently already been discussed and set.
There could hardly be a more open statement about the complicity of the so called opposition forces in Russian in a premeditated, US-backed plot to overthrow the Putin regime and install another, more pro-US, right-wing government in its place.
Kara-Murza speaks for a section of the oligarchy which not only seeks to gain control over the social and economic wealth of Russia, but also fears that a continuation of the Putin regime will threaten not only Russia's geopolitical position, but also social revolution. They see their main goal in making sure that a reshuffling within the oligarchy and upper middle class takes place, to assure both a reorientation of Russian foreign policy more directly in line with the interests of imperialism, and the ongoing suppression of the working class.
The complete indifference toward the implications of these policies for the masses of working people in Russia was at full display when Kara-Murza defended the process of capitalist restoration and the 1990s as time when Russia was actually make headway on the world stage: Russia was included in the G8 and finally internationally recognized, Kara-Murza stressed.
He contemptuously dismissed any criticism of the 1990s by referring to this decade as the "supposedly horrible 90s." The fact that the Russian economy experienced the worst collapse recorded in modern history for peacetime; that life expectancy plummeted, that hundreds of thousands committed suicide and were driven into substance abuse and that workers were going without pay for months and years, all of this is evidently of no concern to him.
Underlining the recklessness of the whole operation, the question of the potential consequences of a "color revolution" was not even raised. But anyone who looks at the past three decades of US foreign policy knows where this type of intervention of leads: civil war, ethnic strife, dictatorial regimes, and decades of economic, social and economic crisis. In the case of Russia, a "color revolution" would most likely mean the violent break-up of the Russian Federation -- many opposition leaders in fact argue for different borders of Russia. It would, moreover, raise the very immediate danger of a nuclear catastrophe: what if a section of the military resorts to the vast nuclear arsenal of Russia to defend its interests? And what will the US military and NATO do if a color revolution underway in Russia suddenly threatens to go astray? Will they intervene directly militarily?
The involvement of Keith Gessen in this dubious event is revealing. At no point did he raise something akin to a critical question. His role was nothing but to ask polite questions and provide Kara-Murza with a platform. A self-styled leftist, Gessen has translated and published the writings of Kirill Medvedev, a leading figure in the Russian Socialist Movement (RSM), a Pabloite formation in Russia. This year, he published a novel "A Terrible Country" in which he, yet again, promotes the Russian pseudo-left. In 2014, the RSM fully backed the far-right coup in Kiev. In Russia itself, the RSM has long shifted toward full support for Alexei Navalny's right-wing "anti-corruption campaign," ignoring or dismissing his history of support for Russian fascism and racism. The role of Gessen in this event is emblematic of the role of these forces as handmaidens US and European imperialism.
It was befitting for Columbia University's Harriman Institute to host this event: the first interdisciplinary Russia institute to be formed after the beginning of the Cold War, it has historically been associated with US imperialist plotting against first the Soviet Union and then Russia. To this day, the Harriman Institute, which is a non-profit, functions primarily as a think tank as well as an educational and recruiting center for Washington's foreign policy establishment and the CIA.
For much of its existence, the Harriman Institute was dominated by the figure and work of Zbigniew Brzezinski who, for over half a century, played a central role in elaborating the world strategy and justifying the war crimes of US imperialism. One of Brzezinski's political trademarks was his advocacy for fostering political opposition and insurrections in the Soviet Union, to undermine the regime and thus fight what he saw as one of the US's main competitors for the control of Eurasia. The "color revolution" strategy of US imperialism since 1991 stands in precisely this tradition. Now as then, far-right forces within the elites and fake left tendencies are the props of imperialism "on the ground."
Events like the one at Columbia reveal much about the state of world politics. "Color revolutions" which will impact the lives of hundreds of millions and threaten civil and all-out nuclear war, are being discussed and plotted behind the exclusive doors of an Ivy League institution with an audience of some 50 people, most of whom are graduate students and professors who, one may assume, either already are on the payroll of the CIA and the State Department or seeking to get there.
The Putin regime offers no alternative to these imperialist machinations. Like the sections of the oligarchy that Kara-Murza speaks for, Putin and his cronies have emerged out of and enriched themselves on the basis of the destruction of the Soviet Union which was carried by the Stalinist bureaucracy hand-in-gloves with imperialism. It considers not imperialism, but the Russian working class to be its main enemy, and, hence, responds to every imperialist provocation is a response of desperate attempts to find a deal with imperialism, largely behind closed doors, and the promotion of nationalism and militarism at home.
This sinister event is a warning to the international working class about the advanced preparations for the next step in the efforts of US imperialism to topple the Putin regime and bring the resources of Russia under its direct control: it is high time for workers both in the US and in Russia to intervene in politics on an independent basis to put an end to these dangerous conspiracies of imperialism through the struggle for socialism.
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Nov 02, 2018 | yro.slashdot.org
CIA material to WikiLeaks , in what later become known as the Vault7 leaks. From a report: According to new court documents filed late Wednesday, October 31, US prosecutors plan to file three new charges against Joshua Schulte for allegedly leaking more classified data while in detention at the New York Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) . Prosecutors say they first learned of Schulte's behavior back in May, when they found out that "Schulte had distributed the Protected Search Warrant Materials to his family members for purposes of dissemination to other third parties, including members of the media." The prosecution held a court hearing in May and initially warned the suspect about his actions, a warning they found Schulte ignored. The US government says that "in or about early October 2018, the Government learned that Schulte was using one or more smuggled contraband cellphones to communicate clandestinely with third parties outside of the MCC." A search of his housing unit performed by FBI agents revealed "multiple contraband cellphones (including at least one cellphone used by Schulte that is protected with significant encryption); approximately 13 email and social media accounts (including encrypted email accounts); and other electronic devices."
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Jul 27, 2018 | www.theoccidentalobserver.net
A tweetstorm consisting of quotes from Israel Shamir's excellent article on Bill Browder showing how he operated in an entirely Jewish milieu. Jewish ethnic networking is alive and well in the twenty-first century.
Kevin MacDonald @TOOEdit Jul 27, 2018
What makes Browder so powerful? He invests in politicians. This probably a uniquely Jewish quality: Jews outspend everybody in contributions to political figures, unz.com/ishamir/the-go...
The Untouchable Mr. Browder?
The Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime.
unz.com
Kevin MacDonald @TOOEdit
Russian NTV channel reported that Browder lavishly financed the US lawmakers. Here they present alleged evidence of money transfers: some hundred thousand dollars was given by Browder's structures officially to the senators and congressmen in order to promote the Magnitsky Act
12:04 PM-Jul 27, 2018Q? 15 See Kevin MacDonald's other Tweets
Kevin MacDonald @TOOEdit
Much bigger sums were transferred via good services of Brothers Ziff, mega-rich Jewish American businessmen, said the researchers in two articles published on the Veteran News Network and in The Huffington Post.
12:05 PM-Jul 27, 2018
Kevin MacDonald @TOOEdit Jul 27, 2018 # Replying to @TOOEdit
"Beneficiary of Browder's generosity is Ben Cardin, a Democrat from Maryland, the engine behind Magnitsky Act. Cardin is a fervent supporter of Hillary Clinton, also a cold warrior of good standing. More to a point, Cardin is a prominent member of Israel Lobby.
Kevin MacDonald @TOOEdit
"Browder affair is a heady upper-class Jewish cocktail of money, spies, politicians and international crime. Almost all involved figures appear to be Jewish, not only Browder, Brothers Ziff and Ben Cardin." Lists other Jews he was involved with: Robert Maxwell, Safra, Berezovsky,
12:11 PM-Jul 27, 2018
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Jul 24, 2017 | www.nbcnews.com
As Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya tells it, she met with Donald Trump Jr. and other Trump aides in New York last summer to press her case against a widely accepted account of Russian malfeasance, one that underpins a set of sanctions against Russians.
It's a cause Veselnitskaya has been pursuing for years. So, too, has Rinat Akhmetshin, the colorful Russian-born American lobbyist she brought with her to Trump Tower.
Trump Jr., who agreed to the June 2016 meeting at the request of a Russian business associate with a promise of dirt on Hillary Clinton , has said he didn't find much to interest him in the presentation. And little wonder: The subject is a dense and tangled web, hinging on a complex case that led Congress to pass what is known as the Magnitsky Act. The law imposed sanctions on individual Russians accused of human rights violations. It has nothing to do with Clinton.
The Trump Tower meeting has become the latest flashpoint in the ongoing investigation into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia's election interference . The topic of the meeting, many observers have said, is almost beside the point.
But the substance of what the pair of Russian advocates say they came to discuss has a fascinating backstory.
It's an epic international dispute -- one that has pitted the grandson of a former American Communist who made a fortune as a capitalist in Russia against a Russian leader who pines for the glory days of his country's Communist past.
In a cinematic twist, one person on the side advocated by Vladimir Putin, Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin is a former American newspaper reporter turned investigator named Glenn Simpson. He is the same Glenn Simpson whose firm, Fusion GPS, helped craft the controversial dossier alleging that the Trump campaign colluded with Russian intelligence .
That dossier, published by Buzzfeed , made other, more salacious allegations about Trump, and FBI Director James Comey briefed the Republican about it before he took office. The dossier is not favorable to Putin and the Russian government.
Simpson's role on both sides of the Putin divide is set to be explored in a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing Wednesday examining the Justice Department's requirements for foreign lobbying disclosures.
Due to testify at the hearing is Simpson's longtime opponent in the Magnitsky dispute, William Browder, an American-born hedge-fund investor who made millions investing in post-Soviet Russia and gave up his U.S. citizenship in 1997.
Simpson's lawyer said he would defy a subpoena to appear Wednesday because he was on vacation, and that he would decline to answer questions anyway, citing his right against self-incrimination.
Browder, whose grandfather Earl led the American Communist Party, accuses Simpson of peddling falsehoods as an agent of the Russian government. The law firm Simpson worked with on the case accused Browder in court papers of perpetrating a web of lies. Both men dispute the allegations.
The Death of Sergei MagnitskyThe story begins with the November 2009 death of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian tax accountant who was working for Browder, and who later died in prison .
Browder's account of Magnitsky's death triggered international outrage. According to Browder, Magnitsky was a lawyer who had been investigating a theft of $230 million in tax rebates paid to Browder's companies in Russia. Browder says his companies had been taken over illegally and without his knowledge by corrupt Russian officials.
Browder says Magnitsky was arrested as a reprisal by those same corrupt officials, and then was tortured and beaten to death. Browder presented documents suggesting that some officials who benefited from the alleged fraud purchased property abroad.
That account led Congress to pass the so-called Magnitsky Act in 2012, imposing sanctions on the Russian officials who were alleged to have violated Magnitsky's human rights.
The Russian government soon imposed a ban on American adoptions of Russian children, ostensibly for other reasons but done in response, many experts say, to the Magnitsky sanctions.
Forty-four Russians are currently on the Magnitsky sanctions list maintained by the U.S. Treasury Department, meaning their U.S. assets are frozen and they are not allowed to travel to the U.S.
Once a Putin supporter, Browder became one of the Russian leader's most ardent foes, spearheading a campaign to draw international attention to the Magnitsky case. He and his employees at Hermitage Capital Management presented information to governments, international bodies and major news organizations.
Browder's advocacy marks a shift from 2004, when, as one of Russia's leading foreign investors, he praised Putin so vigorously that he was labeled Putin's "chief cheerleader" by an analyst in a Washington Post article. Browder has said that Magnitsky's death spurred him to reexamine his view of Putin.
The State Department, lawmakers of both parties and the Western news media have described the Magnitsky case in a way that tracks closely with Browder's account. Browder's assertions are consistent with the West's understanding of the Putin government -- an authoritarian regime that has been widely and credibly accused of murdering journalists and political opponents.
In 2013, the Manhattan U.S. attorney's office sued a Russian company, accusing it of laundering some of the proceeds of the fraud Magnitsky allegedly uncovered. The complaint incorporated Browder's account about what happened to Magnitsky.
That lawsuit set in motion a process through which that version of events would come under challenge.
The defendant, a company called Prevezon, is owned by Denis Katsyv, who became wealthy while his father was vice governor and transport minister for the Moscow region, according to published reports. The father, Pyotr Katsyv, is now vice president of the state-run Russian Railways. Veselnitskaya has long represented the family.
Prevezon hired a law firm, BakerHostetler, and a team that included a longtime New York prosecutor, John Moscow. Also working on Prevezon's behalf were Simpson, Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin.
Simpson, a former investigative reporter for the Wall Street Journal, declined to comment.
Simpson also worked with former British intelligence officer Christopher Steele in the creation of the dossier that asserts Trump collusion with Russian election interference. A source close to him said his work on the dossier was kept confidential from his other clients.
The federal civil lawsuit by the Manhattan U.S. attorney against Prevezon was the first opportunity for the U.S. government to publicly present whatever evidence it had to support its legal assertions regarding Magnitsky. It was also an opportunity for the defendants to conduct their own investigation.
Prevezon's American legal team alleged that Browder's story was full of holes -- and that the U.S. and other governments had relied on Browder's version without checking it. Browder and the U.S. government disagreed.
The chief American investigator, Todd Hyman of the Department of Homeland Security, testified in a deposition that much of the evidence in the government's complaint came from Browder and his associates. He also said the government had been unable to independently investigate some of Browder's claims.
In court documents, Prevezon's lawyers alleged that Magnitsky was jailed not because he was a truth-seeker -- but because he was helping Browder's companies in tax evasion.
The Prevezon attorneys charged that Browder "lied," and "manipulated" evidence to cover up his own tax fraud.
The story was "contrived and skillfully sold by William F. Browder to politicians here and abroad to thwart his arrest for a tax fraud conviction in Russia," says a 2015 federal court filing by one of Prevezon's lawyers, Mark Cymrot of BakerHostetler.
A Russian-born filmmaker named Andrei Nekrasov made a similar set of arguments in a docudrama released last year. Neither Prevezon nor the Russian government had a role in funding or making the film, both parties say, though Veselnitskaya and Akhmetshin helped promote it.
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Oct 27, 2018 | russia-insider.com
Russians were robbed by Jewish people both domestic & foreign under Yeltsin & president Putin stopped them starting with Yukos & Khodorkovsky & others like Berezovski fled to UK.
A similar history we found in the 30th in Germany which caused the rise of Adolf Hitler & his anti-Semitism ultimately ending in the Holocaust.
Presently we see the same happening in USA where the Democratic establishment in media, industry & banks are fighting back - using any illegal method in the book -against the white 'Waspy' Republicans of Trump. And let's not forget that the US population is for 72% White!! That's NOT racism but pure & simple democracy at work.
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Oct 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) has released a new audit of a computer network at the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), Earth Resouces Observation and Science (EROS) Center satellite imaging facility in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.
OIG initiated an investigation into suspicious internet traffic discovered during a regular IT security audit of the USGS computer network. The review found that a single USGS employee infected the network due to the access of unauthorized internet web pages.
Those web pages were embedded with harmful malware, and then downloaded onto a government-issued laptop, which then "exploited the USGS' network."
A digital forensic team examined the infected laptop and found porn. After further review, it was determined the USGS employee visited 9,000 web pages of porn that were hosted mainly on Russian servers and contained toxic malware.
OIG found the employee saved much of the pornographic content on an unauthorized USB drive and personal smartphone, both of which were synced to the government computer and network.
"Our digital forensic examination revealed that [the employee] had an extensive history of visiting adult pornography websites" that hosted dangerous malware, the OIG wrote.
"The malware was downloaded to [the employees'] government laptop, which then exploited the USGS' network."
The forensic team determined two vulnerabilities in the USGS' IT security review: website access and open USB ports. They said the "malware is rogue software that is intended to damage or disable computers and computer systems." The ultimate objective of the malware was to steal highly classified government information while spreading the infection to other systems.
The U.S. Department of the Interior's Rules of Behavior explicitly prohibit employees from using government networks to satisfy porn cravings, and the IOG found the employee had agreed to these rules "several years prior to the detection."
The employee was discharged from the agency, OIG External Affairs Director Nancy DiPaolo told Nextgov.
However, this is not the first time government workers have been figuratively caught with their pants down.
Over the last two decades, similar incidents have occurred at the Environmental Protection Agency, Securities and Exchange Commission, and the IRS.
Last year, a D.C. news team uncovered "egregious on-the-job pornography viewing" at a dozen federal agencies and national security officials have reportedly found an "unbelievable" amount of child porn on government devices, said Nextgov.
It seems that porn watching on government devices is so widespread that Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., introduced legislation banning porn at federal agencies -- three separate times.
Government workers have a porn addiction problem, and it is now jeopardizing national security.
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Oct 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
After hinting for months that the FBI was not forthcoming with federal surveillance court judges when they made their case to spy on the Trump campaign, Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe (R) said on Sunday that the agency is holding evidence which "directly refutes" its premise for launching the probe, reports the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.
Texas Rep. John Ratcliffe provided Sunday the clearest picture to date of what the FBI allegedly withheld from the surveillance court.
Ratcliffe suggested that the FBI failed to include evidence regarding former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos , in an interview with Fox News.
Ratcliffe noted that the FBI opened its investigation on July 31, 2016, after receiving information from the Australian government about a conversation that Papadopoulos had on May 10, 2016, with Alexander Downer , the top Australian diplomat to the U.K. - Daily Caller
While Australia's Alexander Downer claimed that Papadopoulos revealed Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton, Ratcliffe - who sits on the House Judiciary Committee - suggested on Sunday that the FBI and DOJ possess information which directly contradicts that account.
"Hypothetically, if the Department of Justice and the FBI have another piece of evidence that directly refutes that, that directly contradicts that, what you would expect is for the Department of Justice to present both sides of the coin to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to evaluate the weight and sufficiency of that evidence," Ratcliffe said, adding: "Instead, what happened here was Department of Justice and FBI officials in the Obama administration in October of 2016 only presented to the court the evidence that made the government's case to get a warrant to spy on a Trump campaign associate."
https://www.youtube.com/embed/p7nmAFpzyD4
The FBI referred to Papadopoulos in a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant application - however what has been released to the public is so heavily redacted that it's unclear why he is mentioned.
As The Hill 's John Solomon notes, based on Congressional testimony by former FBI General Counsel James Baker - the DOJ / FBI redactions aren't hiding national security issues - only embarrassment .
Other GOP lawmakers have suggested that evidence exists which would exonerate Papadopoulos - who pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Maltese professor (and self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation), Joseph Mifsud.
Ratcliffe suggested that declassifying DOJ / FBI documents related to the matter "would corroborate" his claims about Papadopoulos.
Republicans have pressed President Trump to declassify the documents, which include 21 pages from a June 2016 FISA application against Page. House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes has said that the FBI failed to provide "exculpatory evidence" in the FISA applications. He has also said that Americans will be "shocked" by the information behind the FISA redactions. - Daily Caller
President Trump issued an order to declassify the documents on September 17, but then walked it back - announcing that the DOJ would be allowed to review the documents first after two foreign allies asked him to keep them classified.
"My opinion is that declassifying them would not expose any national security information, would not expose any sources and methods," said Ratcliffe. "It would expose certain folks at the Obama Justice Department and FBI and their actions taken to conceal material facts from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court."
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Oct 25, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
If Russia had actually "hacked" the DNC emails then the National Security Agency would have had proof of such activity. In fact, the NSA could have tracked such activity. But they did not do that. That lack of evidence did not prevent a coordinated media campaign from spinning up to pin the blame on Russia for the "theft" and to portray Donald Trump as Putin's lackey and beneficiary.
Any effort to tell an alternative story has met with stout opposition. Fox News, for example, came under withering fire after it published an article in May 2017 claiming that Seth Rich, a young Democrat operative, had leaked DNC emails to Julian Assange at Wikileaks. The family of Seth Rich reacted with fury and sued Fox, Malia Zimmerman and Ed Butowsky, but that suit subsequently was dismissed.
Now there is new information, courtesy of the National Security Agency aka NSA, that confirms that the NSA has Top Secret and Secret documents that are responsive to a FOIA request for material on Seth Rich and his contacts with Julian Assange. While the content of these documents remain classified for now, they may provide documentary proof that Seth Rich "dropped boxed" the emails to Julian. If these documents are declassified, a big hole could be blown in the claim that Russia hacked the DNC.
Another case of "Arkancide"?jnewman -> Walrus , 12 hours agoVince Foster?DianaLC , 13 hours agoPT, thank for the very detailed description of the entire story surrounding the supposed Russian hack of the DNC emails.Snow Flake -> Lefty , 12 hours agoI always find myself screaming at the T.V. whenever a supposed reporter mentions the supposed Russian hack of the DNC computers as if such an event is settled history.
I came to this summary today after I had turned my T.V. off since all the news is now about the "bombs" being mailed to the Clintons and Obamas. (I was afraid a story line would soon continue that the bombs were from Russia via the White House. I can no longer feel certain that anything reported in the "news" is true and wonder what part of it is made up from thin air.
And I am sad that such a huge number of American citizens simply no longer care what is true or what is not true. They believe only what they want to believe. Mostly I am sad that Seth Rich lived and died and few seem to want to know the facts surrounding his death.
Ellipsis, linguistically? Don't you automatically add what is omitted? ... Russia had (n't) anything ...Guccifer 2.0 was nothing but an elaborate joke.
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Oct 23, 2018 | caucus99percent.com
gjohnsit
We can soon forget Russia's "meddling" in the 2016 election (or lack of meddling ), because the Justice Department is already throwing down indictments for meddling in the 2018 midterm elections.The Voice In th... on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 4:28pmRussians working for a close ally of President Vladimir V. Putin are engaging in an elaborate campaign of "information warfare" to interfere with the American midterm elections next month, federal prosecutors said on Friday in unsealing charges against a woman whom they labeled the project's "chief accountant."Information warfare? That sounds serious. So what exactly is her objectives?
But this time, prosecutors said the operatives appeared beholden to no particular candidate. Russia's trolls did not limit themselves to either a liberal or conservative position, according to the complaint. They often wrote from diverging viewpoints on the same issue.Uh, that's called trolling, and if trolling is against the law then 4Chan should watch out.
It seems that trolling now equals fraud .It isn't just Russia. China and Iran are meddling as well.
In a joint statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security said they "do not have any evidence" that foreign countries have disrupted the voting process or changed any tallies , but that the campaigns have spread "disinformation" and "foreign propaganda.""We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies," the statement said. "These activities also may seek to influence voter perceptions and decision making in the 2018 and 2020 U.S. elections."
So how exactly are they defrauding the American public? As for "undermine confidence in democratic institutions", we already know that we are an oligarchy , not a democracy. So I think the burden of evidence is on our government to prove otherwise, not on Russia.
I've come to the realization that the MSM and our government are using a very different definition of "democracy" and "democratic institutions" than the one in the dictionary. Their version of "democracy" is all about national security and financial interests, and have very little to do with elections and popular will.
Leftists aren't cooperating on RussiagateYou would think from the MSM that Russiagate is "liberals" versus Trump, and that everyone on "the left" is OK with this.
But even some in the media have noticed that leftists that don't identify as Democrats are Russiagate skeptics.Why Are So Many Leftists Skeptical of the Russia Investigation?
Why the left needs to wise up to the growing Trump-Russia scandal
and of course TOP is fully onboard
So what specifically was illegal?gjohnsit on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 5:33pm@gjohnsit
AFAIK, all those facebook posts would be legal if posted by someone in the USA.
Are foreign ideas illegal now? are ideas and opinions illegal?
You would think from the MSM that Russiagate is "liberals" versus Trump, and that everyone on "the left" is OK with this.
But even some in the media have noticed that leftists that don't identify as Democrats are Russiagate skeptics.Why Are So Many Leftists Skeptical of the Russia Investigation?
Why the left needs to wise up to the growing Trump-Russia scandal
and of course TOP is fully onboard
Consider Russia's "crimes" with RTLinda Wood on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 11:19pm@The Voice In the Wilderness
This is supposed to be bad from the official reportRT aired a documentary about the OccupyWall Street movement on 1, 2, and 4 November. RT framed the movement as a fight against "the ruling class" and described the current US political system as corrupt and dominated by corporations.
RT advertising for the documentary featured Occupy movement calls to "take back" the government. The documentary claimed that the US system cannot be changed democratically, but only through "revolution." After the 6 November US presidential election, RT aired a documentary called "Cultures of Protest," about active and often violent political resistance
RT's reports often characterize the United States as a "surveillance state" and allege widespread infringements of civil liberties, police brutality, and drone use
RT has also focused on criticism of the US economic system, US currency policy, alleged Wall Street greed, and the US national debt. Some of RT's hosts have compared the United States to Imperial Rome and have predicted that government corruption and "corporate greed" will lead to US financial collapse
#1 AFAIK, all those facebook posts would be legal if posted by someone in the USA. Are foreign ideas illegal now? are ideas and opinions illegal?
Oh, come on.leveymg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 5:49pmalleged Wall Street greed
Alledged Wall Street greed?
This criminalizes a practice that is commonplace and legalenhydra lutris on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:27pm@The Voice In the Wilderness @The Voice In the Wilderness
when carried out by employees of thousands of foreign-owned companies from countries other than Russia.Basically, this Russian woman is being indicted for doing the books for a Russian entity that incorporated a number of US businesses. These businesses had persons write and post under pen names a number of articles dealing with political subjects. That has been interpreted by the Special Counsel as a conspiracy to violate a federal campaign law that forbids contributions to US election campaigns. That's right, the indictment construes written opinion to be the same as money contributions.
The case would probably be thrown out -- nobody has been prosecuted for this before -- however the woman indicted will never be in court to defend herself, as the prosecutor and FBI know. Mueller is getting desperate to come up with indictments to fill in his jig saw puzzle.
The supremes, infamusly, ruled that miney is speech. Hence,leveymg on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 1:09pm@leveymg
speech must be money, n'est ce pas?
/sSCOTUS also found in the same case that even foreign corporatesnoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:51pm@enhydra lutris @enhydra lutris @enhydra lutris speech is constitutionally protected and can't be limited by campaign finance legislation. Mueller appears to have decided on his own to abrogate the Citizens United decision.
That would be okay, if he applied it to prosecute political mouthpieces such as AIPAC, along with corporate fronts owned by the Saudis, Chinese, British and 100 other countries who similiarly post anonymously.
It's now undeniable: Mueller is the prosecutorial weapon of a very selective political vendetta.
This is from your first linksnoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 5:25pmBut somewhere on the left, right around the fault line where Barack Obama is deemed to have been a bad president, opinion turns back again toward skepticism.
It gets worse from there. I'm betting that this was written by someone from the Atlantic Council or maybe Friedman's twin brother. This person sure went to a lot of work to deride anyone who doesn't believe in Russia Gate didn't he?
Facebook has almost admitted that they are censoring people and websites because of Russia's ads on it that they say affected the election. BTW. Didn't Obama also use Cambridge Analytics during his campaign and did the same things that Trump did? Pretty sure that he did. But I guess that was different because of reasons. Yep. That's why.
You would think from the MSM that Russiagate is "liberals" versus Trump, and that everyone on "the left" is OK with this. But even some in the media have noticed that leftists that don't identify as Democrats are Russiagate skeptics.
Why Are So Many Leftists Skeptical of the Russia Investigation?
Why the left needs to wise up to the growing Trump-Russia scandal
and of course TOP is fully onboard
For gawd's sake!gjohnsit on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 6:00pmWe are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies,First off the GOP is doing a hell of a job undermining confidence in democratic institutions and the voting process by its gerrymandering and its voter ID policies. Look at what's happening in Georgia (?) where the guy running is in charge of the voting policies and is kicking thousands of people off the voting rolls.
Influence government policies you say? If millions of Americans can't do that then how could a foreign country do it? BTW. This is already happening what with all the lobbyists and super PACs. But sure. Let's blame the 3 countries that they want to war with. Anyone who believes this shit ... well I'll not finish this sentence.
Russiagate is useful for crushing dissentsnoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 6:35pm@snoopydawg
Look at this hit piece on Jill SteinMonths before the 2016 election they were already calling Jill Stein a "Nader spoiler" ( here , here , and here )
Funny how 3rd parties are demonized in this "democracy"
We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies,
First off the GOP is doing a hell of a job undermining confidence in democratic institutions and the voting process by its gerrymandering and its voter ID policies. Look at what's happening in Georgia (?) where the guy running is in charge of the voting policies and is kicking thousands of people off the voting rolls.
Influence government policies you say? If millions of Americans can't do that then how could a foreign country do it? BTW. This is already happening what with all the lobbyists and super PACs. But sure. Let's blame the 3 countries that they want to war with. Anyone who believes this shit ... well I'll not finish this sentence.
Ugh!divineorder on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:08pmThere is so much BS in that article it's hard to choose which one is the worst but I'm going with this one.
But Stein's willingness to praise Russian propaganda outlets and push Kremlin talking points didn't end in Moscow. Indeed, she challenged – and arguably surpassed – Trump in crafting the most Moscow-friendly campaign of 2016.
For instance, Stein made the strange claim multiple times that NATO had "surrounded" Russia with nuclear weapons. As she told The Intercept, "This is the Cuban Missile Crisis in reverse, on steroids – in fact, on crack." (Less than 10 percent of Russia's land border touches any NATO member-states.) She also said last year that NATO is only fighting "enemies we invent to give the weapons industry a reason to sell more stuff."
This is what she actually said about NATO and Russia.
Stein: I think this is an issue where something does need to be said--but it's important to understand where they are coming from. The United States, under Bush 1, had an agreement when Germany joined NATO--Russia agreed with the understanding that NATO would not move one inch to the east. Since then NATO has pursued a policy of basically encircling Russia--including the threat of nukes and drones and so on.
Okay and this one too.
Likewise, Stein claimed that Ukraine's 2014 revolution was, in reality, a "coup" that the U.S. "helped foment." Only two other leaders have described Ukraine's toppling of former president Viktor Yanukovych as a "coup": Putin and Kazakhstani President Nursultan Nazarbayev, whose country remains a security ally of Russia. Stein even spent time last year saying that "Russia used to own Ukraine."
Pretty sure that during Obama's presidency the Ukraine government was overthrown by this country and now we're arming neo Nazis with some very bad weapons.
ThinkProgress says it's being targeted by ad networks for producing 'controversial political content'. I'm thinking it's more because they lie their asses off to people who read its website. This is the most blatant lying I've seen from a website. How many people believed every word written there?
FWIW Jill Stein out campaigning for GreensDeja on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:05pmJoin us on Sunday 10/28 to meet Jill Stein and Alameda/SF County Green candidates: Laura Wells, Saied Karamooz, Aidan Hill and Mike Murphy. to support our candidates. People,... https://t.co/EtWyo6fism
-- Santa Clara Greens (@SCCGreens) October 19, 2018
You left out the D establishmentsnoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:24pmFirst off the GOP is doing a hell of a job undermining confidence in democratic institutions and the voting process by its gerrymandering and its voter ID policies.
I agree with your whole comment. Just wanted to make sure we don't leave out the monster that is the Dem establishment, aka the other half of the single body that screws us every chance it gets. Supposed differences are only spoken, especially in election years. When it gets down to the meat and potatoes, our representatives are one big symbiotic meal -- the kind that gives you the shits until you're dead.
We are concerned about ongoing campaigns by Russia, China and other foreign actors, including Iran, to undermine confidence in democratic institutions and influence public sentiment and government policies,
First off the GOP is doing a hell of a job undermining confidence in democratic institutions and the voting process by its gerrymandering and its voter ID policies. Look at what's happening in Georgia (?) where the guy running is in charge of the voting policies and is kicking thousands of people off the voting rolls.
Influence government policies you say? If millions of Americans can't do that then how could a foreign country do it? BTW. This is already happening what with all the lobbyists and super PACs. But sure. Let's blame the 3 countries that they want to war with. Anyone who believes this shit ... well I'll not finish this sentence.
Not for that commentboriscleto on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 9:36pmThe GOP has made it so that over 10% of the population can't vote this year. I think it's in Georgia where thousands are being kicked off the voting rolls almost every day by the dude that is in charge of it and he is also running for an office. They have been gerrymandering the country and other things. Of course the democrats don't seem to be doing much to make it easier for people to vote. But yeah, both parties are just as corrupt.
Georgia has purged 340,000snoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 10:16pm
- The Guardian: GOP candidate improperly purged 340,000 from Georgia voter rolls, investigation claims
- We Sued Brian Kemp This Morning - Greg Palast
- Are You One of 769,436 Voters on the Colorado Purge List?
- 90,000 Purged in Vegas and Reno
Illinois purged 550,000...Indiana purged 20,000...etc...
Thanks for the numbers and the linksdervish on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 11:46pmIsn't it Brian Kemp who is not only running for office, but he is also in a position to purge the voting rolls? This is a huge conflict of interest and some judge should have stopped him from being able to do that. I guess that's what people are suing him for?
Close to 500,000 people were not able to vote in one of the states that Trump won in. Not sure if they were Hillary's or Trump's voters though.
BTW. People are upset with Jill Stein because they think that her votes cost Hillary the election when the libertarian candidate got more votes than Jill did. And yet he's not blamed for her loss. I wonder why that is?
It's because they're sexist. n/tlotlizard on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 2:03am
Isn't it Brian Kemp who is not only running for office, but he is also in a position to purge the voting rolls? This is a huge conflict of interest and some judge should have stopped him from being able to do that. I guess that's what people are suing him for?
Close to 500,000 people were not able to vote in one of the states that Trump won in. Not sure if they were Hillary's or Trump's voters though.
BTW. People are upset with Jill Stein because they think that her votes cost Hillary the election when the libertarian candidate got more votes than Jill did. And yet he's not blamed for her loss. I wonder why that is?
The Dems only kick people off voting rolls in *primaries*snoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 5:34pm@Deja
That makes it all okay for "lesser of two evils" voters.
First off the GOP is doing a hell of a job undermining confidence in democratic institutions and the voting process by its gerrymandering and its voter ID policies.
I agree with your whole comment. Just wanted to make sure we don't leave out the monster that is the Dem establishment, aka the other half of the single body that screws us every chance it gets. Supposed differences are only spoken, especially in election years. When it gets down to the meat and potatoes, our representatives are one big symbiotic meal -- the kind that gives you the shits until you're dead.
From the ToP linkBisbonian on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 10:20amRobert Mueller's indictment of the Russians who interfered in our election is a milestone in an ongoing investigation. The charges focus on the Russians who used online social networking platforms to divide voters and disrupt the electoral process.Changed any votes? Party affiliations? Removed people from the voting rolls? Closed down voting precincts? Didn't supply enough voting machines for high voting areas? Nope. Nope. Nope and nope. Just placed a few ads on Fakebook and most of them after the election was over. It's taken Mueller two years to look into this? If he hasn't found any evidence yet then why waste time and money worrying about China and Iran doing anything? I'm thinking that Mueller is just pretending to be investigating, but he's really spending his time golfing or whatever his favorite activities are.
No kiddingBollox Ref on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 6:16pm@snoopydawg , its like a nuclear submarine calling the teapot black.
Robert Mueller's indictment of the Russians who interfered in our election is a milestone in an ongoing investigation. The charges focus on the Russians who used online social networking platforms to divide voters and disrupt the electoral process.
Changed any votes? Party affiliations? Removed people from the voting rolls? Closed down voting precincts? Didn't supply enough voting machines for high voting areas? Nope. Nope. Nope and nope. Just placed a few ads on Fakebook and most of them after the election was over. It's taken Mueller two years to look into this? If he hasn't found any evidence yet then why waste time and money worrying about China and Iran doing anything? I'm thinking that Mueller is just pretending to be investigating, but he's really spending his time golfing or whatever his favorite activities are.
Remember all those wonderful presentsdivineorder on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 6:28pmwe were going to receive at Fitzmas? Hoping the Establishment is going to finally reveal its sausage-making, really is a flight of fancy. McSausage for the McResistance. The Public are to be seen at voting stations, and not heard.
Great essay. Thanks!snoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:28pmHell I am surprised they even mentioned that first part.
In a joint statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security said they "do not have any evidence" that foreign countries have disrupted the voting process or changed any tallies,
At any rate cracked up when I read Caitlin on FB this morning:
Politico Report Says Russiagaters Should Prepare To Kiss My Ass
"In a just world, everyone who helped promote this toxic narrative would apologize profusely and spend the rest of their lives being mocked and marginalized." #Mueller #TrumpRussia https://t.co/eN349xhjG3
-- Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 20, 2018
In case you missed itMrWebster on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 7:04pmWe had Great discussion about Caitlin's article. Lots of good comments.
Hell I am surprised they even mentioned that first part.
In a joint statement, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, Justice Department, FBI and Department of Homeland Security said they "do not have any evidence" that foreign countries have disrupted the voting process or changed any tallies,
At any rate cracked up when I read Caitlin on FB this morning:
Politico Report Says Russiagaters Should Prepare To Kiss My Ass
"In a just world, everyone who helped promote this toxic narrative would apologize profusely and spend the rest of their lives being mocked and marginalized." #Mueller #TrumpRussia https://t.co/eN349xhjG3
-- Caitlin Johnstone (@caitoz) October 20, 2018
We are looking at the terminus point of the Russian hysteria.divineorder on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 8:19pmActually, I am thinking nuclear war with Russia may be the terminus point, but in terms of propaganda we are seeing it. I have followed the Russia hysteria since 2015 when it was in its infant stage here in the States, but advancing in Europe.
There are still some charges that Russians broke into certain accounts as Microsoft has claimed a few months back, but the claims go no where as they have to admit they had absolutely no proof. And the story fades away until a new charge is made, and those now are hard to make up.
As previous posters before in have commented above, basically the terminus point is ascribing all dissent within the Western powers as Russian created. In this charge it is impossible to to argue as no proof is needed except for the existance of dissent. No more charges which can be proved such as an actual hack. And that dissent can be for or against an issue. All issues lead to Moscow.
The huge censorship of various sites done by Facebook and Twitter begin and are justified by the Russia hysteria and "fan news".
Aside from in your comment though, plenty wrong with Dems?snoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 10:27pmThe long con that is #RussiaGate . https://t.co/HvTHam5Rlb pic.twitter.com/nxlRpYH26b
-- John "Squinty Forehead Man" Graziano (@jvgraz) October 18, 2018
Actually, I am thinking nuclear war with Russia may be the terminus point, but in terms of propaganda we are seeing it. I have followed the Russia hysteria since 2015 when it was in its infant stage here in the States, but advancing in Europe.
There are still some charges that Russians broke into certain accounts as Microsoft has claimed a few months back, but the claims go no where as they have to admit they had absolutely no proof. And the story fades away until a new charge is made, and those now are hard to make up.
As previous posters before in have commented above, basically the terminus point is ascribing all dissent within the Western powers as Russian created. In this charge it is impossible to to argue as no proof is needed except for the existance of dissent. No more charges which can be proved such as an actual hack. And that dissent can be for or against an issue. All issues lead to Moscow.
The huge censorship of various sites done by Facebook and Twitter begin and are justified by the Russia hysteria and "fan news".
And the Vermont electrical grid that Russia hacked into theBisbonian on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 10:25amcomputer that wasn't even hooked up to the internet. Brennan said that Russia tried to meddle in 21?state's voting rolls, but the states said that never happened. But just like people are still saying that all 17 intelligence (3) agencies agree that Russia interfered with the election people still think that the other stuff is true. This is why spreading propaganda is so powerful. The lies are what they remember, not the retractions if they're ever given.
About those FB ads that swayed the election ...
The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn't align with the main media narrative of Tump and the election. https://t.co/2dL8Kh0hof
-- Rob Goldman (@robjective) February 17, 2018
Actually, I am thinking nuclear war with Russia may be the terminus point, but in terms of propaganda we are seeing it. I have followed the Russia hysteria since 2015 when it was in its infant stage here in the States, but advancing in Europe.
There are still some charges that Russians broke into certain accounts as Microsoft has claimed a few months back, but the claims go no where as they have to admit they had absolutely no proof. And the story fades away until a new charge is made, and those now are hard to make up.
As previous posters before in have commented above, basically the terminus point is ascribing all dissent within the Western powers as Russian created. In this charge it is impossible to to argue as no proof is needed except for the existance of dissent. No more charges which can be proved such as an actual hack. And that dissent can be for or against an issue. All issues lead to Moscow.
The huge censorship of various sites done by Facebook and Twitter begin and are justified by the Russia hysteria and "fan news".
by the wayThe Liberal Moonbat on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 8:38pm@snoopydawg , there are only sixteen intelligence agencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Intelligence_Community
computer that wasn't even hooked up to the internet. Brennan said that Russia tried to meddle in 21?state's voting rolls, but the states said that never happened. But just like people are still saying that all 17 intelligence (3) agencies agree that Russia interfered with the election people still think that the other stuff is true. This is why spreading propaganda is so powerful. The lies are what they remember, not the retractions if they're ever given.
About those FB ads that swayed the election ...
The majority of the Russian ad spend happened AFTER the election. We shared that fact, but very few outlets have covered it because it doesn't align with the main media narrative of Tump and the election. https://t.co/2dL8Kh0hof
-- Rob Goldman (@robjective) February 17, 2018
NOT FROM THE ONION - oh, wait, yes it is...wait, what?Bisbonian on Sun, 10/21/2018 - 10:33amWho's on first...?
https://www.theonion.com/mueller-ready-to-deliver-major-parts-of-finding...
I like the comment from the Lobster Murderer the best.snoopydawg on Sat, 10/20/2018 - 11:06pm
Who's on first...?
https://www.theonion.com/mueller-ready-to-deliver-major-parts-of-finding...
Remember the Russian agencies that Mueller charged?He still doesn't want to give their attorneys the evidence he has against them.
Judge Orders Mueller To Prove Russian Company Meddled In Election
A Washington federal judge on Thursday ordered special counsel Robert Mueller's team to clarify election meddling claims lodged against a Russian company operated by Yevgeny Prigozhin, an ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, according to Bloomberg.
Concord Management and Consulting, LLC. - one of three businesses indicted by Mueller in February along with 13 individuals for election meddling , surprised the special counsel in April when they actually showed up in court to fight the charges . Mueller's team tried to delay Concord from entering the case, arguing that thee Russian company not been properly served, however Judge Dabney Friedrich denied the request - effectively telling prosecutors 'well, they're here.'
* Concord pleaded not guilty in May. Their attorney, Eric Dubelier - a partner at Reed Smith, has described the election meddling charges as "make believe," arguing on Monday that Mueller's indictment against Concord "doesn't charge a crime."
"There is no statute of interfering with an election. There just isn't," said Dubelier, who added that Mueller's office alleged a "made-up crime to fit the facts they have."
Concord is one of the corporations that Mueller said placed ads on FB to sway people's opinion on Trump and Hillary. The ads that most were placed after the election.
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Oct 22, 2018 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Candidate Trump railed against the invasion of Iraq during his campaign, at one point blaming George W. Bush directly and saying, "we should have never been in Iraq. We have destabilized the Middle East." As president-elect, Trump continued to promise a very different foreign policy, one that would "stop racing to topple foreign regimes that we know nothing about, that we shouldn't be involved with."
The election of Donald Trump gave the international community pause: Trump appeared unpredictable, eschewed tradition, and flouted convention. He might well have followed through on his promise to move the U.S. away from its long embrace of forever war. China's government in particular must have worried about such a move. If the U.S. focused on its internal problems and instead pursued a restrained foreign policy that was constructive rather than destructive, it might pose more of an impediment to China's rise to global power status.
But the Chinese need not have worried. With a continued troop presence in Afghanistan and Syria, a looming conflict with Iran, and even talk of an intervention in Venezuela, Trump is keeping the U.S. on its perpetual wartime footing.
This is good news for Beijing, whose own foreign policy could not be more different. Rather than embracing a reactive and short-sighted approach that all too often ignores second- and third-order consequences, the Chinese strategy appears cautious and long-ranging. Its policymakers and technocrats think and plan in terms of decades, not months. And those plans, for now, are focused more on building than bombing.
This is not to say that China's foreign policy is altruistic-it is certainly not. It is designed to cement China's role as a great power by ensnaring as many countries as possible in its economic web. China is playing the long game while Washington expends resources and global political capital on wars it cannot win. America's devotion to intervention is sowing the seeds of its own demise and China will be the chief beneficiary.
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Oct 20, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
The Department of Justice admitted in a Friday court filing that the FBI used more than one "Confidential Human Source," (also known as informants, or spies ) to infiltrate the Trump campaign through former adviser Carter Page, reports the Daily Caller .
"The FBI has protected information that would identify the identities of other confidential sources who provided information or intelligence to the FBI" as well as "information provided by those sources," wrote David M. Hardy, the head of the FBI's Record/Information Dissemination Section (RIDS), in court papers submitted Friday.
Hardy and Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys submitted the filings in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) lawsuit for the FBI's four applications for Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrants against Page. The DOJ released heavily redacted copies of the four FISA warrant applications on June 20, but USA Today reporter Brad Heath has sued for full copies of the documents. - Daily Caller
Included in Hardy's declaration is an acknowledgement that the FBI's spies were in addition to the UK's Christopher Steele - a former MI6 operative who assembled the controversial and largely unproven "Steel Dossier" which the DOJ/FBI used to obtain a FISA warrant to spy on Page.
The DOJ says it redacted information in order to protect the identity of their confidential sources, which "includes nonpublic information about and provided by Christopher Steele," reads the filing, " as well as information about and provided by other confidential sources , all of whom were provided express assurances of confidentiality."
Government lawyers said the payment information is being withheld because disclosing specific payment amounts and dates could "suggest the relative volume of information provided by a particular CHS. " That disclosure could potentially tip the source's targets off and allow them to "take countermeasures, destroy or fabricate evidence, or otherwise act in a way to thwart the FBI's activities." - Daily Caller
Steele, referred to as Source #1, met with several DOJ / FBI officials during the 2016 campaign, including husband and wife team Bruce and Nellie Ohr. Bruce was the #4 official at the DOJ, while his CIA-linked wife Nellie was hired by Fusion GPS - who also employed Steele, in the anti-Trump opposition research / counterintelligence effort funded by Trump's opponents, Hillary Clinton and the DNC.
In addition to Steele, the FBI also employed 73-year-old University of Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, a US citizen, political veteran and longtime US Intelligence asset enlisted by the FBI to befriend and spy on three members of the Trump campaign during the 2016 US election . Halper received over $1 million in contracts from the Pentagon during the Obama years, however nearly half of that coincided with the 2016 US election.
Stefan HalperHalper's involvement first came to light after the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross reported on his involvement with Carter Page and George Papadopoulos, another Trump campaign aide. Ross's reporting was confirmed by the NYT and WaPo .
In June, Trump campaign aides Roger Stone and Michael Caputo claimed that a meeting Stone took in late May, 2016 with a Russian appears to have been an " FBI sting operation " in hindsight, following bombshell reports in May that the DOJ/FBI used a longtime FBI/CIA asset, Cambridge professor Stefan Halper, to perform espionage on the Trump campaign.
Roger StoneWhen Stone arrived at the restaurant in Sunny Isles, he said, Greenberg was wearing a Make America Great Again T-shirt and hat. On his phone, Greenberg pulled up a photo of himself with Trump at a rally, Stone said. - WaPo
The meeting went nowhere - ending after Stone told Greenberg " You don't understand Donald Trump... He doesn't pay for anything ." The Post independently confirmed this account with Greenberg.
After the meeting, Stone received a text message from Caputo - a Trump campaign communications official who arranged the meeting after Greenberg approached Caputo's Russian-immigrant business partner.
" How crazy is the Russian? " Caputo wrote according to a text message reviewed by The Post. Noting that Greenberg wanted "big" money, Stone replied: "waste of time." - WaPo
In short, the FBI's acknowledgement that they used multiple spies reinforces Stone's assertion that he was targeted by one.
Further down the rabbit hole
Stefan Halper's infiltration of the Trump campaign corresponds with the two of the four targets of the FBI's Operation Crossfire Hurricane - in which the agency sent former counterintelligence agent Peter Strzok and others to a London meeting in the Summer of 2016 with former Australian diplomat Alexander Downer - who says Papadopoulos drunkenly admitted to knowing that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails.
Interestingly Downer - the source of the Papadopoulos intel, and Halper - who conned Papadopoulos months later, are linked through UK-based Haklyut & Co. an opposition research and intelligence firm similar to Fusion GPS - founded by three former British intelligence operatives in 1995 to provide the kind of otherwise inaccessible research for which select governments and Fortune 500 corporations pay huge sums .
Alexander DownerDowner - a good friend of the Clintons, has been on their advisory board for a decade, while Halper is connected to Hakluyt through Director of U.S. operations Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. (h/t themarketswork.com )
Alexander Downer, the Australian High Commissioner to the U.K. Downer said that in May 2016, Papadopoulos told him during a conversation in London about Russians having Clinton emails.
That information was passed to other Australian government officials before making its way to U.S. officials. FBI agents flew to London a day after "Crossfire Hurricane" started in order to interview Downer.
It is still not known what Downer says about his interaction with Papadopoulos, which TheDCNF is told occurred around May 10, 2016.
Also interesting via Lifezette - " Downer is not the only Clinton fan in Hakluyt. Federal contribution records show several of the firm's U.S. representatives made large contributions to two of Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign organizations ."
Halper contacted Papadopoulos on September 2, 2016 according to The Caller - flying him out to London to work on a policy paper on energy issues in Turkey, Cyprus and Israel - for which he was ultimately paid $3,000. Papadopoulos met Halper several times during his stay, "having dinner one night at the Travellers Club, and Old London gentleman's club frequented by international diplomats."
They were accompanied by Halper's assistant, a Turkish woman named Azra Turk. Sources familiar with Papadopoulos's claims about his trip say Turk flirted with him during their encounters and later on in email exchanges .
...
Emails were also brought up during Papadopoulos's meetings with Halper , though not by the Trump associate, according to sources familiar with his version of events. T he sources say that during conversation, Halper randomly brought up Russians and emails. Papadopoulos has told people close to him that he grew suspicious of Halper because of the remark. - Daily Caller
Meanwhile, Halper targeted Carter Page two days after Page returned from a trip to Moscow.
Page's visit to Moscow, where he spoke at the New Economic School on July 8, 2016, is said to have piqued the FBI's interest even further . Page and Halper spoke on the sidelines of an election-themed symposium held at Cambridge days later. Former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and Sir Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6 and a close colleague of Halper's, spoke at the event.
...
Page would enter the media spotlight in September 2016 after Yahoo! News reported that the FBI was investigating whether he met with two Kremlin insiders during that Moscow trip.
It would later be revealed that the Yahoo! article was based on unverified information from Christopher Steele, the former British spy who wrote the dossier regarding the Trump campaign . Steele's report, which was funded by Democrats, also claimed Page worked with Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort on the collusion conspiracy. - Daily Caller
A third target of Halper's was Trump campaign co-chairman Sam Clovis, whose name was revealed by the Washington Post on Friday.
In late August 2016, the professor reached out to Clovis, asking if they could meet somewhere in the Washington area, according to Clovis's attorney, Victoria Toensing.
"He said he wanted to be helpful to the campaign" and lend the Trump team his foreign-policy experience, Toensing said.
Clovis, an Iowa political figure and former Air Force officer, met the source and chatted briefly with him over coffee, on either Aug. 31 or Sept. 1, at a hotel cafe in Crystal City, she said. Most of the discussion involved him asking Clovis his views on China.
"It was two academics discussing China," Toensing said. " Russia never came up. " - WaPo
Meanwhile, Bruce Ohr is still employed by the Department of Justice, and Fusion GPS continues its hunt for Trump dirt after having partnered with former Feinstein aide and ex-FBI counterintelligence agent, Dan Jones.
It's been nearly three years since an army of professional spies was unleashed on Trump - and he's still the President, Steele and Downer notwithstanding.
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Oct 21, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
BakedBeans , 9 hours ago link
Count Cherep , 9 minutes ago linkThe "original" so-called intelligence report was a load of BS, I read it, I'm a computer engineer of over 30 years experience. My opinion is that it was pure BS, "filler" posing as a report, no evidence presented. Nothingburger. People then seized on it, waved it in the air, and said, "Here's the proof!". That's a common tactic that's been used over, and over. Here's the NY Times "correction". Note, after the correction, Hillary continued to spout the nonsense that 17 agencies all agreed. It was ONLY the FBI, CIA Office of the Director of National Intelligence (Dan Coats), and the NSA.
The puzzling part is this - since the "blame Russia" story is fake, why does the US continue to harass and provoke Russia, via Nato, Bolton, Haley? Who's in charge??
Correction: June 29, 2017
A White House Memo article on Monday about President Trump's deflections and denials about Russia referred incorrectly to the source of an intelligence assessment that said Russia orchestrated hacking attacks during last year's presidential election. The assessment was made by four intelligence agencies -- the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, the Central Intelligence Agency, the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the National Security Agency. The assessment was not approved by all 17 organizations in the American intelligence community.
Longfisher , 9 hours ago linkWho's in charge?
The " Best Government Money Can Buy"
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/10/04/best-government-money-can-buy.html
Thordoom , 9 hours ago linkI believe Muller is going for criminal conspiracy and interference with an investigation charges, instead of collusion with Russia.
bh2 , 10 hours ago linkBut what if comes out that they didn't break any law ? They can ask for reparations of lost money because of sanction and then every sanctioned entity and individual in Russia can ask for reparations because of bogus charges.
WTFUD , 9 hours ago linkIt seems likely the overwhelming record of the Mueller "probe" into "interference in US elections" will be pretended prosecution of acts which never occurred or which violate no statutory laws.
In other words, it's been a political stunt with no lawful foundation from the very beginning.
Had they bothered to look into FBI and DNC/Hillary efforts to deceptively manipulate public perception with false accusations, they would have found ample evidence of criminal conduct.
So they didn't.
Wahooo , 10 hours ago linkExactamundo , Mueller's core aim is to Deflect attention from the Real Criminals. He don' need no steenkin' evidence when pointing the finger.
Who's picking up his and his team's TAB?
glenlloyd , 5 hours ago linkThe Deep State sure hates Russia. What a bunch of cold war holdovers, should have been riffed decades ago.
Count Cherep , 1 hour ago linkI been waiting for some news on this one. I had heard a while back that Mueller tried to deny the Russian company the ability to contest the charges with that weak *** "they haven't been served properly" excuse only to have it rejected by the judge.
I hope this deflates on Mueller and leaves him open to charges by the others who he alleges conspired to meddle in US elections.
FFS the US meddles in EVERYONE's elections they now kicking and screaming cuz someone might have setup a troll farm or dispensed some info on Hillary that might not have been true (can it be?)
This will play out badly for the Mueller team, the judge already hates them and is disgusted by their tactics.
I am thoroughly disgusted with this charade.
There are so many important matters which need to be addressed, yet parasites like Mueller can waste millions of dollars on nonsense.
"Robert Mueller -- FBI director on 9-11; under his "leadership" FBI field agents' warnings of an imminent attack were stifled"
http://kennysideshow.blogspot.com/2014/01/those-still-alive-and-well.html
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Aug 11, 2018 | www.sott.net
America is going to soon know the name Nellie Ohr. Americans will also learn she was a communist sympathizer more connected to Russia than President Trump ever will be who did all she could to overturn the candidacy and Presidency of President Trump.
Diana West, the author of American Betryal , wrote this at the American Spectator on Nellie Ohr, who they call "the "dossier" spying scandal's woman in the middle." -
To one side of Ohr, there is the Fusion GPS team, including fellow contractor Christopher Steele. To the other, there is husband Bruce Ohr, who, until his "dossier"-related demotion, was No. 4 man at the Department of Justice, and a key contact there for Steele.What's more revealing about Nellie Ohr is what she did before the FBI and DOJ Russia scandal and the men in her life protecting her involvement in the Russia scandal -As central as Nellie Ohr's placement is, her role in the creation of the "dossier" remains undefined. For example, the House Intelligence Committee memo on related matters vaguely tells us that Nellie Ohr was "employed by Fusion GPS to assist in the cultivation of opposition research on Trump"; the memo adds that Bruce Ohr "later provided the FBI with all of his wife's opposition research." Senator Lindsey Graham more sensationally told Fox News that Nellie Ohr "did the research for Mr. Steele," but details remain scarce.
Notably, the "dossier" men in her life have tried to shield Ohr from public scrutiny, even at professional risk. Her husband, as the Daily Caller News Foundation reports, failed to disclose his wife's employment with Fusion GPS and seek the appropriate conflict-of-interest waiver, which may have been an important factor in his demotion from associate deputy attorney general late last year.We know that Steele was a NeverTrumper but Nellie Ohr was an outright communist sympathizer. Ohr's PhD thesis provides the support -Under Senate and House questioning, Fusion GPS co-founder Glenn Simpson consistently failed to disclose Nellie Ohr's existence as one of his firm's paid Russian experts, let alone that he hired her for the red-hot DNC/Clinton campaign Trump-Russia project.
Even Christopher Steele may have tried to keep Nellie Ohr "under cover." Steele, put forth as the "dossier" author ever since its January 2017 publication in BuzzFeed , does not appear to have let on to his many media and political contacts that he had "dossier"-assistance from at least two fellow Fusion GPS Russian experts, Nellie Ohr and Edward Baumgartner. Baumgartner, interestingly, was a Russian history major at Vassar in the 1990s when Nellie Ohr taught Russian history there.
Nellie Ohr's Ph.D. thesis is titled "Collective farms and Russian peasant society, 1933-1937: the stabilization of the kolkhoz order"?In later years, Ohr reviewed several books by "revisionists," and offered her sympathies for Stalin. Her beliefs are in deep contrast to President Trump, who the American Spectator says "whether he or anyone else realizes it, is the most instinctively anti-communist president elected in generations.""Kolkhoz" order means "collective farm" order, so Ohr's subtitle refers to the "stabilization" of the collective farm order. The phrasing alone is suggestive of some silverish lining after the six million or more people were killed by Stalin's state-created famine, mass deportations, and general war of "de-kulakization."
In the introduction to her 418-page paper, Ohr sets forth her main arguments, citing many of "revisionism's" leading figures - J. Arch Getty, Roberta Manning, Gabor Rittersporn, Sheila Fitzpatrick.
Speaking "revisionist" lingo, Nellie Ohr turns the millions killed by Stalin into "excesses," which, in Ohr's words, "sometimes represented desperate measures taken by a government that had little real control over the country." (Poor Stalin.) She depicts purges as representing "to some degree a center-periphery conflict in which the 'state-building' central government tried to bring headstrong local satraps under control."
Here, in full context, are the "revisionist" trends she says her thesis will "corroborate":
Recently, Western historians [i.e., "revisionists"] have been using materials from the Smolensk archive to back up their arguments that power flowed not only from the top down but also from the bottom up to some degree; that excesses sometimes represented desperate measures taken by a government that had little real control over the country; that policies such as dekulakization and the purges of the later 1930s had some social constituency among aggrieved groups of poorer peasants; and that the purges represented to some degree a center-periphery conflict in which the 'state-building' central government tried to bring headstrong local satraps under control.
The American Spectator next presented not only Ohr's but Special Counsel Mueller's ties to Russia as well -
As FBI Director (2001-2013), Robert Mueller presided over the Bureau's decade-long counterintelligence operation known as "Ghost Stories," which targeted the deep-cover ring of Russian "illegals" mentioned above. In June 2010, the FBI netted this ring of covert Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) operatives, which was successfully boring into elite circles, including Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's - and then sent them packing ASAP to Mother Russia.Clearly this last paragraph is satire as the Russians wanted Hillary elected and were happy to do all they could to prevent a Trump Presidency. The links between Russia and Nellie Ohr are unknown. The dossier she helped create is a farce.Why? All of the available evidence strongly suggests that this painstaking FBI work of a decade was thrown away to protect Hillary Clinton , the once and future presidential candidate, who was at risk of being compromised. As FBI counterintelligence chief Frank Figliuzzi put it: "We were becoming very concerned they were getting close enough to a sitting US cabinet member that we thought we could no longer allow this to continue."
Never one to save the republic instead of herself, Hillary Clinton "worked feverishly" to get these Russian agents deported before they could be adequately debriefed or otherwise exploited, as J. Michael Waller writes. Remember, June 2010 was a busy month for the Clintons: Rosatom was initiating its purchase of Uranium One; Bill Clinton was pocketing $500,000 from that KGB-linked Moscow bank, Renaissance Capital, which was "talking up" Uranium One shares (even as $145 million was sloshing into the Clinton Foundation); President Obama was pushing for Russian membership in the World Trade Organization, and all the "reset" rest. The exposure of a highly trained network of SVR operatives targeting Hillary Clinton among others could not have been more inconvenient. How do you say, "Get them out of here on the double" in Russian?
Looking back, I don't recall FBI Director Mueller in a lather over this Russian "meddling," or "influence" on the Obama administration. Last time I looked, he did not resign from his FBI directorship in protest of this crude administration cover-up, either. Maybe he was too busy hiding evidence from Congress of the so-called Mikerin probe, the investigation into a Russian bribery scheme to control an American uranium trucking firm, even as U.S. lawmakers were examining the proposed sale of Uranium One to the Russian government.
Thus, in FBI Director Mueller's treatment of the Russian espionage ring in we see a funhouse-mirror-image of Special Counsel Mueller's Russian social media indictments. In 2010, without a single indictment or anything comparable, Mueller's FBI did its part in deporting from American soil a network of high-value SVR operatives for political reasons; in 2018, without any expectation of prosecution, Mueller's Special Counsel office indicted a network of Russian Internet hooligans on Russian soil, also for political reasons.
In both cases, it is our national security that suffers while Mueller's political masters benefit. In 2010, they wanted Obama-Clinton protected from real Russian exposure; in 2018 they want Trump destroyed by concocted Russian exposure.
Enter the "dossier."
Earlier this month, the Hill reported that "an FBI informant connected to the Uranium One controversy told three congressional committees... that Moscow routed millions of dollars to America with the expectation it would be used to benefit Bill Clinton's charitable efforts while Secretary of State Hillary Clinton quarterbacked a 'reset' in U.S.-Russian relations."
Even if the information-warriors in the MSM won't call it "Russian influence," let's not kid ourselves: Putin's Russia got what it paid for, from those infamous U.S. uranium stocks, to Obama's "flexibility," to hypersonic missile engine technology , to WTO membership and more, all despite that latter-Obama-second-term chill - in itself a political zig-zag with historically suspicious resonance.
Then, improbably, along came Trump, and neither Republican nor Democrat could stop him. When Smash-Mouth Hillary tried to tag him Putin's "puppet" during the final presidential debate in October 2016, it was an act of desperation, and, perhaps, her own "insurance policy" for the unthinkable - defeat.
Even as Clinton spoke on the debate stage, Nellie "Terror and Excitement" Ohr was still laboring in the Fusion GPS Russia shop (working her ham radio?), which was still whipping up the final installments of DNC/Clinton "opposition research," including the "dossier," to back up Clinton's wild, Pravda -esque charge.
It didn't stick, of course, not in time to vault Clinton over the Election Day finish line first.
What a sigh of relief Putin must have drawn inside his palace on November 8, 2016 now that he finally had a "puppet" to call his own inside the White House; someone who, in addition to his counter-revolutionary "America First" agenda to restore U.S. manufacturing, prosperity and sovereignty (joy of Kremlin joys,) strongly believed the U.S. military was "depleted" and dangerously behind Russia's... someone who, after so many years of neglect, wanted to modernize and expand, not shrink and mothball, America's nuclear arsenal... Phew! What a relief! Putin almost had to face a "real" neo-Cold Warrior who wanted to follow and accelerate Obama's military decline, someone who said on the campaign trail that "the last thing we need" are next-generation nuclear-armed cruise missiles....
What we do know is that mean spirited communist sympathizer Nellie Ohr, whose husband helped run the corrupt DOJ, was involved in slandering candidate Donald Trump and did all she could to stop him from being President.
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Oct 19, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Pft , Oct 18, 2018 12:29:54 AM | link
TheBag @72
The President has authority under the Global Magnitsky Act to impose sanctions against anyone who has committed a human rights violation. Congress has already requested a HR investigation which Trump must act on and report to them within 4 months
It appears my prediction of Saudi gate may be right. This potentially is good news for Iran and Russia. Perhaps not so good for Trump and Saidis. Israel may not be happy. Perhaps his wife's plane troubles were a warning shot to remind him who is boss. Who knows ?
Haleys resignation beginning to make sense now. The House of Trump and House of Saud may soon fall, and Bibi wont be happy losing Trump and MBS. We all know what they are capable of to get things back on track
Why did the media held back on this so for so long? Yemen (and Gaza).
CGTN & Al-Jazeera are the only global news outlets consistently and regularly reporting on the US facilitated genocides in Yemen and Jewish-occupied Palestine/Gaza.
The never-ending Khashoggi non-mystery mystery keeps Yemen & Gaza out of the Jew-controlled Western Media headlines. Saudi Barbaria and "Israel" are natural allies because each of them is an artificial Western political construct with a cowardly and incompetent military apparatus and an anti-heroic penchant for slaughtering undefended civilians - for psychopathic reasons.
--------
Talking about psychopathy...
Oz's Christian Zionist PM, Sco Mo, is blathering about following Trump's lead and moving Oz's Embassy in "Israel" to Jerusalem. Sc Mo, who has never had an original idea in his life, still hasn't woken up to the fact that Trump's Jerusalem gambit was a trap for Bibi. So it's hilarious that Sco Mo The Unoriginal, is planning to take a flying leap into the same trap!
Anyone with more than half a brain would realise that...
1. No civilised country has followed Trump's lead.
2. Trump can, and will, reverse his (illegal) Jerusalem decision out of a 'new-found respect' for International Law.Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | Oct 18, 2018 12:14:08 AM | 83
Posted by: JNDillard | Oct 17, 2018 11:59:34 PM | 81
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/nationworld/ct-saudi-arabia-payment-20181017-story.htmlPosted by: Krollchem | Oct 17, 2018 11:19:22 PM | 79
Whoever is ultimately behind this campaign (which I suspect is a loose association of interest groups spread throughout SA, Turkey, London citi, wall street, whoever) they will not stop until MbS is paraded through the streets in chains or at least his head at the end of a lance. At this point the only question how many days will it take to see his head on a pike?
Posted by: ToivoS | Oct 17, 2018 11:24:27 PM | 80
"Their target that night: Anssaf Ali Mayo, the local leader of the Islamist political party Al-Islah. The UAE considers Al-Islah to be the Yemeni branch of the worldwide Muslim Brotherhood, which the UAE calls a terrorist organization. Many experts insist that Al-Islah, one of whose members won the Nobel Peace Prize, is no terror group. They say it's a legitimate political party that threatens the UAE not through violence but by speaking out against its ambitions in Yemen."
Posted by: Krollchem | Oct 17, 2018 10:26:46 PM | 77
Posted by: Gary Weglarz | Oct 17, 2018 10:22:19 PM | 76
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Oct 15, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
this_circus_is_no_fun , 12 minutes ago link
Paddyo2 , 37 minutes ago linkSome say that declassifying the documents would expose " sources and methods ". Others say that the documents are being kept secret to prevent the DOJ and FBI from becoming embarrassed . I say that both can be true.
If the documents expose the liars and fabrications that went into the entire Russia Gate fraud, then declassifying the documents will indeed embarrass the DOJ and FBI by showing that their " sources " are liars and that their " methods " are fabrications.
See, everything always makes sense in the circus.
Anunnaki , 30 minutes ago linkEither Trump is constantly threatened, boxed into a corner, or it IS ALL FOR SHOW!
The best example is now, Trump "walking back the release" because of Aussie and UK complicity. The threatened release of USA dirty laundry, of which there is plenty knowing how our CIA works. Or we are being played once more.
Frankly, I'm beyond sick of these walk backs! IG report! Rosenstein resigns! FISA Declas!!
I'm an independent voter. It's high time I WALK BACK my vote for all Republicans on November 6th UNLESS WE THE People that they represent get a FULL UNREDACTED FISA AND IG REPORT published .
Tell Trump and the Republican party . Protect NOT ONE Criminal. If UK or Aus threaten exposing spies or military secrets then threaten back with annihilation should they endanger Americans.
I'm fed up beyond return with Holder, Brennan et al.
Bingo Hammer , 49 minutes ago linkIt is all for show.
Our elites don't put each other in jail. That is reserved for the Deplorables.
Remember what Trump said after the election, "The Clinton's are good people."
wolf pup , 35 minutes ago linkObama, Hillary and the DNC pressured the UK's M16 as the No.1 instigator via Steele, its lapdog Australia's intelligence service, then told Alexander Downer to forward "salted" info to US agencies...and 2.5 years later here we are
scraping_by , 1 hour ago linkIt's always something that causes The Never Ending Wait..
and it always makes decent sense in the short term (memory loss)..
and it always; and for years now, happens.
I can't buy that those involved are powerful, savvy, or more importantly, courageous enough to finally stand the hell UP to the powers that be bullshitting the Citizenry. It's clearly not the case.
And what does Sundance say of the MIA Sessions? Is he really wearing tights and cape under those rumpled wee suits of his, and just snarling to leap out, indictments in hand, to read off tens of thousands of the accused' names? "Stealth Jeff"; actor par excellence? Sessions as Hero? Any day now to be proved The Truth's Hitman?
A GOP-won Midterms would benefit from the declassification of criminal intent that supports the US President. -> Before the vote. Afterward, and if the vote gone badly, lol it'll be as useful as John Brennan's soul. And a "Mueller surprise"; if the declassification happened before the vote, would be tainted beyond its .. surprise.
So why the wait this time - again?
I'm sorry; I don't mean to come across rudely, but "hoping; forever" is exhausting, damaging to fact based living, induces apathy and entirely suits those who have so much to hide, and offers nothing to the targets involved; We, the People.
tunetopper , 1 hour ago linkThe factions in the FBI/DOJ who want to keep the Russian collusion hoax going are the same ones who protected Hillary from the most outrageous violation of the espionage laws ever to bubble to the surface. Office politics in that axis are a lot like any other large company, with the exception of sending people to prison. So her supporters are still on the job.
The investigation never made first page news, living out here in the alternate press, and now that The Donald seems to walk back obvious Donaldesque moves, it might never come to light. Remember his campaign promise was to prosecute Sec. Clinton, and he settled for firing Comey. So they may get away with most of this yet.
Any time the US government cooperates with the British, we get stuck. The Austrailians are colonials and love it. So the paperwork for the Comey-McCabe-Rosenstien conspiracy might never be published.
JethroBodien , 1 hour ago linkWhen the FBI wants a warrant, its presumed that they are not going to make an even-handed case to the FISA Court. All they have to do is deny that they had sufficient infomation to the contrary. Thats what makes this court an abomination to our freedom. This is why the US Patriot Act and the Homeland Security Act are a bunch of crap. We are now finding out that intelligence services knew who concocted 911 (elements within the Saudi Govt along side the wealthy dissident near-royals ie. the Khashoggis and the Bin-Ladens, and possibly the Israelis knew too).
trutherator , 1 hour ago linkEveryone, none of this matters. Has everyone forgotten about 9/11 and the conspiracy perpetrated on the American people. Frankly all is not what it seems and most of what we are seeing is simply theatre for the masses.
Some of the biggest men in the United States, in the field of commerce and manufacture, are afraid of something. They know that there is a power somewhere so organized, so subtle, so watchful, so interlocked, so complete, so pervasive, that they had better not speak above their breath when they speak in condemnation of it."
~ Woodrow Wilson (1856 – 1924), 28th President of the United States
"The very word "secrecy" is repugnant in a free and open society; and we are as a people inherently and historically opposed to secret societies, to secret oaths and to secret proceedings...Our way of life is under attack. Those who make themselves our enemy are advancing around the globe...no war ever posed a greater threat to our security. If you are awaiting a finding of "clear and present danger," then I can only say that the danger has never been more clear and its presence has never been more imminent...For we are opposed around the world by a monolithic and ruthless conspiracy that relies primarily on covert means for expanding its sphere of influence–on infiltration instead of invasion, on subversion instead of elections, on intimidation instead of free choice, on guerrillas by night instead of armies by day. It is a system which has conscripted vast human and material resources into the building of a tightly knit, highly efficient machine that combines military, diplomatic, intelligence, economic, scientific and political operations. Its preparations are concealed, not published. Its mistakes are buried, not headlined. Its dissenters are silenced, not praised. No expenditure is questioned, no rumor is printed, no secret is revealed."
― President John F. Kennedycheech_wizard , 1 hour ago linkRemember? The FBI lovers email that said the president wants to "know everything"?
Start there. Did Congress ask either of them where they heard this, and how much of this treachery Obama was complicit in?
Dornier27 , 2 hours ago linkMight I reference this:
business as stusual , 1 hour ago linkAnyone else worried that the President keeps doing an about face or being unable or unwilling to deliver on important issues? Orders papers to be published unredacted then they are not? Hillary walking free. No Wall, no withdrawal from Afghanistan and now backtracking on punishing Saudi Arabia....
DjangoCat , 1 hour ago linkJust like the rest, he is owned.
Bavarian , 1 hour ago link" and now backtracking on punishing Saudi Arabia.."
And you think the Russian's really poisoned the Skripals, or that Assad merrily gassed his own people just before entering peace talks, or that the White Helmet people being invited into Canada are not Al Nusra terrorists?
You had better be prepared to believe all that if you think the Saudis are stupid enough to dismember a Washington Post journalist in a Saudi consulate, and to let it be recorded to boot. How dumb can you get? But then, maybe I misjudge you. Maybe you do believe all that. Not me, pal.
PS For extra confirmation, just look at who has decided not to attend Davos in the Desert. Top of the list are the New Yawk banksters.
Jim in MN , 2 hours ago linkYou want to might ask yourself why the Post ran this story, employed the journalist and published that John Brennan demand that we "punish" Saudi Arabia. You might ask yourself why the NYT pushed the narrative that RR should be fired before mid-terms.
'Misunderstanding all you see' - John Lennon
WorkingClassMan , 2 hours ago linkWeiner laptop please. Now, please. thx
bh2 , 3 hours ago linkDomestic terrorists (the Federal Bureau of Intimidation) generally is dramatic.
Hulk , 3 hours ago linkGuess which specific portions of the released documents will be redacted "for national security reasons".
DingleBarryObummer , 3 hours ago linkand while we are at it, declassify the whistleblower report generated by the William Binney complaint.
Then put Haydn's treasonous *** in jail too...
Hulk , 3 hours ago linki watched a documentary about that. basically, binney was genius who created a genius system to find terrorists while maintaining the integrity of the constitution (and for relatively cheap cost!). The deep state was like "piss on that," spent 100x more money than they had to, and wiped their *** with the constitution.
ardent , 3 hours ago linkdont forget that the FBI fabricated evidence about Binney and three of his colleagues.The criminal case against Binney and his colleagues was then thrown out of court once the fabrication was revealed. This out of control corruption has been going on a long time...
lester1 , 3 hours ago linkIt's obvious the FUNDAMENTALS of the conflict with Russia
have NOT changed one iota. Even with Trump.
Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours ago linkFBI is a criminal racket!
And where the hell are the "honorable" FBI agents to blow the lid off all the corruption/ conspiracy against the President ??🤔
DaBard51 , 3 hours ago linkI've stated for months that rank and file are in the tank w/leadership corruption OR they have been threatened either with harm to themselves of family members if they didn't go along. However at this point, no whistleblowers proves the former.
Totally_Disillusioned , 3 hours ago linkHave they opened Weiner's laptop or found Hillary's laptop yet?
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/hillary-clinton-emails-laptop-thumb-drive-archive-missing
- https://www.foxnews.com/politics/judicial-watch-sues-justice-dept-for-records-from-anthony-weiner-laptop
A trend... as reported by (!) CNN & NY Times (!)...
- http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/02/12/fbi.laptops/index.html
- https://www.nytimes.com/2001/07/18/us/fbi-check-finds-laptops-and-weapons-are-missing.html
When nine hundred years old you become, look this good you will not.
Everybodys All American , 3 hours ago linkStrzok testifed several CDs of ALL 680K emails that included crimes against children, classified info was handed over to Comey who merely placed them in his office. Comey has been gone for over six months, why have those CDs not been reviewed and acted on?
There are a LOT of dots and THEY count on YOU not connecting them. I keep a journal.
hooligan2009 , 3 hours ago linkLets suppose its all true. Which we pretty much know if you have been paying attention that the FBI has gone rogue. Then what? Arrests? Mueller? I don't think that's even close to what is needed. We are talking major treason from multiple levels and people through out government.
Joe Davola , 3 hours ago linkthis:
" the DOJ would be allowed to review the documents first after two foreign allies asked him to keep them classified. "
refers to the British and Australian governments who would be embarassed because rogue agents wishing to arrange for the impeachment of Trump would be exposed.
as such, this would represent a threat to the apolitical use of five eyes security pact for intelligence purposes - a pact intended to detect and prevent EXTERNAL threats to the five eyes nations - rather than instigate POLITICAL control of INTERNAL affairs of the democratic functioning of five eyes countries.
treason and sedition has been exposed within the US - aided and abetted by drunks and sycophants in britain and australia,
Madcow , 3 hours ago linkMy impression is that FIVE EYES exists so that the individual members can ask one of the other members to spy on their own people without violating constitutional limits on such activity.
NoDebt , 3 hours ago linkIn my humble opinion, politicians and government bureaucrats should be strictly prohibited from falsely accusing their ideological opponents of criminal activity and then manufacturing fake evidence to support those claims.
No amount of sanctimonious political-correctness justifies Authoritarian rule squarely in opposition to the US Constitution.
lester1 , 3 hours ago link"Americans will be "shocked" by the information behind the FISA redactions"
Not after waiting for this evidence for two ******* years. I'm worn out. Do something about it or **** off.
Think for yourself , 2 hours ago linkTrump caved and allowed the deep state members at the FBI to conceal the truth!
ypczh , 5 minutes ago linkExactly @NoDebt. Nearly every day or multiple times a day there's something huge that radically alters the narrative... people are worn out. This is so huge!
Bingo Hammer , 55 minutes ago linkTiming is everything and Trump knows it. All heads of the hydra must be cut off at the same time.
otschelnik , 3 hours ago linkNot sure about that, as at least 2 crucial allies, the UK and Australia, were pressured by the Obama and Hillary camps to set this whole narrative off...and therefore does he seriously damage those international and key security countries with info or does he compromise to keep the peace? Too much is at play here for Trump expose the truth
I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.... That's that the UK's GCHQ initiated spying on Popadolous and Trump Tower at the request of Obummer and/or Rice and/or Brennan, BEFORE the FBI/Comey said UNDER OATH that they started in May, and were denied a FISA warrant in June 2016.... that's why they needed the 'golden shower dossier.' That's i-l-l-e-g-a-l.
Oh, and Brennan said he pushed the FBI to initiate an investigation but Nunes said there was no intelligence (EC) which they could base it on. It was a set-up from day 1.
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Oct 12, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
et Al October 11, 2018 at 2:22 am
RT.com: US senators demand Magnitsky Act probe, sanctions on Saudi Arabia over Khashoggi disappearance
https://www.rt.com/usa/440922-trump-letter-senators-khashoggi/####
All kinds of delicious can proceed from this.
The whole Magnitsky Act thing was supposed to be a convenient tool of western foreign policy cloaked in Human Rights sugar to justify punished the usual suspects ad perpituitam, not for attacking allies. It looks like some US politicians actually think it is about human rights! They'll need to practice their best acting to explain why some are on the list and others aren't, along with compliant media and governments.
What we are seeing now are the consequences of classic imperial over-reach – extending one's power so far and so generally that it hoists itself upon its own petard! The implosion of the USA continues afoot, Hillary Clinton being one of its cheerleaders (according to her recent Amappaling interview).
Trump is also promising a rapid USG reaction to India buying S-400s, so it really is time to stock up on the popcorn. I knew for sure that this year would certainly be more interesting than last year, but 2019 should be a corker. Woo.
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Oct 08, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
Vis the Dutch push for a new sanctions regime for Human Rights abusers, apart from global sponsors of Islamic terrorism who also happen to have $$$, the obvious takeaway that only just occurred to me is that the push for a European Magnitsky Act must have failed.
This is exactly the same thing, they just dropped the name. The EU is not united and I don't see the Netherlands as having enough influence in the EU without the UK.
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Oct 08, 2018 | original.antiwar.com
As the hoax unravels, the real story of "foreign collusion" comes out
The conspiracy to overthrow a sitting US President extends far beyond our own "Deep State." As I've been saying in this space for quite some time, it's been an international team effort from the beginning. Setting aside the British origins of the obscene "dossier" compiled by "ex"-MI6 agent Christopher Steele, we now have further confirmation of foreign involvement in President Trump's decision to delay (perhaps indefinitely) the declassification of key Russia-gate documents. While US intelligence officials were expected to oppose the move, "Trump was also swayed by foreign allies, including Britain, in deciding to reverse course, these people said. It wasn't immediately clear what other governments may have raised concerns to the White House."But of course the Washington Post knows perfectly well which other governments would have reason to raise "concerns" to the White House. It's clear from the public record that the following "allies" have rendered the "Resistance" essential assistance at one time or another:
- United Kingdom – This entire episode has Her Majesty's Secret Service's fingerprints all over it. Steele's key role is plain enough: here was a British spook who was not only hired by the Clinton campaign to dig up dirt on Trump but was unusually passionate about his work – almost as if he'd have done it for free. And then there was the earliest approach to the Trump campaign, made by Cambridge professor and longtime spook Stefan Halper to Carter Page. And then there's the mysterious alleged "link" to Russian intelligence, Professor Joseph Mifsud, whose murky British-based thinktank managed to operate openly despite later claims it was a Russian covert operation.
- It was Mifsud who orchestrated the Russia-gate hoax, first suggesting that the Russians had Hillary Clinton's emails, and then disappearing into thin air as soon as the story he had planted percolated into plain view. Some "Russian agent"!
- Australia – Why would the former Australian High Commissioner to the UK seek out George Papadopoulos, a low-level semi-advisor to the Trump campaign, and milk him for information while getting him drunk?
- Israel – So how did Papadopoulos find himself spilling his guts at a bar with a top Australian intelligence figure? The Times reports that "The meeting at the bar came about because of a series of connections, beginning with an Israeli Embassy official who introduced Mr. Papadopoulos to another Australian diplomat in London."
- Estonia – The Times and other outlets report that a "Baltic intelligence agency" was the first to relay "concerns" about Russian influence over the Trump team. I'm willing to bet it was the Estonians, who have always been the most actively anti-Russian actors in the region.
- Ukraine – Democratic National Committee members actually met with Ukrainian government leaders in an attempt to uncover dirt on Trump. Working together with the DNC, Democratic official and Ukrainian lobbyist Alexandra Chalupa received active assistance from the Ukrainian embassy, which became a veritable locus of Clintonian campaign operations.
This is part of the price we pay for our vaunted "empire," and the "liberal international order" the striped-pants set is so on about. As that grizzled old "isolationist" prophet, Garet Garrett, described the insignia of empire at the dawn of the cold war:
"There is yet another sign that defines itself gradually. When it is clearly defined it may be already too late to do anything about it. That is to say, a time comes when Empire finds itself –
"A prisoner of history.
"The history of a Republic is its own history . A Republic may change its course, or reverse it, and that will be its own business., But the history of Empire is a world history, and belongs to many people."
A Republic may restrain itself, wrote Garrett, but "Empire must put forth its power" – on whose behalf? There are many claimants whose wealth, position, and prestige depend on the Imperial largesse. When that claim is threatened, the "satellites" turn against their protector. This is what the Russia-gate covert action -- carried out by coordinated action of our "allies" – is all about. We now have clear evidence of just how far our "client" states are willing go to ensure that the American gravy train of free goodies continues to flow.
Trump's decision to walk back his announcement that the key Russia-gate intelligence would be declassified tells us almost as much as if he'd tweeted it out, unredacted. For what it tells us is that public knowledge of the contents would constitute a major break in relations with at least one key ally.
So here we have it at last, the final truth of Russia-gate: yes, there was indeed foreign collusion in the 2016 election, but it came from the opposite direction than the media are telling us. We weren't attacked by Russia: a few thousand dollars in Facebook ads that nobody saw did not put Trump in the White House. Our democratic process was undermined, not by the supposedly omnipotent Vladimir Putin but by the intelligence agencies of some of our more beloved "allies." We were attacked by a tag -team, both foreign and domestic, intent on ousting a democratically-elected President by any means necessary.
Here is the final irrefutable argument against America as the "world leader," designated champion of the "liberal international order" – we become, as Garrett noted, a prisoner of history. Indeed, we are no longer entitled to write our own history, but must endure the lobbying and aggressive interventions of our ungrateful and spiteful "allies," whose welfare states could not exist without generous US "defense" subsidies.
When those subsidies, subventions, and special privileges are threatened, as they are by the nationalist cheapskate Trump, who would gladly demolish the whole decrepit, dated, and dangerous cold war architecture with a wave of his hand. A US President who puts America first? They can't allow it.
And that's really the essence of the fight, the issue that will determine the woof and warp of American politics in the new millennium. The global Establishment has risen up against the People. There's no telling what the outcome will be, but one thing I know for sure: I know what side I'm on. Do you?
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Oct 08, 2018 | www.rt.com
8 Oct, 2018
An intelligence service given free rein to commit 'serious crimes' in its own country is an intelligence service that is the enemy of its people. The quite astounding revelation that Britain's domestic intelligence service, MI5, has enjoyed this very freedom for decades has only just been made public at a special tribunal in London, set up to investigate the country's intelligence services at the behest of a coalition of human rights groups, alleging a pattern of illegality up to and including collusion in murder.
The hitherto MI5 covert policy sanctioning its agents to commit and/or solicit serious crimes, as and when adjudged provident, is known as the Third Direction. This codename has been crafted, it would appear, by someone with a penchant for all things James Bond within an agency whose average operative is more likely to be 5'6" and balding with a paunch and bad teeth than any kind of lantern-jawed 007.
The Pat Finucane Centre , one of the aforementioned human rights groups involved in bringing about this tribunal investigation (Investigatory Powers Tribunal, to give it its Sunday name) into the nefarious activities of Britain's domestic intelligence agency, issued a damning statement in response to the further revelation that former Prime Minister David Cameron introduced oversight guidelines with regard to the MI5 covert third direction policy back in 2012.
Cameron's decision to do so, the group claims, was far from nobly taken:
"It can be no coincidence that Prime Minister David Cameron issued new guidelines, however flawed, on oversight of MI5 just two weeks before publication of the De Silva report into the murder of Pat Finucane. The PM was clearly alive to the alarming evidence which was about to emerge of the involvement of the Security Service in the murder. To date no-one within a state agency has been held accountable. The latest revelations make the case for an independent inquiry all the more compelling."
Pat Finucane, a Belfast Catholic, plied his trade as a human rights lawyer at a time when the right to be fully human was denied the minority Catholic community of the small and enduring outpost of British colonialism in the north east corner of Ireland, otherwise known as Northern Ireland. He was murdered by loyalist paramilitaries in 1989, back when the decades-long conflict euphemistically referred to as the Troubles still raged, claiming victims both innocent and not on all sides.
Unlike the vast majority of those killed and murdered in the course of this brutal conflict, Finucane's murder sparked a long and hard fought struggle for justice by surviving family members, friends and campaigners. They allege – rather convincingly, it should be said – that it was carried out with the active collusion of MI5.
Stepping back and casting a wider view over this terrain, the criminal activities of Britain's intelligence services constitute more than enough material for a book of considerable heft. How fortunate then that just such a book has already been written.
In his 'Dead Men Talking: Collusion, Cover Up and Murder in Northern Ireland's Dirty War', author Nicholas Davies "provides information on a number of the killings [during the Troubles], which were authorized at the highest level of MI5 and the British government."
But over and above the crimes of MI5 in Ireland, what else have those doughty defenders of the realm been up to over the years? After all, what is the use of having a license to engage in serious criminal activity, including murder and, presumably, torture, if you're not prepared to use (abuse) it? It begs the question of how many high profile deaths attributed to suicide, natural causes, and accident down through the years have been the fruits of MI5 at work?
And what about the possibility of MI5's involvement in, dare we use the term, false flag operations?
As someone who abhors the premise of conspiracy theory on principle, the fact that more and more are turning to its warm embrace as an intellectual reflex against what is politely described as the 'official narrative' of events, well this is no surprise when we learn of the egregious machinations of Western intelligence agencies such as Britain's MI5.
What we are bound to state, doing so without fear of contradiction, is this particular revelation opens up a veritable Pandora's Box of grim possibilities when it comes to the potential crimes committed by Britain's domestic intelligence agency, ensuring that a full and vigorous investigation and public inquiry is now both necessary and urgent.
If any such investigation is to be taken seriously, however, it must include in its remit the power to investigate all possible links between Britain's intelligence community and organisations such as, let's see, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group ?
The deafening UK mainstream media and political class silence over the trail connecting 2017 Manchester Arena suicide bomber Salman Abedi and MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence agency, leaves a lingering stench of intrigue that will not out. The work of investigative journalist Mark Curtis on this sordid relationship is unsurpassed.
As Curtis writes,
"The evidence suggests that the barbaric Manchester bombing, which killed 22 innocent people on May 22nd, is a case of blowback on British citizens arising at least partly from the overt and covert actions of British governments."
In the same report he arrives at a conclusion both damning and chilling:
"The evidence points to the LIFG being seen by the UK as a proxy militia to promote its foreign policy objectives. Whitehall also saw Qatar as a proxy to provide boots on the ground in Libya in 2011, even as it empowered hardline Islamist groups."
Finally: "Both David Cameron, then Prime Minister, and Theresa May – who was Home Secretary in 2011 when Libyan radicals were encouraged to fight Qadafi [Muammar Gaddafi] – clearly have serious questions to answer. We believe an independent public enquiry is urgently needed."
In words that echo down to us from ancient Rome, the poet Juvenal taunts our complacency with a question most simple and pertinent: "Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" Who will guard the guards themselves?
Edward R Murrow puts it rather more bluntly: "A nation of sheep will beget a government of wolves."
Sooner or later, people in Britain are going to have to wake up to who the real enemy is.
Read more
- UK spies go on the offensive with yet another costly intelligence agency
- 'Murder, torture, sexual assault' - MI5 & informants authorized to commit crimes in UK, court hears
- Wilderness of mirrors: MI6, the Cold War, spies and traitors from Gordievsky to Skripal
John Wight has written for a variety of newspapers and websites, including the Independent, Morning Star, Huffington Post, Counterpunch, London Progressive Journal, and Foreign Policy Journal.
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Oct 07, 2018 | action.larouchepac.com
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500Mr. President:
- The Congressional investigations into the origins of the ongoing, fake Russiagate coup against your presidency have revealed that the Obama Administration used false information and evidence fabricated in London, by official and unofficial British intelligence agents, to justify an unprecedented FBI counterintelligence investigation of your campaign.
- Former MI6 agent Christopher Steele told his Department of Justice handler, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, that Steele would "do anything" to prevent Donald Trump's election and was desperate to stop it from happening. Steele was the author of the notorious fake dossier claiming that Donald Trump, having previously been sexually compromised by Vladimir Putin, was working with Putin to defeat Hillary Clinton. Steele's bizarre, amateurish, and totally fake dossier was used by a corrupted FBI to justify steps in its illegal investigation, despite the fact that this dossier was paid for by the Clinton campaign and its facts were unverified.
- According to multiple published reports, Obama's CIA Director, John Brennan, convened an illegal intelligence task force at the CIA to launder and investigate fake dirt on Trump, produced by a British spy circle led by former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove for purposes of destroying the Trump presidential campaign. Brennan did this because, he said, Donald Trump's election would jeopardize the "special relationship" between U.S. and British intelligence agencies. Dearlove played a key role in the faked intelligence which led the United States into the Iraq War.
- LaRouchePAC, through a previous petition to President Trump on August 10, 2017 -- and to Congress on December 29, 2017 -- called for complete exposure of the British attempt to nullify the 2016 U.S. election based on British strategic interests. At the time, virtually no one else thought the British were the source of foreign interference in the 2016 elections. That fact is now widely recognized. The so-called "resistance," both within and without the government, is stalling further release of key documents to Congressional committees in order to win the midterm elections and begin impeachment proceedings in the House of Representatives.
- The British are conducting an international campaign to smear and militarily and economically confront Russia and China because the City of London financial and imperial order is economically and morally bankrupt and has no plan to build a future for humanity over the course of the next 50 years. This British campaign is not in the interest of the United States, and, Mr. President, you were elected in substantial part on the promise to end America's useless wars on behalf of British strategic objectives.
- The complete exposure of the British/Obama Administration subversion of the Trump presidency represents a unique opportunity for Americans to take our country back: to, once again, fully embrace the profound difference between the British imperial system and the American system of political economy created by Alexander Hamilton and advanced by Lyndon LaRouche. The British system produces the degradation of the majority of the population for the wealth of the few; the American system produces general prosperity.
Now, therefore, we, the undersigned, call upon you to:
- order the declassification of documents referencing all British-spawned allegations, wherever in our government they may reside, concerning your relationship or that of your campaign workers to Russia and demand that the British produce the same from their files;
- order the declassification of all documents -- including those held by the CIA, Director of National Intelligence, NSA, FBI, Department of Justice, Treasury Department, State Department, Obama White House, and any other relevant agencies -- concerning any alleged ties to Russia by you or individuals associated with your campaign;
- order the declassification of all documents demonstrating, alleging, or suggesting that the Russians did not provide files they hacked from the DNC or John Podesta to Wikileaks; and
- order the declassification of all documents requested of the Department of Justice and the FBI by the House Intelligence, Government Oversight, and Judiciary Committees, and the Senate Judiciary Committee, concerning "Russiagate." This includes the now-delayed DOJ Inspector General's report concerning the Clinton email investigation. All such documents should be delivered to the House Intelligence Committee and the House Judiciary Committee for purposes of producing an unclassified report to the American people concerning the origins and reasons for the "Russiagate" insurrection against the Trump presidency.
End the special relationship with the United Kingdom; end the secret government.
A PDF of this petition can be found here.
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Oct 05, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
chet380 , Oct 5, 2018 1:37:53 PM | link
A few months ago, a dozen Russian individuals were charged with cyber-crime offenses that Mueller knew would never be tested at trial b/c the charged individuals would never be extradited. However, the indictment included charges against two Russian corporations that cleverly hired American lawyers to appear on their behalf, and enter pleas of Not Guilty.This tactic should have set the pre-trial discovery process to begin, causing Mueller to be obliged to turn over evidence supporting the charges as well as any exculpatory information favoring the accused corporations.
As any reference to this case can't seem to be found, can anyone help with info as to the present status of the case?
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Oct 04, 2018 | it.slashdot.org
Taco Cowboy ( 5327 ) , Tuesday May 29, 2012 @12:17AM ( #40139317 ) JournalIt's a scam !! ( Score: 5 , Informative)http://erratasec.blogspot.com/2012/05/bogus-story-no-chinese-backdoor-in.html [blogspot.com]
Bogus story: no Chinese backdoor in military chip"Today's big news is that researchers have found proof of Chinese manufacturers putting backdoors in American chips that the military uses. This is false. While they did find a backdoor in a popular FPGA chip, there is no evidence the Chinese put it there, or even that it was intentionally malicious.Furthermore, the Actel ProAsic3 FPGA chip isn't fabricated in China at all !!
jhoegl ( 638955 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @01:30PM ( #40136003 )khasim ( 1285 ) writes: < brandioch.conner@gmail.com > on Monday May 28, 2012 @01:48PM ( #40136097 )Fear mongering ( Score: 5 , Insightful)It sells...
Particularly in a press release like that. ( Score: 5 , Insightful)That entire article reads more like a press release with FUD than anything with any facts.
Which chip?
Which manufacturer?
Which US customer?No facts and LOTS of claims. It's pure FUD.
(Not that this might not be a real concern. But the first step is getting past the FUD and marketing materials and getting to the real facts.)
ArsenneLupin ( 766289 ) , Tuesday May 29, 2012 @01:11AM ( #40139489 )Re:Particularly in a press release like that. ( Score: 5 , Informative)A quick google showed that that this is indeed the chip, but the claims are "slightly" overblown [blogspot.com]
Anonymous Coward , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:14PM ( #40136273 )Most likely inserted by Microsemi/Actel not fab ( Score: 5 , Informative)1) Read the paper http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/Silicon_scan_draft.pdf
2) This is talking about FPGAs designed by Microsemi/Actel.
3) The article focuses on the ProAsic3 chips but says all the Microsemi/Actel chips tested had the same backdoor including but not limited to Igloo, Fusion and Smartfusion.
4) FPGAs give JTAG access to their internals for programming and debugging but many of the access methods are proprietary and undocumented. (security through obscurity)
5) Most FPGAs have features that attempt to prevent reverse engineering by disabling the ability to read out critical stuff.
6) These chips have a secret passphrase (security through obscurity again) that allows you to read out the stuff that was supposed to be protected.
7) These researchers came up with a new way of analyzing the chip (pipeline emission analysis) to discover the secret passphrase. More conventional analysis (differential power analysis) was not sensitive enough to reveal it.This sounds a lot (speculation on my part) like a deliberate backdoor put in for debug purposes, security through obscurity at it's best. It doesn't sound like something secret added by the chip fab company, although time will tell. Just as embedded controller companies have gotten into trouble putting hidden logins into their code thinking they're making the right tradeoff between convenience and security, this hardware company seems to have done the same.
Someone forgot to tell the marketing droids though and they made up a bunch of stuff about how the h/w was super secure.
JimCanuck ( 2474366 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @04:45PM ( #40137217 )Re:Most likely inserted by Microsemi/Actel not fab ( Score: 5 , Interesting)I don't think anyone fully understands JTAG, there are a lot of different versions of it mashed together on the typical hardware IC. Regardless if its a FPGA, microcontroller or otherwise. The so called "back door" can only be accessed through the JTAG port as well, so unless the military installed a JTAG bridge to communicate to the outside world and left it there, well then the "backdoor" is rather useless.
Something that can also be completely disabled by setting the right fuse inside the chip itself to disable all JTAG connections. Something that is considered standard practice on IC's with a JTAG port available once assembled into their final product and programmed.
Plus according to Microsemi's own website, all military and aerospace qualified versions of their parts are still made in the USA. So this "researcher" used commercial parts, which depending on the price point can be made in the plant in Shanghai or in the USA at Microsemi's own will.
The "researcher" and the person who wrote the article need to spend some time reading more before talking.
emt377 ( 610337 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @07:02PM ( #40137873 )Re:Most likely inserted by Microsemi/Actel not fab ( Score: 4 , Insightful)The so called "back door" can only be accessed through the JTAG port as well, so unless the military installed a JTAG bridge to communicate to the outside world and left it there, well then the "backdoor" is rather useless.With pin access to the FPGA it's trivial to hook it up, no bridges or transceivers needed. If it's a BGA then get a breakout/riser board that provides pin access. This is off-the-shelf stuff. This means if the Chinese military gets their hands on the hardware they can reverse engineer it. They won't have to lean very hard on the manufacturer for them to cough up every last detail. In China you just don't say no to such requests if you know what's good for you and your business.
JimCanuck ( 2474366 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @11:05PM ( #40139083 )Re:Most likely inserted by Microsemi/Actel not fab ( Score: 4 , Interesting)Not being readable even when someone has the device in hand is exactly what these secure FPGAs are meant to protect against!It's not a non-issue. It's a complete failure of a product to provide any advantages over non-secure equivalents.
You clearly have NOT used a FPGA or similar. First the ProASIC3 the article focuses on is the CHEAPEST product in the product line (some of that model line reach down to below a dollar each). But beyond that
... Devices are SECURED by processes, such as blowing the JTAG fuses in the device which makes them operation only, and unreadable. They are secureable, if you follow the proper processes and methods laid out by the manufacturer of the specific chip. Just because a "research paper" claims there is other then standard methods of JTAG built into the JTAG doesn't mean that the device doesn't secure as it should, nor does it mean this researcher who is trying to peddle his own product is anything but biased in this situation.
nospam007 ( 722110 ) * , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:39PM ( #40136445 )Re:What did the military expect? ( Score: 4 , Interesting)"Even if this case turns out to be a false alarm, allowing a nation that you repeatedly refer to as a 'near-peer competitor' to build parts of your high-tech weaponry is idiotic."
Not to mention the non-backdoor ones.
'Bogus electronic parts from China have infiltrated critical U.S. defense systems and equipment, including Navy helicopters and a commonly used Air Force cargo aircraft, a new report says.'
http://articles.dailypress.com/2012-05-23/news/dp-nws-counterfeit-chinese-parts-20120523_1_fake-chinese-parts-counterfeit-parts-air-force-c-130j [dailypress.com]
0123456 ( 636235 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:04PM ( #40136219 )Re:Should only buy military components from allies ( Score: 3 , Funny)The US military should have a strict policy of only buying military parts from sovereign, free, democratic countries with a long history of friendship, such as Israel, Canada, Europe, Japan and South Korea.Didn't the US and UK governments sell crypto equipment they knew they could break to their 'allies' during the Cold War?
tlhIngan ( 30335 ) writes: < slashdot@[ ]f.net ['wor' in gap] > on Monday May 28, 2012 @03:30PM ( #40136781 )Re:Should only buy military components from allies ( Score: 5 , Insightful)Second problem.... 20 years ago the DOD had their own processor manufacturing facilities, IC chips, etc. They were shut down in favor of commercial equipment because some idiot decided it was better to have an easier time buying replacement parts at Radioshack than buying quality military-grade components that could last in austere environments. (Yes, speaking from experience). Servers and workstations used to be built from the ground up at places like Tobyhanna Army Depot. Now, servers and workstations are bought from Dell.Fabs are expensive. The latest generation nodes cost billions of dollars to set up and billions more to run. If they aren't cranking chips out 24/7, they're literally costing money. Yes, I know it's hte military, but I'm sure people have a hard time justifying $10B every few years just to fab a few chips. One of the biggest developments in the 90s was the development of foundries that let anyone with a few tens of millions get in the game of producing chips rather than requiring billions in startup costs. Hence the startup of tons of fabless companies selling chips.
OK, another option is to buy a cheap obsolete fab and make chips that way - much cheaper to run, but we're also talking maybe 10+ year old technology, at which point the chips are going to be slower and take more power.
Also, building your own computer from the ground up is expensive - either you buy the designs of your servers from say, Intel, or design your own. If you buy it, it'll be expensive and probably require your fab to be upgraded (or you get stuck with an old design - e.g., Pentium (the original) - which Intel bought back from the DoD because the DoD had been debugging it over the decade). If you went with the older cheaper fab, the design has to be modified to support that technology (you cannot just take a design and run with it - you have to adapt your chip to the foundry you use).
If you roll your own, that becomes a support nightmare because now no one knows the system.
And on the taxpayer side - I'm sure everyone will question why you're spending billions running a fab that's only used at 10% capacity - unless you want the DoD getting into the foundry business with its own issues.
Or, why is the military spending so much money designing and running its own computer architecture and support services when they could buy much cheaper machines from Dell and run Linux on them?
Hell, even if the DoD had budget for that, some bean counter will probably do the same so they can save money from one side and use it to buy more fighter jets or something.
30+ years ago, defense spending on electronics formed a huge part of the overall electronics spending. These days, defense spending is but a small fraction - it's far more lucrative to go after the consumer market than the military - they just don't have the economic clout they once had. End result is the military is forced to buy COTS ICs, or face stuff like a $0.50 chip costing easily $50 or more for same just because the military is a bit-player for semiconductors
__aaltlg1547 ( 2541114 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:29PM ( #40136361 )Genda ( 560240 ) writes: < <ten.tog> <ta> <teiram> > on Monday May 28, 2012 @03:46PM ( #40136857 ) JournalRe:Should only buy military components from allies ( Score: 2 )Anybody remember Jonathan Pollard?
Re:Should only buy military components from allies ( Score: 2 )You do know that the Mossad has been caught stealing and collecting American Top Secrets. In fact most of the nations above save perhaps Canada have at one time or another been caught either spying on us, or performing dirty deeds cheap against America's best interest. I'd say for the really classified stuff, like the internal security devices that monitor everything else... homegrown only thanks, and add that any enterprising person who's looking to get paid twice by screwing with the hardware or selling secrets to certified unfriendlies get's to cools their heels for VERY LONG TIME.
NixieBunny ( 859050 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @01:34PM ( #40136025 ) HomepageThe actual article ( Score: 5 , Informative)The original article is here. [cam.ac.uk] It refers to an Actel ProAsic3 chip, which is an FPGA with internal EEPROM to store the configuration.
Anonymous Coward , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:09PM ( #40136249 )Re:The actual article ( Score: 5 , Interesting)From your much more useful link,
We investigated the PA3 backdoor problem through Internet searches, software and hardware analysis and found that this particular backdoor is not a result of any mistake or an innocent bug, but is instead a deliberately inserted and well thought-through backdoor that is crafted into, and part of, the PA3 security system. We analysed other Microsemi/Actel products and found they all have the same deliberate backdoor. Those products include, but are not limited to: Igloo, Fusion and Smartfusion.we have found that the PA3 is used in military products such as weapons, guidance, flight control, networking and communications. In industry it is used in nuclear power plants, power distribution, aerospace, aviation, public transport and automotive products. This permits a new and disturbing possibility of a large scale Stuxnet-type attack via a network or the Internet on the silicon itself. If the key is known, commands can be embedded into a worm to scan for JTAG, then to attack and reprogram the firmware remotely.emphasis mine. Key is retrieved using the backdoor. Frankly, if this is true, Microsemi/Actel should get complete ban from all government contracts, including using their chips in any item build for use by the government.
NixieBunny ( 859050 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:44PM ( #40136487 ) HomepageRe:The actual article ( Score: 3 )I would not be surprised if it's a factory backdoor that's included in all their products, but is not documented and is assumed to not be a problem because it's not documented.
With regard to reprogramming the chip remotely or by the FPGA itself via the JTAG port: A secure system is one that can't reprogram itself.
When I was designing VMEbus computer boards for a military subcontractor many years ago, every board had a JTAG connector that required the use of another computer with a special cable plugged into the board to perform reprogramming of the FPGAs. None of this update-by-remote-control crap.
Blackman-Turkey ( 1115185 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:19PM ( #40136305 )Re:The actual article ( Score: 3 , Informative)No source approved [dla.mil] for Microsemi (Actel) qualified chips in China. If you use non-approved sources then, well, shit happens (although how this HW backdoor would be exploited is kind of unclear).
It seems that People's Republic of China has been misidentified with Taiwan (Republic of China).
6031769 ( 829845 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @01:35PM ( #40136031 ) Homepage JournalWait and see ( Score: 5 , Informative)Either the claims will be backed up by independently reproduced tests or they won't. But, given his apparent track record in this area and the obvious scrutiny this would bring, Skorobogatov must have been sure of his results before announcing this.
Here's his publications list from his University home page, FWIW: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~sps32/#Publications [cam.ac.uk]
Anonymous Coward , Monday May 28, 2012 @01:36PM ( #40136039 )samzenpus will be looking for a new job soon ( Score: 3 , Funny)Even though this story has been blowing-up on Twitter, there are a few caveats. The backdoor doesn't seem to have been confirmed by anyone else, Skorobogatov is a little short on details, and he is trying to sell the scanning technology used to uncover the vulnerability.Hey hey HEY! You stop that right this INSTANT, samzenpus! This is Slashdot! We'll have none of your "actual investigative research" nonsense around here! Fear mongering to sell ad space, mister, and that's ALL! Now get back to work! We need more fluffy space-filling articles like that one about the minor holiday labeling bug Microsoft had in the UK! That's what we want to see more of!
laing ( 303349 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:08PM ( #40136243 )Requires Physical Access ( Score: 5 , Informative)The back-door described in the white paper requires access to the JTAG (1149.1) interface to exploit. Most deployed systems do not provide an active external interface for JTAG. With physical access to a "secure" system based upon these parts, the techniques described in the white paper allow for a total compromise of all IP within. Without physical access, very little can be done to compromise systems based upon these parts.
vlm ( 69642 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @03:34PM ( #40136807 )Where was it designed in? ( Score: 3 )Where was this undocumented feature/bug designed in? I see plenty of "I hate China" posts, it would be quite hilarious if the fedgov talked the US mfgr into adding this backdoor, then the Chinese built it as designed. Perhaps the plan all along was to blame the Chinese if they're caught.
These are not military chips. They are FPGAs that happen to be used occasionally for military apps. Most of them are sold for other, more commercially exploitable purposes.
time961 ( 618278 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @03:51PM ( #40136887 )Big risk is to "secret sauce" for comms & cryp ( Score: 5 , Informative)This is a physical-access backdoor. You have to have your hands on the hardware to be able to use JTAG. It's not a "remote kill switch" driven by a magic data trigger, it's a mechanism that requires use of a special connector on the circuit board to connect to a dedicated JTAG port that is simply neither used nor accessible in anything resembling normal operation.
That said, it's still pretty bad, because hardware does occasionally end up in the hands of unfriendlies (e.g., crashed drones). FPGAs like these are often used to run classified software radio algorithms with anti-jam and anti-interception goals, or to run classified cryptographic algorithms. If those algorithms can be extracted from otherwise-dead and disassembled equipment, that would be bad--the manufacturer's claim that the FPGA bitstream can't be extracted might be part of the system's security certification assumptions. If that claim is false, and no other counter-measures are place, that could be pretty bad.
Surreptitiously modifying a system in place through the JTAG port is possible, but less of a threat: the adversary would have to get access to the system and then return it without anyone noticing. Also, a backdoor inserted that way would have to co-exist peacefully with all the other functions of the FPGA, a significant challenge both from an intellectual standpoint and from a size/timing standpoint--the FPGA may just not have enough spare capacity or spare cycles. They tend to be packed pretty full, 'coz they're expensive and you want to use all the capacity you have available to do clever stuff.
Fnord666 ( 889225 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @09:16PM ( #40138557 ) JournalRe:Big risk is to "secret sauce" for comms & c ( Score: 4 , Insightful)This is a physical-access backdoor. You have to have your hands on the hardware to be able to use JTAG. It's not a "remote kill switch" driven by a magic data trigger, it's a mechanism that requires use of a special connector on the circuit board to connect to a dedicated JTAG port that is simply neither used nor accessible in anything resembling normal operation.Surreptitiously modifying a system in place through the JTAG port is possible, but less of a threat: the adversary would have to get access to the system and then return it without anyone noticing.
As someone else mentioned in another post, physical access can be a bit of a misnomer. Technically all that is required is for a computer to be connected via the JTAG interface in order to exploit this. This might be a diagnostic computer for example. If that diagnostic computer were to be infected with a targeted payload, there is your physical access.
nurb432 ( 527695 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @02:43PM ( #40136477 ) Homepage Journalrtfa-troll ( 1340807 ) , Monday May 28, 2012 @03:22PM ( #40136743 )Re:Is it called JTAG? ( Score: 2 )I agree it most likely wasn't malicious, but its more than careless, its irresponsible, especially when dealing with military contracts.
Re:No China link yet, probably a US backdoor ( Score: 2 )There is no China link to the backdoor yet.The page with a link to the final paper actually does mention China. However, it's an American design from a US company. I suspect we will find the backdoor was in the original plans. It will be interesting to see however.
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Oct 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Today, Bloomberg BusinessWeek published a story claiming that AWS was aware of modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in Elemental Media's hardware at the time Amazon acquired Elemental in 2015, and that Amazon was aware of modified hardware or chips in AWS's China Region.
As we shared with Bloomberg BusinessWeek multiple times over the last couple months, this is untrue. At no time, past or present, have we ever found any issues relating to modified hardware or malicious chips in SuperMicro motherboards in any Elemental or Amazon systems. Nor have we engaged in an investigation with the government.
There are so many inaccuracies in this article as it relates to Amazon that they're hard to count. We will name only a few of them here. First, when Amazon was considering acquiring Elemental, we did a lot of due diligence with our own security team, and also commissioned a single external security company to do a security assessment for us as well. That report did not identify any issues with modified chips or hardware. As is typical with most of these audits, it offered some recommended areas to remediate, and we fixed all critical issues before the acquisition closed. This was the sole external security report commissioned. Bloomberg has admittedly never seen our commissioned security report nor any other (and refused to share any details of any purported other report with us).
The article also claims that after learning of hardware modifications and malicious chips in Elemental servers, we conducted a network-wide audit of SuperMicro motherboards and discovered the malicious chips in a Beijing data center. This claim is similarly untrue. The first and most obvious reason is that we never found modified hardware or malicious chips in Elemental servers. Aside from that, we never found modified hardware or malicious chips in servers in any of our data centers. And, this notion that we sold off the hardware and datacenter in China to our partner Sinnet because we wanted to rid ourselves of SuperMicro servers is absurd. Sinnet had been running these data centers since we launched in China, they owned these data centers from the start, and the hardware we "sold" to them was a transfer-of-assets agreement mandated by new China regulations for non-Chinese cloud providers to continue to operate in China.
Amazon employs stringent security standards across our supply chain – investigating all hardware and software prior to going into production and performing regular security audits internally and with our supply chain partners. We further strengthen our security posture by implementing our own hardware designs for critical components such as processors, servers, storage systems, and networking equipment.
Security will always be our top priority. AWS is trusted by many of the world's most risk-sensitive organizations precisely because we have demonstrated this unwavering commitment to putting their security above all else. We are constantly vigilant about potential threats to our customers, and we take swift and decisive action to address them whenever they are identified.
– Steve Schmidt, Chief Information Security Officer
Trumptards are IDIOTs
CashMcCall , 5 hours ago
CashMcCall , 5 hours agoTRUMPTARDS have an enormous amount of surplus time on their hands to forward their Harry Potter Styled Conspiracies.
APPLE AND AMAZON DENIED THE STORY. STORY OVER... GET IT CREEPY?
Urban Roman , 5 hours agoWhile TRUMPTARDS were posting their Conspiracy Theories and the "TrumpEXPERTS" were embellishing the ridiculous story with their lavish accounts of chip bug design, I was enjoying a Bloomberg windfall.
Having confirmed early that the story was False since AMAZON and APPLE BOTH DENIED IT... and their stock was not moving, I turned to Supermicro which was plunging and down over 50%. I checked the options, and noted they were soft, so I put in bids for long shares and filled blocks at 9 from two accounts.
The moronic TRUMPTARD Conspiracy posts continued, Supermicro is now up over 13.
That is the difference between having a brain in your head or having TRUMPTARD **** FOR BRAINS...
Chairman , 5 hours agoOn second thought, this story is just ********. Note that the BBG story never mentions the backdoors that were talked about for over a decade, nor did they mention Mr. Snowden's revelation that those backdoors do exist, and are being used, by the surveillance state.
Since the Chinese factories are manufacturing these things, they'd have all the specs and the blobs and whatever else they need, and would never require a super-secret hardware chip like this. Maybe this MITM chip exists, and maybe it doesn't. But there's nothing to keep China from using the ME on any recent Intel chip, or the equivalent on any recent AMD chip, anywhere.
The purpose of this article is to scare you away from using Huawei or ZTE for anything, and my guess is that it is because those companies did not include these now-standard backdoors in their equipment. Maybe they included Chinese backdoors instead, but again, they wouldn't need a tiny piece of hardware for this MITM attack, since modern processors are all defective by design.
DisorderlyConduct , 4 hours agoI think I will start implementing this as an interview question. If a job candidate is stupid enough to believe this **** then they will not work for me.
Kendle C , 5 hours agoWell, hmmm, could be. To update a PCB is actually really poor work. I would freak my biscuits if I received one of my PCBs with strange pads, traces or parts.
To substitute a part is craftier. To change the content of a part is harder, and nigh impossible to detect without xray.
Even craftier is to change VHDL code in an OTP chip or an ASIC. The package and internal structure is the same but the fuses would be burned different. No one would likely detect this unless they were specifically looking for it.
AllBentOutOfShape , 5 hours agoWell written propaganda fails to prove claims. Everybody in networking and IT knows that switches and routers have access to root, built in, often required by government, backdoors. Scripts are no big thing often used to speed up updates, backups, and troubleshooting. So when western manufacturers began shoveling their work to Taiwan and China, with them they sent millions of text files, including instructions for backdoor access, the means and technology (to do what this **** article is claiming) to modify the design, even classes with default password and bypass operations for future techs. We were shoveling hand over foot designs as fast as we could...all for the almighty dollar while stiffing American workers. So you might say greed trumped security and that fault lies with us. So stuff this cobbled together propaganda piece, warmongering ****.
skunzie , 6 hours agoZH has definitely been co-oped. This is just the latest propaganda ******** article of the week they've come out with. I'm seeing more and more articles sourced from well known propaganda outlets in recent months.
PrivetHedge , 6 hours agoReminds me of how the US pulled off covert espionage of the Russians in the 70's using Xerox copiers. The CIA inserted trained Xerox copy repairmen to handle repairs on balky copiers in Russian embassies, etc. When a machine was down the technician inserted altered motherboards which would transmit future copies directly to the CIA. This is a cautionary tale for companies to cover their achilles heel (weakest point) as that is generally the easiest way to infiltrate the unsuspecting company.
CashMcCall , 6 hours agoWhat another huge load of bollocks from our pharisee master morons.
I guess they think we're as stupid as they are.
smacker , 7 hours agoBut but but the story came from one of the chosen money changers Bloomberg... everyone knows a *** would never lie or print a false story at the market open
Stinkbug 1 , 7 hours agoWith all the existing ***** chips and backdoors on our computers and smartphones planted by the CIA, NSA, M$, Goolag & friends, and now this chip supposedly from China, it won't be long before there's no space left in RAM and on mobos for the chips that actually make the device do what we bought it to do.
I Write Code , 7 hours agothis was going on 20 years ago when it was discovered that digital picture frames from china were collecting passwords and sending them back. it was just a test, so didn't get much press.
now they have the kinks worked out, and are ready for the coup de grace.
ChecksandBalances , 7 hours agoFedPool , 7 hours agoThis story seemed to die. Did anyone find anything indicating someone on our side has actually got a look at the malicious chip, assuming it exists? Technical blogs have nothing, only news rags like NewsMaxx. If 30 companies had these chips surely someone has one. This might be one huge fake news story. Why Bloomberg would publish it is kind of odd.
underlying , 7 hours agoProbably a limited evaluation operation to gauge the population's appetite for war. Pentagram market research. They're probably hitting all of the comment sections around the web as we speak. Don't forget to wave 'hi'.
Heya warmongers. No, we don't want a war yet, k thanks.
Urban Roman , 5 hours agoSince were on the topic let's take a look at the scope hacking tools known to the general public known prior to the Supermicro Server Motherboard Hardware Exploit; (P.S. What the **** do you expect when you have Chinese state owned enterprises, at minimum quasi state owned enterprises in special economic development zones controlled by the Chinese communist party, building motherboards?)
Snowden NSA Leaks published in the gaurdian/intercept
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/the-nsa-files
Wikileaks Vault 7 etc....
Spector/Meltdown vulnerability exploits
https://leeneubecker.com/grc-releases-test-tool-spectre-and-meltdown-vulnerabilities/
Random list compiled by TC bitches
https://techcrunch.com/2017/03/09/names-and-definitions-of-leaked-cia-hacking-tools/
This does not include the private/corporate sector hacking pen testing resources and suites which are abundant and easily available to **** up the competition in their own right.
Moribundus , 8 hours agoExactly. Why would they ever need a super-micro-man-in-the-middle-chip?
Maybe this 'chip' serves some niche in their spycraft, but the article in the keypost ignores a herd of elephants swept under the carpet, and concentrates on a literal speck of dust.
Dr. Acula , 8 hours agoA US-funded biomedical laboratory in Georgia may have conducted bioweapons research under the guise of a drug test, which claimed the lives of at least 73 subjects...new documents "allow us to take a fresh look" at outbreaks of African swine fever in southern Russia in 2007-2018, which "spread from the territory of Georgia into the Russian Federation, European nations and China. The infection strain in the samples collected from animals killed by the disease in those nations was identical to the Georgia-2007 strain." https://www.rt.com/news/440309-us-georgia-toxic-bioweapon-test/
"In a Senate testimony this past February, six major US intelligence heads warned that American citizens shouldn't use Huawei and ZTE products and services." - https://www.theverge.com/2018/5/2/17310870/pentagon-ban-huawei-zte-phones-retail-stores-military-bases
Are these the same intelligence agencies that complain about Russian collusion and cover up 9/11 and pizzagate?
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Oct 03, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
James Baker, a former top FBI lawyer, told congressional investigators on Wednesday that the Russia probe was handled in an "abnormal fashion" and was rife with "political bias" according to Fox News , citing two Republican lawmakers present for the closed-door deposition.
"Some of the things that were shared were explosive in nature," Rep. Mark Meadows, R-N.C., told Fox News. "This witness confirmed that things were done in an abnormal fashion. That's extremely troubling."
Meadows claimed the "abnormal" handling of the probe into alleged coordination between Russian officials and the Trump presidential campaign was "a reflection of inherent bias that seems to be evident in certain circles." The FBI agent who opened the Russia case, Peter Strzok, FBI lawyer Lisa Page and others sent politically charged texts, and have since left the bureau. - Fox News
Baker, who worked closely with former FBI Director James Comey, left the bureau earlier this year.
Lawmakers did not provide any specifics about the interview, citing a confidentiality agreement signed with Baker and his attorneys, however they said that he was cooperative and forthcoming about the beginnings of the Russia probe in 2016, as well as the FISA surveillance warrant application to spy on former Trump campaign aide Carter Page.
"During the time that the FBI was putting -- that DOJ and FBI were putting together the FISA (surveillance warrant) during the time prior to the election -- there was another source giving information directly to the FBI, which we found the source to be pretty explosive," said Rep. Jim Jordan, R-Ohio.
Meadows and Jordan would not elaborate on the source, or answer questions about whether the source was a reporter. They did stress that the source who provided information to the FBI's Russia case was not previously known to congressional investigators. - Fox News
According to Fox , Baker "is at the heart of surveillance abuse allegations, and his deposition lays the groundwork for next week's planned closed-door interview with Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein."
As the FBI's top lawyer, baker helped secure the FISA warrant on Page, along with three subsequent renewals .
Rosenstein is scheduled to appear on Capitol Hill on October 11 for a closed-door interview, according to Republican House sources, "not a briefing to leadership," and comes on the heels of a New York Times report that said Rosenstein had discussed secretly recording President Trump and removing him from office using the 25th Amendment.
Rosenstein and Trump pushed off a scheduled meeting into limbo amid speculation of his impending firing.
White House Press Secretary Sarah Sanders told reporters Wednesday the meeting remains in limbo.
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Oct 03, 2018 | www.chicagotribune.com
But in blaming "revenge on behalf of the Clintons" for the sexual misconduct allegations against him, the Supreme Court nominee is drawing new attention to his time on the Kenneth Starr team investigating Bill Clinton. And in doing so, he's shown he can deliver a Trump-like broadside against detractors even if it casts him in a potentially partisan light.
As a young lawyer, Kavanaugh played a key role on Starr's team investigating sexual misconduct by then-President Bill Clinton, helping to shape one of the most salacious chapters in modern political history.
Kavanaugh spent a good part of the mid-1990s jetting back and forth to Little Rock, Arkansas, digging into the Clintons' background, according to documents that were made public as part of his nomination to the Supreme Court
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Oct 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Nicephorus says: September 29, 2018 at 7:58 am GMT 2,000 Words
We still have to wait to see whether Judge Kavanaugh's appointment will go through, so the most important practical consequence of this shameful exercise in character assassination is as yet unknown. I'm pretty sure he'll eventually be appointed.
But, I think some critical theoretical aspects of the context in which this battle was waged were definitively clarified in the course of this shameful and hugely destructive effort by the Democrat leadership to destroy Judge Kavanaugh's reputation in pursuit of narrow political advantage. On balance, although Judge Kavanaugh and his family were the ones who had to pay the price for this bitter learning experience, all of us should be the long-term beneficiaries of this contest's central but often hidden issues being brought to light and subjected to rational analysis. I want to show what I think these hidden issues are.
What this sordid affair was all about was the zombie-like return-from-the-dead of a phenomenon exposed and pretty much completely invalidated more than thirty years ago, which never should have been permitted to raise its ugly head before an assembly of rational, educated Americans: the "Recovered Memory" (aka "False Memory") Syndrome movement of the 1980s, in which numerous troubled, frequently mentally off-balance, women (and a few men) came forward to declare that they had been the victims of incestual sexual abuse – most often actual sexual intercourse – at the hands of mature male family members; usually fathers but sometimes uncles, grandfathers, or others.
Their testimony was usually highly emotional and impassioned, leaving an impression very similar to that conveyed last night by Dr. Ford. Many hearers were completely convinced that these events had occurred. I recall having a discussion in the 1990s with two American women who swore up and down that they believed fully 25% of American women had been forced into sexual intercourse with their fathers. I was dumbfounded that they could believe such a thing. But, vast numbers of American women did believe this at that time, and many – perhaps most – may never have looked sufficiently into the follow-up to these testimonials to realize that the vast majority of such bizarre claims had subsequently been definitively proven invalid.
The "Recovered" (or "False") Memory Syndrome movement emerged in the midst of the steadily radicalizing Feminist Movement in the United States, probably at the very apogee of its extreme evolution, and was a movement in which Freudian therapy was central and Freudian therapists came to play the leading role.
It was only after they had been subjected to extensive pseudo-scientific Freudian "therapy," in which sex always lay prominently at the center, that virtually all of these women came forward with these stories. A major controversy, which arose within the ranks of the Freudians themselves over what was the correct understanding of the Master's teachings, lay at the core of the whole affair. A nd, in this dispute the American ultra-Feminists chose to believe and preach the worst, most salacious, and most vicious possible interpretation of Dr. Freud's highly speculative, evidence-less, and – as subsequent study has overwhelmingly shown – completely contrived diagnoses.
It's now known that Dr. Freud's journey to the theoretical positions which had become orthodoxy among his followers by the mid-20th century had followed a strange, little known, possibly deliberately self-obscured, and clearly unorthodox course. Beginning with a conviction that cocaine could provide a substantial therapeutic base for solving psychological problems, Freud seems himself to have become for a period a regular consumer of that drug, but subsequently altered the focus of his therapy to hypnosis. After realizing certain limitations to this approach, he shifted again, turning to the so-called "Talking Cure" rooted in provoking word associations, which provided the basis for the classic Freudian method of popular imagination – with the patient reclining on a couch and the good Dr. seated behind with his notebook and pen in hand. This is the method he retained for the rest of his life.
The primary fault which has been cited for Freud's methods generally, but which has been particularly critiqued in both hypnosis and the "Talking Cure" as a reason for their invalidation, is the claim that both – at least inadvertently – incorporate the high probability of suggestion from the therapist. In this view, patient testimony moves subtly, and probably without the patient's awareness, from whatever his or her own understanding might originally have been to the interpretation implicitly propounded by the analyst. Analysis thus follows a circular course, the analyst's theoretical surmise being first subtly communicated to the patient, then confirmed by the patient's casting of his (or, more often her) own ideas within the framework which had been suggested by the analyst. In the end, nothing new is actually discovered. The patient merely replicates the expressed Freudian doctrine.
The particular doctrine at hand was undergoing a critical reworking at this very time, and this important reconsideration of the Master's meaning almost certainly constituted a major, likely the predominating, factor which facilitated the emergence of the Recovered Memory Syndrome movement. Freudian orthodoxy at that time included as an important – seemingly its key – component the conviction of a child's (even an infant's) sexuality, as expressed through the hypothesized Oedipus Complex for males, and the corresponding Electra Complex for females. In these complexes, Freud speculated that sexually-based neuroses derived from the child's (or infant's) fear of imagined enmity and possible physical threat from the same-sex parent, because of the younger individual's sexual longing for the opposite-sex parent.
This Freudian idea, entirely new to European, American, and probably most other cultures, that children, even infants, were the possessors of an already well-developed sexuality had been severely challenged by Christian and some other traditional authorities, and had been met with repugnance from many individuals in Western society. But, the doctrine, as it then stood, was subject to a further major questioning in the mid-1980s from Freudian historical researcher Jeffrey Masson, who postulated, after examining a collection of Freud's personal writings long kept from popular examination, that the Child Sexual Imagination thesis itself was a pusillanimous and ethically-unjustified retreat from an even more sinister thesis the Master had originally held, but which he had subsequently abandoned because of the controversy and damage to his own career its expression would likely cause. This was the belief, based on many of his earlier interviews of mostly women patients, that it wasn't their imaginations which lay behind their neuroses. They had told him that they had actually been either raped or molested as infants or young girls by their fathers. This was the secret horror hidden away in those long-suppressed writings, now brought into the light of day by Prof. Masson.
Masson's research conclusions were initially widely welcomed within the psychoanalytical fraternity/sorority and shortly melded with the already raging desire of many ultra-Feminist extremists to place the blame for whatever problems and dissatisfactions women in America were encountering in their lives upon the patriarchal society by which they claimed to be oppressed. The problem was men. Countless fathers were raping their daughters. Wow! What an incentive to revolutionary Feminist insurrection! You couldn't find a much better justification for their man-hate than that. Bring on the Feminist Revolution! Men are not only a menace, they are no longer even necessary for procreation, so let's get rid of them entirely. This is the sort of extreme plan some radical Feminists advocated. Many psychoanalysts became their professional facilitators, providing the illusion of medical validation to the stories the analysts themselves had largely engendered. Those women patients, and a few men, became their victims, but in turn became the perpetrators in the savaging of numerous men's lives, as these men were subjected to the most vicious accusations imaginable. Most of these accusations were, in retrospect, clearly fantasies in a ruthless mid-20th century male-witch hunt.
This radical ideology is built upon the conviction that Dr. Freud, in at least this one of his several historical phases of interpretative psychological analysis, was really on to something. But, subsequent evaluation has largely shown that not to be the case. The same critique which had been delivered against the Child Sexual Imagination version of Freud's "Talking Cure" analytical method was equally relevant to this newly discovered Father Molestation thesis: all such notions had been subtly communicated to the patient by the analyst in the course of the interview. Had thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of European and American women really been raped or molested by their fathers? Freud offered no corroborating evidence of any kind, and I think it's the consensus of most competent contemporary psychoanalysts to reject this idea. Those few who retain a belief in it betray, I think, an ideological commitment to Radical Feminism, for whose proponents such a view offers an ever tempting platform to justify their monstrous plans for the future of a human race in which males are subjected to the status of slaves or are entirely eliminated.
But, the judicious conclusions of science often – perhaps usually – fail to promptly percolate down to the comprehension of common humanity on the street, and within the consequent vacuum of understanding scheming politicians can frequently find opportunity to manipulate, obfuscate, and distort facts in order to facilitate their own devious and often highly destructive schemes. Such, I fear, is the situation which has surrounded Dr. Ford. The average American of either sex has absolutely no familiarity with the history, character, or ultimate fate of the Recovered Memory Syndrome movement, and may well fail to realize that the phenomenon has been nearly entirely disproved.
Into this popular intellectual desert walks Dr. Ford, both whose personal history and her strange physical mannerisms in testimony before the Senate clearly indicate she has unfortunately suffered some form of serious psychological disturbance.
Seemingly alienated from her own parents and most immediate family members, she has made her home as far away from the Washington, DC area where she was born as possible within the territorial limits of the continental United States. The focus of her professional research and practice in the field of psychology has lain in therapeutic treatment to overcome mental and emotional trauma, a problem she has acknowledged has been her own disturbing preoccupation for many decades. In 2012 she underwent some sort of psychological counseling with her husband, though the details as far as I know have not emerged. But, it hardly seems likely coincidental that her first documentable expressions of antipathy to Judge Kavanaugh occurred in that year, when it was announced that Judge Kavanaugh was considered the likely Supreme Court appointee should Mit Romney win the Presidential election. Her expressions of antipathy to him have only grown from there.
Dr. Ford is clearly an unfortunate victim of something or someone, but I don't believe it was Judge Kavanaugh. Almost certainly she has been influenced in her denunciations against him by both that long-term preoccupation with her own sense of psychological injury, whatever may have been its cause, and her professional familiarization with contemporary currents of psychological theory, however fallacious, likely mediated by the ministrations of that unnamed counselor in 2012. Subsequently, she has clearly been exploited mercilessly by the scheming Democratic Party officials who have viciously plotted to turn her plight to their own cynical advantage. As in so many cases during the 1980s Recovered Memory movement, she has almost certainly been transformed by both the scientifically unproven doctrines and the conscienceless practitioners of Freudian mysticism from being merely an innocent victim into an active victimizer – doubling, tripling, or even quadrupling the pain inherent in her own tragic situation and aggressively projecting it upon helpless others, in this case Judge Kavanaugh and his entire family. She is not a heroine.
PiltdownMan , says: September 29, 2018 at 9:01 am GMT
A recovered memory from more than five decades ago. Violet Elizabeth, a irritating younger child who tended to tag along, often wore expensive Kate Greenaway dresses. Her family was new money. William was no misogynist, though. He liked and respected Joan, who was his friend. The second William book is online.Coemgen , says: September 29, 2018 at 10:35 am GMTRules-of-thumbMarkinLA , says: September 29, 2018 at 12:49 pm GMT
-- -- -- -- -- -- -
1. A good offense is the best defense.
2. An ambush backed up by overwhelming force is a good offense.
3. Use of weapons and tactics, of which the defender is unprepared for, is a good offense.Are Republicans et al. unable to understand basic military strategy? Do we lack the ability to conceive of new tactics and weapons to use against Democrats and Globalists?
I realize that it is unacceptable to attack this poor helpless victim so the "it can't be corroborated" card has to be played. However, who else notices how carefully manicured these charges are such that they can never be falsified? This is the actual proof she is a liar and this whole thing is staged.Clyde , says: September 29, 2018 at 12:58 pm GMTShe always takes everybody on some emotional ride right up to the point where she could be exposed but never with enough information so somebody could come out of the woodwork and prove she is a liar.
We also have the infamous letter where we are repeatedly reminded she mailed it BEFORE Kavanaugh was picked. Of course, we only have Feinstein's word for that since nobody saw it until after this crap started. The delay was used to push up the story with new revelation about Mike Judge in a grocery store that shied away from her – again with no specific date so Judge could prove she is a liar. This all reeks of testimony gone over and coached by a team of lawyers.
We also have all of our own recollections of high school insecurities and male-female interactions. What freshman or sophomore girl didn't get all giddy at the thought of the older guys hitting on her so she could tell all her friends about her older boyfriend and possibility of going to the prom as a lower classman? All he had to do (assuming he wasn't repulsive physically and he was a bit of a jock) was make the usual play of pretending to be interested and he likely would have been at least getting to first base at the party.
From her pictures she was no Pamela Anderson and would likely have been flattered. The idea that you rape someone without trying to get the milk handed to you on a silver platter is ridiculous.
This is another female driven hysteria based on lies like the child molestation and satanic cult hysterias of years past. Those were all driven by crazy or politically motivated women who whipped up the rest of the ignorant females.
@AnonOutside doors enter public areas kitchen sunroom living rooms not bedrooms. An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment
Your post is very perceptive and just might be how it all went down. With the complications of couples' counseling over her demand for the bizarre double main entry doors. (lulz) Though I would think any family that built an illegal in-law apartment into their Palo Alto house and deployed it, would be ratted out by their neighbors.
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Oct 02, 2018 | www.unz.com
Anon [257] Disclaimer says: September 29, 2018 at 8:28 am GMT 400 Words
I think I've figured out why they had to go to couples counseling about an outside door and why she came up with claim that she needed an outside bedroom door because she'd been assaulted 37 years ago. The Palo Alto building codes for single family homes were created to make sure single family homes remained single family and weren't chopped up into apartments.
Outside doors enter public areas kitchen sunroom living rooms not bedrooms. An outside door into a master bedroom with attached bathroom is a red flag that it's intended for an illegal what's called in law apartment
There's a unit It's a stove 2 ft counter space and sink. The stoves electric and plugs into an ordinary household electricity. It's backed against the bathroom wall. Break through the wall, connect the pipes running water for the sink. Add an outside door and it's a small apartment.
Assume they didn't want to make it an apartment just a master bedroom. Usually the contractor pulls the permits routinely. But an outside bedroom door is complicated. The permits will cost more. It might require an exemption and a hearing They night need a lawyer. And they might not get the permit.
So she wants the door. Husband says waste of money and trouble. Contractor says call me when you're ready. So they go to counseling Husband explains why the door's unreasonable. Therapist asks wife why she " really deep down" needs the door. Wife makes up the story about attempted rape 35 years ago flashbacks If only there were 2 doors in that imaginary bedroom she could have escaped.
Kacanaugh was nominated. CIA searched for sex problems in his working life. Found nothing Searched law school and college found nothing. In desperation searched high school found nothing. Searched CIA personnel records which go back to grade school and found one of their own employees was about Kavanaugh's age and attended a high school near his and the students socialized.
She's 3rd generation CIA. grandfather assistant director. Father CIA contractor who managed CIA unofficial band accounts. And she runs a CIA recruitment office.
I'm puzzled why CIA is so against Kavanaugh?
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Sep 29, 2018 | www.unz.com
wren , says: September 29, 2018 at 10:37 am GMT
It seems that Flake was not only emotionally abused by those ladies in the elevator, he was played as well.Hopefully the FBI will investigate this collusion between Soros and the Democrats and Ms. Katz to influence the results of the judicial nomination process.
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">linkSep 27, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
BM , Sep 26, 2018 12:04:25 PM | linkLast Friday the New York Times published a story that reflected negatively on the loyalty of Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein towards President Trump. Rosenstein, the NYT claimed, suggested to wiretap Trump and to remove him by using the 25th amendment. Other news reports contradicted the claim and Rosenstein himself denied it.
The report was a trap to push Trump towards an impulsive firing of the number two in the Justice Department, a repeat of Nixon's Saturday Night Massacre . The Democrats would have profited from such an ' October surprise ' in the November 6 midterm elections. A campaign to exploit such a scandal to get-out-the-votes was already well prepared .
The trap did not work. The only one who panicked was Rosenstein. He feared for his reputation should he get fired. To prevent such damage he offered to resign amicably. He tried this at least three times:
By Friday evening, concerned about testifying to Congress over the revelations that he discussed wearing a wire to the Oval Office and invoking the constitutional trigger to remove Mr. Trump from office, Mr. Rosenstein had become convinced that he should resign, according to people close to him. He offered during a late-day visit to the White House to quit, according to one person familiar with the encounter, but John F. Kelly, the White House chief of staff, demurred.
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Also over the weekend, Mr. Rosenstein again told Mr. Kelly that he was considering resigning. On Sunday, Mr. Rosenstein repeated the assertion in a call with Donald F. McGahn II, the White House counsel. Mr. McGahn -- [...] -- asked Mr. Rosenstein to postpone their discussion until Monday.
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By about 9 a.m. Monday, Mr. Rosenstein was in his office on the fourth floor of the Justice Department when reporters started calling. Was it true that Mr. Rosenstein was planning to resign, they asked.
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At the White House the deputy attorney general slipped into a side entrance to the West Wing and headed to the White House counsel's office to meet with Mr. McGahn, who had by then been told by Mr. Kelly that Mr. Rosenstein was on his way and wanted to resign.McGhan punted the issue back to Kelly and finally Rosenstein spoke with Trump. Trump did not fire him nor did he resign. It is now expected that he will stay until the end of the year or even longer :
President Trump told advisers he is open to keeping Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein on the job, and allies of the No. 2 Justice Department official said Tuesday he has given them the impression he doesn't plan to quit.The trap did not work. Neither did Trump panic nor did the White House allow the panicking Rod Rosenstein to pull the trigger. The people who set this up, by leaking some dubious FBI memo to the NYT , did not achieve their aims.
There are only six weeks left until the midterm elections. What other October surprises might be planned by either side?
Posted by b on September 26, 2018 at 11:20 AM | Permalink
This account gives an interesting twist, that Trump wants to keep Rosenstein as leverage.https://theconservativetreehouse.com/2018/09/26/rosenstein-vs-mccabe/
BM , Sep 26, 2018 12:04:25 PM | link
Adrian E. , Sep 26, 2018 12:22:47 PM | linkI think it is not in the interest of Trump to do anything that could look like hampering the Mueller investigation. It might be in his interest to try to force Mueller to show what he has bevore the midterm elections, but that could also be seen as a form of hampering.karlof1 , Sep 26, 2018 12:42:35 PM | linkI think there are already lots of indications that the whole Russiagate collusion story was fabricated. The messages between Peter Strzok und Lisa Page point towards this direction, and it seems that different stories that were used for Russiagate were connected.
It seems that the Steele dossier played a crucial role for getting warrants for spying on the Trump campaign and for starting the media campaign about Trump-Russia "collusion". Obviously, the Steele dossier is a rather implausible conspiracy theory (allegedly, Russia made preparations for Trump's candidacy years earlier when hardly anyone thought Trump would have the slightest chance of being nominated by a major party), contains no evidence for the allegations, and the elements that can be verified are either banal and don't show collusion or they are false (e.g. Trump's lawyer going to Prague, it seems he has an alibi, and there are leaks that there was another person named Michael Cohen, without a connection to Trump, who flew to Prague, so Steele probably had access to flight data, but did not do further verifications).
A further strand of "Russiagate" is the story around Papadopoulos. First, it should be noted that it hardly shows foreknowledge of the DNC leaks when someone may have speculated that Russia may have e-mails from Hillary Clinton - at that time, the deleted mails from Clinton's private server were talked about a lot, and one of the concerns that was often mentioned was that Clinton's private server may have been hacked by Russia or China. None of the versions of what Papadopoulos was allegedly told by Mifsud and told Downer specifically mention DNC or Podesta e-mails. Second, the people involved had close connections to Western intelligence services. Mifsud had close ties with important EU institutions and was connected with educational institutions used by Western intelligence agencies (mainly Italian, British, FBI). If he really was a Russian spy, there would have been larger consequences, and the FBI would hardly have let him go after questioning him. According to a book by Roh and Pastor who have known Mifsud for a long time, he denies having told Papadopoulos anything about damaging material about Hillary Clinton (Mifsud also said that in an interview), and Mifsud suspects Papadopoulos of being a provocateur of Western intelligence services - Papadopoulos forcefully tried to create connections between the Trump campaign and Russians, but both sides were not willing to go along (a representative of a Russian think tank which Papadopoulos asked to invite Trump answered that the Trump campaign should send an official request, which never followed). Papadopoulos was in (probably frequent) contact with FBI informer Stefan Halper, and it may be that Papadopoulos was an unwitting provocateur because of events Stefan Halper arranged. The Australian diplomat Downer has connections to the Clinton foundation (he helped arranging large payments by Australia) and Western secret services. Third, what has exactly been said by whom is disputed. As mentioned, Mifsud denies mentioning anything about damaging material on Hillary Clinton to Papadopoulos (the only one who claims this is Papadopoulos), and Papadopoulos denies mentioning e-mails to Downer. It seems, Papadopoulos were only half-willing participants in the setup arranged by Stefan Halper whose goal was to have some background for the message that could be received from Downer. Papadopoulos' wife has shared a picture of Stefan Halper and Downer together, which also fits the idea that this story was set up by FBI informant Halper with Downer.
The visit of the Russian lawyer Veselnitskaya was arranged by Fusion GPS, and she met with him before and after the meeting she met with Glen Simpson.
Of course, we are just in the beginning, there is certainly enough concrete material for starting an investigation (unlike with the alleged Trump-Russia collusion), but many details are still open. Those who presumably set up the collusion story went from offensive to defensive, even if that might not be clear if someone reads particularly biased media. Now, the time until the midterms certainly is not enough for conducting and concluding such an investigation. But it should be enough for unclassifying and publishing some documents that shed further light on these events.
The time for more decisive action against those who set up Russiagate may be after the midterm elections, and how easy that will be probably partly depends on the election result. Therefore, I suppose that Trump and other Republicans will strongly press for important documents being unclassified and published before the elections.
Trump admin and GOP Congress are doing almost everything possible to alienate the majority of the public on a wide spectrum of issues that's also helped threaten the positions of Republicans masquerading as Democrats. The fallout from the 2016 Primary and subsequent disclosures about Clinton and DNC corruption and law breaking--meddling in elections and caucuses--has emboldened numerous people--particularly women--who were previously politically apathetic, not just to run for office, but also to work to get like-minded candidates elected. Sanders called for an insurrection--and yes, he's still sheep dogging--and it's emerged and isn't totally controlled by the DemParty despite its efforts: The cat's out of the bag.donkeytale , Sep 26, 2018 1:44:18 PM | linkNow I expect the usual attacks using the trite adage that voting doesn't matter. Well, guess what, Trump's election proves that adage to be 100% false. There's only one path to making America Great and that's by getting the neoliberals and neocons out of government; and the only way to do that is to run candidates with opposing positions and elect them--then--once in office, they need to oust the vermin from the bureaucracy--Drain the Swamp, as Trump put it. I know it can be done as it's been done before during two different epochs of US History. And the System was just as rigged against popular success than as it is now.
Karlof1 I agree w you 100%. Voters can make a difference and change is still possible however unlikely and rare. The problem is voter complacency which is fed by cynicism. Ironically younger liberal voters tend to be the most complacent especially at the midterm elections. This year complacency doesn't appear to be an issue so we will probably see a Dem House in January if not also a Dem Senate.uuu , Sep 26, 2018 2:39:10 PM | linkMy take on Rosenstein is he went to the WH to force Trump to accept his resignation or fire him or keep him and thus shut him up either way because even as large a fool as Trump can't be so stupid as to fire RR before the midterms. A trap laid by the Deputy AG not the media imho to also take heat off Mueller.
Trump could shock the world by being on his best behavior for a few weeks. (j/k don't hold your breath).karlof1 , Sep 26, 2018 3:15:48 PM | link Russ , Sep 26, 2018 3:26:10 PM | linkJust a little review:
In November, Dems are expected to take the House of Representatives by a modest margin. The House, not the Senate determines impeachment. Impeachment is like an indictment -- the Senate would then have a "trial" of sorts, and then to convict, you need 2/3 majority of Senators. Nobody expects that.
Nixon actually resigned out of shame after being impeached. Clinton didn't. Trump gives zero f**ks so this outcome isn't even worth discussing.
The Senate is more important. It is just barely within reach for Democrats if everything goes in their favor. If they win every single seat that is competitive, Democrats get 51/100 seats, plus 2 independents who side with them, but minus a couple of Democrats-in-name-only who regularly vote with Republicans (West Virginia's Manchin for example). Recall that the Vice President (Pence) is the tie-breaking vote in the Senate.
More realistically, in a still optimistic scenario, Democrats will lose one or more of the competitive races, and end up with 49-50 votes in the Senate. (they are expected to win big in 2 years in 2020, due to many more Republicans facing re-election then).
Only someone morbidly partisan within the Corporate One-Party would bother seeking the impeachment of a fungible geek like a US president. Indeed, those fixated on impeachment evidently have no rationale beyond Trump Derangement Syndrome. To replace Trump with Pence would be no improvement and most likely would make things worse. Trump and Pence share the corporate globalization ideology and goals, but Trump's more chaotic execution is more likely to lead to chaotic, perhaps system-destructive effects more quickly than a more disciplined execution. The same is true of any Democrat we could envision replacing Trump in 2020.div>That's why it was a good thing that Trump won in 2016: He's more likely to bring about a faster collapse of the US empire and of the globalization system in general. Not because these are his goals, but because his indiscipline adds a much-needed wild card to the deck.
Needless to say, humanity and the Earth have nothing to lose, as we're slowly but surely being exterminated once and for all regardless.
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Sep 26, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
An aide to George Soros, Michael Vachon, has confirmed a February report that the left-wing billionaire financier has funded an ongoing effort by Fusion GPS and ex-Feinstein staffer and former FBI agent, Dan Jones, to privately continue the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross.
- George Soros has admitted to funding an ongoing private Trump-Russia investigation conducted by Fusion GPS and a former FBI agent and staffer for Dianne Feinstein
- In February, it emerged that Soros and a group of "mystery donors" had funded a $50 million "war chest" - as revealed in a House Intel Committee report
- The former FBI agent and Feinstein staffer, Dan Jones, reportedly claimed to be working with former MI6 agent Christopher Steele as part of the ongoing investigation
Vachon made the admission to the Washington Post 's David Ignatious - who has previously been accused of being a deep-state conduit.
Ignatius notes at the end of a Tuesday article downplaying GOP assertions that the Obama administration and Clinton campaign actually colluded with Russia to defeat Trump; "Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson declined to comment for this article. Soros's spokesman, Michael Vachon, told me that Soros hadn't funded Fusion GPS directly but had made a grant to the Democracy Integrity Project, which used Fusion GPS as a contractor. "
The Democracy Integrity Project - according to the Caller, was formed in 2017 by Jones.effort was originally revealed in February and reported on by The Federalist , after a series of leaked text messages between Senator Mark Warner (D-VA) and lobbyist Adam Waldman suggested that Daniel J. Jones - an ex-FBI investigator and former Feinstein staffer, was " intimately involved with ongoing efforts to retroactively validate a series of salacious and unverified memos published by Christopher Steele, a former British intelligence agent, and Fusion GPS. "The Post column confirms what a Washington, D.C., lawyer named Adam Waldman told The Daily Caller News Foundation about a conversation he had with Jones in March 2017.
Waldman was an attorney for Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. He also worked in some capacity for Christopher Steele, according to text messages he exchanged with Virginia Sen. Mark Warner, the top Democrat on the Senate Intelligence panel.
In what the Post's Ignatius noted was an "incestuous" relationship, Steele, a former MI6 officer, has done work for the Kremlin-linked Deripaska in the past .
Waldman told TheDCNF that Jones approached him on March 15, 2017 through text message asking to meet.
"Dan Jones here from the Democracy Integrity Project. Chris wanted us to connect," he wrote, seemingly referring to Steele. At a meeting two days later, Waldman said that Jones told him that he was working with Steele and Fusion GPS and that their project was being funded by Soros and a group of Silicon Valley billionaires . - Daily Caller
In short, Jones is working with Fusion GPS and Christopher Steele to continue their investigation into Donald Trump, using a $50 million war chest just revealed by the House Intel Committee report.
Jones also runs the Penn Quarter Group - a "research and investigative advisory" firm whose website was registered in April of 2016, days before Steele delivered his first in a series of Trump-Russia memos to Fusion GPS . Jones also began tweeting out articles suggesting illicit ties between the Trump campaign and Russia as early as 2017.
Steele's work during the 2016 election culminated in the salacious and unverified 35-page "Steele dossier" used to obtain a FISA warrant against then-President Trump (which, as we reported on Friday, former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper leaked the details to CNN 's Jake Tapper prior to the seemingly coordinated publication by BuzzFeed ).
An April House Intel Report notes that in March 2017, Jones told the FBI that he was working with Steele and Fusion GPS, with funding to the tune of $50 million.
"In late March 2017, Jones met with FBI regarding PQG, which he described as 'exposing foreign influence in Western election,'" reads the House Intel report. "[Redacted] told FBI that PQG was being funded by 7 to 10 wealthy donors located primarily in New York and California, who provided approximately $50 million ."
"[Redacted] further stated that PQG had secured the services of Steele, his associate [redacted], and Fusion GPS to continue exposing Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. Presidential election," reads the report, which adds that Jones " planned to share the information he obtained with policymakers and with the press ."
And the Daily Caller 's Chuck Ross noted at the time, Jones "also offered to provide PQG's entire holdings to the FBI" according to the report, citing a "FD-302" transcript of the interview he gave to the FBI.
Of note, during Congressional testimony last year when Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) asked Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS, if he was still being paid for work related to the dossier , Simpson refused to answer . And while the dossier came under fire for " salacious and unverified " claims, a January 8 New York Times profile of Glenn Simpson confirmed that dossier-related work continues.
Sean Davis of The Federalist reported in February that Jones' name was mentioned in a list of individuals from a January 25 Congressional letter from Senators Grassley and Graham to various Democratic party leaders who were likely involved in Fusion GPS's 2016 efforts. The letter sought all communications between the Democrats and a list of 40 individuals or entities, of which Jones is one.
Still no word on whether Jones and Fusion GPS - funded by Soros - have been able to find a connection between Trump and Russia, but we're sure they'll keep plugging away.
insanelysane , 8 minutes ago
Hyzer , 3 minutes agoMore fake dossiers? After the Kav fiasco of fake accusations, who the **** is going to believe in anything else coming from Steele and Fusion and company?
Boscovius , 8 minutes agoThe New York Times for one.
medium giraffe , 11 minutes agoFor good or bad, the Founders gave Treason a very strict definition. It probably won't apply to very many of these fucko's. But yes, Sedition is most certainly on the menu.
???ö? , 13 minutes ago"You underestimate the power of the Dark Side. If you will not fight, then you will meet your destiny."
-Darth Soros
Grumbleduke , 14 minutes agoThat's probably called SEDITION.
are these assholes some kind of an exile government?
Where were they exactly exiled from, then? How about you yanks send some democracy bombs their way, for a change?
Look at them as sacrificial lambs: the world would cheer, give you props and support like after 9/11. Meanwhile new psychos with unimaginable wealth and cold-heartedness will quietly take over. Don't you worry, we'll all get fucked hard.
One way or another - this clown show won't last for long.
You think your/"our" children will ever forgive us?
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Sep 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Elias Hazou via TheDuran.com,
Before getting down to brass tacks, let me say that I loathe penning articles like this; loathe writing about myself or in the first person, because a reporter should report the news, not be the news. Yet I grudgingly make this exception because, ironically, it happens to be newsworthy. To cut to the chase, it concerns Anglo-American financier Bill Browder and the Sergei Magnitsky affair. I, like others in the news business I'd venture to guess, feel led astray by Browder.
This is no excuse. I didn't do my due diligence, and take full responsibility for erroneous information printed under my name. For that, I apologize to readers. I refer to two articles of mine published in a Cypriot publication, dated December 25, 2015 and January 6, 2016.
Browder's basic story, as he has told it time and again, goes like this: in June 2007, Russian police officers raided the Moscow offices of Browder's firm Hermitage, confiscating company seals, certificates of incorporation, and computers.
Browder says the owners and directors of Hermitage-owned companies were subsequently changed, using these seized documents. Corrupt courts were used to create fake debts for these companies, which allowed for the taxes they had previously paid to the Russian Treasury to be refunded to what were now re-registered companies. The funds stolen from the Russian state were then laundered through banks and shell companies.
The scheme is said to have been planned earlier in Cyprus by Russian law enforcement and tax officials in cahoots with criminal elements.
All this was supposedly discovered by Magnitsky, whom Browder had tasked with investigating what happened. When Magnitsky reported the fraud, some of the nefarious characters involved had him arrested and jailed. He refused to retract, and died while in pre-trial detention.
In my first article, I wrote: "Magnitsky, a 37-year-old Russian accountant, died in jail in 2009 after he exposed huge tax embezzlement "
False . Contrary to the above story that has been rehashed countless times, Magnitsky did not expose any tax fraud, did not blow the whistle.
The interrogation reports show that Magnitsky had in fact been summoned by Russian authorities as a witness to an already ongoing investigation into Hermitage. Nor he did he accuse Russian investigators Karpov and/or Kuznetsov of committing the $230 million treasury fraud, as Browder claims.
Magnitsky did not disclose the theft. He first mentioned it in testimony in October 2008. But it had already been reported in the New York Times on July 24, 2008. In reality, the whistleblower was a certain Rimma Starova. She worked for one of the implicated shell companies and, having read in the papers that authorities were investigating, went to police to give testimony in April 2008 – six months before Magnitsky spoke of the scam for the first time (see here and here ).
Why, then, did I report that about Magnitsky? Because at the time my sole source for the story was Team Browder, who had reached out to the Cyprus Mail and with whom I communicated via email. I was provided with 'information', flow charts and so on. All looking very professional and compelling.
At the time of the first article, I knew next to nothing about the Magnitsky/Browder affair. I had to go through media reports to get the gist, and then get up to speed with Browder's latest claims that a Cypriot law firm, which counted the Hermitage Fund among its clients, had just been 'raided' by Cypriot police. The article had to be written and delivered on the same day. In retrospect I should have asked for more time – a lot more time – and Devil take the deadlines.
For the second article, I conversed briefly on the phone with the soft-spoken Browder himself, who handed down the gospel on the Magnitsky affair. Under the time constraints, and trusting that my sources could at least be relied upon for basic information which they presented as facts, I went along with it. I was played. But let's be clear: I let myself down too.
In the ensuing weeks and months, I didn't follow up on the story as my gut told me something was wrong: villains and malign actors operating in a Wild West Russia, and at the centre of it all, a heroic Magnitsky who paid with his life – the kind of script that Hollywood execs would kill for.
Subsequently I mentally filed away the Browder story, while being aware it was in the news.
But the real red pill was a documentary by Russian filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, which came to my attention a few weeks ago.
Titled 'The Magnitsky Act – Behind The Scenes', it does a magisterial job of depicting how the director initially took Browder's story on faith, only to end up questioning everything. The docudrama dissects, disassembles and dismantles Browder's narrative, as Nekrasov – by no means a Putin apologist – delves deeper down into the rabbit hole.
The director had set out to make a poignant film about Magnitsky's tragedy, but became increasingly troubled as the facts he uncovered didn't stack up with Browder's account, he claims.
The 'aha' moment arrives when Nekrasov appears to show solid proof that Magnitsky blew no whistle.
Not only that, but in his depositions – the first one dating to 2006, well before Hermitage's offices were raided – Magnitsky did not accuse any police officers of being part of the 'theft' of Browder's companies and the subsequent alleged $230m tax rebate fraud.
The point can't be stressed enough, as this very claim is the lynchpin of Browder's account. In his bestseller Red Notice, Browder alleges that Magnitsky was arrested because he exposed two corrupt police officers, and that he was jailed and tortured because he wouldn't retract.
We are meant to take Browder's word for it.
It gets worse for Nekrasov, as he goes on to discover that Magnitsky was no lawyer. He did not have a lawyer's license. Rather, he was an accountant/auditor who worked for Moscow law firm Firestone Duncan. Yet every chance he gets, Browder still refers to Magnitsky as 'a lawyer' or 'my lawyer'.
The clincher comes late in the film, with footage from Browder's April 15, 2015 deposition in a US federal court, in the Prevezon case. The case, brought by the US Justice Department at Browder's instigation, targeted a Russian national who Browder said had received $1.9m of the $230m tax fraud.
In the deposition, Browder is asked if Magnitsky had a law degree in Russia. "I'm not aware that he did," he replies.
The full deposition, some six hours long, is (still) available on Youtube . As penance for past transgressions, I watched it in its entirety. While refraining from using adjectives to describe it, I shall simply cite some examples and let readers decide on Browder's credibility. Browder seems to suffer an almost total memory blackout as a lawyer begins firing questions at him. He cannot recall, or does not know, where he or his team got the information concerning the alleged illicit transfer of funds from Hermitage-owned companies.
This is despite the fact that the now-famous Powerpoint presentations – hosted on so many 'anti-corruption' websites and recited by 'human rights' NGOs – were prepared by Browder's own team.
Nor does he recall where, or how, he and his team obtained information on the amounts of the 'stolen' funds funnelled into companies. When it's pointed out that in any case this information would be privileged – banking secrecy and so forth – Browder appears to be at a loss.
According to Team Browder, in 2007 the 'Klyuev gang' together with Russian interior ministry officials travelled to Cyprus, ostensibly to set up the tax rebate scam using shell companies. But in his deposition, the Anglo-American businessman cannot remember, or does not know, how his team obtained the travel information of the conspirators.
He can't explain how they acquired the flight records and dates, doesn't have any documentation at hand, and isn't aware if any such documentation exists.
Browder claims his 'Justice for Magnitsky' campaign, which among other things has led to US sanctions on Russian persons, is all about vindicating the young man. Were that true, one would have expected Browder to go out of his way to aid Magnitsky in his hour of need.
The deposition does not bear that out.
Lawyer: "Did anyone coordinate on your behalf with Firestone Duncan about the defence of Mr Magnitsky?"
Browder: "I don't know. I don't remember."
Going back to Nekrasov's film, a standout segment is where the filmmaker looks at a briefing document prepared by Team Browder concerning the June 2007 raid by Russian police officers. In it, Browder claims the cops beat up Victor Poryugin, a lawyer with the firm.
The lawyer was then "hospitalized for two weeks," according to Browder's presentation, which includes a photo of the beaten-up lawyer. Except, it turns out the man pictured is not Poryugin at all. Rather, the photo is actually of Jim Zwerg, an American human rights activist beaten up during a street protest in 1961 (see here and here ).
Nekrasov sits down with German politician Marieluise Beck. She was a member of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (Pace), which compiled a report that made Magnitsky a cause celebre.
You can see Beck's jaw drop when Nekrasov informs her that Magnitsky did not report the fraud, that he was in fact under investigation.
It transpires that Pace, as well as human rights activists, were getting their information from one source – Browder. Later, the Council of Europe's Andreas Gross admits on camera that their entire investigation into the Magnitsky affair was based on Browder's info and that they relied on translations of Russian documents provided by Browder's team because, as Gross puts it, "I don't speak Russian myself."
That hit home – I, too, had been fed information from a single source, not bothering to verify it. I, too, initially went with the assumption that because Russia is said to be a land of endemic corruption, then Browder's story sounded plausible if not entirely credible.
For me, the takeaway is this gem from Nekrasov's narration:
"I was regularly overcome by deep unease. Was I defending a system that killed Magnitsky, even if I'd found no proof that he'd been murdered?"
Bull's-eye. Nekrasov has arrived at a crossroads, the moment where one's mettle is tested: do I pursue the facts wherever they may lead, even if they take me out of my comfort zone? What is more important: the truth, or the narrative? Nekrasov chose the former. As do I.
Like with everything else, specific allegations must be assessed independently of one's general opinion of the Russian state. They are two distinct issues. Say Browder never existed; does that make Russia a paradise?
I suspect Team Browder may scrub me from their mailing list; one can live with that.
oncemore1 , 6 minutes ago
Slipstream , 6 minutes agoSoros and Browder are the same tribe. FULLSTOP.
Usura , 8 minutes agoWow. That's a big **** up. But at least this guy is a journalist with ethics. He got it wrong and has said so, to set the record straight. This should be a case taught in every journalism school in the world. Unfortunately, I don't see the Magnitsky Act being repealed any time soon.
Thordoom , 12 minutes agoBill Browder is a lying ***
herbivore , 23 minutes agoAndrei Nekrasov now has webpage dedicated to The Magnitsky Act Behind the Scenes.
You can watch it here online.
Please support his movie.
Thordoom , 33 minutes agoI watched the documentary too. The depositions of Browder were devastating to any notion of him as truth-teller. And yet, he managed to dupe politicians and media around the world.
resistedliving , 52 minutes agoThe only good thing Yeltsin did in his miserable life was to say " **** you " to Bill Clinton in the end when he found out how they wanted to set him up with that 7 billion of IMF money they stolen in order to put Boris Berezovsky in the charge of Russia as a president for hire and stole anything that was not welded down. Yeltsin knowing that the only way for Russia to survive was to put Vladimir Putin in charge to clense the unclean filth that infested Russia in the 90s
Thordoom , 40 minutes agoclassic agitprop.
Don't trust Browder and his self-interests much but trust this guy less.
Browser knows he'll never see that money again and has spent his own funds on his one man mission
RationalLuddite , 31 minutes agoStupid moron he is spending Knohorkovsky's money and HSBC bank money. Half of the UK and US government officials and intl officials and Harward boys are deeply involved in this looting of Russian people in the 90s.
WTFUD , 29 minutes agoClassic Reverse blockade lie by you Restedliving. Good luck moving the middle on Browder . He's just not that bright in lying so I suppose your Talmudic exegesis honed Accusatory Inversion is worth a try.
Please keep it up. Seriously. "Agitprop"😄😄😄😄
You are like a Browder red-pill dispenser with every incoherent mendacious utterance. Thank you mate :*
The Paucity of Hope , 54 minutes agoBruiser Browser Browder, ex light-heavyweight champion of La-La Potemkin Village, Ninnyapolis, USA.
Shouldn't Fakebook be banning the US Government for a plethora of Fake News? Then again it's a nice fit for these 2 entities, a cosy relationship.
Ahmeexnal , 57 minutes agoNekrasov's movie has been disappeared, but was excellent. Also, look at The Forecaster, about Martin Armstrong. It talks about Hermatage Capital and was blocked in the US and Switzerland for several years.
chunga , 38 minutes agoBrowder must hang!
Not a single person in the US gov will even acknowledge this. None. Not one.
At the same time the US domestic affairs revolve around unsubstantiated stories of SC nominee penis wagging, special prosecutors investigating **** actress affairs/bribery with POTUS, FBI, DOJ off the rails, while at the same time asserting a moral authority to sanction and/or attack other countries as though it's an obligation or entitlement.
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Sep 25, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
by Tyler Durden Mon, 09/24/2018 - 21:25 119 SHARES Authored by Elizabeth Vos via DisobedientMedia.com,
Disobedient Media has closely followed the work of the Forensicator , whose analysis has shed much light on the publications by the Guccifer 2.0 persona for over a year. In view of the more recent work published by the Forensicator regarding potential media collusion with Guccifer 2.0, we are inclined to revisit an interview given by WikiLeaks Editor-In-Chief Julian Assange in August of 2016, prior to the publication of the Podesta Emails in October, and the November US Presidential election.
During the interview, partially transcribed below, Assange makes a number of salient points on the differentiation between the thousands of pristine emails WikiLeaks received, and those which had surfaced in other US outlets by that date. Though Assange does not name the Guccifer 2.0 persona directly throughout the interview, he does name multiple outlets which publicized Guccifer 2.0's documents.The significance of revisiting Assange's statements is the degree to which his most significant claim is corroborated or paralleled by the Forensicator's analysis. This is of enhanced import in light of allegations by Robert Mueller (not to mention the legacy media), despite a total absence of evidence, that Guccifer 2.0 was WikiLeaks's source of the DNC and Podesta emails.
This author previously discussed the possibility that Assange's current isolation might stem in part from the likelihood that upon expulsion from the embassy, Julian Assange could provide evidential proof that the DNC emails and Podesta emails published by WikiLeaks were not sourced from Russia, or backed by the Kremlin, all without disclosing the identity of their source.
"In the US media there has been a deliberate conflation between DNC leaks, which is what we've been publishing, and DNC hacks, of the US Democratic Party which have occurred over the last two years, by their own admission what [Hillary Clinton] is attempting to do is to conflate our publication of pristine emails – no one in the Democratic party argues that a single email is not completely valid. That hasn't been done. The head of the DNC, Debbie Wasserman-Schultz, has rolled as a result.
And whatever hacking has occurred, of the DNC or other political organizations in the United States, by a range of actors – in the middle, we have something, which is the publication by other media organizations, of information reportedly from the DNC, and that seems to be the case. That's the publication of word documents in pdfs published by The Hill, by Gawker, by The Smoking Gun. This is a completely separate batch of documents, compared to the 20,000 pristine emails that we have at WikiLeaks.
In this [separate] batch of documents, released by these other media organizations, there are claims that in the metadata, someone has done a document to pdf conversion, and in some cases the language of the computer that was used for that conversion was Russian. So that's the circumstantial evidence that some Russian was involved, or someone who wanted to make it look like a Russian was involved, with these other media organizations. That's not the case for the material we released.
The Hillary Clinton hack campaign has a serious problem in trying to figure out how to counter-spin our publication because the emails are un-arguable There's an attempt to bring in a meta-story. And the meta-story is, did some hacker obtain these emails? Ok. Well, people have suggested that there's evidence that the DNC has been hacked. I'm not at all surprised its been hacked. If you read very carefully, they say it's been hacked many times over the last two years. Our sources say that DNC security is like Swiss Cheese.
Hillary Clinton is saying, untruthfully, that she knows who the source of our emails are. Now, she didn't quite say "our emails." She's playing some games, because there have been other publications by The Hill, by Gawker, other US media, of different documents, not emails. So, we have to separate the various DNC or RNC hacks that have occurred over the years, and who's done that. The source: we know who the source is, it's the Democratic National Committee itself. And our sources who gave these materials, and other pending materials, to us. These are all different questions. "
The core assertion made by Assange in the above-transcribed segment of his 2016 interview with RT is the differentiation between WikiLeaks's publications from the altered documents released by Guccifer 2.0 (after being pre-released to US media outlets as referenced by Assange). This finer point is one that is corroborated by the Forensicator's analysis, and one which it seems much of the public has yet to entirely digest.
Disobedient Media previously wrote regarding the Forensicator's publication of Did Guccifer 2 Plant his Russian Fingerprints? :
"Ars Technica found "Russian fingerprints" in a PDF posted by Gawker the previous day. Apparently, both Gawker and The Smoking Gun (TSG) had received pre-release copies of Guccifer 2.0's first batch of documents; Guccifer 2.0 would post them later, on his WordPress.com blog site. Although neither Gawker nor TSG reported on these Russian error messages, some readers noticed them and mentioned them in social media forums; Ars Technica was likely the first media outlet to cover those "Russian fingerprints."
The Forensicator's analysis cannot enlighten us as to the ultimate source of WikiLeaks's releases. At present, there is no evidence whatsoever to indicate that Guccifer 2.0 was, or was not, WikiLeaks' source. There is no evidence connecting Guccifer 2.0 with WikiLeaks, but there is likewise no evidence to rule out a connection.
It is nonetheless critically important, as Assange indicated, to differentiate between the files published by Guccifer 2.0 and those released by WikiLeaks. None of the "altered" documents (with supposed Russian fingerprints) published by Guccifer 2.0 appear in WikiLeaks's publications.
It is also worth noting that, though Assange's interview took place before the publication of the Podesta email collection, the allegations of a Russian hack based on Guccifer 2.0's publication were ultimately contradicted by a DNC official, as reported by the Associated Press. Disobedient Media wrote:
" Ultimately, it is the DNC's claim that they were breached by Russian hackers, who stole the Trump opposition report, which directly belies their allegation – because the document did not come from the DNC, but from John Podesta's emails."
Again: The very document on which the initial "Russian hack" allegations were based did not originate within the DNC Emails at all, but in the Podesta Emails, which at the time of Assange's RT interview, had not yet been published.
Disobedient Media also noted in relation to the Forensicator's Media Mishaps report:
"The fact the email to which the Trump opposition report was attached was later published in the Podesta Email collection by WikiLeaks does not prove that Guccifer 2.0 and WikiLeaks shared a source on the document. However, it does suggest that either the DNC, the operators of the Guccifer 2.0 persona, or both parties had access to Podesta's emails. This raises questions as to why the DNC would interpret the use of this particular file as evidence of Russian penetration of the DNC."
This creates a massive contradiction within the DNC's narrative, but it does not materially change Assange's assertion that the pristine emails obtained by WikiLeaks were fundamentally distinct and should not be conflated with the altered documents published by Guccifer 2.0, as the WikiLeaks publication of the Podesta emails contain none of the alterations shown in the version of the documents published by Guccifer 2.0.
Though no establishment media outlet has reported on this point, when reviewing the evidence at hand and especially the work of the Forensicator, it is evident that the Guccifer 2.0 persona never actually published a single email. The persona published documents and even screenshots of emails – but never the emails themselves. Thus, again, Guccifer 2.0's works are critically different from the DNC and Podesta email publications by WikiLeaks.
The following charts are included to help remind readers of the timeline of events relative to Guccifer 2.0, including the date specific documents were published:
Image Courtesy Of The Forensicator
Image Courtesy of the Forensicator
This writer previously opined on the apparent invulnerability of the Russiagate saga to factual refutation. One cannot blame the public for such narrative immortality, as the establishment-backed press has made every effort to confuse and conflate the alterations made to documents published by Guccifer 2.0 and the WikiLeaks releases. One can only hope, however, that this reminder of their distinct state will help raise public skepticism of a narrative based on no evidence whatsoever.
It is also especially important to reconsider Julian Assange's statements and texts in light of his ongoing isolation from the outside world, which has prevented him from commenting further on an infinite array of subjects including Guccifer 2.0 and the "Russian hacking" saga.
Winston S. contributed to the content of this report.
platyops , 22 minutes ago
Nature_Boy_Wooooo , 33 minutes agoThe name was Seth Rich. They robbed him for his watch and money but forgot to take the watch and money. Yes that makes as much sense as Dr. Ford and her imagination party!
Dems lie and maybe kill people but they do lie for sure!
Surftown , 2 hours agoAll signs point to a young Bernie Sanders supporter at the DNC named Seth Rich.
Endgame Napoleon , 1 hour agoBrennan is Guccifer 2.0 using NSA Toolkit ( hacked and released) to feign Russia -- to promote the fake Russia interference narrative leading to the FISA warrant justification, or better yet, to the Direct Obama FISA approval/override to approve surveillance of Mr Trump.
bh2 , 2 hours agoThere are a bunch of competing smartphone apps, letting you convert Word docs to PDFs, believe it or not.
Maybe, they only work in limited form, but you can write a resume (or whatever) into the app, saving it in Word, converting it to PDF and sending it to your email.
Real programmers seem to scoff at the technical precision of those apps, so maybe, they are not as sophisticated as they appear to non-techies.
The sequencing of this is weird. If I read it right, it sounds like several publications received the "converted" versions -- the screenshots or PDFs -- of some emails before Wikileaks released the actual, non-converted emails.
Who released those to the media organizations, and how did they have access to the machine containing the emails, enabling them to make screenshots, convert them to PDFs or whatever they did to provide representations of the emails, not the actual emails that Wikileaks later released?
JimmyJones , 2 hours agoActually, William Binney et al demonstrated the email transfer could not have been effected outside the four walls of the DNC because the required network speeds did not exist at that time to any external location, least of all one located outside the US.
The only way that transfer could happen in the time logged was onto a device located on the DNC LAN.
Seth Rich is the person Assange all but directly named as the source.
These two things, taken together, provide a compelling refutation of the DNC fairy tale that the emails were pilfered by Russia (or any other outside actor).
medium giraffe , 2 hours agoBunny said the download speed was indicating a USB thumb drive was used
Endgame Napoleon , 1 hour agoIIRC the transfer speed was similar to a USB bus speed, meaning it wasn't even transferred over a local network, but by a USB flash device directly connected to a DNC PC or laptop.
The US Congress is so unprofessional, allowing this circus about high-school parties to commandeer a SCOTUS confirmation hearing, but did you ever hear any of them trying to get to the bottom of this complex stuff, calling in technical experts to explain this evidence to voters?
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Sep 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Greece , Sep 22, 2018 3:05:11 PM | link
Well, well, Mr.Trump talks the talk but never walks the walk it semms...
If only poor Kennedy would be so lucky...
Nobody to point fingers at for wiring the president...
Did they wire Kenny Mr.Trump?
You did a big show about putting out stuff that would reveal what happened with kennedy, but instead the people were fed the ussual BS plus some "new" irrelevant" stuff.
Was it just a show to push for more power for your favorite Mr.Netanyahou?
How did they eavesdrop Kenny Mr.Trump?
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Sep 22, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
uncle tungsten , Sep 22, 2018 6:34:26 PM | 32
More notions on USA election so excuse a repeat post all. I figure an enormous number of voters reeled in horror at the prospect of a Hillary Clinton president and voted for Trump. Will that horror revert to more democrat support now?
Are those swing voters now uncertain if the $hillary will stage a come back. Nothing absolute has been stated and the demoncrats go through the motions of 'thinking about' another stooge like creepy Joe Biden. The USA is not liberated from the 'Clinton option' yet.
More to the point though is that repeatedly implied and sometimes stated 'certainty' that the DOJ/FBI under its new Trumpian management has a thousand grand jury indictments pending to be actioned in October or something. The Trumpers are certain that their hero is about to slay the many headed dragon and they have been anticipating that move for some time. Sure there appears to be sufficient evidence to draw and quarter a couple of seriously stupid clowns.
Given Trumps kneeling to the British Skripal poisoning 'hate russia' hoax I suspect there is no chance he will go after Christopher Steele or any of the senior demoncrat conspirers no matter how much he would love to sucker punch Theresa May and her nasty colleagues. If Trump backs the British looneys in the UN security council in a day or two we can all be sure he is now a puppet on a British string and that point will be seen by USA voters.
Any leader that lets a foreign nation, Britain, try to destroy his family, presidential campaign and now presidency by assembling and publishing a dirt dossier without response is a coward. If Trump wont stand up to Hillary Clinton, Theresa May, or any of the dossier conspirators, then he is useless. The USA voters see that no matter what the spin but the swing voters more than any other actually discriminate and make judgements based on actions .
They are in a quandary and only Trump can cement their support by going after the perpetrators NOW and telling the EU loonies like Britain and France to F off with their belligerent war mongering. I wouldn't count on it.
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Sep 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited "Grave Concerns" Over Steele Involvement
by Tyler Durden Sun, 09/23/2018 - 11:15 4.6K SHARES
The British government "expressed grave concerns" to the US government over the declassification and release of material related to the Trump-Russia investigation, according to the New York Times . President Trump ordered a wide swath of materials "immediately" declassified "without redaction" on Monday, only to change his mind later in the week by allowing the DOJ Inspector General to review the materials first.
The Times reports that the UK's concern was over material which "includes direct references to conversations between American law enforcement officials and Christopher Steele," the former MI6 agent who compiled the infamous "Steele Dossier." The UK's objection, according to former US and British officials, was over revealing Steele's identity in an official document, "regardless of whether he had been named in press reports."
We would note, however, that Steele's name was contained within the Nunes Memo - the House Intelligence Committee's majority opinion in the Trump-Russia case.
Steele also had extensive contacts with DOJ official Bruce Ohr and his wife Nellie, who - along with Steele - was paid by opposition research firm Fusion GPS in the anti-Trump campaign. Trump called for the declassification of FBI notes of interviews with Ohr, which would ostensibly reveal more about his relationship with Steele. Ohr was demoted twice within the Department of Justice for lying about his contacts with Fusion GPS.
Perhaps the Brits are also concerned since much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016 . Recall that Trump aid George Papadopoulos was lured to London in March, 2016, where Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud fed him the rumor that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. It was later at a London bar that Papadopoulos would drunkenly pass the rumor to Australian diplomat Alexander Downer (who Strzok flew to London to meet with).
Also recall that CIA/FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper met with both Carter Page and Papadopoulos in London.
Halper, a veteran of four Republican administrations, reached out to Trump aide George Papadopoulos in September 2016 with an offer to fly to London to write an academic paper on energy exploration in the Mediterranean Sea.
Papadopoulos accepted a flight to London and a $3,000 honorarium. He claims that during a meeting in London, Halper asked him whether he knew anything about Russian hacking of Democrats' emails.
Papadopoulos had other contacts on British soil that he now believes were part of a government-sanctioned surveillance operation. - Daily Caller
In total, Halper received over $1 million from the Obama Pentagon for "research," over $400,000 of which was granted before and during the 2016 election season.
In short, it's understandable that the UK would prefer to hide their involvement in the "witch hunt" of Donald Trump since much of the counterintelligence investigation was conducted on UK soil. And if the Brits had knowledge of the operation, it will bolster claims that they meddled in the 2016 US election by assisting what appears to have been a set-up from the start .
Steele's ham-handed dossier is a mere embarrassment, as virtually none of the claims asserted by the former MI6 agent have been proven true.
Steele, a former MI6 agent, is the author of the infamous and unverified anti-Trump dossier. He worked as a confidential human source for the FBI for years before the relationship was severed just before the election because of Steele's unauthorized contacts with the press.
He shared results of his investigation into Trump's links to Russia with the FBI beginning in early July 2016.
The FBI relied heavily on the unverified Steele dossier to fill out applications for four FISA warrants against Page. Page has denied the dossier's claims, which include that he was the Trump campaign's back channel to the Kremlin. - Daily Caller
That said, Steele hasn't worked for the British government since 2009, so for their excuse focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious.
StychoKiller , 54 minutes agotexantim , 1 hour agoI find it interesting that the Theresa May Govt in UK has the temerity to interfere with US politics (until they got caught out!), yet can't find the spine to stand up to the EU. If I were Trump, not only would the shoe be dropping re: UK Govt involvement in US politics, but said shoe would be making an imprint across her face! (stoopid twat!)
BitchesBetterRecognize , 1 hour agoI say release the docs and put sanctions on UK.
Baron von Bud , 2 hours agoSo the Motherland ******* up with the ex-colony yet again, huh?
THE UNITED KINGDOM along with ISRAEL & SAUDI ARABIA have always been the ones behind US Politics making, pulling the strings behind the curtains since the Petrodollar Inception, The Greater Israel project & the NWO initiative - only this time around Trump was not the UK's pick...
Oh, but those "civilized" Allies backstabbing each other for more power grip on the USA....
Malvern Joe , 3 hours agoEngland dominates the offshore money laundering havens where the super rich hide their money and evade taxes. They need to be brought down. No more African dictators looting their nation's resources and hiding the money first in offshore banks and then in JP Morgan and Brit banks.
Many hedge funds are deep into this game. I'd wager on Carlyle Group and the Bush clan. Billions of people can't get ahead because the super rich are ******* crooks running the banks and governments. They don't pay taxes but force a small dry cleaner to pay 45% in fed/state taxes. These criminals include Hillary Clinton and many members of congress. Feinstein, Pelosi, Maxine and many more of both parties need to be investigated. How do they get so rich on a congressman's salary. Deep into tax evasion and payoffs? Release the documents and let MI6 hang.
Bricker , 3 hours agoIt is a test. If Trump doesn't go ahead with declassification, we know for sure he is no better than the globalists and neocons whose goal has always been to destroy and depopulate America. It would represent the biggest sellout of this country since the creation of the Fed in 1913, He will go down as the biggest fraud ever and his base will deport his *** to the sums of India where he can defecate in public.
Moving and Grooving , 3 hours agoYou dont get to supply a rogue agent, that was probably told to do it in the first place, and then tell Trump not to do it out of harm, harm is all you BRIT DEEP STATES deserve
Ban KKiller , 4 hours ago'focusing on the former MI6 agent while ignoring the multitude of events which occurred on UK soil, is curious'
Not at all. It's obvious - the problem ISN'T Steele. They're living in fear, as are many in DC and elsewhere, that Trump is going to pry the lid open and reveal at least some of their activities. If killing him would fix the problem, they would. It's too late, considering what Trump is threatening to do. I wonder if he'll back down, at least some?
The sheer corruption of the Global Government is on display here, revealing itself, if you watch for it. Whether planned or not, the last 6 months or so have been astonishing to watch. The entire media has been shown to be liars, academia is shown to be an expensive provider of unprepared students, the corporate world is furiously rent-seeking and finding new ways to destroy humanity, and government is too busy selling Americans out to write a budget. In all countries around the world, adjusting for national status. Lawsuits in the west, machetes in the third world.
John C Durham , 4 hours agoU.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you.
Anunnaki , 4 hours agoDuh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE .
PeaceForWorld , 4 hours agoMay gonna owe Vlad an apology when Skripal is revealed to be Steele's source. Steele himself hadn't been to Russian in 15 years. Will he get life in prison for attempted murder?
Buddha71 , 4 hours ago"t's hard to tell who's telling the truth and who isn't in this whole Russia narrative. Fact is, NOBODY is telling the truth. That is what I've determined after doing my own research.": https://youtu.be/2AA5BIfGj3g
I really like this woman "Shut the **** up!". She is a former Bernie supporter just like me. She has turned against Democrats just like me. She doesn't trust any of the Establishment parties.
trump made promises before being elected, then lied and sold America out, just like every other corrupted assklown politician. he is no different than clinton bush obama, just as arrogant, just as corrupt, and just as much a traitor. he has broken the promises upon which he was elected, just like all the other fkn liars before him. no different. just a pos. he has not made america great again, just more of the same, unemployment is a lie, it is closer to 17%.
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Sep 19, 2018 | www.realclearpolitics.com
Former CIA director and MSNBC contributor John Brennan called on FBI director Christopher Wray, Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats, and Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to "push back" on any directive from the White House that may have a "negative impact" on the Mueller investigation.
Brennan called on "individuals of conscience" in the administration to remember that they took an oath of office not an oath to Donald Trump. Moments prior Brennan admonished people who are abusing their powers to "protect" Trump.
"I think that they should continue to push, push, push, and if Mr. Tump and the White House does not relent, then they have some decisions to make, and whether or not they are going to the just not follow that direction and be fired or to resign," Brennan said of the trio.
"A number of individuals are trying to protect Mr. Trump and abusing their authorities and their powers, whether it be in Congress or within the executive branch," Brennan said on MSNBC's Andrea Mitchell Reports . "And this is something that I am hoping that individuals of conscience are going to stop and prevent because I am concerned that this is just one indication that Mr. Trump is going to increasingly look for steps to take in order to further to try to subvert the Mueller investigation."
"I think that they should continue to push, push, push, and if Mr. Tump and the White House does not relent, then they have some decisions to make, and whether or not they are going to the just not follow that direction and be fired or to resign, but if they really believe this is going to have serious impact, the national security law enforcement, and judicial process, they have an obligation since they took the oath of office to the constitution of the United States and not Mr. Trump to uphold their responsibilities and their agency and the departments' authorities," Brennan said.
Brennan called it critically important that Americans accept the results of the Mueller probe.
"It is critically important for all of the American citizens to learn the results of that investigation, and whether or not it implicates Mr. Trump and others, we have to be ready to accept those findings as apolitical, and not something that is being done for political purposes," he said.
JackDan
Actually, Brennan...there is nothing unconstitutional about what Trump is doing. Nothing at all, not one thing. Your call for circumvention is however seditious and you should be prosecuted for your actions. But beyond that, your fear and your blathering makes me smile from ear to ear because it means you are scared that the truth about you and your ilk WILL come one. "Sunlight is the best disinfectant". It is precious watching you squirm!
KCMarkLeader -> JackDan
Arguing the Constitution with Brennan is like arguing the Bible with an Atheist.
hansenwtLeader -> KCMark
Except Brennan will be in charge of something again in the next Democrat Presidency....if you vote Democrat....Anyone that remotely acts like Brennan, (not a partisan argument)...should never ever be allowed near the levers of control of this country....the 2016 election has proven this.
Edgarson
So, why should WE THE PEOPLE not be able to see what Brennan and his ilk have either been leaking selectively at us or hiding to subvert a lawful election.
We're talking about FISA warrants of a Presidential campaign's staff.
Why should we not see this? Why should the truth not all come out?
What possible reason can Brennan have to keep THIS out of public knowledge?
JackDanLeader -> Edgarson
The only logical reason is because Brennan does not want to go to jail. Well too bad Brennan!
SUTOPEL
In other words, this man is telling the FBI NOT to release anything that belongs to We The People.
JackDanLeader -> SUTOPEL
In other words he is openly advocating for government officials to disobey a presidential order, which is either sedition or treason. I'll let Brennan pick which one.
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Sep 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
The armed forces are watching the present chaos in the US between the revolutionary "Progressives" and the counter-revolutionary "Deplorables." Our versions of Belisarius, Narses and Mundus are calculating the odds of an eventual calming of the discord. They cannot think that the odds are very good.
Political war could easily lead to the real thing. pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nika_riots
HappyCheese -> VietnamVet , 15 hours ago
"The 1980s are coming home to roost."Araminta Smade , a day agoLiterally the best pithy summary of the current trends on the right and the left that I have read since since the current arc started with the 2008 Great Recession.
With respect can I say that I would have thought a more accurate historical parallel would have been the late Roman Republic where the Populares (deplorables) were in conflict with the Optimates (progressives). The latter used every measure they could devise, including assassination, to prevent their opponents passing legislation that might improve the lot of the people. This of course was simply capping the Volcano and when it eventually erupted it destroyed them all and Imperial Rome arose out of the ashes. So it will be here. Democracy in the United States is perishing in the internecine warfare of Washington DC. Eventually Caesar will arise and put an end to the Republic.PRC90 , a day agoThe 82nd Airborne v. Antifa ? Some would crawl over broken glass to be in that very short event, but I suggest it will never happen.GreenZoneCafe , a day agoHowever, two Generals, and a Eunuch (plenty of candidates for that job) bearing gold v. The Resistance ? Will your own Theodora, or her step-daughter, call 'Stand To !' ?
The parallels are very interesting. Provided that the FBI can arrest a bunch of internal high level subversives and crooks (not hard to find..) as an initiating event, and a USSC member or two provides a legal opinion as a basis for action, and the Constitution is followed, and the affair ends with a Presidential and Congressional election to reset the board, it could turn out very well.Timing ? I think Trump will win in 2020, whether he makes it to 2024, who knows ? One thing I'm confident of is that the POTUS after Trump will need to heed the people who elected Trump if their issues are still unresolved - and if not then hold on for the ride.
I think things will settle down once Trump's gone. Pence is kind of bland, and his politics would be nothing new, warmed over Reagan/Bush. A new war on Iran would be a wild card.Pat Lang Mod -> GreenZoneCafe , a day agoThere might be a real crisis in ten years or so based on demographic shifts. What some people call "the left" will start flipping states like Georgia and Texas, just as Virginia and NC are being flipped.
National power would be lost to the GOP in current form. They might retool and recover by reorienting to their traditional smallholder base from the earlier 20th century and abandon the cultural and racial posturing.
If there's another presidential election crisis like 2000, the possibility of trouble is real. I also wonder about these Special Operations types would could see the injustice of supermen like them being ruled by civilians.
Juan Cole made a related speculation on his blog today.
https://www.juancole.com/20...Trump will not be gone. why would you think he will be gone?GreenZoneCafe -> Pat Lang , 20 hours agoA combination of the final results of the Mueller investigation and the House passing to the Democrats. In the alternative, Trump firing Mueller and a Democratic House.Mark Logan , a day ago
Pence is much more reliable for The Powers that Be, the Borg, etc.Submitted mostly for humor, the story told here unintentionally, perhaps, reminds hilariously of our own in spots. Please nuke without comment if this is leading towards an undesired conversation.Eugene Weber's Western Tradition series, The Byzantine Empire:
Play Hide
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Sep 09, 2018 | www.realclearpolitics.com
CNN: Former Trump campaign aide Michael Caputo weighs in on who he believes wrote the anonymously authored op-ed published in the New York Times that was highly critical of President Donald Trump. https://www.youtube.com/embed/XHJrFKnOspQ?enablejsapi=1&origin=https:%2F%2Fwww.realclearpolitics.com
Caputo also said the real writer of the piece is a ghostwriter in terms of looking for the person behind the piece. Caputo said he believes the person is a woman.
"The language of the op-ed is useless to look at because it's a ghostwriter," he said.
"I think, first of all, this person will never admit it. In my mind, the author of this op-ed believes that she is a hero to the American people," Caputo also said.
MICHAEL CAPUTO, FMR. TRUMP ADVISOR: I'm fairly certain I know who it is. I've been going through this parlor game like everybody else has and I am also completely 100% certain that the person who wrote this is on the list of people who said they didn't write it.FREDRICKA WHITFIELD, CNN HOST: Alright. So who do you think it is?
CAPUTO: I'm not going to go into that. My attorney tells me it's a bad idea. But I can tell you think...
WHITFIELD: You consulted your attorney. You said I think I know who this is based on certain language that was and you consulted your attorney and your attorney says don't reveal it?
CAPUTO: Right. Based on language. Based on the fact that I believe these kinds of people leave a trail of crumbs when they are trying to deceive people around them. This is the way it is always is. And if the president looks at key departments of his government that has been purged of all Trump supporters that is a good place to start, and that actually exists. Trump supporters have been purged from this government for 18 months. Last week I spent the evening with several friends of mine from the Trump campaign: all of them have been forced out of the Trump administration. ...
I don't think this person is in the White House... this person really has to be high up. It's got to be a deputy, secretary-level, or higher, otherwise The New York Times is misleading people.
WHITFIELD: Do you believe it is someone who has taken an oath?
CAPUTO: I believe so...
The White House political office and others have kind of shrugged off the idea about losing the House and maybe being impeached because the Senate won't do anything. They won't convict the president on the charges of impeachment. But I think when we find out who this person is, and the president team should find out, we're going to find out this person has real deep and abiding ties to Congress and this op-ed is one step closer not just to impeachment but conviction...
I started with this. Who is the person who I believe hates the president the most? Who is the person in the administration who has screamed about him in their own private office and gone forward and purged their entire office of Trump people? ...
I think, first of all, this person will never admit it. In my mind, the author of this op-ed believes that she is a hero to the American people.
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Sep 23, 2018 | www.unz.com
annamaria , says: July 14, 2018 at 4:56 pm GMT
Sic Semper Tyrannis has published a response to the Rosenstein fantastic "Indictment of Trolls" (Part II): "Something Rotten About the DOJ Indictment of the GRU," by Publius Tacitus http://www.turcopolier.typepad.comannamaria , says: July 14, 2018 at 5:06 pm GMT
"Assistant Attorney General Rosenstein announced a bizarre indictment against Russian military intelligence operatives today that, rather than confirming the case of "Russian meddling" in the U.S. 2016 Presidential election raises more questions. Here are the major oddities:
1. How did the FBI obtain information about activity on the DNC and DCCC servers when the DNC/DCCC refused to give the Feds access to the servers/computers?
2. Why does Crowdstrike get credit as being a competent computer security firm when, according to the indictment, they completely and utterly failed to stop the "hacks? "
3. Why does the indictment refuse to name Wikileaks by name as the Russian collaborator? Here is the bottomline–if US officials knew as early as April that Russia was hacking the DNC, why did it take US officials more than six months to stop the activity? The statement of "facts" contained in the indictment also raises another troubling issue–what is the source of the information? For example, if the FBI was not given access to the DNC/DCCC servers and computers then how do they know what happened on specific dates as alleged in the complaint?"
-- Why does the US national security hang on the opinions and concoctions of a visceral Russophobe Dm. Alperovitch (a ziocon) who is an "expert" (together with the badly uneducated Elliot Higgins) at the thoroughly corrupted and zionized Atlantic Council?
-- What kind of antisemite has been working hard to make the US Jewry at large suspected in a massive conspiracy and treason against the United States of America?Here is the context for the "Indictment of Trolls" (Paty II): https://www.reddit.com/r/conspiracy/comments/62c97j/the_awan_brothers_compromised_at_least_80/
"The Awan brothers compromised at least 80 congressional computers and got paid 5 million to do it. We may never know the extent of the breach.
After compromising the Congress' networks for 12 years they do a quick cleanup by breaking in to 20 congressional offices, store data in an off site server before running of to Pakistan and the D.C. Police are investigating. But wait there's more
Imran Awan has a longtime relationship with some members of Congress, including working for Meeks and Becerra starting in 2004 and joining Wasserman Schultz's office in 2005. The IT staffer position expanded to include more than 30 representatives, including work under congressional members who were members of top secret level congressional committees (DHS, Foreign affairs, Select intelligence committee).
Although personal office computers are not supposed to be used for Intelligence Committee business or classified material, accessing these computers is a high priority for foreign intelligence services because of the information they could glean about the committee's work from unclassified emails.
• The brothers are suspected of serious violations including accessing members' computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress, over billing congress for work and parts, transferring data to a remote server, and bypassing normal security protocols for IT staff. Their Democrat benefactors allowed the breech of policy for the sake of convenience.
• The Awans operated an external server, which is against all protocols concerning secured government information.
Further, there were instances where House information was discovered in an external "cloud" server. The contractors in question reportedly were sending and storing House-related information in that off-site server.
• The Awans had special access to the White House and for Visas.
• Multiple Democratic lawmakers have yet to cut ties with House staffers under criminal investigation for wide-ranging equipment and data theft."
– Hey, Mueller! Hey, Rosenstein! Do your job.
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Sep 23, 2018 | www.realclearpolitics.com
KCMarkLeader -> JackDan
Arguing the Constitution with Brennan is like arguing the Bible with an Atheist.
hansenwtLeader -> KCMark
Except Brennan will be in charge of something again in the next Democrat Presidency....if you vote Democrat....Anyone that remotely acts like Brennan, (not a partisan argument)...should never ever be allowed near the levers of control of this country....the 2016 election has proven this.
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Sep 22, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
blue peacock -> Patrick Armstrong , 3 days ago
The letter from the Democrats on the Gang of 8 to Coats, Rosenstein and Wray is something. Asking them to be insubordinate by refusing the order of the President to release unredacted documents & communications. What were the verbal assurances these apparatchiks gave the Democrats? Did they agree to withhold information from their boss?As Col. Lang has stated numerous times the President is the ultimate classification authority except for atomic secrets. Coats, Rosenstein & Wray I'm sure know that. If they disagree with his declassification order they can always resign. Insubordination is a fireable offense.
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Sep 21, 2018 | www.wsws.org
The New York Times published a fraudulent and provocative "special report" Thursday titled "The plot to subvert an election."
Replete with sinister looking graphics portraying Russian President Vladimir Putin as a villainous cyberage cyclops, the report purports to untangle "the threads of the most effective foreign campaign in history to disrupt and influence an American election."
The report could serve as a textbook example of CIA-directed misinformation posing as "in-depth" journalism. There is no news, few substantiated facts and no significant analysis presented in the 10,000-word report, which sprawls over 11 ad-free pages of a separate section produced by the Times.
The article begins with an ominous-sounding recounting of two incidents in which banners were hung from bridges in New York City and Washington in October and November of 2016, one bearing the likeness of Putin over a Russian flag with the word "peacemaker," and the other that of Obama and the slogan "Goodbye Murderer."
It acknowledges that "police never identified who had hung the banners," but nonetheless goes on to assert that: "The Kremlin, it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory laps for the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history." The article begins with an ominous-sounding recounting of two incidents in which banners were hung from bridges in New York City and Washington in October and November of 2016, one bearing the likeness of Putin over a Russian flag with the word "peacemaker," and the other that of Obama and the slogan "Goodbye Murderer."
It acknowledges that "police never identified who had hung the banners," but nonetheless goes on to assert that: "The Kremlin, it appeared, had reached onto United States soil in New York and Washington. The banners may well have been intended as visual victory laps for the most effective foreign interference in an American election in history."
Why does it "appear" to be the Kremlin? What is the evidence to support this claim? Among the 8.5 million inhabitants of New York City and another 700,000 in Washington, D.C., aren't there enough people who might despise Obama as much as, if not a good deal more than, Vladimir Putin?
This absurd passage with its "appeared" and "may well have" combined with the speculation about the Kremlin extending its evil grip onto "United States soil" sets the tone for the entire piece, which consists of the regurgitation of unsubstantiated allegations made by the US intelligence agencies, Democratic and Republican capitalist politicians and the Times itself.
The authors, Scott Shane and Mark Mazzetti, complain about a lack of "public comprehension" of the "Trump-Russia" story. Indeed, despite the two-year campaign of anti-Russian hysteria whipped up in Washington and among the affluent sections of the upper-middle class that constitute the target audience of the Times , polls have indicated that the charges of Russian "meddling" in the 2016 presidential election have evoked little popular response among the
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Sep 22, 2018 | larouchepac.com
Friday afternoon, the New York Times once again took up the coup against Donald Trump, not as a news matter, but as a witting psychological warfare instrument for those bent on trying to illegally remove this President from office. They report, with great fervor, that shortly after FBI Director James Comey was fired by Trump, Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein discussed using the 25th Amendment to remove the President from office, and himself wearing a wire to record the President at the White House. Rosenstein is supervising the Mueller Special Counsel investigation of the President. Rosenstein has heatedly denied the Times story.
This leak occurs in a context where the coup itself is unraveling. The President ordered the declassification of foundational documents in the coup itself on Monday, September 17, including tweets from Robert Mueller's central witness, Jim Comey. According to press accounts, "our allies" called to complain, most certainly the British and the Australians who instigated this coup together with Barack Obama and John Brennan. In addition, the so-called gang of eight Senators and Congressmen who get briefed by the intelligence community had their knickers in a full knot. On Friday, shortly before the Times story broke, the President delayed release of the documents, placing their release in the hands of Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz, while insisting that the documents be reviewed and released in an expedited fashion. He also reserved the right to move forward himself if the matter was not handled with expedition. This was a sound move by Trump and the documents will be released.
Also this week, Mueller's first victim, former Trump Campaign volunteer George Papadopoulos began press appearances detailing how he was set up by the British and the CIA in the evidence fabrication phase of the Russiagate investigation, during the Spring of 2016. There is a sitting grand jury in Washington D.C. hearing evidence concerning fired FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe. According to various sources, that grand jury is also hearing evidence about criminal abuses of the FISA court process and media leaks.
The press reporting to date on the story points to Andrew McCabe or Robert Mueller as the source of the leak to the New York Times .
McCabe's memos are reportedly the source of the story and he has provided those to Mueller.
There is no doubt that Rosenstein has been a corrupt force throughout the ongoing coup against the President.
The question, which allies of the President should be asking, however, is why is this occurring now? In this strategic context? From the grey lady ragsheet that is the chief propaganda arm of the coup?
The President should demand that the Inspector General Horowitz immediately obtain and review the McCabe memos and interview everyone involved in the referenced in the Times and any follow-on meetings under oath, as well as investigating the source of the leak to the New York Times , providing him an immediate report for his consideration by early next week.
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Sep 22, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
et Al September 21, 2018 at 1:28 pm
Euractiv with AFP: Belgian inquest implicates UK in phone spying
https://www.euractiv.com/section/justice-home-affairs/news/belgian-inquest-implicates-uk-in-phone-spying/A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington, it was revealed on Thursday (20 September).
The report, which summarises a five-year judicial inquiry, is almost complete and was submitted to the office of Justice Minister Koen Geens, a source close to the case told AFP, confirming Belgian press reports
The matter will now be discussed within Belgium's National Security Council, which includes the Belgian Prime Minister with top security ministers and officials.
Contacted by AFP, the Belgian Federal Prosecutor's Office and the cabinet of Minister Geens refused to comment .
####NO. Shit. Sherlock.
So the real question is that if this has known since 2013, why now? BREXIT?
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Sep 21, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com
Journalist Sara Carter told Sean Hannity during his Wednesday radio show that the FBI has two sets of records in the Russia investigation, and that "certain people above Peter Strzok and above Lisa Page" were aware of it - implicating former FBI Director James Comey and his #2, Andrew McCabe.
Hannity : Sara, I'm hearing it gets worse than this–that there is potentially out there–if you will, two sets of record among the upper echelon of the FBI–one that was real one that was made for appearances . Is there any truth to this?
Carter : Absolutely, Sean . With the number of sources that I have been speaking with as well as some others that there is evidence indicating that the FBI had separate sets of books.
I will not name names until all of the evidence is out there, but there were certain people above Peter Strzok and above Lisa Page that were aware of this . I also believe that there are people within the FBI that have actually turned on their former employers and are possibly even testifying and reporting what happened inside the FBI to both the Inspector General and possibly even a Grand Jury.
Listen:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/7GGy0touNxk
( h/t Cristina Laila @ Gateway Pundit ) Tags Entertainment Culture
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