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Hypocrisy of British ruling elite as the template for hypocrisy of neoliberal elite

If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another.

The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, "the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy." ~David Habakkuk Oct, 2018

 

News Propaganda Recommended Links Perfidious Albion British roots of US Rusoophobia Hypocrisy of British ruling elite as the template for hypocrisy of neoliberal elite False flag operations as demonization of the enemy strategy
William Browder, MI6, economic rape of Russia, and Magnitsky Act Pussy Riot Provocation -- hand of MI6? Skripal poisoning Steele dossier Wiretaps of Trump and his associates during Presidential elections Berezovsky case  Litvinenko poisoning
Inside "democracy promotion" hypocrisy fair  Democracy as a universal opener for access to natural resources Khodorkovski case   Neocolonialism The art of manufacturing of prisoners of consciousness Sect of fraudulent election witnesses
Machiavellism The Guardian Slips Beyond the Reach of Embarrassment Miraculous metamorphosis of Russian crooks on crossing Western border Demonization of Putin Corruption smoke screen Manipulation of the term "freedom of press" Usage of sexual minorities
Color revolutions Fifth column Propaganda Neoliberalism    Humor Etc
  British scientists conducted thorough experiments and proved that absence or weakness of air defense capabilities in the countries rich in oil inevitably lead to establishing of the democracy in the particular country

GB: once a great cultured nation, now a poorly-educated gangster mafia state, ruled by oligarchs and inhabited by soccer hooligans

The Kremlin Stooge

hypocrisy noun - definition in British English Dictionary & Thesaurus - Cambridge Dictionary Online

hypocrisy noun [U]

/hɪˈpɒk.rɪ.si/ US /-ˈpɑː.krə-/ disapproving

Definition

A situation in which someone pretends to believe something that they do not really believe, or that is the opposite of what they do or say at another time.

hypocrisy - definition of hypocrisy by Macmillan Dictionary

behaviour in which someone claims to have certain moral principles or beliefs but behaves in a way that shows they are not sincere

There is a degree of hypocrisy in expressing outrage at environmental disasters while doing nothing to prevent them

 

The British Ruling Class Degenerate, Debauched, Deceitful

That the British ruling class has fiddled whilst Britain burns is no longer a metaphor, it is literally true. Now that the pandora’s box of paedophilic corruption at the top has been opened, an avalanche of vile revelations exposing the whole establishment spews forth each day.

The latest news stands out for the scale of the cover-up it reveals. It is quite clear that for the British establishment cover-ups are routine and essential for self-preservation. The fact that this is the case proves that it is in the nature of the ruling class to engage in corruption and unpalatable behaviour.

This attitude of mutual protection in their mutual decadence was expressed by Lord Whitelaw, Thatcher’s Deputy Prime Minister and Home Secretary, who apparently asked ‘Why has this been allowed to come out?’ when a ‘Tories and prostitutes’ scandal broke in the ‘80s. This was admitted recently by a ‘very worldly former Conservative MP’. In other words, it was generally understood that there were practices to suppress news of this behaviour, and that by implication, this behaviour (of seeing prostitutes) was commonly practiced by Tories.

Clive Driscoll, a former senior Metropolitan police officer, is becoming a familiar face on British TV screens. This is a man who has ‘seen too much’. His investigation led to the conviction of two of Stephen Lawrence’s killers, after, by his own damning indictment of the police, decades of ‘disruption tactics’ to let these racist murderers go free.

exposed his former employer for protecting racist thugs, he has reported that “when he revealed - in an internal meeting - the names of suspects he wanted to investigate [for child abuse], which included politicians, he was taken off the case. He told the BBC his inquiry was ‘all too uncomfortable to a lot of people’.” It is now known that more specifically, a team of police covertly filmed the knighted Liberal MP Cyril Smith abusing children in Lambeth, for which he was actually arrested. He was then released without charge, and the officers were forced to hand over all evidence, including the video footage, notes, etc. and told if they ever spoke of it again they would be breaking the Official Secrets Act.

When asked how such a thing as the arrest of an MP could remain covered up for decades, Driscoll explained that “detectives are fathers, husbands, sons, they have their own families. It's incredibly difficult. If you felt that by coming forward and just telling the truth that you might have your livelihood taken away from you or you, worse still, may be taken to prison, then that's very difficult.” In an earlier interview, Driscoll said that this fear of victimisation for speaking out was widespread and exploited for cover-ups, “Whenever people spoke to you and shared their fears and their story about what they had seen, it was almost on the proviso that they wouldn't make a statement and that they would be scared if you realised who those people were that were talking for fear of reprisals to both themselves [sic] and their families."

It is clear that, as Labour MP Simon Danczuk has argued, Cyril Smith was immediately set free because a host of powerful people had participated with Smith in decades of abuse, and they feared his prosecution could lead to the whole network’s downfall. Clearly their ears and eyes were highly attuned to pick up any danger to their conspiracy and snuff it out immediately.

Scotland Yard itself now admits that a whole network of “politicians and establishment figures abused and terrorised children as young as seven more than 30 years ago and went on to kill three young boys.” Police have now raided the homes of former MP Harvey Proctor and former home secretary Leon Brittan for child abuse. The latter, who died only in January, stands accused of leading the entire cover up. According to one police officer he was actually photographed by police as he used ‘rent-boys’ in 1986 - that investigation was also rapidly shut down. Vishambar Mehrotra, whose son may have been one of those abducted and then killed by this network, took evidence of this to the police but was refused an investigation as it implicated ‘judges and politicians’.

So extensive is this network of paedophiles and mutual protection in the establishment, that the inquiry that has now been ordered into the scandal has moved onto its third judge after the first two were found to have close links to those implicated! They have had to go so far as New Zealand to find an experienced judge not discredited through connections to Britain’s paedophilic establishment!

In any given week, one would normally think the exposure of one extensive cover-up to be fairly unlikely, and yet this week we have the unearthing of two! The public has known for some years now that the real cause of the 96 deaths in the Hillsborough disaster was not the drunken hooliganism of Liverpool fans, as disgustingly portrayed by the police and the Sun, but the ineptitude or conscious neglect of the South Yorkshire police force - the same police force that terrorised miners in the Battle of Orgreave in the Miners’ Strike. But the ongoing inquiry - taking place decades too late - has forced the police force into embarrassing admissions proving a cover-up took place.

David Duckenfield, who was in charge at the stadium on the day of the disaster, has admitted that it was his own foolish decisions that led to fatal overcrowding in the stadium. Under questioning he also revealed the police’s contempt for the working class that underlay such foolish decisions. For instance, even after realising the situation was a ‘medical emergency’ and not simple fan ‘disorder’, he called for reinforcements of police dogs and no ambulances as he watched fans dying. Duckenfield ‘has no idea’ why he did this. There can be no other explanation than contempt for working class football fans, who in his eyes were little more than thugs to be barked at and bitten even whilst being crushed to death.

But the questioning also exposed the cover-up that has lasted decades. The police’s line after the disaster was always that it was the Liverpool fans’ fault - a line infamously taken up and played with by The Sun. Paul Middup, a Police Federation joint branch secretary at the time, was put up to making vile slanders on Liverpool fans, such as that they were drunk, ticketless, took coins from dying fans and urinated on police who were ‘heroically’ resuscitating victims, because his bosses could not be seen making such allegations publicly - although they backed him up. Middup now admits he wasn’t even at the game but was watching snooker at home.

There is a mass campaign in Liverpool to boycott The Sun for making the slanders which helped to deflect blame from where it really lay. Now that we know the police conspired to fabricate these falsehoods, the working class of Liverpool and elsewhere should boycott the police force and establishment as a whole, which is clearly not only no better morally than the rest of us, but is engaged in systematic cover-ups, exploitation, debauchery and violence on a staggering scale.

The British establishment is as corrupt and degenerate as any other, as George Monbiot has recently argued. He points out that, to top all this off, “The City of London, operating with the help of British overseas territories and crown dependencies, is the world’s leading tax haven, controlling 24% of all offshore financial services.”

Whereas our media patronises the Chinese with tales of widespread illegal bribing of officials and politicians, in Britain we have instead legalised and very traditional corruption - the buying and selling of politicians, something at which the Conservative Party is particularly adept. The unwelcome publicity around its notorious ‘black and white ball’ money raiser was extremely revealing. This was a party that welcomed oligarchs and billionaires from all over the world to buy favours from our government so they can fund their election campaigns and lifestyles.

Norman Tebbit was very recently disgraced for offering his services to apparent Chinese businessmen in a very free and easy fashion, subsequently justifying himself on the grounds that he cannot be expected to live on a mere £67,000 salary.

Only yesterday, a sting on the Conservative party recorded Hugo Swire, foreign office minister, joking that those on benefits can afford to make £55,000 donations, whilst at the same fundraiser Russian oligarch Alexander Termerko boasted he could provoke a change of Prime Minister because “for a change of prime minister you need 20 [MPs], I have 37. Much more than half.” So one oligarch feels he ‘owns’ 37 MPs, enough to select the Prime Minister of an entire country!

The relentless revelation of establishment scandals is now feeding off itself, as each outing encourages others to come forward and diminishes the Press’ incentive to hold back - especially after they themselves feel aggrieved at the exposure of their own phone-hacking scandal. One wonders what other scandals are currently suppressed? What network of duplicitous MPs, press barons, bankers and royals are protecting each other’s secrets?

Prince-andrew-photo-siim-tellerPrince Andrew accused of having solicited minors - Photo: Siim TellerWe cannot be fooled into thinking that these inquiries and press reports will weed out the corruption, which is too endemic to the ruling class. Mostly these inquiries happen decades after the fact when the crimes can no longer be denied, and their perpetrators are long dead. And where is the campaigning outrage against these scandals from our media and political parties? In the past, they actively encouraged not only outrage but marches and movements against individual, non-establishment paedophiles. Now they report on systematic cover ups by leading politicians, on entire networks of decades long abuse protected by the state, on our very own royalty accused of using under-age prostitutes. They report it, once they have to, but make no bones about these most appalling crimes which reveal that our society is run by liars and abusers of the worst kind.

What these scandals really tell us is that our society as a whole is unjust, violently oppressive and based on lies and illusions. It is high time we rise up and overthrow the lot and avenge those countless victims of ruling class oppression.

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[Apr 27, 2021] The Brits are the real pros in disinformation and obfuscation

Apr 27, 2021 | turcopolier.com

English Outsider says: April 17, 2021 at 7:14 am

The BBC take on the position in the Ukraine –

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-europe-56776463

The art of omission at its most effective. Reply

[Mar 22, 2021] Has anyone else noticed this piece of idiocy?

Mar 22, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

foolisholdman , Mar 21 2021 19:14 utc | 36

Has anyone else noticed this piece of idiocy?

SAS ORDERED TO START DISRUPTING RUSSIAN MEDDLING AROUND THE WORLD
(Headline in the Daily Telegraph)
https://uk.news.yahoo.com/sas-takes-fight-meddling-russiaSTARTns-194726807.html
SAS soldiers will be told to disrupt Russian meddling around the world as part of a major shake up of defence priorities.

The SAS and other units in the Special Forces Group will likely work alongside MI6 to conduct covert surveillance operations against Russian spies and military units.

Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the chief of the general staff, told The Telegraph that special forces will be tasked with tackling "hostile state actors".

The move comes ahead of the publication of the Defence Command Paper, the MoD's contribution to the Government's Integrated Review of foreign, defence, security and development policy, which will be published on Monday.

How can one interpret this except as an attempt to curry favour in Washington? Why now? Presumably, because the USG has just said that it is focussing on Russia. Even if this is a policy shift why announce it? This is the sort of information that, (You might think!) discovered and passed to the Russian Embassy would get you locked up for a long time! If this has any effect, I imagine it would be that if/when the Russians come across any unexplained Brits in (say) Syria, they will KNOW what they are there for and will deal with them accordingly. A more poodle-like action is hard to imagine.


Fyi , Mar 21 2021 19:35 utc | 38

Mr. B

The Five Eyes are servants of polities that are dominated by the English-speaking White Judeo-Christians.

3 of them - Canada, Australia, New Zealand - are military protectorates of the American wing of the Judeo-Christians.

migueljose , Mar 21 2021 19:41 utc | 39

As a practitioner of permaculture I look for patterns, including power constructs of the U.S./5 eyes mafia. Here's one.
Look at Luis Almagro, enthusiastic mouthpiece and cheerleader for the U.S. empire. Now look at NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg. They could be brothers or cousins judging their resumes and history of kissing the rings of powerful mafiosos. Norwegian has already given us a summary of how Stoltenberg "failed up" and Almagro's history is similar. He's most known lately for being the screamer who triggered the coup in Bolivia over a year ago.He didn't ask for my advice. I'd have told him: "run away and hide!" He's still in the limelight as he once again stepped up to call for Jeanine Añez's release from jail for her crimes during the nazi/keystone (cops) reign of terror. Bolivia is responding much like the Russians, Chinese and Iranians: they are standing firm AND now considering prosecuting Almagro!
https://orinocotribune.com/oas-almagro-defends-coup-plotters-in-bolivia-declares-court-case-political-persecution/
https://orinocotribune.com/bolivia-considers-taking-legal-action-against-oas-secretary-general-luis-almagro/
To me, it is like Almagro is walking around naked and trying to act as if he has clothes on. Almagro is similar to Kamala in that his own people in Uruaguay don't like him: national hero and former Tupac Amaru revolutionary hero before he became president Jose Mujica canceled Almagro. He snuggled up to Pompeo and now seamlessly genuflects before... pick a name: Blinken, Kamala, Colombian born frat boy Juan Gonzalez. Fear of the U.S. is diminishing. Same in Ecuador. Alliances are growing stronger--Venezuela and Iran are a shining example of the way forward. They are not hiding their actions... they are BRAGGING about them! https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/15133
Bottom line-- obvious dimwit psychopaths Elliot Abrams and Pompeo are gone, replaced by new guys who are not that bright but they think they are while they are losing the only leverage left: threats. No one likes them and no one fears them. China and Russia's smackdowns will resonate throughout Latin America. Alliances will grow at an increasingly rapid pace. Meanwhile, watch the Ecuador election results April 11. Arauz is strong and gaining more, the people there are getting more mobilized. another game changer in South America.


[Feb 28, 2021] In this video Mate and Max Blumenthal start by explaining how Twitter inadvertently boosted the Grayzone's explosive uncovering of the BBC, Bellingcat and others' programs designed to do what Russiagaters accuse Putin of doing; the difference is that Blumenthal gives evidence in the form of emails. impressive. bottom line, "R2P""Russia bad"... the wheels are falling off.

Feb 28, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

migueljose , Feb 28 2021 17:37 utc | 12

My apologies if this has already been posted. Aaron Mate continues to rise in stature-- IMO-- as he keeps digging into Russiagate and exposing deeper and deeper proof of U.S. and U.K. plots, programs and coverups regarding Russia. In this video Mate and Max Blumenthal start by explaining how Twitter inadvertently boosted the Grayzone's explosive uncovering of the BBC, Bellingcat and others' programs designed to do what Russiagaters accuse Putin of doing; the difference is that Blumenthal gives evidence in the form of emails. impressive. bottom line, "R2P""Russia bad"... the wheels are falling off.

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

[Feb 25, 2021] There has been a long string of these unconvincing stories aimed at Russia. The claim the supported Trump after 2016 was a watershed too, all caution to the winds after that. Skripals, Navalny, one after another that makes no sense.

Feb 25, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bemildred , Feb 25 2021 0:54 utc | 53

You would think they would hire people who have some idea as to what might be plausible when they invent these stories? It's very strange to see. There has been a long string of these unconvincing stories aimed at Russia. The claim the supported Trump after 2016 was a watershed too, all caution to the winds after that. Skripals, Navalny, one after another that makes no sense. It's like they want to make a point and are failing. Or maybe propaganda is all they have.

[Feb 24, 2021] The Empire of "The City"

Feb 24, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Feb 23 2021 1:26 utc | 173

Last week, Grieved linked to a book available at The Archive, The Empire of "The City" which is free to download. It's quite a sensation, and I cited a bit from it as soon as I began reading. Here's another outtake:

"News that definitely points to the existence of the secret world supergovernment of "The City" is treated with dense silence. The current activities of what has been identified as the most powerful international society on earth, the "Pilgrims," are so wrapped in silence that few Americana know even of its existence since 1903.

As a glaring example let us consider the cross-examination of Henry Morgenthau, Jr. as to the contacts of his father with the peculiar activities of the mysterious and secret British statesman Viscount Reginald Esher by Senator Gerald Nye in a Senate hearing on January 28, 1940.

Apparently not one newspaper in the United States gave one inch of space to this immensely sensational exposure, while Senator Nye, like many other statesmen who have ventured too far into forbidden realms, has been effectively submerged."

Great prose, yes?! Even more interesting information, Yes! There's much to commend it, and much to learn from it. The geopolitics it discusses certainly impacts the domestic world and explains the current idiocy of the UK toward China. They think themselves still at the head of an Empire because they are.

Hoarsewhisperer , Feb 23 2021 3:20 utc | 180

Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 23 2021 1:26 utc | 172
(Book: The Empire of "The City")

On a not unrelated theme, a few weeks ago I posted the outline of a 2020 TV doco called Secrets of America's Shadow Government and prepping for Continuity Of Government in the event that the psychos in charge miscalculate. A couple of weeks later I noticed that it was only Episode 1 of an ongoing series, not a stand alone doco, having missed Episode 2. The film makers have gone to great lengths to expose AmeriKKKa's dirty linen in an extremely unflattering context.

Episode 6 is about the CIA and FBI and whose interests they do and DO NOT protect. It also touches on Morgenthau's characterisation of AmeriKKKa as "dual state" and has caught up to the Trump Show. But the details are presumably being aired in Episode 7.

One nice touch is that after every ad break the program resumes with a few seconds of banner headline declaring WHILE THE REST OF US DIE.

[Feb 16, 2021] New Documents Reveal More British Efforts To Undermine Russia

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The information discussed is from government files which outlay various projects and from companies and -- interestingly -- from charities who make bids to run the FCO projects. All underlying files are available for download as one archive file (~80 MB). ..."
"... The budget for the various anti-Russian projects runs at dozens of millions pounds per year. The first programs were launched in 2016 and some continue through this year. ..."
"... Note that 'Russian disinformation' is whatever Britain does not like about Russia. 'Exposing' such 'disinformation' is best done by spreading one's own. These are not defensive programs but attacks on Russia. ..."
"... Many years of painstaking work of HMG through its embassies and intelligence cutouts precede a chemical attack. They create Media, CSOs and pseudo humanitarian organisations that happen to be just at the correct place and in the correct time with their cameras ready when 'suddenly' a dreadful accident 'shocks every one into action'. ..."
"... Do you believe HMG staged the 'Navalny accident' as part of some kind of a secret operation? Did HMG create Media outlets, nurture bloggers and stringers that it controlled? Did it engage Russia's youth and CSOs? Did it try to demonise Putin just like it had done with Assad by labeling them Evil Dictators who poisoned their people with forbidden chemical weapons? Do you know what all of this is needed for? They need it to delegitimise a leader of a country and convince people around the world that 'no holds should be barred to fight a mad dictator'. Can you grasp the gravity of what is going on? ..."
"... That view is not even exaggerated. The 'west' has the knives out against Russia. We previous mentioned a report from the Pentagon think tank RAND which evaluated how to best 'unbalance and overextend' Russia. ..."
"... The aims we have towards Russia are very big. We do not want anything less but regime change in Russia, which is difficult to achieve by economic pressure. ..."
"... The new documents also reveal some interesting new points on Navalny who seems to be on the British government payroll: ..."
"... By now you must have guessed the identity of one of the popular YouTubers investigating corruption. After obtaining EXPOSE Network files and examining the case studies two years ago, we didn't figure out which YouTuber the FCO supported through ZINC. We refrained from making any preliminary conclusions even when journalists discovered that Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of Alexei Navalny, was a part of the Integrity Initiative cluster. ..."
"... But when we saw Mr. Navalny and Bellingcat together, things started to make sense. By digging deeper, we discovered another Navalny's supporter who lives in London - some shadowy Maria Pevchikh who is promoting a system of smart voting in Russia. The Labour used a similar voting system to take the votes of the Conservatives. So, basically it is highly likely that the UK recommended the system to Mr. Navalny. ..."
"... It also turned out that Navalny began a smear campaign against the RT - one of the few media outlets in the West that allows those who disagree with the official position of western government to speak out. Note that Navalny's campaign was running in parallel with that of the Integrity Initiative. A reasonable question is - why Navalny who is mostly engaged in political battles inside Russia spends time fighting a TV network operating outside the country? ..."
"... Not only countries bordering Russia, a cell existed in Spain and it had consequences, when the new government came to power the local cell ran a campaign against the new nominee for National Security for not being tough on Russia as required, he was out of the job, and the main local newspapers were and are in bed with British intelligence dutifully reporting how bad Russia is and how good Navalny and his boys are, journalists working for the media with the largest readership in the country. ..."
"... Devinette: when was the last time a state which was not supported by the US has committed a chemical attack? ..."
"... BTW Maria Pevchikh accompanied Alexei Navalny from Omsk to Berlin. She was the one who was supposed to have gone to his hotel room in Tomsk and picked up the water bottle supposed to contain Novichok, at least until information came out that she acquired the water bottle from a vending machine at Omsk airport en route to Berlin. Pevchikh was the one person in Navalny's entourage who did not submit to questioning by Russian authorities on Navalny's poisoning. ..."
"... I recall that I first found the video below from a MofA comment, but very pertinent to this discussion and maybe it is discussing the same program: Top French Intel Boss Reveals Operation Beluga: US UK Plot to Discredit Putin and Destabilize Russia ..."
"... It gives me pause to try to understand the ethics / morals / humanity of the thousands of western bureaucrats working on these elaborate (sometimes comical) plans to destroy other nations. ..."
"... One visible thing about the complete "undermining of Russia", is that a large amount of bureaucratic planning has gone into it. The quantity of companies that have been employed and with specific duties to perform is shocking. An incidental factor is that the UK and French participants get well paid. £975 or £700 per day, in comparaison to "locally found" participants. ..."
Feb 16, 2021 | www.moonofalabama.org

In 2018 we wrote about:

The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The "Russian Threat" .

The reporting was based on the British Integrity Initiative's internal files which some 'anonymous' organization had acquired and published.

Data acquired from Britain's Foreign and Commonwealth Office by the same group revealed large British propaganda programs in support of Jihadis in Syria as well as British influence operations designed to undermine the security institutions of Lebanon and to secretly influence its population.

Now another large set of files has been published by the same source. These describe an extensive British government program designed to undermine Russia by organizing and financing 'independent' Russian language media, by 'training' Russian journalists and by secretly paying Russian influencers. It is certainly not the only British anti-Russia program but it probably has, secretly, the most public influence.

The anonymous author has laid out the complete Undermining Russia program in four extensive parts: One , two , three , four .

The information discussed is from government files which outlay various projects and from companies and -- interestingly -- from charities who make bids to run the FCO projects. All underlying files are available for download as one archive file (~80 MB).

The most interesting files are the bids the companies make for projects. They reveal previous projects, methods and people and thereby create the larger picture.

The budget for the various anti-Russian projects runs at dozens of millions pounds per year. The first programs were launched in 2016 and some continue through this year.

A 'Supplier Event' for one of the projects laid out the general idea :

Programme Strands

Note that 'Russian disinformation' is whatever Britain does not like about Russia. 'Exposing' such 'disinformation' is best done by spreading one's own. These are not defensive programs but attacks on Russia.

Projects to achieve the above were to be implemented in nearly every country that borders Russia and has a Russian speaking minority as well as in Russia itself.

The British government does not want you to know about such projects. The 'Supplier Event' sheet says:

Security

No unauthorised disclosures of activity on this work. Contract will need to take a look at who we are working with. Basic IT security reasonable steps should cover our requirements but the FCO may request an explanation of what steps have been taken to ensure security and Duty of Care.

It should be noted that for security reasons, some grantees will not wish to be linked to the FCO. It should be noted that the Programme Team would prefer the programme documents do not end up in the Russian media. We know that they are following us, and we are expecting an expose soon.

What is the overall purpose of such secret programs? The author of the Undermining Russia series explains that with regards to the 'poisoning' of Alexei Navalny:

Many years of painstaking work of HMG through its embassies and intelligence cutouts precede a chemical attack. They create Media, CSOs and pseudo humanitarian organisations that happen to be just at the correct place and in the correct time with their cameras ready when 'suddenly' a dreadful accident 'shocks every one into action'.

Do you believe HMG staged the 'Navalny accident' as part of some kind of a secret operation? Did HMG create Media outlets, nurture bloggers and stringers that it controlled? Did it engage Russia's youth and CSOs? Did it try to demonise Putin just like it had done with Assad by labeling them Evil Dictators who poisoned their people with forbidden chemical weapons? Do you know what all of this is needed for? They need it to delegitimise a leader of a country and convince people around the world that 'no holds should be barred to fight a mad dictator'. Can you grasp the gravity of what is going on? Well, you ought to. They are preparing us for war with the Russians and the Chinese. They are looking for casus belli, and only the truth can stop them, because 'if wars can be started by lies, they can be stopped by truth'. (Julian Assange)

That view is not even exaggerated. The 'west' has the knives out against Russia. We previous mentioned a report from the Pentagon think tank RAND which evaluated how to best 'unbalance and overextend' Russia. In the end it was clearly aimed at regime change in Russia, or if not otherwise possible, war. On Friday Gabriel Felbermayr , the president of the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, was asked by a German radio station about new sanctions the EU might impose on Russia. He is skeptic that those might work because (my translation):

The aims we have towards Russia are very big. We do not want anything less but regime change in Russia, which is difficult to achieve by economic pressure.

The new documents also reveal some interesting new points on Navalny who seems to be on the British government payroll:


bigger
These self-exposing documents show that the FCO has established a network of popular YouTubers in Russia who investigate corruption in the government, and the YouTubers get assistance from some journalists from the Baltic States. Also, the FCO has experience of instigating protests in Russia.

By now you must have guessed the identity of one of the popular YouTubers investigating corruption. After obtaining EXPOSE Network files and examining the case studies two years ago, we didn't figure out which YouTuber the FCO supported through ZINC. We refrained from making any preliminary conclusions even when journalists discovered that Vladimir Ashurkov, a close ally of Alexei Navalny, was a part of the Integrity Initiative cluster.

But when we saw Mr. Navalny and Bellingcat together, things started to make sense. By digging deeper, we discovered another Navalny's supporter who lives in London - some shadowy Maria Pevchikh who is promoting a system of smart voting in Russia. The Labour used a similar voting system to take the votes of the Conservatives. So, basically it is highly likely that the UK recommended the system to Mr. Navalny.

It also turned out that Navalny began a smear campaign against the RT - one of the few media outlets in the West that allows those who disagree with the official position of western government to speak out. Note that Navalny's campaign was running in parallel with that of the Integrity Initiative. A reasonable question is - why Navalny who is mostly engaged in political battles inside Russia spends time fighting a TV network operating outside the country? Was RT really such a problem for him? No, it wasn't. It was a problem for the Western imperialists and apparently, they told Navalny to join in.

Anyway. Here are again links to the four parts of 'Undermining Russia': One , two , three , four .

They give extensive insight into the methods the 'west' is using to destroy foreign countries. Knowledge that one needs to really understand what is happening in this world.

Posted by b on February 15, 2021 at 19:24 UTC | Permalink


Norwegian , Feb 15 2021 20:13 utc | 4
Many thanks b. This is real journalism. That is a strong compliment these days.
Paco , Feb 15 2021 20:22 utc | 5
Projects to achieve the above were to be implemented in nearly every country that borders Russia and has a Russian speaking minority as well as in Russia itself.

Not only countries bordering Russia, a cell existed in Spain and it had consequences, when the new government came to power the local cell ran a campaign against the new nominee for National Security for not being tough on Russia as required, he was out of the job, and the main local newspapers were and are in bed with British intelligence dutifully reporting how bad Russia is and how good Navalny and his boys are, journalists working for the media with the largest readership in the country. Some got fired when the scandal went public, others went through the revolving door, that simple. They had a lot to do with the Assange case, as explained in the link bellow.

Integrity Initiative Spain

Piotr Berman , Feb 15 2021 20:23 utc | 6
Russian authorities are more sophisticated that the British, not to mention Americans. The way I see it, American flunkies tend to make most glaring mistakes routinely, and with propaganda efforts they may get some mileage in Latin America -- not as much as they could wish. But in Europe and Middle East, it takes the British to keep track which country is which etc.

In that vein, Russia is not so eager to clobber Navalniks with political accusations. To a larger degree than China and the West, Russia wants to allow free access to information etc., and focuses on discrediting "Navalniks". Let them have 40 offices around the country plus a slew of foreign ones, online TV channels etc. In the same time, Russia is copying Western methods.

In the same time, collaborating with the West puts people who do it in an unpopular box. Navalny tries to circumvent those limitation with rank demagogy, but he still suffers by contagion, and from condemnations from less cynical followers of other Western projects -- for accepting Russian Crimea, frowning on immigrants etc.

Erelis , Feb 15 2021 20:57 utc | 10
On the US side, the program 60 Minutes just aired a segment where president of Microsoft claimed that the Russians used 1000+ hackers for the SolarWinds flair. No wonder Microsoft produces such crap software. If the Russians could manage 1000+ engineers, then they should be outsourced for all of DOD's software.

Largest-ever the world has seen': Microsoft president claims 1,000+ software engineers must have worked on SolarWinds breech
https://www.rt.com/news/515617-solarwinds-breach-largest-ever

The Biden admin is supposedly now deciding what new sanctions or actions to take against Russia. And this psyop comes out. Timing. All about timing. Somebody timed this.

Just confirms that the Biden regime will take the US into a shooting war with Russia just as the Brits were going toward that if their propaganda failed to oust Putin.

Stonebird , Feb 15 2021 21:08 utc | 11
Thanks b.
Skimmed through part 1. I see you are quoted. A question (which may be answered in a later part of the same), are the connections to the "five eyes" as well as the Spanish (re. Paco post) organised by the UK or are they joint efforts? (Anonymous doesn't think too much of the others.)

The FCO seems to be the operative, but is it really the originator? In the sense that at present the financial and "sanctions" elements are part of US/Israel policy. They may have been suggested by the FCO discretely?
-----
I note that Corbyn was attacked for anti-semitism by the FCO and also by Israeli media. They also seem to be deeply involved in the same setup. Were the Israelis involved in the planning?

karlof1 , Feb 15 2021 21:27 utc | 14
Many things to consider given this new information. It provides extra dimensions to Today's Crooke essay and the one by Tim Kirby I posted yesterday. Agent Smith tried to pooh-pooh it all by saying the international culture wars are a side show when in reality they are the crux of the matter since at the end of the day everything boils down to First Principles--Values. Truth, Virtue and Promotion of the Individual to Advance the Many versus Lies, Deceit and Denigration of the Individual to Advance The Few.
mpn , Feb 15 2021 21:28 utc | 15
@10 erelis. Noticed the paid advert on 60 minutes last nite, also. But after watching for 5 minutes, had to switch channels. Saw b's latest write up on Solarwinds which I would tend to trust note than ms / CBS. A follow up from b would be nice.
MarkU , Feb 15 2021 21:33 utc | 16
The poisoning narratives touted by the Western oligarchies and their corporate media should be seen for what they are, hilariously funny. As I said on a previous occasion, I laughed out loud for about half a minute when I read that Navalny had been poisoned with a 'novichok-like substance'. In the most literal sense those stories do not pass the laugh test. From the Litvinenko-polonium story to the Navalny- novichok underpants story they have all been a tissue of quite absurd lies.

Worryingly, despite the absurdities and the frequent changing of details in these narratives, people who are demonstrably quite intelligent in their daily lives appear to be buying into the anti-Russian narrative. People who can watch 'Game of Thrones' and comprehend a fictional character's argument when he asks the question 'why would I frame myself' are seemingly incapable of applying the argument in real life situations. Why would the FSB frame themselves? Why would they use a substance that has not yet succeeded in killing any of the intended targets? There must be literally hundreds if not thousands of toxins that could be used and there are countless other ways of killing a person.

Imagine a check box list of the desirable characteristics of an assassination weapon, neither 'novichok' nor polonium would tick enough (if any) of those boxes to be considered.

So what is it about? Clearly that rubbish is not going to work on the people of the Russian Federation (at least not enough of them to be worthwhile) That just leaves us as the target, they are quite obviously manufacturing consent. Do they actually mean to start WW3? or is it a bluff intended to frighten the Russians into submission? Or ruin their economy with massive increases in arms expenditure? Perhaps it is just more pressure to cancel Nordstream 2 so the US can sell their overpriced fracked gas and delay their coming economic collapse for a short while. Only time will tell, I fear the worst.

Oligarchies usually end with arrogance, stupidity, ignorance and eventually insanity. The modern counterparts of Nero and Caligula are running the western world. While dynasties are usually founded by exceptional people, as a rule the only exceptional thing about their descendants is their arrogance.

Mar man , Feb 15 2021 21:42 utc | 17
There are some flaws in western plans.
  1. Russians can, and do, watch and read western media to see firsthand how badly western press slander Putin and Russians in general. Putin is extremely popular in Russia for saving the country from oligarchs, reuniting Crimea, shutting down western sponsored terrorism in southern Russia and standing up to naked aggression from NATO. Western press shows Russians just how stupid western people have become by believing the inane poisoning stories, airplane shootdowns, and Russian "invasions" such as Crimea. The Russians only need to read western press to know the west is preparing regime change or war. Putin and the Kremlin do not need to say a word to convince Russians the west considers them enemies.
  2. The constant lies about Russia and threats to Europeans and Turkey are backfiring. The Germans, Turks and others are furious over the British and Americans constantly demonizing them for making smart business deals and military purchases with Russia. With all the "maximum pressure" campaigns and sanctions, some European and Middle East countries consider the US and UK bigger threats than Russia.
  3. If the west actually achieves the goal of starting war with Russia, the result will be disastrous for the west. Russia has become so advanced militarily, there is no doubt Russia would easily crush any attacks and then counter attack. Be careful what you wish for, Americans.
JohninMK , Feb 15 2021 21:47 utc | 18
Whilst we the British people, who have no problem with the Russians, have no say in the matter. Oh to be a fly on the wall at the next official Anglo Russian get together. That will be a 'shortest straw' gig as no British politician will want to face Lavrov now, especially after that EU prat visit last week.
John Cleary , Feb 15 2021 22:07 utc | 19
Very interesting b.

Alex Salmond joined RT as a commentator in November 2017. Immediately the powers of the west turned against him.

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/02/the-moa-week-in-review-ot-2021-011.html?cid=6a00d8341c640e53ef026bdebc837b200c#comment-6a00d8341c640e53ef026bdebc837b200c

But Alex is a helluva politician. He fought back, and that fightback reaches its climax in the coming weeks.

https://consortiumnews.com/2021/02/08/scottish-politics-in-crisis-as-craig-murray-testifies-on-plot-against-alex-salmond/

What's going on? Why this animosity towards Russia?

I'll give you my opinion.

The British leadership are VERY ambitious. The nature of their empire has changed. First, They no longer seek to become an empire of nations, but rather an empire of national leaders - primarily Heads of State who control the domestic legal system. Second, they are a feminist empire, with power passed from mother to daughter. They are able to do this because, while there can be but one King, there can be multiple queens simultaneously. For example, from the death of George vi in 1952 until the death of Mary of Teck in 1953 there were no less that three queens of the United Kingdom. Then until 2001 there were two queens. Like chess, with two queens you always win the game.

But they can only do this while the United Kingdom exists. England alone, shorn of Scotland, loses the medieval laws and powers that underpin this empire.

If you investigate the monarchies of Europe you will find that they all are members of the Order of the Garter (KG). This is a sovereign order, which means that in order to join one must swear an oath to the Sovereign of the Order, Queen Elizabeth.

If you investigate the politicians of the US you will find many that have joined the Order of Bath (KB) even though it is explicitly against the constitution for them to do so (I think it is called the Emoluments Clause, but I may have misremembered). Again, in order to join this organization you must swear an oath to Queen Elizabeth.

It used to be that only the Republicans (Reagan, Bush, Weinberger and so on). But in January 2001 I came across a photograph of the three Clintons "leaving Buckingham Palace following a private visit". The benefits gained by the Clintons is what has launched the family into the big time of money and personal unrestrained power and the complete control of the Democratic Party.

This is a millennial empire. It is meant to last for a thousand years. The other great civilizations - Russia, China, Iran - are equally millennial, and are seen as a threat to the British plans for world domination.

The other great civilizations understand all I have written. They know a fight is coming. And I think that this is the reason that Lavrov finally took off the gloves when dealing with Borrell last week. For while he would bend over backwards to understand the EU position in the past, the UK has now quit the EU. The only ties now to the British Empire are those personal ones to the monarchs of Europe like, in the case of Borrell, Felipe vi and his father, juan Carlos. Both Knights of the Garter.

Hope this helps.

Tuyzentfloot , Feb 15 2021 22:28 utc | 20
Devinette: when was the last time a state which was not supported by the US has committed a chemical attack? I think we can dismiss Syria and Iraq.
psychohistorian , Feb 15 2021 22:30 utc | 21
@ John Cleary | Feb 15 2021 22:07 utc | 19 with the description of the British empire

About that Queen thing. I can't think right now where the details are but it is my understanding that annually the Queen presents herself to the City of London in a supplicatory manner. I agree that there is empire and that the Queen is part of the fabric of the curtain behind which are the real lever movers, those that own global private finance.

Paul , Feb 15 2021 22:55 utc | 24
British hostility to Russia has a long history. Indeed, we should not forget that the British Royal family supported Hitler. No doubt this, at least in part, accounts for Neville Chamberlain's 'appeasement' Adolf Hitler, following Germany's annexation of Sudetenland in 1938 and sequent invasion of Czechoslovakia in March, 1939.
See- A brief history of the British Royals and their alleged Nazi connections 28 Aug 2017; Link:
https://www.sbs.com.au/guide/article/2017/08/28/brief-history-british-royals-and-their-alleged-nazi-connections
kiwiklown , Feb 15 2021 23:04 utc | 25
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 15 2021 21:27 utc | 14 -- "Many things to consider given this new information. It provides extra dimensions to Today's Crooke essay and the one by Tim Kirby I posted yesterday. Agent Smith tried to pooh-pooh it all by saying the international culture wars are a side show when in reality they are the crux of the matter since at the end of the day everything boils down to First Principles--Values. Truth, Virtue and Promotion of the Individual to Advance the Many versus Lies, Deceit and Denigration of the Individual to Advance The Few."

Thanks, karlof1, for yet another informative article. Saved it for study along with the Tim Kirby article.

So much to read... so much to learn.... so much to pleasure in.... first principles, eternal values, objective truth, good governance... and did God say that the white man's burden is to go rape, pillage, rob the rest of the world?

And thanks for reminding me that his name is Agent Smith.

This is to help me remember not to engage trolls and / or idiots:

"Never again will we try to persuade a foolish person with reason, for it is senseless and dangerous. In conversation with them, one virtually feels that one is dealing not at all with a person, but with slogans, catchwords and the like that have taken possession of them. They are under a spell, blinded, misused, and abused in their very being.' -- Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Letters and Papers from Prison

Jen , Feb 15 2021 23:08 utc | 26
... These self-exposing documents show that the FCO has established a network of popular YouTubers in Russia who investigate corruption in the government, and the YouTubers get assistance from some journalists from the Baltic States. Also, the FCO has experience of instigating protests in Russia ...

It would be interesting to know if the Russian-language news website Meduza.io might have some connection to this assistance to the YouTubers. Meduza.io is based in Riga, Latvia, and employs Russian-language journalists. Kevin Rothrock , formerly of The Moscow Times (English-language newspaper in Moscow), is editor-in-chief of Meduza.io's international version.

BTW Maria Pevchikh accompanied Alexei Navalny from Omsk to Berlin. She was the one who was supposed to have gone to his hotel room in Tomsk and picked up the water bottle supposed to contain Novichok, at least until information came out that she acquired the water bottle from a vending machine at Omsk airport en route to Berlin. Pevchikh was the one person in Navalny's entourage who did not submit to questioning by Russian authorities on Navalny's poisoning.

I think we should see a bit more (in Google's English-language translation) of what Gabriel Felbermayr said to Katharina Petz of Deutschlandfunk:

Gabriel Felbermayr : I am sceptical about [further sanctions]. The question is always what we want to achieve with sanctions. If we really want to bring Russia to its knees economically, we would need a large coalition of countries to do so, and Europe alone cannot do as much as is necessary. At least China on board and, best of all, India and other [Russia's] trading partners would need it. The fact that sanctions have worked so badly in the past has to do with the fact that they are being undermined by other countries, that is a key problem. That is why I am sceptical that putting a on it (sic) really helps now. The objectives we have with Russia are very large. After all, we want nothing less than regime change in Russia, which is very difficult to achieve with economic pressure ...

... I believe that we must also see who we are hitting with the sanctions. Are these really the people who are acting and who, in the light of the sanctions, may then reconsider their actions, or is it the general population that is hit very diffusely, each a little bit. This does not hurt enough, so to speak, to put great pressure on the regime, but it does hit the general public. That is why I believe that a sanctions instrument that is much more adicating (sic) to individuals is more promising and does not affect the broad mass of Russians. That already exists, we are using it in the European Union. These could be travel restrictions, that could be the freezing of assets abroad, and this could also be sanctions against certain companies that are very close to the Kremlin. Perhaps there is more that can be done than Europe alone, because Russian foreign assets are not in China, so to speak, and the second residences of Russian oligarchs are not somewhere in the Third World, but in Monaco and London and Paris. So smart sanctions are certainly what is more promising – one has to ask whether Europe has the right instruments ...

...Yes, of course, the economic impact of the sanctions is quite different. Germany suffers from the Russia sanctions that have been in place since 2014, more than any country in the world, in absolute terms, and is also much more affected in percentage of economic output than in France. In Germany, this costs about 0.2% of GDP, according to various estimates, and in France this figure is much lower. There are, of course, other European countries where the level of concern is higher, [Bulgaria] for example, or the Eastern European Member States of the European Union as a whole. This unequal concern is certainly a political dilemma.

It is also a political problem with regard to the United States of America, which, while always insisting and pushing for sanctions, has so far drawn little economic disadvantage from it, simply because US trade with Russia is very low. That is the core problem when it comes to forging a broad coalition that costs are too unevenly distributed. We would certainly also have to think about compensation mechanisms within Europe or within the Western world, so that the joint fight against the violation of human rights, for example in Russia, must be paid for economically, not only by a few countries ...

... Yes, I would agree, I think [Nordstream II shutdown] is overestimated. The question is how much billions of export revenues Russia generates in the European Union by selling natural gas, that is the central question. And whether natural gas enters the European Union via Ukraine or Turkey or Germany does not matter much. It may even be the case that the possibility of shutting down or blocking such a pipeline again, or imposing conditions, means that Germany will even get a leverage over Russia that would not otherwise have been possible.

So I also think that Nord Stream 2 is overestimated. Here again the question would have to be asked, who does it actually cost if you do not complete the project. A great many European and German investors are also negatively affected, and with sanctions we want to inflict pain, above all, on the Russian power apparatus and not on ourselves. I believe that Nord Stream 2 is a bad instrument ...

So the sanctions regime against Russia is hitting the EU, and Germany and parts of Eastern Europe in particular, harder than it's hitting Russia and the EU needs more nations on board with sanctioning Russia.

I can't imagine the US would be willing to compensate the EU for any losses it has to sustain by sanctioning Russian government officials and businesspeople.

schmoe , Feb 15 2021 23:11 utc | 27
I recall that I first found the video below from a MofA comment, but very pertinent to this discussion and maybe it is discussing the same program: Top French Intel Boss Reveals Operation Beluga: US UK Plot to Discredit Putin and Destabilize Russia
Sam F , Feb 15 2021 23:26 utc | 29
The UK aristocracy and their opportunists have nothing to credit themselves but ill-gotten money or the hope thereof, they have always been forced to equate money=virtue to pretend to any merit, between themselves and their families. This is the cause of their eternal hatred of socialism and virtue in government, and their eternal hatred of Russia, even in the post-USSR era. If they have no one with less money to hate, they have no claim to personal merit, and must face the truth.

Of course the same is true of the upper classes anywhere, even among the poorest. For what was the purpose of their lying, cheating, stealing and perpetual materialism, what were the values they taught their children, if money is not virtue. Virtue is an unknown land to them, an unforgiveable sin, for that way lies the ugly truth about them.

Passer by , Feb 15 2021 23:28 utc | 30
>>More British Efforts To Undermine Russia

Lots of people living in la la land - that is - in the good old times when the West subjugated the planet.

UK economic drop 2020 -10 %
EU economic drop -7 %
Russia economic drop -3.1 %

Moment to reach 2019 Q4 economic level:
UK beginning of 2023
EU beginning of 2023
Russia Autumn 2021

>>Gabriel Felbermayr: The aims we (EU) have towards Russia are very big. We do not want anything less but regime change in Russia.

Yes, Gabi, it is good that you are honest. It will only warn people of your intentions, so it is preferable to talk that way. :) Meanwhile, in the real world, lots of EU businesses and NGOs will flew out from Russia and be replaced with Asian ones. It already happening with cars, trade, energy flows, diplomatic missions and tourists. So good riddance to bad rubbish.

Passer by , Feb 15 2021 23:35 utc | 32
Posted by: Jen | Feb 15 2021 23:08 utc | 26

>>I can't imagine the US would be willing to compensate the EU for any losses it has to sustain by sanctioning Russian government officials and businesspeople.

The place of the EU in this whole scheme was already described by Victoria Nuland. That is - "F the EU". :)

This is not a problem though, they have long experience with it.

oldhippie , Feb 15 2021 23:45 utc | 34
US will not be selling any LNG to EU/Germany to compensate for loss of NS2. The fracking business is shutting down and shutting down right now. Wells are going offline, replacements are not being drilled. No drill, no gas. Fertilizer shortages are already in sight. As we lose ability to grow food we will not be sending feedstock material across the ocean just because it sounded good in a strategic fantasy.
kiwiklown , Feb 15 2021 23:59 utc | 37
Posted by b on February 15, 2021 at 19:24 UTC | -- "They give extensive insight into the methods the 'west' is using to destroy foreign countries."

Thanks, B, for using the light of truth to expose the insanity of western leadership. It gives me pause to try to understand the ethics / morals / humanity of the thousands of western bureaucrats working on these elaborate (sometimes comical) plans to destroy other nations. How does a "civil" servant like that conceive such evil, then go home to teach their children how to be human beings? This banality of evil is absolutely unfathomable to ordinary people such as I.

Reminds me of the thousands of good Germans who "went along to get along" on the way into WW2. Also, the thousands of good British "planners" who war-gamed their way into WW2.

Passer by , Feb 16 2021 0:06 utc | 40
Gabriel Felbermayr

>>And whether natural gas enters the European Union via Ukraine or Turkey or Germany does not matter much.

This ignorant euro-puppet should be fired immediately.

Having a gas pipeline via Turkey increases the geopolitical weight of Turkey and it allows it to blackmail the Balkan Countries receiving the gas.

Using the Ukrainian route means that additional billions of euros will have to be invested in repairing the old and disrepeit Ukrainian Gas Transit Network which is from the 80s, with good amount of the money disappearing due to corruption.

The gas then may stop due to Russia-Ukrainian disputes (as it happened in the past) or "misterious" explosions may happen on the pipeline (as it happened too).

It is also unclear for how long will Russia be interested in saving the EU from freezing (in January the EU was forced to buy record amounts of gas due to cold temperatures), considering the rise of Asian markets.

Right now Russia is connecting the Western pipelines and the Eastern Pipelines, meaning that "EU gas" may be reserved for the East.

Gazprom is also looking to accelerate work on the Power of Siberia 2 (PoS2) pipeline, as part of plans to unite domestic gas transmission infrastructure across eastern and western Russia into a single system.

https://www.argusmedia.com/en/news/2127793-work-starts-on-final-part-of-russiachina-gas-pipeline

karlof1 , Feb 16 2021 1:24 utc | 41
TASS reports Lavorv's comments after meeting Finnish Foreign Minister revealing the lawless nature of the EU's behavior as it abets crimes against its own laws:

"The minister paid special attention to the fact that Brussels enables brazen violations of rights of Russian speakers and attacks on the Russian language and culture in the Baltic States, Ukraine and several other states. '

Of course, we cannot but take into account the EU condoning blatant breaches of Russian speakers, Russians and the attacks on the Russian language and culture that we witness in the Baltic States, Ukraine and some other countries. When Russian-speaking [TV] channels are shut down, when criminal cases are opened against Russian-speaking journalists for simply doing their jobs, when the disgraceful institute of statelessness remains in the EU, while the European Union watches it all without any desire to change anything, I believe that it is not Russia distancing itself from the EU, but the very EU moves away from the Russian language, Russian culture and all things Russian, meaning that it is drifting away from the Russian Federation ,' the minister noted." [My Emphasis]

As reported earlier, Russia will finish Nord Stream 2 and continue fulfilling its commitments. But given EU co-responsibility for the terrorism and refugee crises combined with the recent revelations, I don't see any positive developments occurring.

kiwiklown , Feb 16 2021 1:57 utc | 42
Posted by: Jen | Feb 15 2021 23:08 utc | 26

Thanks for that very revealing translation of Gabriel Felbermayr's words. It shows that a man can be intelligent and insane at the same time. He speaks as if the need for destroying Russia is a given. Sounds like he is one of those thousands who go along to get along....

"I fooled myself. I had to. I didn't want to see it, because I would then have had to think about the consequences of seeing it, what followed from seeing it, what I must do to be decent. I wanted my home and family, my job, my career, a place in the community." -- Milton Mayer, They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45

norecovery , Feb 16 2021 2:02 utc | 43
Let's get to the heart of the matter: why are expatriate Jews so mad at Russia? That is it, in the simplest terms, is it not?
norecovery , Feb 16 2021 2:20 utc | 44
The answer: because they can never get enough.
kiwiklown , Feb 16 2021 2:33 utc | 45
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 15 2021 23:46 utc | 35 -- "I see New Zealand is still headed by the Queen of England. Time for independence I'd say!"

No way to break free until the world order is rearranged after WW3.

Which may, or may not be during our lifetimes..... ;o)

RJPJR , Feb 16 2021 2:54 utc | 46
For Psychohistorian and John Cleary, regarding the City of London...

The City was never thoroughly brought to heel by William the Conqueror with the result that it was granted a sort of autonomy within the realm, hence its absence in the Doomsday Book, which assessed the realm's lands for taxation by the crown. Whether or not it is part of the United Kingdom is a moot point, for its autonomy (strengthened over time) makes it, in a sense, impervious to United Kingdom legislation that it wishes to ignore. In this regard, it is a sort of anomaly, like the Channel Islands (the last remaining part of the Duchy of Normandy still under the British crown) and the Isle of Mann, both of which are NOT part of the United Kingdom and were not part of the European Union, and both of which are notorious tax havens.

The peculiar status of the City of London is what has made it a great financial center, for it can regulate itself (and does, to some extent, if only to keep the scandalmongers at bay), unlike the New York and Swiss financial centers, which are subject to "outside" oversight, New York by the SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) and Switzerland by the FINMA (Financial Market Supervisory Authority).

kiwiklown , Feb 16 2021 2:57 utc | 47
MarkU @ 16 -- "While dynasties are usually founded by exceptional people, as a rule the only exceptional thing about their descendants is their arrogance."

Ancient Chinese wisdom on generational wealth: First generation make money; second generation keep money; third generation lose money. Start over.

MarkU @ 16 -- "Oligarchies usually end with arrogance, stupidity, ignorance and eventually insanity. "

Good fit for most parts of the Western (*) leadership, lying one day, reversing their own lies the next, then reverting to their original lie, then pivoting to some other lie. Insane. They have gone past derision, gone past shame, gone past dishonour, into insanity. Destruction cometh next.

(*) Russia is Eurasia, not the West.

Stonebird , Feb 16 2021 11:33 utc | 68
"Now it's time to expose another intelligence cutout - BBC Media Action. Don't be surprised that the detested mainstream media outlet BBC has its own secret firm which gets its funding from your taxes as well as from the CSSF." (Taken from part two)

One visible thing about the complete "undermining of Russia", is that a large amount of bureaucratic planning has gone into it. The quantity of companies that have been employed and with specific duties to perform is shocking. An incidental factor is that the UK and French participants get well paid. £975 or £700 per day, in comparaison to "locally found" participants.

Other things of note are the targeting of Russian speaking, younger age groups and the admission that the over 40's are more difficult to change. (This is a common factor for other areas of propaganda as well.)

The "Covid story" has had an effect. No longer are " mother and daughter tea parties " with 40 participants possible. Not a joke , but it serves to underline the thoroughness of the propaganda effort leading up to effect a "regime change".

----
About the Monarchy, and inferred connection to the "landed Gentry Aristocracy". Possible, but would rely on education in the "best" Schools, and their production of eligible members of "secret" manipulative societies via old boy networks, as well as "ordinary" leaders. ie Politicians, Top civil servants.
Private Schools such as Eton and Harrow have recognised "specialities" and form the basis of networks. It is not for nothing that you have to put the names down of likely progeny almost at birth. Closed shop attitude as in a "trade Union"! ST. Johns, Leatherhead, produces clergy for example.
The UK Monarchy was connected by intermarriage to almost all the Royalty in Europe. There are still connections (for those who have the cash), through such goups as Bilderberg, etc.

The relation of the "Dukes" to a desire to take over Russia, is a possible source of interest. ie. The Duke of Grosvernor owns the Square mile of the City of London. (Which is an entity in itself.) The City has the key to the finance of the UK and much of the "dark money, and money laundering in the world.
----
all for today.

Jackrabbit , Feb 16 2021 15:08 utc | 73
vetinLA @Feb16 6:32 #60
Those beliefs led us to DJT..
Obama, Bernie and DJT have led their flocks to nowhere. What led us to them is the establishment's desire to derail populist Movements.

One clue (among many): Each of these so-called populists is pro-Empire.

Nothing will change as long as we keep falling for compromised leaders that are promoted by a compromised media.

!!

Stonebird , Feb 16 2021 15:49 utc | 74
JohninMK | Feb 16 2021 12:59 utc | 70

I heard this when I was a student in London. It may be hearsay after all, as I also tried to find relevant info after your comment. Trouble is the enormous power of the City, the Banks, and major corporations all who have a "vote" (or not) in the affairs of the Corporation, make any detailed study next to impossible. Trusts, etc. I followed somebodies FOI request which led to ..... nothing.

Note that known Grosvenor territory (the house I had a flat in. The street belonged to them.) were part of their assets, and in the last seven years of a 99yr lease. After which it had to be "returned in the same state as it was "sold" in the first place.

The present Duke does apparently not have much to say in the Grosvenor Family Trust. He is still rich. (according to one grovelling article).

It does make a prime suspect for setting up the Anti-Russian saga, as those Banks/Corporations and Billionaires etc. would be the ones to profit massively from a"regime change".

tut, tut !!

Prof K , Feb 16 2021 17:23 utc | 81
Like clockwork, the NYT begins to set a rationalization for more US imperialism in Syria. This is such a contrived article. It doesn't come out of the blue.
These ferocious dogs never stop. The push is to rebuild the Turkish relationship, and so regain influence over Syria through 'protecting Idlib' and its 'children.'

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/16/world/middleeast/syria-turkey-erdogan-afrin.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage

Charles Michael , Feb 16 2021 17:33 utc | 82
Karlofi (with all due respect for your posts)

About Tim Kirby advises to Russia. The guy is completely delusional and really ignorant of Russia history and mental structures.Russi is not going to metamporphose in USA or UEJohn Hermer: http://johnhelmer.net/1000th-dance-with-bears/
But Russia is going fine with China

karlof1 , Feb 16 2021 18:07 utc | 83
Charles Michael @81--

Thanks for your reply! I've often disagreed with Kirby; but as I wrote in my first linking to his essay, there are some suggestions that merge with ideas we've discussed over the months here. I've written about what I see as Russia's fundamental ideology, how it differs from the West, and fume intensely when Putin says differences with the West aren't ideological when it's so clear they are--Putin just laid out the vast chasm in his Davos speech. Lavrov just reiterated that Russia cannot abide nations/organizations that are pathological prevaricators. And China is the same. IMO, the First Principles of Russia and China are the ones humanity needs to adhere to and merge with policy. They are the same as those proposed by Henry Wallace for his Century of The Common Man. I see them as an evolutionary step forward to a Commonwealth of Humanity that would inspire a Great Leveling--which the elite of course oppose. The most recent manifestation of the Abrahamic Religions also appeals to such an arrangement as does most Afro/Asian philosophy.

What we have is an embattled minority trying to keep its power using every trick at its disposal. The #1 question most of us have: Is that minority suicidal--will it see nuclear war as a way to keep its position? Putin has answered that if it does try it will lose. And IMO, the minority knows that it currently will lose but hopes to reverse that outcome--They don't seek compromise as they want it all. And that's where the big problem lies--How to dissuade them of their unattainable Zero-sum Fetish?

psychohistorian , Feb 16 2021 18:24 utc | 85
So empire (is it British, American, Jewish...) threw up Donald Trump as the attempt to gather the totally delusional around a maniacal "strong/bully" leader to push back against the Russia/China axis and it didn't work entirely like they wanted but it broke enough social anchors to increase the fragility/fear factors of society. When the mostly manufactured crisis does come they trust their ability to manufacture Western outcomes that keep private finance alive and with some ongoing control over some chunk of the world.

I don't expect to live to see private finance go entirely away anymore. I think the trajectory is set in that direction but the timeframe will be longer than I wanted/expected. Look at the number of commenters here that still want to play whack-a-mole bad apples games while behind the curtain the global private finance elite are continuing their species perversion through British ways like b has shown here.

The West needs a better social system that has the broader public instead of a cult of folks as its focus or we will continue our road to deserved extinction.

juliania , Feb 16 2021 18:47 utc | 86
emersonreturn @ 9, I have just done the same this morning as gently as I could with family members in New Zealand. It is very hard for them to recognize this is not all Trump's doing - especially when they are benefitting from better government themselves as far as coping with the virus, and they remember fondly better days in the relationship with the US.

All we can do is keep trying.

Paco , Feb 16 2021 18:56 utc | 87
Lavrov at work, day after day. Today with Togolese Foreign Minister, a quick translation so as to induce a little smile:

Question: How do Western countries view the rapprochement between Russia and African countries?

Foreign Minister Lavrov: In different ways. Some are neutral, others, like the former US Administration, are very negative. Former US Secretary of State M. Pompeo traveled to Africa before the end of President Trump's term and publicly urged not to cooperate with Russia and China in the field of trade, because Moscow and Beijing allegedly proceed from geopolitical interests, trying to benefit. The United States, on the other hand, "does it from the heart." I will not comment on this kind of position.

Recently, representatives of the new US Administration called on the Russian Sputnik V vaccine to be viewed with suspicion, since again, this is a "Kremlin's geopolitical plan" and one must be "careful" not to become "dependent on Russia."

willie , Feb 16 2021 19:00 utc | 88
I think Crimea was meant to be the new homeland for Israel citizens, when the usurpator state goes down. Now they will have to save themselves to Patagonia.
Hoarsewhisperer , Feb 16 2021 19:11 utc | 89
Intriguing topic.
It's anyone's guess why the Christian West's front-of-curtain leaders are training the Homeland serfs to become accustomed to 24/7 lies about remote enemies. The notion that the West can "win" a war with Russia/China is laughable. Each/both could retaliate EFFECTIVELY if attacked. So if the bs isn't about WWIII then what is it about?

My guess is that it's nothing more sophisticated than Creative Distraction from what's been going on in AmeriKKKa and, to a lesser extent the Rest of the West, since the Oligarchs had their own taxes slashed in the '70s, '80s and '90s. This helped to fund the Oligarch's favourite hobby: "Privatise Every Publicly Owned Monopoly/Utility." Keeping wage-growth flat also helped to fund the take-over.

From a country-to-country perspective the trend, whilst quite uneven, has been inexorable. And there is a notable absence of serious debate about reversing the trend.

It doesn't matter what the ultimate goal of this social engineering may or may not be. It has to be reversed. And one way to reverse it would be to submit every excuse Rich People use to justify their tax breaks to Public Scrutiny and laughed out of court.

In the 1950s Rich People, worldwide, paid eye-watering Taxes on all 'excess income' beyond the top marginal rate. And when they went to Heaven their Estate was taxed on its 'excess value'. They've killed off those taxes too, by playing one country/ jurisdiction off against another - using Lawfare (high-priced lawyers whom ordinary folk can't afford).

They're too eerily inept to win a war against Russia/China. Their war is against their own countrymen. And it's aim is to prevent as many serfs as possible from getting their grubby little mits on OUR MONEY!

juliania , Feb 16 2021 19:19 utc | 91
Thank you, karlof1 @ 14; Crooke's essay is masterful! If only others in the West could be persuaded to read it -- the references to Ireland and India are so persuasive, but then he doesn't stop but demonstrates how the situation today is so much worse. The bolded quote,
"...We may have democracy, or we may have surveillance society, but we cannot have both." (Emphasis added).

has to be seen in the entirety of the article to be appreciated, and his definition of the EU as a cartel is pure genius! They are all not even worthy of the title 'empire' -- they are all cartels!!

Jo , Feb 16 2021 19:31 utc | 93
UK loaned 1.5b to Ukraine to build 2 warships for them...plus rebuild shipyards to re construct the navy....paratroopers are training Ukraine forces....do they plan to go against Donbass like this....reminds me of old film a bridge too far where British forces failed ......and Nato gonna give Black Sea a lot more trouble for Russia too.
karlof1 , Feb 16 2021 19:48 utc | 94
Paco @87--

I was just going to post the link to that transcript, From it much can be learned about the degree of Russian involvement in Togo and Africa as a whole; this for example:

"The Association for Economic Cooperation with the African States was created in Russia following the 2019 Sochi summit. It includes representatives from the related departments and major Russian companies. The Russia-Africa Partnership Forum, which is a political association, was created as well. Its secretariat is located at the Russian Foreign Ministry. We agreed to hold the forum's annual political meetings at the foreign minister level, from Russia and the African Union Troika that is comprised of its former, current and incoming chairpersons. In 2020, we held them via videoconference with the foreign ministers from South Africa, Egypt and the Democratic Republic of the Congo. Hopefully, we'll be able to meet in person in 2021."

That's a lot of interaction that also includes Russian businesses, all of which ought to be added to China's activities. In addition to what Paco provided, there's this closing paragraph that reveals more of the Anti-Russian nature of BidenCo:

" It wasn't long ago that representatives of the new US administration said the Russian Sputnik V vaccine should be treated with suspicion, since it was another geopolitical plan from the Kremlin, and that one must be careful not to become dependent on Russia . It's sad if they have nothing else to say about normal and friendly relations between countries, and if this is the only thing that they have to say about this. We never make friends with other countries in order to oppose third countries. If Russia and its foreign partners are mutually attracted, we have every right to develop our relations as we see fit. I hope others will also learn their lessons and treat our ties with Africa with respect." [My Emphasis]

Russia and China act while the Outlaw US Empire focuses on fashioning a False Narrative that can easily be seen as such. However, it seems the underlying scourge is becoming easier for English speakers to see: "All animals are equal; but some animals are more equal than others."

Paco , Feb 16 2021 20:14 utc | 98
Posted by: karlof1 | Feb 16 2021 19:48 utc | 94

Too bad the mid.ru site usually does not publish the guests comments and answers, excess of caution maybe, but it was interesting what the Togo foreign minister had to say concerning good relations with the Soviet Union and then Russia in many countries all over Africa, he expressed his gratitude for the many African students in Russia, students that have become high cadres in Togo and other countries. Another interesting point was the fact that Lome is the main deep water port in all of West Africa, and therefore the minister was talking about regional matters, Togo as a hub. Macron must have watched the press conference, after all the foreign minister spoke in French. Russia is recovering lost presence in Africa.


[Jan 17, 2021] Leaked Documents Suggest The FBI and British Intelligence Are Using COINTELPRO Tactics Against Nationalists - National Justic

Jan 17, 2021 | national-justice.com

British Security Service's Involvement In Combat 18

While the FBI's COINTELPRO program in the 1960s is well-documented, the British government has engaged in similar intelligence operations more recently.

When the British National Party (BNP), under the leadership of John Tyndall, began making inroads in local elections during the early 1990s, a parallel and initially friendly organization, Combat 18, emerged around the same time.

C18, as it came to be known, was founded by a man named Charlie Sargeant with help from American Harold Covington.

Initially, Tyndall enjoyed the enthusiasm of C18 members, who promised to help defend against "antifa" groups that were attacking BNP events.

The relationship quickly soured when C18 began attacking the BNP for its parliamentary approach, which they saw as inferior to C18's open avowal of terrorism -- "direct action" -- to achieve political ends. Later, C18 members launched a campaign of ruthless beatings of lone BNP members and became a source of gossip and slander against other nationalist leaders in the British scene.

In 1995, Tyndall wrote an editorial in the BNP's newspaper Spearhead outlining C18's irrational and violent war to destroy the BNP , despite both sharing similar goals and enemies. In it, he states his belief that C18 was being influenced by MI5 and the Special Branch, with help from the FBI in America, in a ploy to disrupt and discredit the British nationalist movement.

A year and a half later, C18 leader Charlie Sargeant murdered Christopher Castle during a power struggle for control of the group with Wilf Browning.

According to an investigative piece on the incident, Sargeant and Browning told police during their interrogations that they had friends in high places and wanted to speak to the Special Branch (a British counter-terrorism agency). They tried to use their service to the unit as a way to get out of trouble. Tyndall's suspicions were confirmed: Sargeant and Browning were indeed state assets and had special license to commit crimes.

A chapter in researcher Larry O'Hara's 1994 book Turning Up the Heat: Mi5 After the Cold War suggests that Combat 18 was partially organic, but then was taken over by MI5 agents and informants as both a counter-intelligence project to undermine and divide the BNP, as well as a honeypot to peel away the most violent outliers in the National Front and BNP with the intention of later entrapping them in bogus terror plots to justify their crackdowns.

As for C18's other "founder," Harold Covington, nationalists such as William Pierce have for decades suspected he was himself an FBI asset and agent provocateur. Covington was known for inventing lies from whole cloth about high profile nationalists in America and loudly broadcasting them, including that they were police informants, thieves, homosexuals, pedophiles, secret Jews, and other baseless gossip.

Left-wing activist Nick Martin filed a FOIA request to see the FBI's files on Covington in December 2018, but the government continues to drag its feet in providing them according to Martin's most recent update last month on MuckRock.

If Covington is confirmed to have been an intelligence operative, then MI5 and the FBI have recently collaborated in these nefarious conspiracies against nationalist dissidents.

[Oct 19, 2020] MI6 outgoing chief: the perceived threat posed by Russia and China against the UK is overstated and distract from addressing the UK's domestic problems

And that's by design. False flags like Scripal Novichok saga are just a smoke screen over UK problems, the ciursi of neoliberalism in the country, delegitimization of neoliberal elites and its subservience to the USA global neoliberal empire, which wants to devour Russia like it plundered the USSR in the past.
But why outgoing MI6 chief decided to tell us the truth? This is not in the traditions of the agency.
Oct 19, 2020 | www.rt.com

After years of focusing on combating terrorism, US Special Forces are preparing to turn their attention to the possibility of future conflict with adversaries Russia and China. The outgoing head of MI6, the UK's clandestine intelligence service, says that the perceived threat posed by Russia and China against the UK is overstated and distract from addressing the UK's domestic problems. Meanwhile, his replacement insists that the threat posed by Russia and China is real and is growing in complexity. Rick Sanchez explains. Then former US diplomat Jim Jatras and "Going Underground" host Afshin Rattansi share their insights.

The Senate Judiciary Committee is meeting for a for a final day of deliberations before the confirmation of Judge Amy Coney Barrett, President Trump's controversial pick for the US Supreme Court. RT America's Faran Fronczak reports. RT America's Trinity Chavez reports on the skyrocketing poverty across the US as coronavirus relief funds dry up and the White House stalls on additional stimulus. RT America's John Huddy reports on the backlash against Facebook and Twitter for their suppression of an incendiary new report about Democratic nominee Joe Biden's son Hunter Biden and his foreign entanglements.

[Oct 15, 2020] Britain has always been unfair, unequal and divided Covid-19 has only served to show this in even more stark relief -- RT Op-ed

Oct 15, 2020 | www.rt.com

Britain has always been unfair, unequal and divided – Covid-19 has only served to show this in even more stark relief Dr Lisa McKenzie Dr Lisa McKenzie

Dr Lisa McKenzie is a working-class academic. She grew up in a coal-mining town in Nottinghamshire and became politicized through the 1984 miners' strike with her family. At 31, she went to the University of Nottingham and did an undergraduate degree in sociology. Dr McKenzie lectures in sociology at the University of Durham and is the author of 'Getting By: Estates, Class and Culture in Austerity Britain.' She's a political activist, writer and thinker. Follow her on Twitter @redrumlisa . 14 Oct, 2020 14:02 / Updated 13 hours ago Get short URL Britain has always been unfair, unequal and divided – Covid-19 has only served to show this in even more stark relief The Angel of the North © Wikipedia / Picnicin; © Corbis via Getty Images / Frédéric Soltan 51 Follow RT on RT As London politicians hammer the regions with even more lockdowns, they highlight the yawning chasm decades of unrestrained capitalism has slashed across the country.

It seems the old divisions of North and South are creeping back into our public consciousness. These divides are ancient and etched deeply into the fabric of Britain. Divisions of clan, of geography and of power have always been there, but Covid-19, like a dry summer exposing an ancient settlement, is causing the inequalities in our society to re-emerge with a vengeance.

It's hard not to see them, as government policy made in the South seems to be hitting those in the North more harshly, with the virus further exploiting the policies of those past governments that created this unfair, unequal and divided country. The spectres of our industrial past loom large in the current climate. The great Cheshire-based novelist Elizabeth Gaskell, who wrote 'North and South', a book outlining Britain's industrial upheavals in the 18th century, may well be watching and sighing at our failure to learn anything about the dangers of unchecked inequality.

READ MORE Disgust & applause after huge crowds swarm Liverpool ahead of 'tier 3' coronavirus lockdown (VIDEOS) Disgust & applause after huge crowds swarm Liverpool ahead of 'tier 3' coronavirus lockdown (VIDEOS)

The ghosts of Britain's past haunt this island. The UK has such varied geography, such differences in natural resources, not to mention a weather system that means two towns within miles of one another can have very different climates, all of which creates incredibly localised cultures. Our recent history is about how we used those resources to build an empire – a narrative told by those above, by those who benefitted from those divisions, and more importantly those resources, to those below.

In the 1980s, the Thatcher government was the enemy of the North of England. The Iron Lady saw swathes of the country as unproductive and idle, so she put in place policies that ensured the North-South divide was deepened. The traditional jobs of the Industrial Revolution – of coal and steel, of manufacturing and exporting goods – would be replaced by a focus on finance, marketing, insurance and the legal framework needed to hold this new global system together.

The North-South divide was deepened even further by subsequent governments, both Labour and Tory, with no opposition put up to the establishment of a British Babylon filled with excess, inequality and the stinking rich. The so-called Third Way was vaunted as a method to use money from the private sector to fund investment in public services. But, like all trickle-down economics, the Third Way was, in reality, just another way of the rich getting richer.

And now, in 2020, wealth inequality has never been wider. The richest are shooting for the stratosphere, while Covid-19 further entrenches all those bad policy choices of the past, keeping the poor welded to the bottom.

In truth the North-South divide is more of a Southeast doughnut. The global elite's use of the Southeast of England as a millionaire's playground has carved a hole into the country. That wound, inflicted by the wealthy in London and the Home Counties, has raised land and property prices so high that there's effectively been a working-class exodus.

Meanwhile, Britain's middle class and the aforementioned global elite see endless opportunities in this 21st-century Babylon, filled to the brim with cultural, media, political, and financial goodies for those with the right connections and accent, and enough money. The doughnut's hole is growing ever larger as these deepening divisions continue to stretch it.

ALSO ON RT.COM As Covid crisis adversely affects UK's white working class, it is the middle class's self-interest that means there is no easy fix

Local councils and representatives in the rest of the country have started to realise they simply cannot compete. But they have to do something, so they try to attract new businesses into their areas. With the old industries of coal and shipbuilding consigned to the dustbin of history, they now offer up all that's left to exploit: the local population.

Their towns are given over to the giants of the global distribution economy. Great warehouses can be constructed quickly, and the locals, in desperate need of work, are commodified just like the coal their fathers once mined. The Kent coalfields are now distribution centres and car parks for international logistics firms, while the Midlands and parts of the North are used to pick and pack Europe's cheap clothing and pharmaceuticals. Northern mayors and councillors roll out the red carpet for Amazon, despite knowing their constituents are doomed to lives devoid of much hope or meaning, to keep those same constituents down with myths of 'opportunity'.

Our divisions of North and South are deep, and while it once may have been about clan, natural resources and geography are now created in town halls and Government. Britain has been carved into zones: the important, wealthy, cultural and creative areas are well fed and nurtured, while the zones of those whose ancestors toiled in the mines, mills, docks and shipyards exist solely to feed consumerist greed. They need jobs and global capitalism needs workers.

ALSO ON RT.COM The Culture War is nothing but a bourgeois distraction from the only war that really matters – Class War

But now these places are no longer split only by geography, the poor of the South are just as exploited as those in the North. The division between them has been carved by the gerrymandering of wealth by the elite in Westminster and the City. While it may be romantic to think of a great North-South divide, it's also no longer correct. Our social historical and economic geography is far more complex – and yet, at the same time, depressingly predictable.

In the past, the mill owners, the mine moguls and the shipyard entrepreneurs had family and ancestral homes all over the United Kingdom and townhouses in London – just as the bankers and brokers of today have their penthouses and countryside pied-à-terres. The booming voices of those with power have always been able to tell their own stories of success while moving freely around the country to have the best of all worlds. If you want to know where and how our country is divided, simply look to those who are unable to move and those you cannot hear.

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Septuagenarian 11 hours ago I always get a touch of nostalgia when reading Ms McKenzie's articles. This kind of analysis and class conflict was still common in the sixties, long after the socialist experiment of the forties was quashed. Nothing changed, of course. The changes ahead for UK are mass unemployment, no major employers outside the NHS - if it survives a US/UK deal and if there is one. Lack of enterprise, lack of capital, raging inflation. Her beloved working class doesn't exist anymore. There'll be little employment, embourgeoisement for the few with a job, higher taxes and no chance to change it through the ballot box, what with a lack of credible opposition and a voting system bent in favour of the Tory party. Only hope is for those from the sub-continent to create jobs in their sweatshops. Sexton 6 minutes ago I basically agree with Ms. McKenzie, but one needs to go back in history a little further. In 1066 a bunch of criminals referred to as William and his Robber Barons came over from Normandy and stole every last acre of England. Their descendants are still around and own about 80% of UK. Right from the start they used a bunch of original Saxons, nowadays referred to as the middle-class, to help them control the peasant class. Up to the present day very little has changed. Reply fjapjawpjd 13 hours ago Thats a gross simplification of history. The stark hierarchy and sick society came with the religions and thats no coincidence.

[Oct 11, 2020] About "The Insider":

Oct 11, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

MOSCOW EXILE October 10, 2020 at 12:18 am

About "The Insider":

ABOUT THE PROJECT
The Insider is an online publication specializing in investigative journalism, fact-checking and political analytics.

The Insider has received numerous international awards, including the Council of Europe Innovation Award (2018), The European Press Prize (2019), Free Media Award (2019) and many others.

An important source of funding for The Insider is regular donations, so we encourage everyone who wants to support our publication to subscribe to regular donations.

CONTACTS
Moscow office: 119072, Bersenevskaya nab. 6, building 3, office 1.

[email protected]

From Russian Wiki:

"The Insider" is a Russian online publication. Founded in November 2013 by a member of the movement "Solidarity" , a journalist and political activist of liberal-democratic orientation Roman Dobrokhotov , who is the editor-in-chief of the publication.


Dobrokhotov. As I live and breathe -- a "kreakl"!!!!

In September 2018, in collaboration with "Bellingcat" Eliot Higgins, "The Insider" conducted an investigation, allegedly publishing copies of official documents of the Russian Federal migration service for passport application in the name of Alexander Petrov, one of the suspects of the British authorities in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal, which may indicate his connection with the Russian special services.

In February 2020, "The Insider", jointly with "Bellingcat"and "Der Spiegel", conducted an investigation and stated that the murder of Zelimkhan khangoshvili in Berlin in August 2019 was organized by the special unit of the FSB "Vimpel". They said that the FSB special assignment Centre was preparing a repeat killer, Vadim Krasikov, for this murder, and they also gave some details of Krasikov's movements around Europe.

On November 10, 2017, "The Insider" received from "The World Forum for Democracy" an award for innovation in democracy with the following wording:

"'The Insider' is an investigative publication that seeks to provide its readers with information about the current political, economic and social situation in Russia, while promoting democratic values and highlighting issues related to human rights and civil society. In addition, 'The Insider' carries out the project 'Antifake', the task of which is to systematically expose false news in the Russian media, which helps its audience to distinguish real information from false news and propaganda".

In 2019, "The Insider" and "Bellingcat" received the European Press Prize for establishing the identity of the two men allegedly responsible for the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal .

How drole! "The insider" likes to shout out "Fake!" yet seems to work closely with "Bellingcat".

[Sep 20, 2020] Democratic-Defense-Against-Disinformation-2.0.pdf by Alina Polyakova and Daniel Fried

Counter disinformation network can't revive the dead chicken of neoliberal ideology.
Neoliberal elite lost legitimacy and as such has difficulties controlling the narrative. That's why all this frantic efforts were launched to rectify the situation.
Anti-Russian angle of Atlantic council revealed here quite clearly
Sep 20, 2020 | www.brookings.edu

The paper's biggest single recommendation was that the United States and EU establish a Counter-Disinformation Coalition, a public/private group bringing together, on a regular basis, government and non-government stakeholders, including social media companies, traditional media, Internet service providers (ISPs), and civil society groups. The Counter-Disinformation Coalition would develop best practices for confronting disinformation from nondemocratic countries, consistent with democratic norms. It also recommended that this coalition start with a voluntary code of conduct outlining principles and agreed procedures for dealing with disinformation, drawing from the recommendations as summarized above.

In drawing up these recommendations, we were aware that disinformation most often comes from domestic, not foreign, sources. 8 While Russian and other disinformation players are known to work in coordination with domestic purveyors of disinformation, both overtly and covertly, the recommendations are limited to foreign disinformation, which falls within the scope of "political warfare." Nevertheless, it may be that these policy recommendations, particularly those focused on transparency and social resilience, may be applicable to combatting other forms of disinformation.

[Sep 18, 2020] New Documents Reveal Secret British Efforts To Arm, Assist And Propagandize 'Moderate Rebels' In Syria

Notable quotes:
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... Moon of Alabama ..."
Sep 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

New Documents Reveal Secret British Efforts To Arm, Assist And Propagandize 'Moderate Rebels' In Syria

In November 2018 some anonymous people published a number of documents that had been liberated from a clandestine British propaganda organization, the Integrity Initiative .

The same group or person who revealed the Integrity Initiative papers has now released several dozens of documents about another 'Strategic Communication' campaign run by the British Foreign Office. The current release reveals a number of train and assist missions for 'Syrian rebels' as well as propaganda operations run in Syria and globally on behalf of the British government.

Moon of Alabama , as well as other sites , had published a series of pieces about the Integrity Initiative . There were also connections between the Integrity Initiative and the Skripal 'novichok poisoning' affair.

They newly released documents about British operations in Syria are accessible under:

All the now published documents archived in one file are available for download under:

Most of the documents are detailed company responses to several solicitations from the Foreign Office for global and local campaigns in support of the 'moderate rebels' who are fighting against the Syrian government and people.

The documents lay out large scale campaigns which have on-the-ground elements in Syria, training and arming efforts in neighboring countries, command and control elements in Jordan, Turkey and Iraq, as well as global propaganda efforts. These operations were wide spread.


bigger

Most of the documents are from 2016 to 2019. They detail the organization of such operations and also portrait persons involved in these projects. They often refer back to previous campaigns that have been run from 2011/2012 onward. This is where the documents are probably the most interesting. They reveal what an immense effort was and is waged to fill the information space with pro-rebel/pro-Islamist propaganda.

The documents are not about the 'White Helmets' which were a separate British run Strategic Communication campaign financed by various governments. While the operations described in the new documents were coordinated with U.S. efforts they do not reference the CIA run campaigns in Syria which included similar efforts at a cost of $1 billion per year.

The various projects and the detailed commercial offers to implement them from various notorious companies are roughly described in the above two links. I will therefore refrain from repeating that here. Some of the documents' content will surely be used in future Moon of Alabama posts. But for now I will let you rummage through the stash.

Please let us know in the comments of the surprising bits that you might find.

Posted by b on September 18, 2020 at 15:51 UTC | Permalink


james , Sep 18 2020 16:22 utc | 1

thanks b... i will look at them and get back on this..
Red Ryder , Sep 18 2020 16:32 utc | 2
Documents the "war crimes industry" of the UK, and others, as expressed in Libya and Syria.

Assad has indicated he will pursue reparations from the nations that have killed 400,000 citizens, destroyed or stolen his industrial infrastructure (whole factories broken down and trucked into Turkey).

One reason why the US and UK and France want Assad dead is the tens of billions of dollars they will have to pay the Syrian people for the genocidal war waged for a decade in order to kill Assad and break Syria into pieces.

vk , Sep 18 2020 16:53 utc | 3
This confirms the UK has essentially kept the same military doctrine it adopted by necessity in 1945, which is: attach itself to the USA, focus on intelligence, punch above your weight. Ideologically, they rationalize that by attributing themselves the role of the cultured province of the USA; "Greece to the USA's Rome".

The British were always fascinated with intelligence/paramilitary forces. In their vision, it gives you (a nation) an air of sophistication, a civilizing aspect to the nation that wages this kind of warfare.

After the Suez fiasco of 1956, the UK gave up direct interventions in the Middle East. It now only intervenes there under the skirt of the USA. Of course, whenever they can, they do that with their weapon of choice, which is intelligence. So, yeah, these documents don't surprise me.

[Aug 30, 2020] UK's Johnson Reprises Skripal Saga For Navalny -- False Flag Poisoning

Aug 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Herodotus , 3 hours ago

If Johnson doesn't play ball, Christopher Steele will prepare a dossier on him.

aspnaz , 2 hours ago

Only the UK would be dumb enough to keep on paying Steele. Jesus, he is like a muck spreader: **** in, **** rain out.

Sandmann , 1 hour ago

Steele was disowned by UK in Jan 2017 in handwritten note to White House

Unknown User , 2 hours ago

Russians build rockets, jets, missiles, nukes, etc. but can't seem to produce a poison. Unlike Brits who successfully poisoned lots of Russians, starting with Ivan the "Terrible" (that's what Brits called Ivan the Fearsome) and his whole family including his son, which Brits insist was killed by Ivan. And remember Rasputin? The one who was poisoned and then shot by a British agent.

Yes. Useless Russians can't do it like the Brits.

PJBloggs , 2 hours ago

It is indeed suspicious that Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia have disappeared into the embrace of the British deep state and not been heard from since. Their family in Russia got one phone call from a stressed Yulia who they believed couldn't speak freely.
If the Skripals are indeed safe and living willingly & freely in British protection, then the UK should give them a live interview to express their gratitude and reassure their family in Russia.
The silence from the Skripals is more suspicious than what ails Navalny.

aspnaz , 2 hours ago

David Kelly is dead: Skripals are dead.

foxenburg , 1 hour ago

Imagine if a US citizen (version of Yulia) were detained in Moscow and the US consular people wanted to speak with her to check that she was OK....and they were told to buzz off and she didn't want to speak to them. Diplomatic law, signed by all countries, states that consular access MUST be allowed to citizens....even if they don't want it...because otherwise a country has no way of establishing if its citizen has been kidnapped or murdered.

What if the Iranians managed to kidnap Pompeo (Oh, Happy Day!) and when the State Dept went ballistic and said give him back, the Iranians just released a statement; "Mr Pompeo says he does not want to speak to any US officials. He has thanked Ayatollah Ali Khamenei for saving his life. He says please leave him alone. In deference to his security needs, you will never hear from him again".

Ace006 , 34 minutes ago

Full marks. It's astonishing to have Boris on the Russians' case about yet another poisoning (YAP) by them when, hopefully, he's holding two alleged victims incommunicado for over two years. "Oh, THAT, old bean. Bit of a bother. We disappear people in the U.K. all the time."

headfake , 4 hours ago

Why does the UK and US always try to demonise Russia? Where does this deep rooted hatred come from? Were they not allies in WW2? I've never understood this. Is it jealousy or something different? Did they not like the fact the Russians developed their own Nuclear arsenal and therefore cannot be bossed around? Or was it cos they kicked out the bankers?

Herodotus , 3 hours ago

The UK always allys with others in opposition to the strongest military power in Europe. That is their foreign policy. They don't want any single power to be able to dominate the continent. Today, that happens to be Russia. In the past, it was Germany, or France, or Spain.

Arch_Stanton , 2 hours ago

True, but someone should tell pedo island that the 19th century wants its foreign policy back.

PJBloggs , 2 hours ago

Russia under Putin exerts its sovereignty from the globalist banking oligarchy based in London, Wall Street, Israel & Western Eorope. Russia is in the way of the NWO this planned demic is meant to usher in.

JPHR , 2 hours ago

British Empire lost "Great Game to Russia". That started the downfall of that British Empire. US intelligence was groomed by British intelligence during WWII. US hegemony as illustrated by Brzezinsky's "The Grand Chessboard, American Primacy & Its Geostrategic Imperatives (1997)" still based on the very same McKinder based ideas from the British Empire defining control over Eurasia as a precondition for maintaining that empire. Adding insult to injury Putin twarted US and UK banks in their operation to destroy Russia and acquire its resources.

The malignancy of this ideology is well illustrated in Brzezinski proudly announcing in the intrduction of aforementioned book how his ideas are shared by both Hitler and Stalin:

"Eurasia is thus the chessboard on which the struggle for global primacy continues to be played, and that struggle involves geostrategy -- the strategic management of geopolitical interests. It is noteworthy that as recently as 1940 two aspirants to global power, Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin, agreed explicitly (in the secret negotiations of November of that year) that America should be excluded from Eurasia. Each realized that the injection of American power into Eurasia would preclude his ambitions regarding global domination. Each shared the assumption that Eurasia is the center of the world and that he who controls Eurasia controls the world. "

Sandmann , 1 hour ago

UK has a natural ally in Europe - it is not France - it is Russia.

Uk is run by interests like Bill Browder who buy influence and set the tenor. UK is a very Oligarchic country, highly centralised run for the Benefit of The Few

PJBloggs , 2 hours ago

Navalny was an asset to Putin. With a popularity rating around 2% his party couldn't get seats in the Duma.
Why would you poison him and give The West a propaganda victory at same time The West is trying a colour revolution in your most valuable military ally?

Just like why would you poison Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia just before holding a successful World Cup of football?

By the way where are the Skripals?

Cui Bono?

Volkodav , 2 hours ago

Litvinenko

https://www.unz.com/article/revisiting-litvinenko-what-really-happened/

Litvinenko's Father told his son was dirty, crime involved.

deef , 2 hours ago

Using Acetylcholinesterase Inhibitors as Nootropics (smart drugs to enhance memory):

https://peaknootropics.com/using-acetylcholinesterase-inhibitors-nootropics/

Joiningupthedots , 1 hour ago

The Skripals are probably DEAD.......and that happened on the UK's watch under UK control.

The Russian poison meme?

Even the the thickest halfwit that reads The Sun, The Mirror, The Star....the comic strips et al understands that the monkeys in control are actually nothing more than better read versions of themselves.

Johnstone and Co are certainly not more intelligent.......their nonsense utterances and actions prove this.

Vladimirovich , 2 hours ago

Dear Readers,

Sadly the British people are every bit a dopey as others in the western world and will always vote for the worst possible person to 'do the job'. Please be patient.

In the UK Boris Johnson is colloquially known as "The village idiot", and he does his best to match up to that title.

That being so he will remain in office until his masters decide to make a change.

Wish the UK well......PLEASE !

Roger Casement , 2 hours ago

Gangsters always play dumb. So do all politicians.

Twelve voices were shouting in anger, and they were all alike. No question, now, what had happened to the faces of the pigs. The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.

Son of Captain Nemo , 2 hours ago

Reading between the lines of B0J0...

We the U.K. who's "sun never sets", requires a generous purchase of British Pound Sterling and $USD by the Russian Central Bank effective immediately before his Nation's "sun sets"!...

And if the Russian Federation should refuse... We shall make up more nasty hasbara stories that aren't true like Skripal/Navalny to our public that doesn't care about either of them!...

aspnaz , 2 hours ago

Yep, "Sun never sets", the government really need to hire some better astronomer, astrologers, maybe witches, to sort this out. I often wonder about this, lying in bed in Wickham in the dark at midnight.

Ace006 , 1 hour ago

Well, technically the British Empire extends to the English Channel these days so what's true in Wickham may not necessarily be true in Norwich.

deplorableX , 3 hours ago

Bojo appears to be struggling with alcoholism which would explain his sticking to a saga which was pretty much fabricated from the get go. Delirium tremens.

bh2 , 3 hours ago

After the absurd plot described by British authorities in the Skripal case, nobody believes these concocted political dramas.

Until both Skripals can be interviewed in public and without an official UK "keeper" hovering about, nobody is going to believe them, either.

Moribundus , 3 hours ago

Evaluation of the finding is misinformation, because without medicinal products from the category, cholinesterase inhibitors, it is not possible to keep the patient in artificial sleep or to connect to artificial lung ventilation, because cholinesterase inhibitor preparations are not a poison but a drug such as diazepam used to treat anxiety or clonazepam, which are used specifically to relax the patient's muscles during artificial lung ventilation.

Thus, the Germans did not find out what caused the comatic condition of the patient, but what the patient was treated in Russia,
respectively given to the patient on board the aircraft, during transport to Germany.

When induced coma, hospitals use relaxants in combo with anaesthetic. Typically those are indeed Choline Sterase inhibitors... So, some of that stuff is in his system the moment they intubated him in hospital.. at least under normal circumstances (learned al lot about covid ICU treatment = induced coma).

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enzyme_inhibitor

NuYawkFrankie , 2 hours ago

I have to give credit where it's due:

Nobody - absolutely NOBODY! - can recycle a Silly Schoolboy Script - with a straight face! -as well as the THICK BRITS... even as the rest of Planet Earth laughs its a$$ off!

NIRP_BTFD , 2 hours ago

'Boris Johnson is a Lying ****' - Fugue

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X_G-FBSf1UI

[Aug 01, 2020] Did MI6 created White Helmets?

Notable quotes:
"... Perhaps he was even the initiator of the White Helmets? My take away from those reports is that Cummings and Johnson have commenced a transition strategy within the UK and that the future of Integrity Initiative and its bogan crew may be limited. ..."
"... They have also restrained the MI6 manipulators that would conspire and contrive the overt 'Hate Russia' policy. Not that Bojo and Cummings will necessarily change anything other than a superficial rearrangement in their favour (for a month or two anyway). ..."
"... Caitlin Johnston has recently posted an astute analysis of the current distraction politics and why we should not be distracted by Covid19 rants from seeing the immediate rendition of the great game. ..."
"... I guess the UK will be less overt re Russia but expect the Libyan war to escalate as UKUSAI use Turkey in Libya to push back against Russia and even Sisi in Egypt. ..."
"... The UK could stage yet another 'Suez incident' with this mendacious confluence of opportunities. ..."
"... The USA has become the patsy for these thugs, when will they rise? ..."
Aug 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Aug 1 2020 0:39 utc | 39

Jackrabbut #3

Thank you for those John Helmer reports. I note that the new head of MI6 is a lover of all fine Turkish things including Erdoghan. "Richard Moore, currently a third-ranking official of the Foreign Office, an ex-Ambassador to Turkey; an ex-MI6 agent; and a Harvard graduate".

Perhaps he was even the initiator of the White Helmets? My take away from those reports is that Cummings and Johnson have commenced a transition strategy within the UK and that the future of Integrity Initiative and its bogan crew may be limited.

They have also restrained the MI6 manipulators that would conspire and contrive the overt 'Hate Russia' policy. Not that Bojo and Cummings will necessarily change anything other than a superficial rearrangement in their favour (for a month or two anyway).

AtaBrit #9 includes an excellent link to a National Interest report on Turkey and is worth the read in this context of the rise and rise of Richard Moore. Thank you AtaBrit.

Caitlin Johnston has recently posted an astute analysis of the current distraction politics and why we should not be distracted by Covid19 rants from seeing the immediate rendition of the great game.

I guess the UK will be less overt re Russia but expect the Libyan war to escalate as UKUSAI use Turkey in Libya to push back against Russia and even Sisi in Egypt. They have a willing US president now and likely continuing in the next few years (be it Trump or Biden). The UK could stage yet another 'Suez incident' with this mendacious confluence of opportunities.

The USA has become the patsy for these thugs, when will they rise?

[Jul 29, 2020] The UK government didn't find evidence because it didn't look for it, and backs increased powers for intelligence agencies and media censorship as a result

Jul 29, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

WARREN July 27, 2020 at 10:07 am

https://www.youtube.com/embed/NG17cgS2-sU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

UK 'Russia report' fear-mongers about meddling yet finds no evidence
10,974 views•25 Jul 2020

The Grayzone
111K subscribers
Pushback with Aaron Maté

A long-awaited UK government report finds no evidence of Russian meddling in British domestic politics, including the 2016 Brexit vote. But that hasn't stopped the fear-mongering: the report claims the UK government didn't find evidence because it didn't look for it, and backs increased powers for intelligence agencies and media censorship as a result. Afshin Rattansi, a British journalist and host of RT's "Going Underground", responds.

Guest: Afshin Rattansi, British journalist and host of RT's "Going Underground."

[Jul 25, 2020] Propaganda for kids- UK govt-backed 'news' site teaches children about 'ruthless' Putin 'shameless' Russia -- RT UK News

Jul 25, 2020 | www.rt.com

Propaganda for kids: UK govt-backed 'news' site teaches children about 'ruthless' Putin & 'shameless' Russia 24 Jul, 2020 19:09 / Updated 1 day ago Get short URL © Getty Images / Robert Daly 98 32 Follow RT on RT Is Vladimir Putin "the most dangerous man in the world?" If you trust the same news sources that some British schoolchildren's teachers do, then yes. Perhaps it's a good thing that the kids aren't listening.

When schools in Britain eventually reopen in September, children filling into the classrooms won't just be learning their reading, writing and arithmetic. On top of these fundamentals, their teachers will spoon-feed them blatant propaganda that would make Herr Goebbels blush.

The propaganda source in question is The Day, a news site founded by a team of established journalists and directed at teens. Designed for use in the classroom, each of The Day's stories is presented alongside a range of thought-provoking questions and exercises to help young people learn to "think for themselves and engage with the world."

Though UK-focused, The Day is used in classrooms around the world as a teaching aid.

ALSO ON RT.COM Madonna LIES about getting fined A MILLION DOLLARS in Russia for speaking up about gay rights – what else is new?

A recent article describes Russian President Vladimir Putin as "the most dangerous man in the world" and suggests "nothing can be done to bring this rogue state [Russia] to heel." Moscow's entire foreign policy is "shameless" and Putin is described as a man who delights in stoking unrest in the West. The widely-debunked accusations of Russian interference into the 2016 US election are treated as fact, as are the rumors that Putin meddled in the UK's Brexit referendum and in last year's general election.

The children are also offered Bill Browder's opinion that Russia is a "mafia state running a mafia operation." Browder, the site omits, is a magnate and fraudster who made billions of dollars in Russia during the privatization rush of the 1990s and reinvented himself as an anti-Putin activist once his revenue stream was cut off.

Below the article, kids are asked to answer a number of questions, such as "Should Russia be expelled from the United Nations?" and even to write a creative story about what it would be like to meet Putin during his KGB days. For good measure, the New York Times' recent evidence-free and widely criticized story claiming Russia paid bounties to the Taliban to kill US troops in Afghanistan is suggested as further reading to help kids become an "expert" on all things Putin.

ALSO ON RT.COM The Russians are coming, again! Poorly understood cybercrimes play perfectly into political agendas

The Day does not bill itself as an anti-Russia think tank for kids. Quite the opposite. Ironically, its founder, Richard Addis, wanted to set up the site to fight deceptive journalism, hoaxes, "slanted reporting" and "stories where the truth is contentious" -- fake news in other words.

He was supported in this quest by the British government's Commission on Fake News and the Teaching of Critical Literacy Skills in Schools, which partnered with The Day to compile a damning report in 2018, revealing that only two percent of British youngsters have the critical thinking skills to spot phony news.

"It is clear that our schools are absolutely vital in encouraging children to burrow through the rubbish and rootle out the truth," Addis said at the time. Stories on the site with titles like 'Putin the terrible' and 'Toxic Putin on mission to poison the West' are clearly what Addis considers balanced journalism.

ALSO ON RT.COM George Galloway: Labour's demand for Ofcom review of RT licence is apostasy against democratic principles

Balance, however, is not a common trait among British Russia-watchers. Parliament's long-awaited 'Russia report' relies almost wholesale on "allegations" to back up its claim that Moscow "poses a significant threat to the UK." The report even relies on articles by BuzzFeed to substantiate its shaky claims.

As slanted as its coverage is, The Day's message may fall on deaf ears. According to the same government report, only a quarter of older children actually trust the news they read online. As such, The Day's propagandizing might all be in vain.

[Jul 24, 2020] Cold Wars Profit by Craig Murray

Jul 24, 2020 | consortiumnews.com

Consortiumnews Volume 26, Number 206 – Friday, July 24, 2020

AFGHANISTAN , COMMENTARY , FOREIGN POLICY , HISTORY , HUMAN RIGHTS , MEDIA , PROPAGANDA , RUSSIA , RUSSIAGATE , UKRAINE , UNITED KINGDON , UNTIL THIS DAY--HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES ON THE NEWS Cold Wars & Profit July 21, 2020 Save

Craig Murray lambasts a Russophobic media that celebrates a supposed cyber attack on UK vaccine research, ignores collapse of key evidence of a "hack" and dabbles in dubious memorabilia.

The Guardian's headquarters in London. (Bryantbob, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

By Craig Murray
CraigMurray.org.uk

... ... ...

Attack on UK Vaccine Research

Andrew Marr, center, in 2014. ( Financial Times , Flickr)

A whole slew of these were rehearsed by Andrew Marr on his flagship BBC1 morning show. The latest is the accusation that Russia is responsible for a cyber attack on Covid-19 vaccination research. This is another totally evidence-free accusation. But it misses the point anyway.

The alleged cyber attack, if it happened, was a hack not an attack -- the allegation is that there was an effort to obtain the results of research, not to disrupt research. It is appalling that the U.K. is trying to keep its research results secret rather than share them freely with the world scientific community.

As I have reported before , the U.K. and the USA have been preventing the WHO from implementing a common research and common vaccine solution for Covid-19, insisting instead on a profit driven approach to benefit the big pharmaceutical companies (and disadvantage the global poor).

What makes the accusation that Russia tried to hack the research even more dubious is the fact that Russia had just bought the very research specified. You don't steal things you already own.

Evidence of CIA Hacks

If anybody had indeed hacked the research, we all know it is impossible to trace with certainty the whereabouts of hackers. My VPNs [virtual private networks] are habitually set to India, Australia or South Africa depending on where I am trying to watch the cricket, dodging broadcasting restrictions.

More pertinently, WikiLeaks' Vault 7 release of CIA material showed the specific programs for the CIA in how to leave clues to make a leak look like it came from Russia. This irrefutable evidence that the CIA do computer hacks with apparent Russian "fingerprints" deliberately left, like little bits of Cyrillic script, is an absolutely classic example of a fact that everybody working in the mainstream media knows to be true, but which they all contrive never to mention.

Thus when last week's "Russian hacking" story was briefed by the security services -- that former Labour Party Leader Jeremy Corbyn deployed secret documents on U.K./U.S. trade talks which had been posted on Reddit, after being stolen by an evil Russian who left his name of Grigor in his Reddit handle -- there was no questioning in the media of this narrative. Instead, we had another round of McCarthyite witch-hunt aimed at the rather tired looking Corbyn.

Personally, if the Russians had been responsible for revealing that the Tories are prepared to open up the NHS "market" to big American companies, including ending or raising caps on pharmaceutical prices, I should be very grateful to the Russians for telling us. Just as the world would owe the Russians a favor if it were indeed them who leaked evidence of just how systematically the DNC rigged the 2016 primaries against Bernie Sanders.

But as it happens, it was not the Russians. The latter case was a leak by a disgusted insider, and I very much suspect the NHS U.S. trade deal link was also from a disgusted insider.

When governments do appalling things, very often somebody manages to blow the whistle.

Crowdstrike's Quiet Admission

Crowdstrike's Shawn Henry presenting at the International Security Forum in Vancouver, 2009.
(Hubert K, Flickr)

If you can delay even the most startling truth for several years, it loses much of its political bite. If you can announce it during a health crisis, it loses still more. The world therefore did not shudder to a halt when the CEO of Crowdstrike admitted there had never been any evidence of a Russian hack of the DNC servers.

You will recall the near incredible fact that, even through the Mueller investigation, the FBI never inspected the DNC servers themselves but simply relied on a technical report from Crowdstrike, the Hillary Clinton-related IT security consultant for the DNC.

It is now known for sure that Crowdstrike had been peddling fake news for Hillary. In fact, Crowdstrike had no record of any internet hack at all. There was no evidence of the email material being exported over the internet. What they claimed did exist was evidence that the files had been organized preparatory to export.

Remember the entire "Russian hacking" story was based ONLY on Crowdstrike's say so. There is literally no other evidence of Russian involvement in the DNC emails, which is unsurprising as I have been telling you for four years from my own direct sources that Russia was not involved. Yet finally declassified congressional testimony revealed that Shawn Henry stated on oath that "we did not have concrete evidence" and "There's circumstantial evidence , but no evidence they were actually exfiltrated."

This testimony fits with what I was told by Bill Binney, a former technical director of the National Security Agency (NSA), who told me that it was impossible that any large amount of data should be moved across the internet from the USA, without the NSA both seeing it happen in real time and recording it. If there really had been a Russian hack, the NSA would have been able to give the time of it to a millisecond.

That the NSA did not have that information was proof the transfer had never happened, according to Binney. What had happened, Binney deduced, was that the files had been downloaded locally, probably to a thumb drive.

Bill Binney. (Miquel Taverna / CCCB via Flickr)

So arguably the biggest news story of the past four years -- the claim that Putin effectively interfered to have Donald Trump elected U.S. president -- turns out indeed to be utterly baseless. Has the mainstream media, acting on security service behest, done anything to row back from the false impression it created? No it has doubled down.

Anti-Russia Theme

The "Russian hacking" theme keeps being brought back related to whatever is the big story of the day.

Brexit? Russian hacking.
U.K. general election 2019? Russian hacking
Covid-19 vaccine? Russian hacking.

Then we have those continual security service briefings. Two weeks ago we had unnamed security service sources telling The New York Times that Russia had offered the Taliban a bounty for killing American soldiers. This information had allegedly come from interrogation of captured Taliban in Afghanistan, which would almost certainly mean it was obtained under torture.

It is a wildly improbable tale. The Afghans have never needed that kind of incentivization to kill foreign invaders on their soil. It is also a fascinating throwback of an accusation – the British did indeed offer Afghans money for, quite literally, the heads of Afghan resistance leaders during the first Afghan War in 1841, as I detail in my book "Sikunder Burnes."

Taliban in Herat, Afghanistan, 2001. (Wikipedia)

You do not have to look back that far to realize the gross hypocrisy of the accusation. In the 1980s the West was quite openly paying, arming and training the Taliban -- including Osama bin Laden – to kill Russian and other Soviet conscripts in their thousands. That is just one example of the hypocrisy.

The U.S. and U.K. security services both cultivate and bribe senior political and other figures abroad in order to influence policy all of the time. We work to manipulate the result of elections -- I have done it personally in my former role as a U.K. diplomat. A great deal of the behavior over which Western governments and media are creating this new McCarthyite anti-Russian witch hunt, is standard diplomatic practice.

My own view is that there are malign Russian forces attempting to act on government in the U.K. and the USA, but they are not nearly as powerful as the malign British and American forces acting on their own governments.

The truth is that the world is under the increasing control of a global elite of billionaires, to whom nationality is irrelevant and national governments are tools to be manipulated. Russia is not attempting to buy corrupt political influence on behalf of the Russian people, who are decent folk every bit as exploited by the ultra-wealthy as you or I. Russian billionaires are, just like billionaires everywhere, attempting to game global political, commercial and social structures in their personal interest.

The other extreme point of hypocrisy lies in human rights. So many Western media commentators are suddenly interested in China and the Uighurs or in restrictions on the LBGT community in Russia, yet turn a completely blind eye to the abuse committed by Western "allies" such as Saudi Arabia and Bahrain.

As somebody who was campaigning about the human rights of both the Uighurs and of gay people in Russia a good decade before it became fashionable, I am disgusted by how the term "human rights" has become weaponized for deployment only against those countries designated as enemy by the Western elite.

Finally, do not forget that there is a massive armaments industry and a massive security industry all dependent on having an "enemy." Powerful people make money from this Russophobia. Expect much more of it. There is money in a Cold War.

Craig Murray is an author, broadcaster and human rights activist. He was British ambassador to Uzbekistan from August 2002 to October 2004 and rector of the University of Dundee from 2007 to 2010.

This article is from CraigMurray.org.uk .

The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.

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Tags: Cold War Craig Murray Russophobia Ukrainian Insurgent Army Ukrainian Resistance

Post navigation ← COVID-19: The Pentagon Confronts the Pandemic State Dept-Funded Transparency International Silent on Jailed Transparency Activist Julian Assange → 12 comments for " Cold Wars & Profit "

DH Fabian , July 22, 2020 at 19:54

On the core subject here: By necessity, a pandemic requires a cooperative international response. Only one country has refused to do so: The US. In their supreme arrogance, our ruling class lost track the fact that the US needs the rest of the world, not the other way way around.

Zalamander , July 22, 2020 at 19:12

One by one the so-called Russiagate "evidence" have collapsed. The fake Steele Dossier, "Russian spy" Joseph Mifsud who is actually a self-admitted member of the Clinton Foundation, Roger Stone's non-existant Wikileaks contacts, Russian Afgan bounties, etc. But the neoliberal mainstream media still presents these as "facts" with no retractions. This is not journalism, its disinformation designed to distract the American public from the failures of capitalism.

Piotr Berman , July 22, 2020 at 18:03

Peter Janney
July 22, 2020 at 06:55
Craig Murray succinctly (and very beautifully) gives us a REAL glimpse of what great journalism really looks like.
-- --
Perhaps it is great writing, but is it journalism?

Some people in National Union of Journalists (a trade union in UK) ponder that question for many months, unable to decide if Craig should be allowed to join or not. If he is neither a flack nor a hack, who kind of journalist is he? (More details at Craig Murray's web site).

Peter Janney , July 23, 2020 at 06:06

Journalism is printing what someone else does not want printed.
Everything else is public relations.
-- George Orwell

rosemerry , July 22, 2020 at 16:42

All of the Russophobia and lies serve the rulers of the USA?UK and their poodles well. The whole year of Skripal mania started by Theresa May and joined in by Trump, with the media such as the Guardian's scurrilous Luke Harding providing fantasy "evidence" and the whole story conveniently disappearing, like the Skripals, when other "news" arrived, has no benefit to seekers of even the minimum of truth.

DH Fabian , July 22, 2020 at 19:46

Certainly, and this is key to understanding the current situation. What we're seeing now is the final stages of the long-sinking West -- those once-mighty partners of empire, the UK/US. This descent appears to have begun with the Reagan/Thatcher years, and is now in the final stages. We've seen a rather dramatic growth of psychosis in the political-media-public discussion over the past 3-4 years, driven by an irrational obsession with China/Russia. (Russia and China both quietly observe, prepared to respond if attacked.) There really isn't anything we can do about it, beyond acknowledging it as what it is.

Jerome J Donnelly , July 22, 2020 at 12:12

Very good, but needs to be supplemented by reference to the interview with NIH Director Franaic Collins on last Sunday's Meet the Press. When host Chuck Todd asked Collins about Russian hacking of US vaccine research Collins smiled and answered by pointing out that the research wasn't intended to be secret and that it was all to be published for "transparency." Todd looked disappointed, mumbled, "OK," and changed the subject. No media have reported this exchange, which is retrievable on the internet.

JOHN CHUCKMAN , July 22, 2020 at 10:58

Brilliant, but that's what one expects of Craig Murray.

Ray McGovern , July 22, 2020 at 10:13

Brilliant article, Craig. You do have a way of saying things. Thanks.

Question: "Team Mueller" forgot to interview you. Have any of the new investigators taken the trouble to talk to you?

Ray

Bob Van Noy , July 22, 2020 at 09:18

Can't thank you enough Craig Murray for your professional life of honesty!

Please read: hXXp://off-guardian.org/2020/07/21/globocap-uber-alles/

Peter Janney , July 22, 2020 at 06:55

Craig Murray succinctly (and very beautifully) gives us a REAL glimpse of what great journalism really looks like. I commend his courage for never bending in the face of all the bullshit we have had to tolerate from the mainstream media. Thank you, thank you dear Craig . . .

geeyp , July 22, 2020 at 00:10

Regarding Craig's last summing up paragraph, all one need do to confirm that is read the previous article of Michael T. Klare.

[Jul 21, 2020] This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier.

Highly recommended!
Apr 20, 2019 | theduran.com
Marcus April 20, 2019

There is something rotten in the state .. of England.

This Skripal thing smelled to high heaven from day 1. My opinion is that Sergei Skripal was involved (to what degree is open to speculation) with the Steele dossier. He was getting homesick (perhaps his mother getting older is part of this) for Russia and he thought that to get back to Russia he needed something big to get back in Putin's good graces. He would have needed something really big because Putin really has no use for traitors. Skripal put out some feelers (perhaps through his daughter though that may be dicey). The two couriers were sent to seal or move the deal forward. The Brits (and perhaps the CIA) found out about this and decided to make an example of Sergei. Perhaps because they found out about this late, the deep state/intelligence people had to move very quickly. The deep state story was was extremely shaky (to put it mildly) as a result. Or they were just incompetent and full of hubris.

Then they were stuck with the story and bullshit coverup was layered on bullshit coverup. 7 Reply FlorianGeyer Reply to Marcus April 20, 2019

@ Marcus.

To hope to get away with lies, one must have perfect memory and a superior intellect that can create a lie with some semblance of reality in real life, as opposed to the digital 'reality' in a Video game. And a rather corny video game at that.

MI5/6 failed on all parts of Lie creation 2 Reply Mistaron April 21, 2019

If Trump was so furious about being conned by Haspel, how come he then went on to promote her to becoming the head of the CIA? It's quite perplexing.

[Jul 18, 2020] It will be interesting attempting to charge the retarded Prince with statutory rape. Boy won't that be a legal circle jerk between two countries...

Jul 18, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Stonewall Jackson , 3 hours ago

Let's set aside Trump for a moment... it will be interesting attempting to charge the retarded Prince with statutory rape. Boy won't that be a legal circle jerk between two countries...

The Big Fat Bastard , 3 hours ago

"retarded Prince"

Perfect description.

[Jul 13, 2020] Daily Fail: EDWARD LUCAS: At last! The end of the age of appeasing Beijing bullies

Jul 13, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

ET AL July 7, 2020 at 2:53 am

Ever wondered what happened to our mouth foaming favorite russophobe, Ed Lucas?

Daily Fail: EDWARD LUCAS: At last! The end of the age of appeasing Beijing bullies
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-8495983/EDWARD-LUCAS-end-age-appeasing-Beijing-bullies.html

####

Remember, Sir John Sawers is the former chief of MI6 and is in no way linked to the UK government. He is a private individual. This is not Hybrid Warfare.

Which is good, because it allows Ed to earnestly parrot his talking points and add plenty of filler in that well known balanced, independent and journalistically shining star of an outlet, the Daily Fail.

The lesson I think we can take from this is that UK gov has finally been caught in its own bitch 'n' slap China trap and also a victim of t-Rump's bash China campaign. Time has run out on this strategy. It was more than happy to sign on to loud anti-China slogans, as long as it didn't cost UK plc serious cash or future investme nt. The problem is that China has had enough of mostly ignoring those slings and arrows for years.

The new so-called 'Wolf-warrior' China response that the west is publicly bemoaning as 'threatening' comes after so much sinophobia. Thus, UK gov has got the message much more forcefully in the last few days and the opposition like 'ex' directors of British intelligence and others are all hands to the wheel because they do not hold official power and have no other way of influencing the government. 2020 really is a momentous year.

MARK CHAPMAN July 7, 2020 at 8:28 am

I didn't really have time to read it because I have to leave for work, but the headline alone is enough to showcase classic Lucas behavior – enthusiastically cheer the government 'taking a stand', and leaving the accountants to sort out the damage and try to salvage something from the rubble. You know, it is a miracle Britain has survived as long as it has with the eejits who are let to run it.

[Jul 11, 2020] Pablo Miller, Mark Urban and Hamish de Bretton-Gordon all served in the same tank regiment in the British Army

Jul 11, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

MARK CHAPMAN July 6, 2020 at 8:38 am

Thanks, Jennifer; I didn't really have to do much – Moscow Exile was kind and psychic enough to print out Straw's whole editorial, else I might have had to subscribe to The Independent to even see it. *Shudder*. And Straw just opened his head and let the bullshit flow – I only had to redirect the stream a little here and there.

I don't think Miller was the neighbour, I seem to remember a different name nope, that was Ross Cassidy, who was cited by John Helmer as perhaps the only person Skripal trusted enough to have left a key with him, but he didn't live next door. Pablo Miller does indeed also live in Salisbury, but I have seen no mention of where,

https://www.theblogmire.com/joining-some-dots-on-the-skripal-case-part-2-four-invisible-clues/

Pablo Miller, Mark Urban and Hamish de Bretton-Gordon all served in the same tank regiment in the British Army. I have seen one other source – can't remember where now – that claimed Christopher Steele also served in the same regiment, but that's not true – he was recruited straight out of Cambridge at graduation, by MI6, and worked for them for 22 years. That's not to say there were not connections, though – Steele was also Case Officer for Litvinenko, and was allegedly the first to assess that Litvinenko's death was 'a Russian state hit'.

"Over a career that spanned more than 20 years, Steele performed a series of roles, but always appeared to be drawn back to Russia; he was, sources say, head of MI6's Russia desk. When the agency was plunged into panic over the poisoning of its agent Alexander Litvinenko in 2006, the then chief, Sir John Scarlett, needed a trusted senior officer to plot a way through the minefield ahead – so he turned to Steele. It was Steele, sources say, who correctly and quickly realised that Litvinenko's death was a Russian state "hit"."

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jan/12/intelligence-sources-vouch-credibility-donald-trump-russia-dossier-author

You'll enjoy that piece by The Grauniad – it goes on and on about how first-rate credible Steele was, and how the quality of his work is above reproach. His legendary 'dossier', obviously, has since fallen apart and been dismissed as fanciful disinformation.

[Jul 09, 2020] U.S. UK intensify campaign against Russia; UK harks back to first pillar of new Cold War, the Magnitsky hoax – The Komisar Scoop

Notable quotes:
"... Browder testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee ..."
"... claimed that Magnitsky was beaten to death by 8 riot guards ..."
"... Browder's Hermitage Fund in 2009 put out press release noting Starova's complaint to police. See last graph. Browder deleted it when his narrative changed, but the Wayback Machine preserved it. ..."
"... She says there has been a violation of Article 165 of the criminal code. ..."
"... Browder translates that into Starova accusing his companies of the theft of state funds. She talks about involvement of Viktor Markelov, who organized the fraud. In his testimony , Markelov said he got documents from a "Sergei Leonidovich." Magnitsky's full name was Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky. ..."
"... Magnitsky's body on a cot in the hospital ward. ..."
"... Script: The position of the corpse of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky. ..."
"... Script: The situation in the [hospital] ward, viewed towards the door. ..."
"... Magnitsky face shoulders on hospital-bed ..."
"... Script: Chest image of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky. ..."
"... Browder doctored report claims a section illegible, third line. ..."
"... Russian document shows nothing is illegible. ..."
"... Dr. Robert Bux ..."
"... They do exist, but Browder did not give them to PHR. ..."
"... Forensic photos of bruises on Magnitsky's hands and knee ..."
"... Forensic schematic drawings showing marks of injuries show no injuries. ..."
"... closed craniocerebral injury ..."
"... No signs of a violent death detected." ..."
"... Magnitsky death certificate – no signs of a violent death detected ..."
Jul 09, 2020 | www.thekomisarscoop.com

U.S. & UK intensify campaign against Russia; UK harks back to first pillar of new Cold War, the Magnitsky hoax

By Lucy Komisar
July 6, 2020, Committee for an East-West Accord .

Browder testimony to Senate Judiciary Committee
claimed that Magnitsky was beaten to death by 8 riot guards .

The U.S. and UK are intensifying their collaborative Cold War against Russia. In Washington, calls for sanctions are based on the fake "bountygate," and the UK has sanctioned selected Russians based on William Browder's Magnitsky hoax.

The "bountygate" charge that Russia paid militants to kill American soldiers in Afghanistan is unproved by U.S. intelligence agencies and even discounted by the international wire-tapping National Security Agency (NSA). The UK sanctions against 25 Russians, judges and court officials, tax investigators, and prison doctors, are based on disproved claims by billionaire investor William Browder that they were responsible for the death of his accountant Sergei Magnitsky.

Browder's Magnitsky story is a pillar of America's Russiagate, which has five. Before bountygate, there was the 2019 Mueller Report which found no evidence that President Trump had colluded with the Russians, the Jan 2017 intelligence agencies' charge of Russian interference in the U.S. 2016 election which concludes with the admission that they had no proof; and the 2016 accusation that Russians had stolen Democratic National Committee emails, made by the private security group CrowdStrike, later walked back by CrowdStrike's president Shawn Henry at a secret House hearing in Dec 2017, but not revealed till this May.

With the UK, we return to the first pillar of the U.S. Russiagate story, the 2012 Magnitsky Act, which targeted many on the U.S. list. The Magnitsky Act is recognized as the beginning of the deterioration of U.S.-Russian relations. It is based on a hoax invented by Browder and easily disproved by documentary evidence, if governments cared about that.

The European Court of Human Rights on Magnitsky's arrest

First, a few of the obvious fake charges. Three judges are accused of detaining Magnitsky, which the UK says "facilitated" his mistreatment and denial of medical care. However, the European Court of Human Rights ruled in August 2019, "The Russians had good reason to arrest Sergei Magnitsky for Hermitage tax evasion." The Court said: "The accusations were based on documentary evidence relating to the payment of taxes by those companies and statements by several disabled persons who had confessed to sham work for the two companies."

The decision to arrest him was made after "investigating authorities noted that during a tax inquiry which had preceded the criminal investigation, Mr Magnitskiy had influenced witnesses, and that he had been preparing to flee abroad. In particular, he had applied for an entry visa to the United Kingdom and had booked a flight to Kyiv." He was a flight risk.

Several of the UK targets were said to have "facilitated" mistreatment of Magnitsky because they had been involved in a fraud he exposed. The reference is to a $230-million tax refund scam against the Russian Treasury.

Back to the ECHR: "The Court observe[d] that the inquiry into alleged tax evasion, resulting in the criminal proceedings against Mr Magnitskiy, started in 2004, long before he complained that prosecuting officials had been involved in fraudulent acts." The taxes were the real story; the fraud narrative was a cover-up.

The fake fraud story

Magnitsky did not uncover a massive fraud. That was the tax refund fraud in which companies engaged in collusive lawsuits, "lost" the suits, and "agreed" to pay damages equal to their entire year's profits. They then requested a full refund of taxes paid on the now zero gains. The fake lawsuits and payouts were first revealed to police by Russian shell company director Rimma Starova April 9 and July 10, 2008. (Russian originals April and July .)

With investigators on the trail, Browder's Hermitage Fund director Paul Wrench filed a complaint about the fraud, and Browder gave the story to The NYTimes and the Russian paper Vedomosti , which published it July 24, 2008, long before Magnitsky mentioned it in October 2008. His testimony did not accuse any officials.

Browder's Hermitage Fund in 2009 put out press release noting Starova's complaint to police. See last graph. Browder deleted it when his narrative changed, but the Wayback Machine preserved it. She says there has been a violation of Article 165 of the criminal code. Browder translates that into Starova accusing his companies of the theft of state funds. She talks about involvement of Viktor Markelov, who organized the fraud. In his testimony , Markelov said he got documents from a "Sergei Leonidovich." Magnitsky's full name was Sergei Leonidovich Magnitsky.

The main story at the center of the Magnitsky Acts in the U.S. and UK are not that he was mistreated or failed to get good medical care, which is what is mostly alleged here. That would put dozens of U.S. prison officials in the crosshairs, including recently those running state prison systems in Alabama and Mississippi . It is that he was murdered. In the only reference to beating, the head of the Matrosskaya detention center is accused of "ordering the handcuffing and beating" of Magnitsky before he died.

The U.S. Act, on which the British version is modeled, says that in detention Magnitsky "was beaten by 8 guards with rubber batons on the last day of his life." But the alleged assailants' names are not on the list. A key argument made by sponsors Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md) and Rep. James McGovern (D-Mass) was that the people targeted – tax investigators, court officials, hospital workers -- played a role in this claimed murder of Magnitsky. (Cardin and McGovern haven't responded to my requests to comment on contradictory evidence.)

UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab takes the same line, declaring, "You cannot set foot in this country, and we will seize your blood-drenched ill-gotten gains if you try," as he announced the new sanctions. Blood-drenched? No evidence supplied for the sanctioned Russians.

For Browder, the purpose of the Magnitsky Acts he promotes in the West is as a political tool to build a wall against Russia's attempt to have him answer for documented financial frauds totaling at least $100 million, and with new evidence as much as $400 million.

The death hoax: Forensic photos tell the truth

Here is the story of Magnitsky death hoax, with links to evidence, including how Browder forged and falsified documents.

Browder had the Russian forensic reports and photos that were made after Magnitsky's death but suppressed what did not support his arguments. The photos in this forensic report show that Magnitsky, allegedly beaten to death, didn't have a life-threatening mark on his body.

Magnitsky's body on a cot in the hospital ward. Script: The position of the corpse of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky.

Script: The situation in the [hospital] ward, viewed towards the door.

Magnitsky face shoulders on hospital-bed . Script: Chest image of Mr. S. L. Magnitsky.

Browder doctored part of another forensic report provided in translation to the Physicians for Human Rights, Cambridge, Mass., for its analysis of Magnitsky's death. It notes as "illegible" words that show there were no beating marks on Magnitsky's body and that there was no scalp damage. The deleted parts of the true translation are underlined.

"The cadaverous spots are abundant, bluish-violet, diffuse, located on the back surface of the neck, trunk, upper and lower extremities, with pressure on them with a finger disappear and restore their original color after 8 minutes. Damage not found on the scalp."

The doctored line reads, "The cadaverous spots are abundant, bluish-violet, diffuse, located on the back surface of the neck, trunk, upper and lower extremities, (illegible) not found on the scalp."

Here in the report that Browder gave PHR:

Browder doctored report claims a section illegible, third line.

The paragraph in the Russian document shows nothing is illegible.

Russian document shows nothing is illegible.

The Russian words omitted in the doctored English document are "при надавливании на них пальцем исчезают и восстанавливают свою первоначальную окраску через 8 минут. Повреждений на волосистой части головы не обнаружено."

The full Russian text can be translated online: Трупные пятна обильные, синюшно-фиолетовые, разлитые, располагающиеся на задней поверхности шеи, туловища, верхних и нижних конечностей, при надавливании на них пальцем исчезают и восстанавливают свою первоначальную окраску через 8 минут. Повреждений на волосистой части головы не обнаружено. Кости лицевого скелета, хрящи носа на ощупь целы. Глаза закрыты.

What the American pathologist who analyzed Browder's documents said

Dr. Robert Bux

Dr. Robert C. Bux, then coroner/chief medical examiner for the El Paso County Coroner's Office in Colorado Springs, was the forensic expert on the team that wrote the PHR report . Bux told me, "I do not think that these spots are contusions. Contusions will not go away and can be demonstrated by incising or cutting into the tissues under the skin. These are reportedly all on the posterior aspect of the neck, body and limbs and may represent postmortem lividity when the body was viewed by the prosecutor of the autopsy."

Dr. Bux said, "If this is lividity (red purple coloration of the skin) it is not yet fixed and will blanch to a pale skin color and red purple coloration will disappear. If the body is then placed face up i.e. supine then after a few minutes then it will appear again. This is simply due to blood settling in the small blood vessels and a function of gravity."

It's not what a layman reading Browder's forged "illegible" might think.

Dr. Bux added, "Having said all of this, I have never seen any autopsy photographs demonstrating this, and while photographs should have been taken to document all skin abnormalities as well as all surfaces of the body to document the presence or absence of trauma, I do not know if photographs were taken and withheld or never taken ."

PHR said, "A full and independent review of the cause of death of S.L. Magnitsky is not possible given the documentation presented and available to PHR." The document list is at its report pages 2-3 .

The PHR autopsy protocol claims that there are "photo tables on 2 sheets" and "schematic representation of injuries on 1 sheet. However, if they exist, they were not available for the present review."

They do exist, but Browder did not give them to PHR.

Browder posted and widely distributed this composite of photos of bruises on Magnitsky's hand and knee taken November 17 th , 2009, the day after the accountant's death.

Forensic photos of bruises on Magnitsky's hands and knee

He got them from Russian forensic Report 2052. Katie Fisher , doing public relations for Hermitage, posted them, but not the text, to Google Cloud.

The report cited "circular abrasions in the wrist area," a "bluish-violet bruise" and "multiple strip-like horizontally located abrasions."

It said, "A bruise located on the inner surface of the right lower limb in the projection of the ankle joint appeared 3-6 days before the time death."

It concluded, "[T]hese injuries in living persons do not entail a temporary disability or a significant permanent loss of general disability and are not regarded as harm to health, they are not in a cause and effect relationship with death."

The forensic reports attribute bruises to Magnitsky wearing handcuffs and kicking and hitting against cell doors. Magnitsky's lawyer Dmitri Kharitonov told filmmaker Andrei Nekrasov, "I think he was simply banging on the door with all his force trying to make them let him out and none paid attention."

No other injuries found

The same report includes schematic drawings of Magnitsky's body on which to note other relevant marks or injuries.

The report said, "There were no marks or injuries noted on his head or torso No other injuries were found on the corpse " Browder didn't send PHR these drawings or make them public.

Forensic schematic drawings showing marks of injuries show no injuries.

Asked if there was evidence that Magnitsky was "beaten to death by riot guards," Dr. Bux told me, "I have no evidence to suggest that this occurred." For the record, PHR said Magnitsky's death was from untreated serious illness. Even without the body photos, its experts didn't claim a beating. Forensic analysts never have.

Manipulating the death certificate

To promote his fabrication, Browder posted a deceptive PowerPoint of the death certificate that indicated a " closed craniocerebral injury ?" circled in red, with the other text too small to read.

The true document told a different story: " No signs of a violent death detected." That url is at the bottom of Browder's own PowerPoint.

Magnitsky death certificate – no signs of a violent death detected

"Closed" meant "past." Several forensic documents include an interview with Magnitsky's mother Natalya Magnitskaya. She told investigators, "In 1993 – I can't say a more accurate date, S.L Magnitsky had a craniocerebral injury. He slipped on the street and as a result hit his head, after which he had headaches for some time."

Investigators obtained full medical records including this on page 29 of Report 555-10 in English, which Browder gave PHR: " On February 4, 1993, at about 08:40 a.m.., in his house entrance he slipped and fell down hitting his head, lost consciousness for a short time, vomited, attended for emergency help by an ambulance which took him to the City Clinic Hospital (GKB). Was examined by the neurosurgeon in the reception ward, craniogram without pathema. Diagnosis: brain concussion, recommended treatment to be taken on an out-patient clinic basis."

Browder's assertion that the "closed craniocerebral injury" came from a beating was a lie.

Browder's changing stories on the death of Magnitsky

Browder did not initially claim Magnitsky had been murdered. He said Magnitsky, left alone uncared for in a room, had simply died. After a few years, pushing the Magnitsky Act, he declared Magnitsky had been tied up and beaten by rubber baton-wielding thugs until dead.

Graphic by Michael Thau.

Browder December 2009 tells Chatham House , London, "I don't know what they were thinking. I don't know whether they killed him deliberately on the night of the 16th, or if he died of neglect."

"They put him in a straight-jacket, put him in an isolation room and waited 1 hour and 18 minutes until he died." December 2010, San Diego Law School .

Then, promoting the Magnitsky Act, "They put him in an isolation cell, tied him to a bed, then allowed eight guards guards beat him with rubber batons for 118 min until he was dead." December 2011, University of Cambridge Judge Business School.

" .they put him in an isolation cell, chained him to a bed, and eight riot guards came in and beat him with rubber batons. That night he was found dead on the cell floor." July 2017, U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee .

What the Moscow Public Oversight Commission says really happened

The Public Oversight Commission , an independent Russian NGO, reports Magnitsky's final day differently. November 16, 2009:

7:00pm. The patient behaves inadequately. Talks to a "voice," looks disorientated, and shouts that someone wants to kill him. His condition is diagnosed as psychosis. The emergency doctor was called. There are no body damages apart from traces of handcuffs on the wrists.

7:30pm. He was left unattended without medical support.

8:48pm. Emergency team arrived. When emergency doctors entered the special cell, Sergei was sitting on the cot, with his eyes unfocused.

9:15pm. The patient was surveyed again as his condition deteriorated. He lost consciousness. The reanimation procedure was started (indirect heart massage and ventilation of lungs using the Ambu pillow). The patient was transferred to the special room where he received an artificial ventilation of lungs and a hormones injection.

9:50pm. The patient died."

The commission reported no evidence of beating. The Russian forensic and medical experts' conclusion was that Magnitsky had heart disease (arteriosclerosis), diabetes, hepatitis, and pancreatitis, some illnesses predating arrest. They wrote detailed criticism of the doctors' treatment, saying that it wasn't timely or adequate and that "the shortcomings in the provision of the medical assistance to S.L. Magnitsky" caused his death.

But it's not the riot squad beating Browder, with no evidence, sold to the U.S. Congress, the State Department, the UK Parliament, the Foreign Office and the media. Or that U.S. or UK authorities or media ever attempted to prove. Because like the Tonkin Gulf "incident" and Iraq's WMD, the weaponized Russiagate stories have a foreign/military policy goal. Truth is quite irrelevant.

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7 Responses to " U.S. & UK intensify campaign against Russia; UK harks back to first pillar of new Cold War, the Magnitsky hoax "
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[Jun 14, 2020] It was England, not Israel, that booted South Africa from the Commonwealth 0f Nations. It was WASPs in England, not Jews in England, that led that charge.

Jun 14, 2020 | www.unz.com

Mefobills , says: Show Comment Next New Comment June 13, 2020 at 6:21 pm GMT

@Jake

It was England, not Israel, that booted South Africa from the Commonwealth 0f Nations. It was WASPs in England, not Jews in England, that led that charge.

That is technically correct. But WASP ideology is Jewish at root.

The mind virus had already infected the British brain, and has since spread to much of the world.

This mind virus is: Judaizer Christianity + Debt Spreading Banking + Usury + Perpetual Corporations + Money Markets

I contributed to below article, which may help in understanding how WASP came about.

https://realcurrencies.wordpress.com/2014/06/05/capitalism-is-jewish-usury/

Another issue is miss-identification of Biblical passages regarding sin, which is really debts.

https://michael-hudson.com/2017/12/he-died-for-our-debt-not-our-sins/

[Jun 11, 2020] Secret letters written in 1975 by the Queen and her man in Canberra, Sir John Kerr, can now be released by the National Archives - if the Australian establishment allows it. On November 11, 1975, Kerr infamously sacked the reformist government of prime minister Gough Whitlam, and delivered Australia into the hands of the United States.

Jun 11, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

2020 , Jun 11 2020 11:02 utc | 106

The Australian High Court has ruled that correspondence between the Queen and the Governor-General of Australia, her viceroy in the former British colony, is no longer "personal" and the property of Buckingham Palace. Why does this matter?

Secret letters written in 1975 by the Queen and her man in Canberra, Sir John Kerr, can now be released by the National Archives - if the Australian establishment allows it. On November 11, 1975, Kerr infamously sacked the reformist government of prime minister Gough Whitlam, and delivered Australia into the hands of the United States.


Today, Australia is a vassal state bar none: its politics, intelligence agencies, military and much of its media are integrated into Washington's "sphere of dominance" and war plans. In Donald Trump's current provocations of China, the US bases in Australia are described as the "tip of the spear".


There is an historical amnesia among Australia's polite society about the catastrophic events of 1975. An Anglo-American coup overthrew a democratically elected ally in a demeaning scandal in which sections of the Australian elite colluded. This is largely unmentionable. The stamina and achievement of the Australian historian Jenny Hocking in forcing the High Court's decision are exceptional.


Gough Whitlam was driven from government on Remembrance Day, 1975. When he died six years ago, his achievements were recognised, if grudgingly, his mistakes noted in false sorrow. The truth of the coup against him, it was hoped, would be buried with him.


During the Whitlam years, 1972-75, Australia briefly achieved independence and became intolerably progressive. Politically, it was an astonishing period. An American commentator wrote that no country had "reversed its posture in international affairs so totally without going through a domestic revolution".

http://johnpilger.com/articles/the-cia-coup-against-the-most-loyal-ally-is-history-s-warning-in-2020

[Jun 09, 2020] Britain had the disgusting habit of leaving huge chunks of the world as powder kegs that others would end up having to deal with.

Jun 09, 2020 | www.unz.com

Wyatt , says: June 7, 2020 at 9:17 pm GMT

@Europe Europa h problem once and for all, failure to stop Hitler when they had the power and authority to do so (and thus preventing all the dumb shit that happened as a result of WW2), tens of millions dead in India from casual and frequent starvations, failure to eliminate the Irish once and for all, thus plaguing America with loutish white ignoramuses who have been reliable Democrat voters despite getting fucked over by them many times.

The British have consistently outstripped everyone and I mean EVERYONE in their ability to dick over everyone else and cause centuries long problems. Frankly, fuck'em.

[May 28, 2020] The US-based Center For Public Integrity seems to be the parent of the UK government's Integrity Initiative boondoggle

May 28, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

guidoamm , May 28 2020 7:05 utc | 60

Center For Public Integrity

Funding
The Center for Public Integrity has received contributions from a number of left-leaning foundation funders including the Ford Foundation, Omidyar Network Fund, Foundation to Promote Open Society, Knight Foundation, and MacArthur Foundation.[3] The foundation has stated that it no longer accepts corporate gifts, but it takes money from the private foundations of many of the richest Americans including actor Leonardo DiCaprio.

Seems to be the parent of the UK government's Integrity Initiative boondoggle

[May 24, 2020] Trial by Blockhead by Mark Chapman

Notable quotes:
"... Enter the Buk system, with the 9K37 SA-11 missile. It's got the range, it's got the altitude, the Russians have it in active service. Oooo problem. It's got the range, but only if it was fired from inside Ukraine. ..."
"... Anyway, back to the Buk system. And not a moment before time, either – I just re-read that sanctimonious stab above, again; " having armed the militants without due thought as to the consequences " What, exactly, is the ridiculous nature of the accusation being presented here? That the Russians gave an anti-aircraft system to the 'militants' without considering they might use it to shoot down an aircraft? How did they not see that coming? The Ukrainian Army shot down a civilian airliner in October of 2001 , and lied about it for as long as it could – interestingly, it took place during joint Ukrainian-Russian air defense exercises on the Crimean peninsula, and Russia tried hard to avoid assigning blame to Ukraine, while at least one Israeli television station claimed the Russians had shot down their own aircraft. This disaster and subsequent lying did not prevent the USA from giving the Javelin missile to Ukraine – did it not occur to them that they might use it to shoot tanks? No due thought to the consequences, obviously. ..."
"... The Buk air-defense system normally consists of at least 4 TELAR launchers , each with 4 missiles on the launch rails, a self-propelled acquisition radar designated by NATO nomenclature as Snow Drift (the radar on the nose of the TELAR unit itself is designated Fire Dome), and a self-propelled command post, for a minimum of 6 vehicles. Also usually part of the system is a mobile crane, to reload the launchers. If you were going to supply an air-defense system to militant rebels, why wouldn't you give them the whole system? In a pinch, you might be able to get away without the command post vehicle, although it is the station that collates all the input from the sensors and makes the decision to assign targets for acquisition, tracking and engagement. If you didn't give them the crane vehicle, and perhaps a logistics truck with some reloads, they would be limited to the missiles that came already mounted – once those were fired, they'd have to abandon the system, because they couldn't reload it. Seems a little wasteful, don't you think? ..."
"... I'm going a little further with my inexpert opinion, to say that the Buk system was selected as the 'murder weapon', because it provides a limited autonomous capability. To be clear, the Fire Dome radar on the nose of the TELAR does have a limited search capability, and once the radar is locked on to a target, the TELAR vehicle is completely autonomous. The purpose of the surveillance radar is to detect the target from far beyond the Fire Dome's range, assign it to a TELAR and thereby direct it to the elevation and bearing of the target so that the TELAR's radar knows exactly where to look, and continue to update its position until the TELAR to which it was assigned has locked on to the target. ..."
"... The Fire Dome radar mounted on the TELAR can search a 120-degree sector in 4 seconds, at an elevation of 6 to 7 degrees. Its search function is maximized for defense against ground attack aircraft, and a single launcher is not looking at 240 degrees of potential air threat axis during each sweep. It is not looking high enough to see an airliner at 30,000 ft+. More importantly for a system which was not designed to shoot down helpless airliners, it leaves two-thirds of a circle unobserved all the time it is searching for a target. And the Russians provided this to the 'militants' for air defense? They should be shot. ..."
"... There is no telling what kind of ordnance might be found in the wreckage itself, as the Ukrainian Army continued to shell the site for days after the crash; doubtless various artillery shells could be found at the crash site, as well, but it would be quite a leap of faith to suggest a Boeing 777 was shot down by artillery. What you would not find is pieces of the SAM that shot it down. ..."
"... Nor is that by any means all. The Dutch investigation which concluded with the preliminary report implied that nothing of any investigative value was found on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) or the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). Nothing to indicate what might have happened to the aircraft – just that it was flying along, and suddenly it wasn't. How likely is that? No transcript was provided, and I guess that would be expected if there was no information at all. Funny how often that happens with Malaysian airliners; they really need to look at their quality control. Oh; except they don't build the aircraft. Boeing does. I could see there not being any information after the plane began to break up, because both the CVR and the FDR are in the tail , and that broke off before the fuselage hit. But the microphones are in the ceiling of the cockpit and in the microphone and earpiece of the pilots' headsets, which they wear at all times while in flight. The last audio claimed to have been recorded was a course alteration sent by Ukrainian ATC. ..."
"... According to the Malaysian government, there was an early plan by NATO for a military operation involving some 9000 troops to 'secure the crash site', which was forestalled by a covert Malaysian operation which recovered the 'black boxes' and blocked the plan. I have to say that given the many, many other unorthodox and bizarre happenings in the conduct of what was supposed to be a transparent and impartial international investigation, it's getting so nothing much is unbelievable. The Malaysian Prime Minister went on record as believing that the western powers had already concluded that Russia was responsible, and were mostly just going through the motions of investigating. ..."
"... The telephone recordings presented by the SBU as demonstrating Russian culpability were analyzed by OG IT Forensic Services, a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, which concluded the recordings were cut, edited and fabricated . Yet they are relied upon as important evidence of guilt by the Dutch and the JIT. ..."
May 24, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

>Uncle Volodya says, "We become slaves the moment we hand the keys to the definition of reality entirely over to someone else, whether it is a business, an economic theory, a political party, the White House, Newsworld or CNN."

"The receptivity of the masses is very limited, their intelligence is small, but their power of forgetting is enormous. In consequence of these facts, all effective propaganda must be limited to a very few points and must harp on these in slogans until the last member of the public understands what you want him to understand by your slogan."

– Adolf Hitler

We're going to do something just a bit different today; the event I want to talk about is current – in the future, actually – but the reference which is the subject of the discussion is almost a year old. and the event it discusses is coming up to its sixth anniversary. The past event was the downing of Malaysia Airlines flight MH-17 over Ukraine, the future event is the trial in absentia of persons accused by the west of having perpetrated that disaster, and the reference is this piece, by Mark Galeotti, for the Moscow Times: "Russia's Roadmap Out of the MH17 Crisis" .

You all know Mr. Galeotti, I'm sure. Here's his bio, for Amazon:

"Professor Mark Galeotti is a senior researcher at UMV, the Institute of International Relations Prague, and coordinator of its Centre for European Security. Formerly, he was Professor of Global Affairs at New York University and head of History at Keele University. Educated at Cambridge University and the LSE, he is a specialist in modern Russian politics and security and transnational organized crime. And he writes other things for fun, too "

Yes, yes, he certainly does, as you will see. But this bio is extremely modest, albeit he most likely wrote it himself. Mr. Galeotti also authored an excellent blog, In Moscow's Shadows , which was once a go-to reference for crime and legal issues in Russia, a subject in which he seems very well-informed. The blog is still active, although he seems mostly to use it now to advertise podcasts and sell books. That's understandable – it's evident from the blur of titles appended to his name that he's a very busy man. Always has been, really; either as a student or an educator. He also speaks with confidence on the details of military affairs and equipment despite never having been in the military or studied engineering; his education has pretty much all been in history, law or political science.

I know what you will say – many of the greatest reference works on pivotal battles, overall military campaigns and affairs were written by those who had no personal military experience themselves. Mr. Galeotti studied under Dominic Lieven, whose "Russia Against Napoleon" was perhaps the greatest work of military history, rich with detail and insight, that I have ever read. It won him the Wolfson prize for History for 2010, a well-deserved honour. Yet so far as I could make out, Mr. Lieven never served a day in uniform, and if you handed him an AK-47 and said "Here; field-strip this", your likely response would be a blank look. He most certainly was not a witness to the subject military campaign. No; his epic work on Napoleon's invasion of Russia was informed by research, reading the accounts of others who were there at the time, poring over reams of old documents and matching references to get the best picture we have been afforded to date of Napoleon's ignominious defeat through a combination of imperial overreach, a poor grasp of logistics and, most of all, resistance by an adversary who refused to be drawn into playing to Napoleon's strength – the decisive, crushing battle in which the enemy could not retreat, and in which Napoleon would commit all the reserves and crush his enemy to dust.

So it is perfectly possible for an inquisitive mind with no military experience to put together an excellent reference on military happenings which already took place, even if the owner of that mind was not present for the actual event. Given human nature and the capabilities afforded by modern military equipment, it is even possible to forecast future military events with a fair degree of accuracy, going merely by political ambitions and enabling factors, without any personal military experience. After all, the decision-makers who give the orders that send their military forces into battle are often not military men themselves.

Returning for a moment to Mr. Galeotti, it is quite believable that an author with no military background could compose such works as "Armies of the Russian-Ukrainian War" , although there is no serious evidence that Russia is a part of such a conflict in any real military strength. You could write such a book entirely from media references and documentation, which in this case would come almost entirely from the side which claims it is under constant attack by the other – Ukraine. Likewise "Kulikovo 1380; the Battle that Made Russia" . None of us were around in 1380, so we all have to go by historical references, and whoever collects them all into a book first is likely to be regarded as an expert.

No, it's more when we get into how stuff works that I have an issue with it. Like " Spetsnaz: Russia's Special Forces ". Or " The Modern Russian Army ". I'm kind of skeptical about how someone could claim to know the actual internal workings of either organization simply from reading about them in popular references, considering that more than half the material on Russia written in English in western references is rubbish heavily influenced by politics and policy. We would not have to look very far to find examples in which ridiculous overconfidence by one side that it had the other side's number resulted in a horrible surprise. In fact, we would not have to look very far to find an example of this particular author confidently averring to know something inside-out, only to find that version of reality could not be sustained . And I would no more turn to a Senior Non-Resident Fellow at the Institute of International Relations Prague for expert analysis of the "Combat Vehicles of Russia's Special Forces" than I would ask a house painter to cut my hair. Unless I see some recollections of a college-age Galeotti tinkering with drivetrains and differentials until the sun went down from a pure love of mechanics, I am going to go ahead and assume that he knows what the vast majority of us knows about military vehicles – he could pick one out of a lineup which included a melon, a goat and an Armored Personnel Carrier, and if it had a flat tire he could probably fix it given time and the essential equipment.

Just before we move on, the future event: the MH-17 'trial' has been postponed until June 8th , to give defense attorneys more time to prepare after the amazingly fortuitous capture of a 'key witness' in Eastern Ukraine. I'm not going to elaborate here on what a kicking-the-can-down-the-road crock this is; we'll pick that up later. The whole MH-17 'investigation' has been such a ridiculous exercise in funneling the pursuit to a single inescapable conclusion – that Russia shot it down – irrespective of how many points have to be bent to fit the curve that no matter how it comes out, it will stand as perhaps the greatest example of absurd western self-justification ever recorded.

There are a couple of ways of solving a mystery crime. One is to collect evidence, and follow where it takes you. Another is to decide who you want to have been responsible, and then construct a sequence of events in which they might have done it. To do that, especially in this case, we will have to throw out a few assumptions, such as all that stuff about means, motive and opportunity. In the absence of a believable scenario, that is. Let's look at what we have, and what we need, and see how we get from there to here.

First, we need for Ukraine not to have been responsible. That's going to be awkward, because it looks as if the aircraft was shot down by a missile, but the missile had to have come from inside Ukraine, because the aircraft was too far from the nearest point in Russia at the moment it was stricken for the missile to have come from there. But we need Russia to have been responsible, and not Ukraine. Therefore we need a sequence of events in which a Russian missile launcher capable of shooting down an airliner at cruising altitude was inside Ukraine, in a position from which it could have taken the shot.

You know what? We are going to have to look at means, motive and opportunity, just for a second. My purpose in doing so is to illustrate just how improbable the western narrative is, starting from square one. The coup in Ukraine – and anyone who believes it was a 'grass-roots revolution' might as well stop reading right here, because we are going to just get further apart in our impressions of events – followed by the triumphant promise from the revolutionaries to repeal Yanukovych's language laws and make Ukrainian the law of the land touched off the return of Crimea to its ancestral home in the Russian Federation. Crimea was about 65% ethnic Russian by population at the time, and only about 15% Ukrainian, and Crimea had made several attempts to break free of Ukraine before that yet for some reason the west refused steadfastly to accept the results of a referendum which voted in favour of Crimea becoming a part of the Russian Federation, as if it were more believable that a huge ethnic-Russian majority preferred to learn Ukrainian and be governed by Kiev.

Be that as it may, Washington reacted very angrily; much more so than Europe, considering the distance between the United States and Ukraine versus its proximity to Europe. Perhaps that is owed simply to Washington's assumption that every corner of the world looks to it for leadership, and that it must have a position ready on any given situation, regardless how distant. So Washington insisted there must be sanctions against Russia, for stealing Crimea from its rightful owner, Ukraine. We're not really going to get into struggles for freedom and the right to self-determination right now, except to state that the USA considers nothing more important in some cases, while in others it is completely irrelevant. Washington demanded sanctions but much of Europe was reluctant .

"It is notoriously difficult to secure EU agreement on sanctions anywhere because they require unanimity from the 28 member states. There were wide differences over the numbers of Russians and Crimeans to be punished, with countries such as Greece, Cyprus, Bulgaria and Spain reluctant to penalise Moscow for fear of closing down channels of dialogue. The 21 named were on an original list that ran to about 120 people Expanding the numbers on the sanctions list is almost certain to be discussed at the EU summit on Thursday and Friday. Some EU states are torn about taking punitive measures against Russia for fear of undoing years of patient attempts to establish closer ties with Moscow as well as increase trade. The EU has already suspended talks with Russia on an economic pact and a visa agreement The German foreign minister, Frank-Walter Steinmeier, said any measure must leave "ways and possibilities open to prevent a further escalation that could lead to the division of Europe" .

The original list of those to be sanctioned was 120 people. The haggling reduced that to 21. Only 7 of those were Russians. Putin was not included. That was pretty plainly not the United Front That Speaks With One Voice that Washington had envisioned, and the notion that Europe would buy into sanctions that might really do some damage to Russia, albeit there would be economic costs to Europe as well, was a dim prospect.

Gosh – you know what we need? An atrocity which can be quickly tied to Russia, and which will so appall the EU member states that resistance to far-reaching sanctions will collapse. That's called 'motive'. It's just not a motive for Russia. Having just gone far out on a limb and taken back Crimea, to the obvious and vocal fury of the United States, it is a bit of a stretch that Russia was looking for what else it could do that would stir up the world against it.

Means, now. That presents its own dilemma. Because Russia could have shot down an airliner from its own territory. Just not with the weapon chosen. The S-400 could have done it; it has the range, easily. But if you were setting up a scenario in which something happened that you wanted to blame on Russia, but they didn't really do it, you must have the weapon to do it yourself, or access to it. By any reasonable construct, Ukraine must be a suspect as well – there was a hot war going on in Ukraine, Ukraine controlled both the airspace and the aircraft that was lost, and the aircraft was lost over Ukrainian territory. But Ukraine doesn't have the S-400. You could use a variety of western systems, but it would quickly be established that the plane was shot down with a weapon that Russia does not have. In order for the narrative to be believable, Russia must have the weapon – but if it wasn't Russia, then whoever did it must have the weapon, too.

Enter the Buk system, with the 9K37 SA-11 missile. It's got the range, it's got the altitude, the Russians have it in active service. Oooo problem. It's got the range, but only if it was fired from inside Ukraine.

Which brings us back to Mr. Galeotti, an expert in Russian combat systems; enough of an expert to write books on them, anyway. And he plainly believes it was an SA-11 missile fired from a single Buk TELAR (Transporter/Erector/Launcher and Radar) which brought down the Boeing; he says that's what the evidence demonstrates, although by this time (2019) most of the world has backed away from saying Putin showed up with no shirt on to close the firing switch personally (cue the instant British-press screaming headlines before the dust had even settled, "PUTIN'S MISSILE!!!" "PUTIN KILLED MY SON!!!"). Now the story is that the disgraceful deed was done by 'Ukrainian anti-government militants', using a weapon supplied by Russia.

"In this context, a full reversal of policy seems near-enough impossible. The evidence suggests that while the fateful missile was fired by Ukrainian anti-government militants, it was supplied by the Russian 53rd Air Defense Brigade under orders from Moscow and in a process managed by Russian military intelligence.

To admit this would not only be to acknowledge a share in the unlawful killing of 298 innocents, but also an unpicking of the whole Kremlin narrative over the Donbass. It would mean admitting to having been an active participant in this bloody compound of civil war and foreign intervention, to having armed the militants without due thought as to the consequences, and to having lied to the world and the Russian people for half a decade."

We don't really have the scope in this piece to broaden the discussion to Russia's probable actual involvement. Suffice it to say that despite non-stop allegations by Poroshenko throughout his presidency of entire battalions of active-service Russian Army soldiers inside Ukraine, zero evidence has ever been provided of any such presence, although there have been some clumsy attempts to fabricate it . To argue that the Russian Army has been trying to overrun Ukraine for six years now, but has been unable to do so because of the combat prowess of the Ukrainian Army is to imply a belief in leprechauns. This is only my own inexpert opinion, but it seems likely to me the complete extent of Russia's involvement, militarily, is the minimum which prevents Eastern Ukraine from being overrun by the Ukrainian military, and including the rebel areas' own far-from-inconsequential military forces. I'm always ready to entertain competing theories, though; be sure to bring your evidence. Meanwhile, the Ukrainian Constitution prohibits using the country's military forces against its own citizens. The logic of 'Have cake, and eat it" cannot apply here – either the Ukrainian state is in direct and obvious violation of its own constitution or the people of the breakaway regions are not Ukrainian citizens.

Anyway, back to the Buk system. And not a moment before time, either – I just re-read that sanctimonious stab above, again; " having armed the militants without due thought as to the consequences " What, exactly, is the ridiculous nature of the accusation being presented here? That the Russians gave an anti-aircraft system to the 'militants' without considering they might use it to shoot down an aircraft? How did they not see that coming? The Ukrainian Army shot down a civilian airliner in October of 2001 , and lied about it for as long as it could – interestingly, it took place during joint Ukrainian-Russian air defense exercises on the Crimean peninsula, and Russia tried hard to avoid assigning blame to Ukraine, while at least one Israeli television station claimed the Russians had shot down their own aircraft. This disaster and subsequent lying did not prevent the USA from giving the Javelin missile to Ukraine – did it not occur to them that they might use it to shoot tanks? No due thought to the consequences, obviously.

The Buk air-defense system normally consists of at least 4 TELAR launchers , each with 4 missiles on the launch rails, a self-propelled acquisition radar designated by NATO nomenclature as Snow Drift (the radar on the nose of the TELAR unit itself is designated Fire Dome), and a self-propelled command post, for a minimum of 6 vehicles. Also usually part of the system is a mobile crane, to reload the launchers. If you were going to supply an air-defense system to militant rebels, why wouldn't you give them the whole system? In a pinch, you might be able to get away without the command post vehicle, although it is the station that collates all the input from the sensors and makes the decision to assign targets for acquisition, tracking and engagement. If you didn't give them the crane vehicle, and perhaps a logistics truck with some reloads, they would be limited to the missiles that came already mounted – once those were fired, they'd have to abandon the system, because they couldn't reload it. Seems a little wasteful, don't you think?

What about the acquisition radar? Because acquiring targets is all about scanning capability and situational awareness. We're going to assume for a moment that you don't use an air defense system exclusively to hunt for airliners, but that you want to defend yourself against ground-attack aircraft like the Sukhoi SU-25. Because, when you think about it, who is more likely to be trying to kill you ? A Malaysian Airlines Boeing 777, or an SU-25? The latter is not quite as fast as an airliner at its cruising height of 30,000 ft+, but it is very agile and will be nearly down in the treetops if it is attacking you. You need to be able to search all around, all the time.

That's where the acquisition radar comes in. A centimetric waveband search radar, the Snow Drift (called the 9S18M1 by its designer) has 360-degree coverage and from 0 to 40 degrees of height in a 6-second sweep in anti-aircraft mode, with a 160 km detection range, obviously dependent on target altitude. An airliner, being a large target not attempting to evade detection, and at a high altitude, would quite possibly be detected at the maximum range of which the system is capable. But then the operators would certainly know it was an airliner. And the narrative says whoever shot it down probably did so by accident.

Maybe if it was his first day on the job. Let's talk for a minute about air-defense deconfliction. It would be nice if your Command parked you somewhere that there was nothing around you but enemies. Well, not as nice as parking you across the street from a pulled-pork barbecue joint with strippers and cold beer, but from a defense standpoint, it'd be nice to know that anything you detected, you could shoot. Know something? It's never like that. Your own aircraft are flying around as if they didn't even know you are dangerous, and as everyone now knows, civilian airliners continue their transport enterprises irrespective of war except in rare instances in which high-flying aircraft have been shot down by long-range missiles. That rarely happens. Why? Because an aircraft flying a steady course, at 30,000 ft+ and not descending, is no threat to you on the ground. From that altitude it can't even see you in the ground clutter, and it'd be quite a bombardier that could hit a target the size of a two-car garage with a bomb dropped from 30,000 ft while flying at 400 knots.

And unless you are an idiot, you know it is an airliner. When you are deployed into the field in an air-defense role, you know where the commercial airlanes are that are going to be active. You know what a commercial-aviation profile looks like – aircraft at 30,000 ft+ altitude, flying at ≥400 knots on a steady course, squawking Mode 3 and Charlie = airliner. Might as well take a moment here to talk about IFF ; Identification Friend or Foe. This is a coded pulse signal transmitted by all commercial aircraft whenever they are in flight unless their equipment is non-functional, and you are not allowed to take off with it in that state. Mode C provides the aircraft's altitude, taken automatically from its barometric altimeter. All modern air search radars have IFF capability, and a dashed line just below the raw video of the air track can be interrogated with a light-pen to provide the readout. You already know how high the plane is if you have a solid radar track, but Mode C provides a confirmation.

Military aircraft have IFF transponders, too; in fact, most of the modes are reserved for military use. But military aircraft often turn off their IFF equipment, because it provides a giveaway who and where they are. In Ukraine, which uses mostly Soviet military aircraft, both sides are capable of reading each other's IFF, so all the more reason not to transmit. Foreign nations typically cannot read each other's IFF except for the modes which are for both military and civilian use, other than those nations who are allies. Anyway, the point I wanted to make is that the Snow Drift acquisition radar has IFF, and if it detected an airliner-like target at 160 km., the operator would have that much more time to interrogate it and determine it was an airliner. Just to reiterate, the western narrative holds that the destruction of the airliner was a mistake.

I'm going a little further with my inexpert opinion, to say that the Buk system was selected as the 'murder weapon', because it provides a limited autonomous capability. To be clear, the Fire Dome radar on the nose of the TELAR does have a limited search capability, and once the radar is locked on to a target, the TELAR vehicle is completely autonomous. The purpose of the surveillance radar is to detect the target from far beyond the Fire Dome's range, assign it to a TELAR and thereby direct it to the elevation and bearing of the target so that the TELAR's radar knows exactly where to look, and continue to update its position until the TELAR to which it was assigned has locked on to the target.

That autonomous capability is probably what made it attractive to those building the scenario; consider. A complete Buk system of 6, maybe 7 vehicles could hardly get all the way inside Ukraine to the firing position without being noticed and perhaps recorded. But perhaps a single TELAR could do it. The aircraft could be shot down by an SA-11 missile and blamed on Russia – Ukraine has access to plenty of SA-11's. But it is a weapon in the Russian active-service inventory. Further, Galeotti's commitment to the allegation that the single TELAR was provided by Russia's 53rd Air Defense Brigade tells us he supports the crackpot narrative offered by Bellingcat, the loopy citizen-journalist website headed by failed financial clerk Eliot Higgins. Bellingcat claims the Buk TELAR was trucked into Ukraine on the back of a flatbed, took the shot that slew MH-17, and was immediately withdrawn back to Russia.

Ummm .how was that an accident? The Russians gave the Ukrainian militants a single launcher with no crane or reload missiles, so it was limited to a maximum of four shots. Its ability to defend itself from ground attack was almost nil, since the design purpose of mounting a Fire Dome radar on each TELAR is not to make the launcher units autonomous; it is to permit concurrent engagements by several launchers, all coordinated by the acquisition radar and command post. Without a radar of its own on the launcher, the firing unit would have to wait until each engagement was completed before it could switch to a new target, but with a fire-control guidance radar on each TELAR, multiple targets can be assigned to multiple launchers, while the search radar limits itself to acquisition and target assignment.

The Fire Dome radar mounted on the TELAR can search a 120-degree sector in 4 seconds, at an elevation of 6 to 7 degrees. Its search function is maximized for defense against ground attack aircraft, and a single launcher is not looking at 240 degrees of potential air threat axis during each sweep. It is not looking high enough to see an airliner at 30,000 ft+. More importantly for a system which was not designed to shoot down helpless airliners, it leaves two-thirds of a circle unobserved all the time it is searching for a target. And the Russians provided this to the 'militants' for air defense? They should be shot.

A single TELAR with no reloads and no acquisition radar would have to be looking directly at the target when it was activated in order to even see it; it takes 15 seconds for the launcher to swing into line and elevation even when that information is transmitted to it from the acquisition radar. It takes 4 seconds for a scan to be completed when there is a whole two-thirds of a circle that it is not even looking at, and you have to manually force it to search above 7 degrees because it is not designed to shoot down airliners. All this time, the target is crossing the acquisition scope at 400 knots+. Fire Dome has integrated IFF, so if it did by some miracle pick up an airliner in its search, the operator would know from transmitted IFF that he was looking at an airliner. A single TELAR with no reload capability sent on an air-defense mission would have its ass ripped in half by ground-attack aircraft that it never saw – if the autonomous capability is so good, why don't the Ukrainians use them as a single unit? Think of how much air-defense coverage they could provide! Do you see the Ukrainian air-defense units employing the Buk that way? Never. Not once. Four TELARS, acquisition radar vehicle, command vehicle, just the way the system was designed to operate.

Just because it has a limited capability to function in a given capacity should not suggest you would employ it that way. You can use a hockey stick to turn off the bedroom light, and you won't even have to get out of bed. Would you do that? I hope not.

A one-third effective capacity in the air defense role together with the covert delivery and immediate withdrawal suggests that the Russians provided the 'militants' with a single TELAR for the express purpose of shooting down a defenseless airliner. Except nobody is saying that. It was a mistake. Well, except for Head of the Security Service of Ukraine Valentyn Nalyvaichenko, who claimed "Terrorists and militants have planned a cynical terrorist attack on a civilian aircraft Aeroflot AFL-2074 Moscow-Larnaka that was flying at that time above the territory of Ukraine." He further claimed that this was motivated by a desire to 'justify an invasion'. I'm pretty sure if any western authority could prove anything even close to that, we would not have had to wait 6 years for a trial.

Which brings us to the covert delivery and extraction. As part of his personal investigation, Max van der Werff drove the route Bellingcat claimed was the extraction route by which the single TELAR, on its flatbed, was returned to Russia. He verified that there is a highway overpass on the route which is too low for a load that tall to pass underneath. When he pointed this out to Higgins, he was told there is a bypass spur which goes around it, which would allow the flatbed to regain the road beyond without having gone through the overpass. Max drew his attention to the concrete barriers which blocked that road at the top of the hill, and which locals claimed had been in place long before the destruction of MH-17. And that was the end of that conversation. I cannot say enough about the quality of Max's work and his diligent, patient dissection of the evidence . His diagrams of the entry and egress routes as provided by Bellingcat illustrate how little sense they make. It was imperative the guilty Russians get the fuck out of Dodge with the greatest possible dispatch so they drove 100 kilometers out of their way? Don't even terrorist murderers have GPS now?

Similarly, the simpleminded flailing of the Ukrainian investigators suggests they do not even have much of a grasp of how Surface-To-Air missiles work. In excited posts like this one , the BBC discloses that an exhaust vent from the tail section of a 'Buk missile' (the missile is actually the SA-11, while Buk is the entire system) was found in the wreckage of the crashed plane, while this one even shows terminally-stunned head prosecutor Fred Westerbeke standing next to what is allegedly part of the rocket body of an SA-11, including legible inventory markings, also 'found at the crash scene'.

Do tell.

Let me review for you how an SA-11 missile shoots down an aircraft. Does it pierce it like a harpoon, blow up in a thunderous explosion, and ride the doomed aircraft down to the crash site? It certainly does not. The missile blasts out of the launcher and flies to the target via semiactive homing, which means it has an onboard seeker that updates the missile trajectory, while the radar on the launcher also communicates with it and the missile and the target are brought together in intercept. When the proximity fuse of the missile – this is the important part – senses that the missile's warhead is close to the target, the internal explosive detonates, and a shower of prefragmented shrapnel pierces the area of the plane near where the missile detonated, usually the front, because the missile is constantly adjusting to make sure it stays with the target until intercept.

MH-17 traveled on, mostly intact, for miles before it crashed into the ground; the crash site was some 13 miles from where the plane was hit. The missile self-destructed miles away from the crash site, and the only parts of it which accompanied the plane to its impact point were the shrapnel bits of the exploded warhead. The body of the missile, together with the exhaust vent, fell back to the ground somewhere quite close to where the plane was hit, not where it fell. Once the missile's fuel is exhausted, either because it ran out or because it was consumed in the explosion triggered by the proximity fuse, the missile parts do not fly around in formation, seeking out the wreckage and coming gently to rest in it where they can later be found by investigators. I don't know how many times I have to say this, because this is certainly not the first, but there would not be any missile parts in the wreckage of MH-17 because the missile would have blown up in front of the plane without ever touching it. The missile does not hit the plane. The pieces of the warhead do. But reality has to take a back seat to making out an airtight case.

There is no telling what kind of ordnance might be found in the wreckage itself, as the Ukrainian Army continued to shell the site for days after the crash; doubtless various artillery shells could be found at the crash site, as well, but it would be quite a leap of faith to suggest a Boeing 777 was shot down by artillery. What you would not find is pieces of the SAM that shot it down.

Several witnesses claimed to have seen an SU-25 near the plane before it exploded. They quite possibly did – the Ukrainian Air Force was observed to be using civilian airliners as cover to allow them to get close to Eastern-Ukrainian villages which might be protected by hand-held launchers known as MANPADS (for Man-Portable Air Defense System), reasoning the defenders would not shoot if they were afraid they might hit a civil aircraft. Once they were close enough to the village or other target to make an attack run, they would then return to the vicinity of the airliner for protection while withdrawing; the rebel side complained about this illegal and immoral practice a month before the destruction of MH-17. But there is no evidence I am aware of linking the destruction of MH-17 to an attack by aircraft.

It may no longer be possible to look at the shooting-down of the Malaysian Boeing objectively; the event has become a partisan rush to judgment which was rendered immediately, after which an investigation began which plainly had as its goal proving the accusations already made. Means and motive clearly favour the accusers rather than the accused, and opportunity is mostly irrelevant as a consideration. Ukraine obviously had to be a suspect – the destruction of the aircraft occurred over Ukraine while Ukraine was in control of it and the airspace in which it traveled. Yet Ukraine was allowed to lead the investigation, and to gather and safeguard evidence, while the owner of the aircraft – Malaysia – was excluded until the investigation had been in progress for four months. Russia was not allowed any part in it save to yield whatever evidence the investigators demanded, while all its theories were widely mocked. Demonstrations set up by Almaz-Antey, the designers and builders of the SA-11, were unattended by any investigating nation – small wonder they do not have Clue One how the missile works, and believe they are going to find big chunks of it in the wreckage, perhaps with Putin's passport stuck to one of them. If any of these conditions prevailed in an investigation which favoured Russia, NATO would scream as if it were being run over with spiked wheels – if the Boeing had been shot down over Russia, who thinks Russia would have been heading the investigation, and custodian of the evidence?

Nor is that by any means all. The Dutch investigation which concluded with the preliminary report implied that nothing of any investigative value was found on the Cockpit Voice Recorder (CVR) or the Flight Data Recorder (FDR). Nothing to indicate what might have happened to the aircraft – just that it was flying along, and suddenly it wasn't. How likely is that? No transcript was provided, and I guess that would be expected if there was no information at all. Funny how often that happens with Malaysian airliners; they really need to look at their quality control. Oh; except they don't build the aircraft. Boeing does. I could see there not being any information after the plane began to break up, because both the CVR and the FDR are in the tail , and that broke off before the fuselage hit. But the microphones are in the ceiling of the cockpit and in the microphone and earpiece of the pilots' headsets, which they wear at all times while in flight. The last audio claimed to have been recorded was a course alteration sent by Ukrainian ATC.

According to the Malaysian government, there was an early plan by NATO for a military operation involving some 9000 troops to 'secure the crash site', which was forestalled by a covert Malaysian operation which recovered the 'black boxes' and blocked the plan. I have to say that given the many, many other unorthodox and bizarre happenings in the conduct of what was supposed to be a transparent and impartial international investigation, it's getting so nothing much is unbelievable. The Malaysian Prime Minister went on record as believing that the western powers had already concluded that Russia was responsible, and were mostly just going through the motions of investigating.

The telephone recordings presented by the SBU as demonstrating Russian culpability were analyzed by OG IT Forensic Services, a Malaysian firm specializing in forensic analysis of audio, video and digital materials for court proceedings, which concluded the recordings were cut, edited and fabricated . Yet they are relied upon as important evidence of guilt by the Dutch and the JIT.

The conduct of the investigation has been all the way across town from transparent, and in fact seems to represent a clique of cronies getting their heads together to attempt nailing down a consistent narrative, which is in the judgment of forensic professionals based upon clumsy fabrications. The investigators plainly have no understanding of how the weapons systems involved perform, or they would not claim confidently to have discovered pieces of the very missile that destroyed the plane in the wreckage of it. But rather than take an objective look at how this flailing is perceived, they continue to rely on momentum and the appearance of getting things done while being scrupulously impartial, all the while that more mountains of evidence are collected, which they cannot disclose to the public, although it is all right to let the prime suspect keep it safe under wraps.

Make of that what you will.

" Bullshit is unavoidable whenever circumstances require someone to talk without knowing what he is talking about. Thus the production of bullshit is stimulated whenever a person's obligations or opportunities to speak about some topic exceed his knowledge of the facts that are relevant to that topic. "

-Harry G. Frankfurt

[May 22, 2020] My mother was a teenage girl when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong. According to her account, she saw the Bristush battle ships and submarines ran from the harbor before the advance of the Japanese troops.

May 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Casual Observer , May 22 2020 22:45 utc | 36

" Britain had to agree to the pact because it had lost the capability to defend the colony."...
The Bristish had never defended Hong Kong and never had the intention to defend Hong Kong. My mother was a teenage girl when the Japanese invaded Hong Kong. According to her account, she saw the Bristush battle ships and submarines ran from the harbor before the advance of the Japanese troops. Leaving only the local Boy Scouts and the Salvation Army to fire a few token shots (who were all killed eventually). They didn't even bother to collect their own citizens when they ran, leaving behind a group of British nurses at a hospital, who were raped by the Japanese soldiers when they arrived.

vk , May 23 2020 0:30 utc | 47

@ Posted by: Kay Fabe | May 23 2020 0:09 utc | 42

The timing doesn't add up. China opened up in 1972 (the famous Nixon-Mao handshake), while the UK's agreement to give HK back was from 1984 - well into the Thatcher Era.

The most likely reason for the UK to decide to obey the lease deal was of military nature: the valuable land necessary to defend HK was the flatland adjacent to the city proper, where potable water comes from. It already part of the Mainland, thus rendering the defense of HK virtually impossible without an outright invasion of the Mainland itself.

Margaret Thatcher probably didn't want to obey the treaty (99-year lease), as a good neoliberal she was, but her military advisors probably warned her of the practical difficulties, and, since it was a 99-year lease anyway, she must've agreed to simply allow the treaty to be followed.

It is important to highlight that, in 1984, there were a lot of reasons the capitalist world should be optimist about China becoming capitalist. After all, it really got off the Soviet sphere after 1972, and Deng's reforms were - from the point of view of a vulgar (bourgeois) economist - indeed a clear path to a capitalist restoration. It didn't cross Thatcher's mind that China could stand its ground and remain socialist - at least not in 1984. If you read the sources of the time, you will easily see the Western elites treated China's return to capitalism as a given.

[May 21, 2020] Falsification of history as the major goal of propaganda

May 21, 2020 | off-guardian.org

Howard ,

"History," they say, "is written by the winners." But if you want to get at the fundamental flaw, remove the last three words and you have it: "History is written."

Events cannot be written, they can only be lived.

Just as a sun in a picture cannot give heat or light. The problem is that those who live history seldom speak of it, it's much too traumatic for them.

And those who speak voluminously of it most likely did not live it.

kenny gordon ,

Nice comment, Howard.

When my Father [Royal Artillery] was told to stop fighting against my Father-in-Law [Waffen SS], he was sent off to fight against MOSSAD in Palestine he witnessed the brutal treatment handed out to the "indigenous people" and was very reluctant to talk about his experience.. "By way of deception thou shalt do war"..!

[May 21, 2020] The 'Clean Break' Doctrine OffGuardian

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm ..."
"... "the right to plunder anything one can get their hands on" ..."
"... "the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi" ..."
May 21, 2020 | off-guardian.org

n 1996 a task force, led by Richard Perle, produced a policy document titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm for Benjamin Netanyahu, who was then in his first term as Prime Minister of Israel, as a how-to manual on approaching regime change in the Middle East and for the destruction of the Oslo Accords.

The "Clean Break" policy document outlined these goals:

Ending Yasser Arafat's and the Palestinian Authority's political influence, by blaming them for acts of Palestinian terrorism Inducing the United States to overthrow Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Launching war against Syria after Saddam's regime is disposed of. Followed by military action against Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt.

"Clean Break" was also in direct opposition to the Oslo Accords, to which Netanyahu was very much itching to obliterate. The Oslo II Accord was signed just the year before, on September 28th 1995, in Taba, Egypt.

During the Oslo Accord peace process, Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu accused Rabin's government of being "removed from Jewish tradition and Jewish values." Rallies organised by the Likud and other right-wing fundamentalist groups featured depictions of Rabin in a Nazi SS uniform or in the crosshairs of a gun.

In July 1995, Netanyahu went so far as to lead a mock funeral procession for Rabin, featuring a coffin and hangman's noose.

The Oslo Accords was the initiation of a process which was to lead to a peace treaty based on the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 242 and 338, and at fulfilling the "right of the Palestinian people to self-determination." If such a peace treaty were to occur, with the United States backing, it would have prevented much of the mayhem that has occurred since.

However, the central person to ensuring this process, Yitzak Rabin, was assassinated just a month and a half after the signing of the Oslo II Accord, on November 4th, 1995. Netanyahu became prime minister of Israel seven months later. "Clean Break" was produced the following year.

On November 6th, 2000 in the Israeli daily Ha'aretz, Israeli Justice Minister Yossi Beilin, who was the chief negotiator of the Oslo peace accords, warned those Israelis who argued that it was impossible to make peace with the Palestinians:

Zionism was founded in order to save Jews from persecution and anti-Semitism, and not in order to offer them a Jewish Sparta or – God forbid – a new Massada."

On Oct. 5, 2003, for the first time in 30 years, Israel launched bombing raids against Syria, targeting a purported "Palestinian terrorist camp" inside Syrian territory. Washington stood by and did nothing to prevent further escalation.

"Clean Break" was officially launched in March 2003 with the war against Iraq, under the pretence of "The War on Terror". The real agenda was a western-backed list of regime changes in the Middle East to fit the plans of the United Kingdom, the U.S. and Israel.

However, the affair is much more complicated than that with each player holding their own "idea" of what the "plan" is. Before we can fully appreciate such a scope, we must first understand what was Sykes-Picot and how did it shape today's world mayhem.

Arabian Nights

WWI was to officially start July 28th 1914, almost immediately following the Balkan wars (1912-1913) which had greatly weakened the Ottoman Empire.

Never one to miss an opportunity when smelling fresh blood, the British were very keen on acquiring what they saw as strategic territories for the taking under the justification of being in war-time, which in the language of geopolitics translates to "the right to plunder anything one can get their hands on" .

The brilliance of Britain's plan to garner these new territories was not to fight the Ottoman Empire directly but rather, to invoke an internal rebellion from within. These Arab territories would be encouraged by Britain to rebel for their independence from the Ottoman Empire and that Britain would support them in this cause.

These Arab territories were thus led to believe that they were fighting for their own freedom when, in fact, they were fighting for British and secondarily French colonial interests.

In order for all Arab leaders to sign on to the idea of rebelling against the Ottoman Sultan, there needed to be a viable leader that was Arab, for they certainly would not agree to rebel at the behest of Britain.

Lord Kitchener, the butcher of Sudan, was to be at the helm of this operation as Britain's Minister of War. Kitchener's choice for Arab leadership was the scion of the Hashemite dynasty, Hussein ibn Ali, known as the Sherif of Mecca who ruled the region of Hejaz under the Ottoman Sultan.

Hardinge of the British India Office disagreed with this choice and wanted Wahhabite Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud instead, however, Lord Kitchener overruled this stating that their intelligence revealed that more Arabs would follow Hussein.

Since the Young Turk Revolution which seized power of the Ottoman government in 1908, Hussein was very aware that his dynasty was in no way guaranteed and thus he was open to Britain's invitation to crown him King of the Arab kingdom.

Kitchener wrote to one of Hussein's sons, Abdallah, as reassurance of Britain's support:

If the Arab nation assist England in this war that has been forced upon us by Turkey, England will guarantee that no internal intervention take place in Arabia, and will give Arabs every assistance against foreign aggression."

Sir Henry McMahon who was the British High Commissioner to Egypt, would have several correspondences with Sherif Hussein between July 1915 to March 1916 to convince Hussein to lead the rebellion for the "independence" of the Arab states.

However, in a private letter to India's Viceroy Charles Hardinge sent on December 4th, 1915, McMahon expressed a rather different view of what the future of Arabia would be, contrary to what he had led Sherif Hussein to believe:

[I do not take] the idea of a future strong united independent Arab State too seriously the conditions of Arabia do not and will not for a very long time to come, lend themselves to such a thing."

Such a view meant that Arabia would be subject to Britain's heavy-handed "advising" in all its affairs, whether it sought it or not.

In the meantime, Sherif Hussein was receiving dispatches issued by the British Cairo office to the effect that the Arabs of Palestine, Syria, and Mesopotamia (Iraq) would be given independence guaranteed by Britain, if they rose up against the Ottoman Empire.

The French were understandably suspicious of Britain's plans for these Arab territories. The French viewed Palestine, Lebanon and Syria as intrinsically belonging to France, based on French conquests during the Crusades and their "protection" of the Catholic populations in the region.

Hussein was adamant that Beirut and Aleppo were to be given independence and completely rejected French presence in Arabia. Britain was also not content to give the French all the concessions they demanded as their "intrinsic" colonial rights.

Enter Sykes and Picot.

... ... ...

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s violent confrontations between Jews and Arabs took place in Palestine costing hundreds of lives. In 1936 a major Arab revolt occurred over 7 months, until diplomatic efforts involving other Arab countries led to a ceasefire.

In 1937, a British Royal Commission of Inquiry headed by William Peel concluded that Palestine had two distinct societies with irreconcilable political demands, thus making it necessary to partition the land.

The Arab Higher Committee refused Peel's "prescription" and the revolt broke out again. This time, Britain responded with a devastatingly heavy hand. Roughly 5,000 Arabs were killed by the British armed forces and police. Following the riots, the British mandate government dissolved the Arab Higher Committee and declared it an illegal body.

In response to the revolt, the British government issued the White Paper of 1939, which stated that Palestine should be a bi-national state, inhabited by both Arabs and Jews.

Due to the international unpopularity of the mandate including within Britain itself, it was organised such that the United Nations would take responsibility for the British initiative and adopted the resolution to partition Palestine on November 29th, 1947.

Britain would announce its termination of its Mandate for Palestine on May 15th, 1948 after the State of Israel declared its independence on May 14th, 1948.

A New Strategy for Securing Whose Realm?

Despite what its title would have you believe, "Clean Break" is neither a "new strategy" nor meant for "securing" anything. It is also not the brainchild of fanatical neo-conservatives: Dick Cheney and Richard Perle, nor even that of crazed end-of-days fundamentalist Benjamin Netanyahu, but rather has the very distinct and lingering odour of the British Empire.

"Clean Break" is a continuation of Britain's geopolitical game, and just as it used France during the Sykes-Picot days it is using the United States and Israel.

The role Israel has found itself playing in the Middle East could not exist if it were not for over 30 years of direct British occupation in Palestine and its direct responsibility for the construction of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, which set a course for destruction and endless war in this region long before Israel ever existed.

It was also Britain who officially launched operation "Clean Break" by directly and fraudulently instigating an illegal war against Iraq to which the Chilcot Inquiry, aka Iraq Inquiry , released 7 years later, attests to.

This was done by the dubious reporting by British Intelligence setting the pretext for the U.S.' ultimate invasion into Iraq based off of fraudulent and forged evidence provided by GCHQ, unleashing the "War on Terror", aka "Clean Break" outline for regime change in the Middle East.

In addition, the Libyan invasion in 2011 was also found to be unlawfully instigated by Britain.

In a report published by the British Foreign Affairs Committee in September 2016, it was concluded that it was "the UK and France in March 2011 which led the international community to support an intervention in Libya to protect civilians from forces loyal to Muammar Gaddafi" .

The report concluded that the Libyan intervention was based on false pretence provided by British Intelligence and recklessly promoted by the British government.

If this were not enough, British Intelligence has also been caught behind the orchestrations of Russia-Gate and the Skripal affair .

Therefore, though the U.S. and Israeli military have done a good job at stealing the show, and though they certainly believe themselves to be the head of the show, the reality is that this age of empire is distinctly British and anyone who plays into this game will ultimately be playing for said interests, whether they are aware of it or not.

Originally published by Strategic Culture


Almondson ,

Yossi B said:

Zionism was founded in order to save Jews from persecution and anti-Semitism

Ever heard of Dumbo? He's a flying elephant.

The crusade in the ME will continue, with Israel the top dog until America's military support is no longer there. Even without the Israeli eastern european invaders, the area is primed for perpetual tribal warfare because the masses are driven by tribalist doctrines and warped metaphysics dictated by insane and inhumane parasites (priests). It is the epicenter of a spiritual plague that has infected most of the planet.

paul ,

There is complete continuity between the activities of Zionist controlled western countries and those of the present day.

In the 1930s, there were about 300,000 adult Palestinian males. Over 10% were killed, imprisoned and tortured or driven into exile. 100,000 British troops were sent to Palestine to destroy completely Palestinian political and military organisations. Wingate set up the Jew terror gangs who were given free rein to murder, rape and burn, in preparation for the complete ethnic cleansing of the country.

We see the same ruthless, genocidal brutality on an even greater scale in the present day, serving exactly the same interests. Nothing has ever come of trying to negotiate with the Zionists and their western stooges – just further disasters. It is only resolute and uncompromising resistance that has ever achieved anything. Hezbollah kicking their Zionist arses out of Lebanon in 2000 and keeping them out in 2006. Had they not done so, Lebanon would still be under Zionist occupation and covered with their filthy illegal settlements.

They have never stopped and they never will. The objective is to create a vast Zionist empire comprising the whole of Palestine, Jordan, Lebanon and Syria, and parts of Egypt, Turkey, Iraq, and Saudi Arabia. This plan has never changed and it never will. The Zionist thieves will shortly steal what little is left of Palestine. But the thieving will not end there. It will just move on to neighbouring countries.

The prime reason they have been able to get away with this is not their control of British and US golems. It is by playing the old, dirty colonial games of divide and rule, with the Quisling stooge dictators serving their interests. They have always been able to set Sunni against Shia, and different factions against others. The dumb Arabs fall for it every time. Their latest intrigues are directed at the destruction of Iran, the next victim on their target list after Iraq, Libya and Syria. And the Quisling dictators of Saudi Arabia are openly agitating for this and offering to pay for all of it. Syria sent troops to join the US invasion of Iraq in 1991, though Iraqi troops fought and died in Syria in 1973 against Israel. Egypt allows Israel to use its airspace to carry out the genocidal terror bombing of Gaza.

All this is contemptible enough and fits into racist stereotypes of Arabs as stupid, irrational, corrupt, easily bought, violent and treacherous. This of course does not apply to the populations of those countries, but it is a legitimate assessment of their Quisling dictators, with a (very) few honourable exceptions.

Seamus Padraig ,

Of course, Arab rulers who don't tow the Zionist line generally get overthrown, don't they? And that usually requires the efforts/intervention of FUKUS, doesn't it? So you can't really pretend that 'Arab stupidity' is the main factor.

Richard Le Sarc ,

The fact that, as the Yesha Council of Rabbis and Torah Sages declared in 2006, as Israel was bombing Lebanon 'back to the Stone Age', under Talmudic Judaism, killing civilians is not just permissible, but a mitzvah, or good deed, explains Zionist behaviour. Other doctrines allow an entire 'city' eg Gaza, to be devastated for the 'crimes' of a few, and children, even babies, to be killed if they would grow up to 'oppose the Jews'. Dare mention these FACTS, seen everyday in Israeli barbarity, and the 'antisemitism' slurs flow, as ever.

Julia ,

" is that this age of empire is distinctly British"

.it takes some balls to make such an absurd statement and still expect to be taken seriously. The US of course with its 800 military bases around the world and gifts of 40 billion a year to Israel has no opinion on the future of the Middle East. You would have us believe that they are just humble onlookers, as a small bankrupt country tells them what to do. We are being told that the CIA, the most formidable spy agency and manipulator of countries in history, sits quietly by as the British and Israel tells the US what to do.
Absurd isn't it., Clearly the truth is that Israel is just another military base for the US in the Middle East, easily the most important geopolitical region in the world. They fund it, arm it, and protect it from all attacks, Israel does as it is told by the US for the most part despite the pantomime on the surface.
Many on the far right like to hide US interests behind a wall of antisemitism that likes to paint 'the jews' as an all powerful enemy but this is just cover for Israel's real geopolitical roll as a US puppet.
Time and time again all we are seeing is attempt to write the US, the largest empire in the history out of the news and out of the history books, like it is some invisible benign force that has not interests, no control and does noting to forward it's interests and it's empire.

''To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise."

I don't know about you, but I'm not 10 years old and I know I am looking at Empire and it's power being flexed every day in every part do the world, especial in the parts of the world that it funds with trillions of dollars.

Julia ,

" is that this age of empire is distinctly British"

.it takes some balls to make such an absurd statement and still expect to be taken seriously. The US of course with its 800 military bases around the world and gifts of 40 billion a year to Israel has no opinion on the future of the Middle East. You would have us believe that they are just humble onlookers, as a small bankrupt country tells them what to do. We are being told that the CIA, the most formidable spy agency and manipulator of countries in history, sits quietly by as the British and Israel tells the US what to do.
Absurd isn't it., Clearly the truth is that Israel is just another military base for the US in the Middle East, easily the most important geopolitical region in the world. They fund it, arm it, and protect it from all attacks, Israel does as it is told by the US for the most part despite the pantomime on the surface.
Many on the far right like to hide US interests behind a wall of antisemitism that likes to paint 'the jews' as an all powerful enemy but this is just cover for Israel's real geopolitical roll as a US puppet.
Time and time again all we are seeing is attempt to write the US, the largest empire in the history out of the news and out of the history books, like it is some invisible benign force that has not interests, no control and does noting to forward it's interests and it's empire.

''To find out who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticise."

I don't know about you, but I'm not 10 years old and I know I am looking at Empire and it's power being flexed every day in every part do the world, especial in the parts of the world that it funds with trillions of dollars.

Richard Le Sarc ,

The antithesis of the truth. It is US politicians who flock to AIPAC's meeting every year to pledge UNDYING fealty to Israel, not Israeli politicians pledging loyalty to the USA. It is Israeli and dual loyalty Jewish oligarchs funding BOTH US parties, it is US politicians throwing themselves to the ground in adulation when Bibi the war criminal addresses the Congress with undisguised contempt, not Israeli politicians groveling to the USA. The master-servant relationship is undisguised.

Pyewacket ,

In Daniel Yergin's The Prize, a history of the Oil industry, he provides another interesting angle to explain British interest in the region. He states that at that time, Churchill realised that a fighting Navy powered by Coal, was not nearly as good or efficient as one using Oil as a fuel, and that securing supplies of the stuff was the best way forward to protect the Empire.

BigB ,

Yergin would be right. The precursor of the First World War was a technological arms race and accelerated 'scientific' perfection of arsenals – particularly naval – in the service of imperialism. British and German imperialism. The full story involves the Berlin to Cairo railway and the resource grab that went with it. I'm a bit sketchy on the details now: but Churchill had a prominent role, rising to First Lord of the Admiralty.

Docherty and Macgregor have exposed the hidden history. F W Engdahl has written about WW1 being the first oil war.

Andreas Schlüter ,

And don´t forget which of the US Military command regions into which the US Military divided the WHOLE World is named "US CENTCOM"!
„One Thing Must be Clear to the World: The US Power Elite Regards the Whole Globe as Their Colony!": https://wipokuli.wordpress.com/2016/10/26/one-thing-must-be-clear-to-the-world-the-us-power-elite-regards-the-whole-globe-as-their-colony/

Antonym ,

In 1996 a task force, led by Richard Perle, produced a policy document titled A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm for Benjamin Netanyahu

No source link for this!

By the way 1996 was during the Clinton administration. Warren Christopher was secretary of state and John Deutch was the Director of Central Intelligence . George Tenet was appointed the Deputy Director of Central Intelligence in July 1995. After John Deutch's abrupt resignation in December 1996, Tenet served as acting director.

Reg ,

Here you go, sonny boy

http://www.dougfeith.com/docs/Clean_Break.pdf

Richard Le Sarc ,

Antsie, what are you going to deny next? The USS Liberty? Deir Yassin? The Lavon Affair? Sabra, Shatilla? Qana (twice)? The Five Celebrating Israelis on 9/11?Does not impress.

[May 11, 2020] the pro-NATO propagandists often exploit the so-called 'Russian threat' concept; however, this merely provides a cover for their aggressive actions to silence and discredit opposing opinions and sources of information they deem to be counter to their own interests.

May 11, 2020 | www.unz.com

Anonymous [208] Disclaimer , says: Show Comment May 11, 2020 at 10:43 am GMT

To achieve their goals, the pro-NATO propagandists often exploit the so-called 'Russian threat' concept; however, this merely provides a cover for their aggressive actions to silence and discredit opposing opinions and sources of information they deem to be counter to their own interests.

The reason behind their activity is simple – they must justify their existence in reports to their sponsors. They are constantly and fiercely working to engineer 'successful actions' regardless of their validity. In order to continue securing funding to expose and defeat an imaginary enemy, they must create imaginary victories, irrespective of reality.

Uh, the author obviously knows better so why promote this narrative? These operatives are not going after "wrong", or "invalid" targets to justify their funding. They're specifically hired to do what they're doing now.

[May 05, 2020] UK government experince with the White Helmets and the Skripal affair definitly halps in anti-china propaganda.

Highly recommended!
May 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

begob , May 5 2020 2:08 utc | 114

In the UK, looks like Tom Tugendhat, chair of the foreign affairs committee, is spreading the China-did-it propaganda, after his comments on the BBC last week. He can file it alongside his promotion of the White Helmets and the Skripal affair.

[Apr 30, 2020] After WW2 the Brits collected as many Enigma machines as they could get their hands on and gave them to all the commonwealth countries, and a few others, saying they were un-crackable all the while knowing that wasn't the case and they could read them like the daily papers

Apr 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

xxx logicalman 4/27/2020, 1:40:42 PM (Edited)

Perfidious Albion.

After WW2 the Brits collected as many Enigma machines as they could get their hands on and gave them to all the commonwealth countries, and a few others, saying they were un-crackable all the while knowing that wasn't the case and they could read them like the daily papers. That's why Enigma was top secret for at least 40 years - some details will likely be kept secret for ever.

My dad worked on cracking it - got a medal for his work 50 years after the end of WW2. Didn't let on to anyone until his work was declassified. I had some very interesting conversations with him towards the end of his life.

He was invited down to Bletchley for the official switch-on when the Colossus rebuild was finished.

[Apr 18, 2020] The modern English oligarchy does not rest on the cruelty of the rich to the poor - it rests on the unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich

Apr 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Phyryne's frock , Apr 17 2020 21:48 utc | 124

Does anyone know where Nancy Pelosi lives? Is there any talk of forming a line of cars outside her house, everybody holding up signs "My kids are hungry give them your ice cream!"

(just saw on my rarely-scanned fb page her actually proudly showing off her big stash of very expensive consumables and james cordon fawning over her, every bit as bizarro as trump and minions)

Once again, The poor should immediately apologize to the rich, take all the wealth off them that was not self-earned but merely drifted to them via myriad legal thefts that exist in our economic dystems un-countered, and then promise never again to allow heaps of wealth to be piled on any human being. Because piling heaps of unearned wealth on people is a very cruel thing to do to them: it allows them to succumb to their own worst instincts (like james cordon and nancy did in that gobsmacking "interview"), it makes them targets of the poor and all the other rich, they are forced to waste their lives eroding their overfortunes trying to defend their overfortunes, it deprives them of the greatest joy in life, fraternity and camaraderie being part of the human herd, wealth makes soft and lazy and far-to-fall.

GK Chesterton said "The modern English oligarchy does not rest on the cruelty of the rich to the poor - it rests on the unfailing kindness of the poor to the rich."

He was wrong about that. It IS NOT a kindness to ANYONE to be putting people in positions of economic inferiority and superiority. It is artificially and unnecessarily contrived poison - but people swallow it every day, every hour, every minute.

[Apr 16, 2020] Interconnections between British political elite and British intelligence

Apr 16, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Realist , Apr 15 2020 17:51 utc | 8

Re: British Labour Party leader "Sir" Keir Starmer and his connection to British Military Intelligence service MI5

https://www.twitter.com/DCKennard/status/1250344315777212416

Matt Kennard

Why did then head of the CPS, Keir Starmer, meet then head of MI5, Sir Jonathan Evans, for informal social drinks in April 2013, the year after Starmer decided not to prosecute MI5 for its role in torture. No record any other CPS head accepting hospitality from an intel chief.

When Starmer decided not to prosecute MI5, its director-general Sir Jonathan Evans said: "I am delighted that after a thorough police investigation the CPS has concluded that [MI5] has no case to answer".


Sir Jonathan Evans left MI5 a week following his drinks with Starmer. The day after Evans left the service, Starmer announced he would also leave the CPS. Evans is now Baron Evans of Weardale after David Cameron made him a life peer in 2014.


The CPS' role involved attempting to trace responsibility for the actions of the MI5 officer it was investigating further up MI5's chain of command. It is likely that Sir Jonathan Evans -- who joined MI5 in 1980 -- played a role in the case under investigation.

In September 2001 Sir Jonathan Evans had become director of international counter terrorism at MI5 and was in this position when the British resident -- whose treatment the CPS was investigating -- was snatched, tortured and rendered by the CIA, with MI5 involvement.


It's not known if Evans would have been criminally liable if the prosecution had gone ahead, but he later had to defend MI5 from accusations of a cover-up in case after Lord Neuberger, then President of the Court of Appeal, said there was a "culture of suppression" in the agency


The value of the hospitality Starmer received from Evans is listed as "unknown" and MI5 is not mentioned, indicating this was a social meeting. Formal meetings for the head of the CPS are registered separately under "meetings with external organisations", which would include MI5

Such social drinks appear to be unusual for the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP). The three years hospitality records for the period after Starmer left the CPS show his successor as DPP received no hospitality from a sitting intelligence chief -- or met them formally.


At the time of Starmer's social drinks with Sir Jonathan Evans the CPS was still investigating the role of MI5's sister organisation MI6 in the rendition of two families to Libya when it was ruled by Muammar Gaddafi.


In 2012 -- the year before Starmer met Evans for drinks -- Conservative MP David Davis said it was "essential" for MI5 to be investigated by Scotland Yard for joint operations it conducted with Libyan intelligence against Libyan dissidents living in the UK. That never happened.

TRILATERAL COMMISSION: Sir Keir Starmer is a member of the intelligence-linked Trilateral Commission, an organisation set up in 1973 by American billionaire David Rockefeller who was then chairman of Chase Manhattan Bank. Starmer is the only British MP who is a member.

[Apr 14, 2020] Dirty rotten British establishment. Why is Assange in jail and NOT Ghislaine Maxwell?

Apr 14, 2020 | www.unz.com

annamaria , says: Show Comment April 13, 2020 at 11:13 am GMT

@A123 Poor quetching zionist. Why do your brethren prefer NYC to Israel?

Your Singers, Adelsons, Epsteins, Wexlers, Lauders, and other Schumers don't want to live with Hasidim and the supremacist scum of Schneerson's followers. So much for the Jewish State of collaborators with self-proclaimed neo-nazi in Kaganat of Nuland (former Ukraine). https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/rights-groups-demand-israel-stop-arming-neo-nazis-in-the-ukraine-1.6248727
Your obnoxious lot has never been able to create a distinct civilization but only a fungus.

As for zionism of the 21st century, the worst of the worst have united into a ziocon plague made of the walking cadavers of Cheney, Blairs, Clintons, Obama, Trump, Rumsfeld, and ghastly founders of PNAC (dreaming of Amalek): https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_for_the_New_American_Century

The Wars for Israel have this prominent victim: https://consortiumnews.com/2020/04/12/assange-partner-speaks-out-after-threat-from-judge/

A legitimate question:

Dirty rotten British establishment. Why is Assange in jail and NOT Ghislaine Maxwell????

Why, "A123?" Do you know why the courageous journalist is in jail in the thoroughly zionized UK, but the procuress of teens for wealthy pedophiles is free to wander, and her property is protected in the UK? The Friends of Israel indeed have a lot of power in the UK, and you surely know the secret of Ghislaine Maxwell's success.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/LgK5ZqjvC5s?feature=oembed

[Apr 07, 2020] Wuhan lab virus leak 'no longer discounted': Cobra by Dave Makichuk

British elite hypocrisy in action? Why in case of Novichok Porton Down and the Army nurse on the scène were discounted?
Beware Daily Mail (or more precisely the Sunday version). Notorious for anti-Russian and anti-Chinese stories, along with smearing anything even mildly left-wing
Apr 06, 2020 | asiatimes.com

...a leak from a laboratory in the Chinese city is "no longer being discounted" by UK ministers, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday .

... ... ...

American biosecurity expert Professor Richard Ebright, of Rutgers University's Waksman Institute of Microbiology, New Jersey, said that while the evidence suggests Covid-19 was not created in one of the Wuhan labs, it could easily have escaped from there while it was being analyzed, the report said.

Prof Ebright said he has seen evidence that scientists at the Centre for Disease Control and the Institute of Virology studied the viruses with only "level 2" security -- rather than the recommended level 4 – which "provides only minimal protection against infection of lab workers," the report said. He concluded that the evidence left "a basis to rule out [that coronavirus is] a lab construct, but no basis to rule out a lab accident."

Intriguingly, when the wildlife market was closed in January, a report appeared in the Beijing News identifying Huang Yanling, a researcher at the Institute of Virology, as "patient zero" – the first person to be infected.

The claim was described as "fake information" by the institute, which said Huang left in 2015, was in good health and had not been diagnosed with Covid-19.

[Mar 22, 2020] Mask piracy among neoliberal nations: Wonderful show of world-wide solidarity

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... 1) Pompeo and Grenell reportedly arguing that coronavirus has created window of opportunity for a direct strike on a weak and divided Iran. ..."
"... Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisian has criticized the #UK for not delivering millions of masks #Iran bought in preparations ahead of #Covid19 outbreak. The London govt. refused to deliver them citing US sanctions! Note that Germany took supplies meant for Switzerland, The US via the Italian Mafia (I suppose) gets masks from Bergamo. etc. ..."
Mar 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

Stonebird , Mar 21 2020 21:25 utc | 31

I just think that the US "Intelligence" and most of the US Administration just haven't got it. I suppose when you are waiting for the "rapture" anything that can add to the chaos is to be included.

1) Pompeo and Grenell reportedly arguing that coronavirus has created window of opportunity for a direct strike on a weak and divided Iran. They were arguing about the severity of the strike.

2) Deputy Health Minister Alireza Raisian has criticized the #UK for not delivering millions of masks #Iran bought in preparations ahead of #Covid19 outbreak. The London govt. refused to deliver them citing US sanctions! Note that Germany took supplies meant for Switzerland, The US via the Italian Mafia (I suppose) gets masks from Bergamo. etc. Wonderful show of world-wide solidarity.

Pompeo should hold his "rapture" in his hot little hand and .....

[Jan 29, 2020] How The U.S. Regime And Its Allies Enforce Their Smears And Their Other Lies by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... the West's equivalent to the former Soviet Union's systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not. ..."
"... (The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be "good," even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.) ..."
"... The great then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012, "Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who actually do it." How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. ..."
"... Let's examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it's perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government ( Kaplan/The Washington Post ), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it's an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from? ..."
"... This is the American gospel, and it is called "capitalism." Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel switched instead to pure global conquest -- über -imperialism -- and the American public didn't even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism has come to mean über-imperialism. That's today's American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today's Amerika. ..."
Jan 29, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Eric Zuesse via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Without enforced suppression of truth, there would be no way that the U.S. and its allied regimes could continue hiding the lies that were behind their invasions of Iraq in 2003 , and of Syria since 2012 , and their coup against Ukraine in 2014 , and also of their takeovers and attempted takeovers of other countries that had refused to be bullied by the U.S. regime into complying with its obsessive anti-Russian demands -- America's subterranean continuation of the Cold War, even after Russia had quit the Cold War in 1991 .

All of the lies are still being propounded by the U.S. regime and remain fully enforced by suppression of the truth about these matters.

That's being done in all news-media except a few of the non -mainstream ones.

So: this is about an actual Western samizdat - the West's equivalent to the former Soviet Union's systematic, and equally pervasive, truth-suppression, to fool the public into thinking that the Government represents them, no matter how much it does not.

(The chief trick in this regard is to fool them into thinking that since there is more than one political party, one of them will be "good," even though the fact may actually be that each of the parties represents simply a different faction of a psychopathically evil aristocracy. After all: each party lied and supported invading Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011, and Syria constantly; and no party acknowledges that the 2014 regime-change in Ukraine was a U.S. coup instead of a domestic Ukrainian democratic revolution. On such important matters, they all lie, and in basically the same ways. These lies are bipartisan, even though most of the other political lies are heavily partisan.)

Right now, Julian Assange is rotting to death inside Britain's equivalent to the U.S. regime's Guantanamo Bay prison, which is Belmarsh Prison, in London. As the CIA-edited and written Wikipedia's article on Belmarsh Prison retrospectively admits, "Between 2001 and 2002, Belmarsh Prison was used to detain a number of people indefinitely without charge or trial under the provisions of the Part 4 of the Anti-terrorism, Crime and Security Act 2001, leading it to be called the 'British version of Guantanamo Bay'." However, only because of the case of Julian Assange is it now publicly known that this characterization of that prison is -- at least for him -- equally true today . And Assange is, indeed, being held there "indefinitely without charge or trial," even after his having previously been held in various other forms of confinement, ever since at least 12 April 2012, when -- being then 'temporarily' under house-arrest in Norfolk England, while awaiting trial on a manufactured rape-charge against him which was reluctantly abandoned by the Government only when the alleged victim refused to testify against him -- Assange broadcast an interview for RT, Russian Television, an interview of the head of Lebanon's Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.

The U.S.-and-allied regimes' billionaires-owned-and-controlled 'news'-media condemned Assange for this interview, because it enabled whomever still had an open mind, amongst the Western public, to hear from one of those billionares' destruction-targets (Nasrallah), and for Assange's doing this on the TV-news network of the main country that America's billionaires are especially trying to conquer, which is (and since 26 July 1945 has consistently been ) Russia.

The great then-independent investigative journalist Glenn Greenwald headlined about that interview, at Salon on 18 April 2012, "Attacks on RT and Assange reveal much about the critics: Those who pretend to engage in adversarial journalism will invariably hate those who actually do it." How true that was, and unfortunately still is! And Assange himself is the best example of it. Greenwald wrote:

Let's examine the unstated premises at work here. There is apparently a rule that says it's perfectly OK for a journalist to work for a media outlet owned and controlled by a weapons manufacturer (GE/NBC/MSNBC), or by the U.S. and British governments (BBC/Stars & Stripes/Voice of America), or by Rupert Murdoch and Saudi Prince Al-Waleed Bin Talal (Wall St. Journal/Fox News), or by a banking corporation with long-standing ties to right-wing governments (Politico), or by for-profit corporations whose profits depend upon staying in the good graces of the U.S. government ( Kaplan/The Washington Post ), or by loyalists to one of the two major political parties (National Review/TPM/countless others), but it's an intrinsic violation of journalistic integrity to work for a media outlet owned by the Russian government. Where did that rule come from?

But from 'temporary' house-arrest there, Assange was allowed asylum by Ecuador's progressive President Rafael Correa on 20 June 2012 , to stay in London's Ecuadoran Embassy, so as not to be seized by the UK regime to be sent to prison and probable death-without-trial in the U.S. To Correa's shock, it turned out that Correa's successor, Vice President Lenin Moreno, was actually a U.S. agent, who promptly forced Assange out of the Embassy, into Belmarsh prison, to die there or else become extradited to die in a U.S. prison, also without trial.

And, for what, then, is Assange being imprisoned, and perhaps murdered? He divulged government secrets that should never even have been secrets! He raised the blanket of lies, which covers over these actually dictatorial clandestine international operations. He exposed these evil imperialistic operations, which are hidden behind (and under) that blanket of imperialists' lies. For this, he is being martyred -- a martyr for democracy, where there is no actual democracy (but only those lies).

Here is an example:

On December 29th, I headlined "Further Proof: U.S., UK, & France Committed War-Crime on 14 April 2018" and reported highlights of the latest Wikileaks document-dumps regarding a U.S.-UK-French operation to cover-up (via their control over the OPCW) their having committed an international war-crime when they had fired 105 missiles against Syria on 14 April 2018, which was done allegedly to punish Syria for having perpetrated a gas-attack in Douma seven days before -- except that there hadn't been any such gas-attack, but the OPCW simply lied and said that there might have been one, and that the Syrian Government might have done it! That's playing the public for suckers.

Back on 3 November 2019, Fox News bannered "Fox News Poll: Bipartisan majorities want some U.S. troops to stay in Syria" and reported that when citing ISIS as America's enemy that must be defeated, 69% of U.S. respondents wanted U.S. troops to stay in Syria. But when did ISIS ever constitute a threat to U.S. national security? And under what international law is any U.S. soldier, who is inside Syria, anything other than an invader there? The answer, to both of these questions, is obviously "never" and "none." But if you are an investor in Lockheed Martin, don't you want Americans to be suckers about both ? And, so, they are . People such as Julian Assange don't want the public anywhere to be lied-to. Anyone who is in the propaganda-business -- serving companies such as Lockheed Martin -- wants the public to be suckers.

This is the way the free market actually works. It works by lying, and in such a country the Government serves the people who have the money, and not the people who don't. The people who don't have the money are supposed to be lied-to. And, so, they are. But this is not democracy.

Democracy, in fact, is impossible if the public are predominantly deceived.

If the public are predominantly deceived, then the people who do the deceiving will be the dictators there. And if a country has dictators, then it's no democracy. In a totally free market, only the people with the most money will have any freedom at all; everyone else will be merely their suckers, who are fooled by the professionals at doing that -- lying.

The super-rich enforce their smears, and their other lies, by hiring people to do this.

When Barack Obama said that "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation" - so that each other nation is "dispensable" - he was merely exemplifying the view that only the most powerful is indispensable, and that therefore everyone else is dispensable. Of course, this is the way that he, and Donald Trump, both have governed in the U.S. And Americans overwhelmingly endorse this viewpoint . They're fooled by both parties, because both parties serve only their respective billionaires -- and billionaires are above the law; they are the law, in America and its allied regimes. That's the way it is.

This is the American gospel, and it is called "capitalism." Oddly, after Russia switched to capitalism in 1991, the American gospel switched instead to pure global conquest -- über -imperialism -- and the American public didn't even blink. So: nowadays, capitalism has come to mean über-imperialism. That's today's American gospel. Adolf Hitler would be smiling, upon today's Amerika.

And as far as whistleblowers -- such as Julian Assange, and Edward Snowden, and Chelsea Manning, and other champions of honesty and of democracy -- are concerned: Americans agree with the billionaires, who detest and destroy such whistleblowers. Champions of democracy are shunned here, where PR reigns and real journalism is almost non-existent.

[Jan 14, 2020] Impeachment Of President Trump An Imperial War Game by By Barbara Boyd

Highly recommended!
Barbara Boyd correctly called Kent testimony "obsine" becase it was one grad neocon gallisination, which has nothing to do with real facts on the ground.
She attributed those dirty games not only to the USA but also to London.
Nov 22, 2019 | futurefastforward.com

If you want to stop the coup against the President, you must understand how Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton's State Department carried out a coup against the democratically elected government of Ukraine in 2014.

In a November 16 webcast, LaRouche PAC's Barbara Boyd presented the real story behind the present impeachment farce: how the very forces running the attack on President Trump, used thugs as their enforcers, in order to turn Ukraine into a pawn in the British geopolitical war drive against Russia.

https://youtu.be/uBg3vLjWePI

[Jan 10, 2020] Lord Salisbury was credited with having said that the problem with those British strategists who saw Russia as a menace to India was that they were using maps of such small scale that the enormous distances and formidable physical barriers that lay between Moscow of Delhi were neglected.

Jan 10, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

bevin , Jan 10 2020 18:52 utc | 15

"Reuters is a British agency.."
Or is it Canadian? Or is it both? It probably doesn't matter.

as b says it is economic warfare-maximum pressure- designed to impoverish and isolate Iranians.

Lord Salisbury was credited with having said that the problem with those British strategists who saw Russia as a menace to India was that they were using maps of such small scale that the enormous distances and formidable physical barriers that lay between Moscow of Delhi were neglected.

In this case the problem the US has is that it seems to look at Iran only from the west, forgetting that overland access from the east and north- the New Silk Road- is equally possible. Sometimes it looks as if the strategy of the US is to do all it can to advance China's BRI and to tighten the bonds between Eurasia's vast populations.

[Jan 09, 2020] It looks like UK and the USA intelligences agencies run the contest to see who can come up with the most surreal anti-Russian propaganda psy-ops

Highly recommended!
For MI6 this level of detachment from reality is stunning
Notable quotes:
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
Nov 24, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Likbez,

It looks like UK and USA are engaged in the contest to see who can come up with the most surreal anti-Russian propaganda psy-ops.

British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

That shed some light on the common origin of MH17, Russiagate and Scripal propaganda campaigns connecting all three with British government's psy-op operation called The ' Integrity Initiative ' which builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.

And among others participants, William Browder is listed too:

Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person of interest is Andrew Wood who handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus of the BBC.
Here is one interesting comment from MoA:

Anya, Nov 24, 2018 11:57:00 AM

The British government has been running a serious meddling into the US affairs:

https://www.zerohedge.com/n...

"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil
throughout 2016."
A Steele & Skrupal's anti-Russian / anti-Trump saga: https://spectator.org/big-d...
"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..."
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.

[Jan 08, 2020] Big, bad Putin attacked by slimy rat Browder.

Jan 08, 2020 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Is there a chorus of politicians singing in there about how lazy they are, and how they never bothered to verify Browder' story? The story is indeed remarkable, but not in the way that first appears.

Stephen Fry / @stephenfry

You may or may not know the remarkable story of @Billbrowder and the #MagnitskyAct - find out the startling truth by listening to
#MagnitskytheMusical by the wondrous @JohnnyFlynnHQ & @roberthudson - @BBCRadio3 7.30 Sun 12th Jan

Magnitsky the Musical

Book and lyrics by Robert Hudson
Music and lyrics by Johnny Flynn

12 January 2020
О 1 hour, 34 minutes

Johnny Flynn and Robert Hudson bring us a musical based on the
incredible story of an American venture capitalist, a Russian tax
advisor, a crazy heist, the Trump Tower meeting and the very rule of
law.

Blending music and satire, the story explores the truths and fictions
surrounding the origins and aftershocks of the Magnitsky Act; global
legislation which allows governments to sanction those who they see
as offenders of human rights.

It tells the story of a tax adviser's struggle to uncover a huge tax
fraud, his imprisonment by the very authorities he is investigating,
and the American financier's crusade for justice.

Johnny Flynn, Paul Chahidi and members of the cast perform songs in
a epic story that explores democracy, corruption, and how we
undervalue the law at our peril.

Bill Paul Chahidi Sergei Johnny Flynn Jamie Fenella Woolgar Natalia Ellie Kendrick Kuznetsov Gus Brown Guard Clive Hayward Silchenko Ian Conningham Jared Will Kirk Fisherman Neil McCaul Judge Jessica Turner

Additional singing by Sinead Maclnnes, Laura Christy, Scarlett
Courtney and Lucy Reynolds.

The cellist is Joe Zeitlin. Sound is by Peter Ringrose. Directed by Sasha Yevtushenko.

[Jan 02, 2020] The Art of Doublespeak Bellingcat and Mind Control by Edward Curtin

Notable quotes:
"... Bellingcat is an alleged group of amateur on-line researchers who have spent years shilling for the U.S. instigated war against the Syrian government, blaming the Douma chemical attack and others on the Assad government, and for the anti-Russian propaganda connected to, among other things, the Skripal poisoning case in England, and the downing of flight MH17 plane in Ukraine. ..."
"... The Intercept , along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using "open source" tools -- with Bellingcat's past, controversial investigations for use as case studies Thus, while The Intercept has long publicly promoted itself as an anti-interventionist and progressive media outlet, it is becoming clearer that – largely thanks to its ties to Omidyar – it is increasingly an organization that has more in common with Bellingcat, a group that launders NATO and U.S. propaganda and disguises it as "independent" and "investigative journalism." ..."
Dec 17, 2019 | countercurrents.org

In the 1920s, the influential American intellectual Walter Lippman argued that the average person was incapable of seeing or understanding the world clearly and needed to be guided by experts behind the social curtain. In a number of books he laid out the theoretical foundations for the practical work of Edward Bernays , who developed "public relations" (aka propaganda) to carry out this task for the ruling elites. Bernays had honed his skills while working as a propagandist for the United States during World War I, and after the war he set himself up as a public relations counselor in New York City.

There is a fascinating exchange at the beginning of Adam Curtis's documentary, The Century of Self , where Bernays, then nearly 100 years old but still very sharp, reveals his manipulative mindset and that of so many of those who have followed in his wake. He says the reason he couldn't call his new business "propaganda" was because the Germans had given propaganda a "bad name," and so he came up with the euphemism "public relations." He then adds that "if you could use it [i.e. propaganda] for war, you certainly could use it for peace." Of course, he never used PR for peace but just to manipulate public opinion (he helped engineer the CIA coup against the democratically elected Arbenz government in Guatemala in 1954 with fake news broadcasts). He says "the Germans gave propaganda a bad name," not Bernays and the United States with their vast campaign of lies, mainly aimed at the American people to get their support for going to a war they opposed (think weapons of mass destruction). He sounds proud of his war propaganda work that resounded to his credit since it led to support for the "war to end all wars" and subsequently to a hit movie about WWI , Yankee Doodle Dandy , made in 1942 to promote another war, since the first one somehow didn't achieve its lofty goal.

As Bernays has said in his book Propaganda ,

The American motion picture is the greatest unconscious carrier of propaganda in the world today.

He was a propagandist to the end. I suspect most viewers of the film are taken in by these softly spoken words of an old man sipping a glass of wine at a dinner table with a woman who is asking him questions. I have shown this film to hundreds of students and none has noticed his legerdemain. It is an example of the sort of hocus-pocus I will be getting to shortly, the sly insertion into seemingly liberal or matter-of-fact commentary of statements that imply a different story. The placement of convincing or confusing disingenuous ingredients into a truth sandwich – for Bernays knew that the bread of truth is essential to conceal untruth.

In the following years, Bernays, Lippman, and their ilk were joined by social "scientists," psychologists, and sundry others intent on making a sham out of the idea of democracy by developing strategies and techniques for the engineering of social consensus consonant with the wishes of the ruling classes. Their techniques of propaganda developed exponentially with the development of technology, the creation of the CIA, its infiltration of all the major media, and that agency's courting of what the CIA official Cord Meyer called in the 1950s "the compatible left," having already had the right in its pocket. Today most people are, as is said, "wired," and they get their information from the electronic media that is mostly controlled by giant corporations in cahoots with government propagandists. Ask yourself: Has the power of the oligarchic, permanent warfare state with its propaganda and spy networks increased or decreased over your lifetime. The answer is obvious: the average people that Lippman and Bernays trashed are losing and the ruling elites are winning.

This is not just because powerful propagandists are good at controlling so-called "average" people's thinking, but, perhaps more importantly, because they are also adept – probably more so – at confusing or directing the thinking of those who consider themselves above average, those who still might read a book or two or have the concentration to read multiple articles that offer different perspectives on a topic. This is what some call the professional and intellectual classes, perhaps 15-20 % of the population, most of whom are not the ruling elites but their employees and sometimes their mouthpieces. It is this segment of the population that considers itself "informed," but the information they imbibe is often sprinkled with bits of misdirection, both intentional and not, that beclouds their understanding of important public matters but leaves them with the false impression that they are in the know.

Recently I have noticed a group of interconnected examples of how this group of the population that exerts influence incommensurate with their numbers has contributed to the blurring of lines between fact and fiction. Within this group there are opinion makers who are often journalists, writers, and cultural producers of some sort or other, and then the larger number of the intellectual or schooled class who follow their opinions. This second group then passes on their received opinions to those who look up to them.

There is a notorious propaganda outfit called Bellingcat , started by an unemployed Englishman named Eliot Higgins, that has been funded by The Atlantic Council, a think-tank with deep ties to the U.S. government, NATO, war manufacturers, and their allies, and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), another infamous U.S. front organization heavily involved in so-called color revolution regime change operations all around the world, that has just won the International Emmy Award for best documentary. The film with the Orwellian title, Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World, received its Emmy at a recent ceremony in New York City.

Bellingcat is an alleged group of amateur on-line researchers who have spent years shilling for the U.S. instigated war against the Syrian government, blaming the Douma chemical attack and others on the Assad government, and for the anti-Russian propaganda connected to, among other things, the Skripal poisoning case in England, and the downing of flight MH17 plane in Ukraine.

It has been lauded by the corporate mainstream media in the west. Its support for the equally fraudulent White Helmets (also funded by the US and the UK) in Syria has also been praised by the western corporate media while being dissected as propaganda by many excellent independent journalists such as Eva Bartlett, Vanessa Beeley, Catte Black, among others. It's had its work skewered by the likes of Seymour Hersh and MIT professor Theodore Postol, and its US government connections pointed out by many others, including Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal at The Gray Zone. And now we have the mainstream media's wall of silence on the leaks from the Organization for the Prohibition on Chemical Weapons (OPCW) concerning the Douma chemical attack and the doctoring of their report that led to the illegal U.S. bombing of Syria in the spring of 2018. Bellingcat was at the forefront of providing justification for such bombing, and now the journalists Peter Hitchens, Tareq Harrad (who recently resigned from Newsweek after accusing the publication of suppressing his revelations about the OPCW scandal) and others are fighting an uphill battle to get the truth out.

Yet Bellingcat: Truth in a Post-Truth World won the Emmy , fulfilling Bernays' point about films being the greatest unconscious carriers of propaganda in the world today.

Who presented the Emmy Award to the film makers, but none other than the rebel journalist Chris Hedges . Why he did so, I don't know. But that he did so clearly sends a message to those who follow his work and trust him that it's okay to give a major cultural award to a propaganda outfit. But then, perhaps he doesn't consider Bellingcat to be that.

Nor, one presumes, does The Intercept , the billionaire Pierre Omidyar owned publication associated with Glen Greenwald and Jeremy Scahill, and also read by many progressive-minded people. The Intercept that earlier this year disbanded the small team that was tasked with reviewing and releasing more of the massive trove of documents they received from Edward Snowden six years ago, a minute number of which have ever been released or probably ever will be. As Whitney Webb pointed out , last year The Intercept hosted a workshop for Bellingcat. She wrote:

The Intercept , along with its parent company First Look Media, recently hosted a workshop for pro-war, Google-funded organization Bellingcat in New York. The workshop, which cost $2,500 per person to attend and lasted five days, aimed to instruct participants in how to perform investigations using "open source" tools -- with Bellingcat's past, controversial investigations for use as case studies Thus, while The Intercept has long publicly promoted itself as an anti-interventionist and progressive media outlet, it is becoming clearer that – largely thanks to its ties to Omidyar – it is increasingly an organization that has more in common with Bellingcat, a group that launders NATO and U.S. propaganda and disguises it as "independent" and "investigative journalism."

Then we have Jefferson Morley , the editor of The Deep State, former Washington Post journalist, and JFK assassination researcher, who has written a praiseworthy review of the Bellingcat film and who supports Bellingcat. "In my experience, Bellingcat is credible," he writes in an Alternet article, "Bellingcat documentary has the pace and plot of a thriller."

Morley has also just written an article for Counterpunch "Why the Douma Chemical Attack Wasn't a 'Managed Massacre'" – in which he disputes the claim that the April 7, 2018 attack in the Damascus suburb was a false flag operation carried out by Assad's opponents. "I do not see any evidence proving that Douma was a false flag incident," he writes in this article that is written in a style that leaves one guessing as to what exactly he is saying. It sounds convincing unless one concentrates, and then his double messages emerge. Yet it is the kind of article that certain "sophisticated" left-wing readers might read and feel is insightful. But then Morley, who has written considerably about the CIA, edits a website that advertises itself as "the thinking person's portal to the world of secret government," and recently had an exchange with former CIA Director John Brennan where "Brennan put a friendly finger on my chest," said in February 2017, less than a month after Trump was sworn in as president, that:

With a docile Republican majority in Congress and a demoralized Democratic Party in opposition, the leaders of the Deep State are the most -- perhaps the only -- credible check in Washington on what Senator Bob Corker (R-Tenn.) calls Trump's " wrecking ball presidency ."

Is it any wonder that some people might be a bit confused?

"I know what you're thinking about," said Tweedledum; "but it isn't so, nohow."

"Contrariwise," continued Tweedledee, "if it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as it isn't, it ain't. That's logic."

As a final case in point, there is a recent book by Stephen Kinzer , Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb And The CIA Search For Mind Control, t he story of the chemist known as Dr. Death who ran the CIA's MK-ULTRA mind control project, using LSD, torture, electric shock therapy, hypnosis, etc.; developed sadistic methods of torture still used in black sites around the world; and invented various ingenious techniques for assassination, many of which were aimed at Fidel Castro. Gottlieb was responsible for brutal prison and hospital experiments and untold death and suffering inflicted on all sorts of innocent people. His work was depraved in the deepest sense; he worked with Nazis who experimented on Jews despite being Jewish himself.

Kinzer writes in depth about this man who considered himself a patriot and a spiritual person – a humane torturer and killer. It is an eye-opening book for anyone who does not know about Gottlieb, who gave the CIA the essential tools they use in their "organized crime" activities around the world – in the words of Douglass Valentine, the author of The CIA as Organized Crime and The Phoenix Program . Kinzer's book is good history on Gottlieb; however, he doesn't venture into the present activities of the CIA and Gottlieb's patriotic followers, who no doubt exist and go about their business in secret.

After recounting in detail the sordid history of Gottlieb's secret work that is nauseating to read about, Kinzer leaves the reader with these strange words:

Gottlieb was not a sadist, but he might well have been . Above all he was an instrument of history. Understanding him is a deeply disturbing way of understanding ourselves.

What possibly could this mean? Not a sadist? An instrument of history? Understanding ourselves? These few sentences, dropped out of nowhere, pull the rug out from under what is generally an illuminating history and what seems like a moral indictment. This language is pure mystification.

Kinzer also concludes that because Gottlieb said so, the CIA failed in their efforts to develop methods of mind control and ended MK-ULTRA's experiments long ago. Why would he believe the word of a man who personified the agency he worked for: a secret liar? He writes,

When Sydney Gottlieb brough MK-ULTRA to its end in the early 1960s, he told his CIA superiors that he had found no reliable way to wipe away memory, make people abandon their consciences, or commit crimes and then forget them.

As for those who might think otherwise, Kinzer suggests they have vivid imaginations and are caught up in conspiracy thinking: "This [convincing others that the CIA had developed methods of mind control when they hadn't] is Sydney Gottlieb's most unexpected legacy," he asserts. He says this although Richard Helms, the CIA Director, destroyed all MK-Ultra records. He says that Allen Dulles, Gottlieb, and Helms themselves were caught up in a complete fantasy about mind control because they had seen too many movies and read too many books; mind control was impossible, a failure, a myth, he maintains. It is the stuff of popular culture, entertainment. In an interview with Chris Hedges, interestingly posted by Jefferson Morley at his website, The Deep State , Hedges agrees with Kinzer. Gottlieb, Dulles, et al. were all deluded. Mind control was impossible. You couldn't create a Manchurian Candidate; by implication, someone like Sirhan Sirhan could not have been programmed to be a fake Manchurian Candidate and to have no memory of what he did, as he claims. He could not have been mind-controlled by the CIA to perform his part as the seeming assassin of Senator Robert Kennedy while the real killer shot RFK from behind. People who think like this should get real.

Furthermore, as is so common in books such as Kinzer's, he repeats the canard that JFK and RFK knew about and pressured the CIA to assassinate Fidel Castro. This is demonstrably false, as shown by the Church Committee and the Assassinations Record Review Board, among many others. That Kinzer takes the word of notorious liars like Richard Helms and the top-level CIA operative Samuel Halpern is simple incredible, something that is hard to consider a mistake. Slipped into a truth sandwich, it is devoured and passed on. But it is false. Bullshit meant to deceive.

But this is how these games are played. If you look carefully, you will see them widely. Inform, enlighten, while throwing in doubletalk and untruths. The small number of people who read such books and articles will come away knowing some history that has no current relevance and being misinformed on other history that does. They will then be in the know, ready to pass their "wisdom" on to those who care to listen. They will not think they are average.

But they will be mind controlled, and the killer cat will roam freely without a bell, ready to devour the unsuspecting mice.

Edward Curtin is a writer whose work has appeared widely. He teaches sociology at Massachusetts College of Liberal Arts. His website is http://edwardcurtin.com/

[Dec 25, 2019] A remarkably disingenuous article from BBC (what you can expect?) I would say. Russia sanctioned and sanctioned again with threats of being kicked out of SWIFT and isolated in every way takes minimal precautions against an internet collapse and is criticized

Dec 25, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com
thern Star December 24, 2019 at 12:02 pm https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-50902496
I guess we know this is being contemplated here (USA).

Patient Observer December 24, 2019 at 1:03 pm

A remarkably disingenuous article I would say. Russia sanctioned and sanctioned again with threats of being kicked out of SWIFT and isolated in every way takes minimal precautions against an internet collapse and is criticized. For example, DNS resolution function which I believe resides in various western countries could be denied rendering much of the Russian internet useless.

https://myopswork.com/how-does-my-browser-find-the-right-website-8b156037c3eb

US cellphones and computer OS have more back doors than a bordello and Russia is criticized for developing their own OS.

Mr. Putin – Build the Wall!

[Dec 25, 2019] If the British were the ones to organise an independence referendum in Crimea, they would probably push as many people as possible into postal voting and reduce the number of polling stations as part of this strategy.

Dec 25, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jen December 23, 2019 at 2:23 pm

If the British were the ones to organise an independence referendum in Crimea, they would probably push as many people as possible into postal voting and reduce the number of polling stations as part of this strategy.

Postal vote fraud seems to be an ongoing problem in the UK as detailed a 2016 report on electoral fraud by Sir Eric Pickles:
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/sir-eric-pickles-publishes-report-into-tackling-electoral-fraud

[Dec 21, 2019] There has been a gradual decline in the rationality of UK military forces thinking

Notable quotes:
"... There has been a gradual decline in the rationality of UK forces thinking. They insisted on UN legal cover cover the invasion of Iraq but were totally on board with pre-emptive action in Libya, happily training effectively ISIS forces before Gaddafi was removed. They are now training Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and training ISIS/whatever in Syria, effectively invading the country. I guess this may reflect the increasing direct Zionist control of Perfidious Albion with attendant levels of hubris. ..."
Aug 10, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Anonymous | Aug 4, 2017 7:00:33 PM | 37

Enrico Malatesta @13

The Russians were there in Yugoslavia but they were not following NATO's script. There was an incident where Russian forces took control of a key airport to the total surprise of NATO. The US overall commander ordered the UK to go in and kick the Russians out. The UK ground commander wisely said he was not prepared to start WW III over Russian control of an airfield.

There has been a gradual decline in the rationality of UK forces thinking. They insisted on UN legal cover cover the invasion of Iraq but were totally on board with pre-emptive action in Libya, happily training effectively ISIS forces before Gaddafi was removed. They are now training Ukrainian Neo-Nazis and training ISIS/whatever in Syria, effectively invading the country. I guess this may reflect the increasing direct Zionist control of Perfidious Albion with attendant levels of hubris.

[Dec 17, 2019] History Doesn t Repeat, But It Often Rhymes: Wilson in UK was subjected to the similar attack by rogue elements in MI5 as Trump in the USA

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories". ..."
"... Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about. ..."
Dec 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

English Outsider

Massive win, Colonel, that as far as I know nobody predicted. Not the polls, not the political blogs. But I didn't follow it that closely so that's just a general impression.

My man, Nigel Farage, got squeezed mercilessly. I was looking around the BBC site to find out how mercilessly when I came across a picture of the bete noir of my father's time, Harold Wilson. Wilson was convinced that MI something was out to get him - bugged his office, spread smear stories about him around the press, even a possible coup.

The odd rumour of all this had spread to my corner of the English provinces and I'd always wondered if there was anything in it. So I clicked on the BBC article -

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/stories-49939123

- and came across this -

" .. A 1987 inquiry concluded the allegations of a security service plot against Wilson were untrue. However, an inquiry by cabinet secretary Lord Hunt in 1996 concluded that "a few, a very few, malcontents in MI5" had "spread damaging malicious stories".

Well, if a cabinet secretary says that it must be true. MI5, not MI6 - I think MI5's the heavy mob - but I just wondered if our spooks had passed these tricks on to the lads who put the Steele dossier about.

On another security matter I note with concern above - "Those are Jacobite tribesmen at the top. Some of my ancestors were such as they." I thought so. '15 and '45 caused us a lot of trouble and just in case the tradition remained in your family I'm opening a file. We're very happy with our present Queen, thank you, and we don't want you replacing her with some Stuart relic you might happen to have dug up.

Though I suppose it would only be poetic justice. We've just had a go at toppling your President so why shouldn't you return the compliment and topple Her Majesty.

14 December 2019 at 07:07 AM

[Dec 14, 2019] I don't want to see the following headline: "Nigel Farage returns hated Conervatives to power" but then such is perfidious Albions style

Dec 14, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

uncle tungsten , Dec 12 2019 21:36 utc | 9

I don't want to see the following headline:
Nigel Farage returns hated Conervatives to power

but then such is perfidious Albions style.

Alternatively this headline would make my day:

Blairite traitors decimated in Corbyn WIN

[Dec 13, 2019] The Inspector General's Report on 2016 FBI Spying Reveals a Scandal of Historic Magnitude: Not Only for the FBI but Also the U.S. Media by Glenn Greenwald

Notable quotes:
"... a single American ..."
Dec 12, 2019 | theintercept.com
Just as was true when the Mueller investigation closed without a single American being charged with criminally conspiring with Russia over the 2016 election, Wednesday's issuance of the long-waited report from the Department of Justice's Inspector General reveals that years of major claims and narratives from the U.S. media were utter frauds .

Before evaluating the media component of this scandal, the FBI's gross abuse of its power – its serial deceit – is so grave and manifest that it requires little effort to demonstrate it. In sum, the IG Report documents multiple instances in which the FBI – in order to convince a FISA court to allow it spy on former Trump campaign operative Carter Page during the 2016 election – manipulated documents, concealed crucial exonerating evidence, and touted what it knew were unreliable if not outright false claims.

If you don't consider FBI lying, concealment of evidence, and manipulation of documents in order to spy on a U.S. citizen in the middle of a presidential campaign to be a major scandal, what is? But none of this is aberrational: the FBI still has its headquarters in a building named after J. Edgar Hoover – who constantly blackmailed elected officials with dossiers and tried to blackmail Martin Luther King into killing himself – because that's what these security state agencies are. They are out-of-control, virtually unlimited police state factions that lie, abuse their spying and law enforcement powers, and subvert democracy and civic and political freedoms as a matter of course.

In this case, no rational person should allow standard partisan bickering to distort or hide this severe FBI corruption. The IG Report leaves no doubt about it. It's brimming with proof of FBI subterfuge and deceit, all in service of persuading a FISA court of something that was not true: that U.S. citizen and former Trump campaign official Carter Page was an agent of the Russian government and therefore needed to have his communications surveilled.

[Dec 03, 2019] Something about Bellingcat credibility

Dec 03, 2019 | www.nytimes.com

The blogger Eliot Higgins made waves early in the decade by covering the war in Syria from a laptop in his apartment in Leicester, England, while caring for his infant daughter. In 2014, he founded Bellingcat, an open-source news outlet that has grown to include roughly a dozen staff members, with an office in The Hague. Mr. Higgins attributed his skill not to any special knowledge of international conflicts or digital data, but to the hours he had spent playing video games , which, he said, gave him the idea that any mystery can be cracked.
...
Bellingcat journalists have spread the word about their techniques in seminars attended by journalists and law-enforcement officials. Along with grants from groups like the Open Society Foundations, founded by George Soros, the seminars are a significant source of revenue for Bellingcat, a nonprofit organization.

[Dec 02, 2019] British aerial attacks using poisoning gas against Red Army in Russia in August 1919

Notable quotes:
"... "The 'chemical incident' has likely been faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield." ..."
"... Once the dust, smoke, and the fog of war had cleared, it became apparent that this, was yet again a choreographed move, same as the missiles on Shayrat airfield. ..."
"... I may well be wrong, as I do not go along with group think here, but this strike seems a preemptive move by Trump to prevent a push for for US military action in Syria that will take us to WWIII. ..."
Apr 19, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ghost Ship | Apr 19, 2018 3:07:17 AM | 15

OT but very relevant to the Skripal/Douma incidents.

The Guardian has an article today headlined " The taboo on chemical weapons has lasted a century – it must be preserved " which is a bare-faced lie as the Guardian should know because the British used chemical weapons against the Russian in August, 1919, less than a century ago, and the Japanese, among America's closest allies used them against the Chinese in World War 2.

The strongest case for Churchill as a chemical warfare enthusiast involves Russia, and was made by Giles Milton in The Guardian on 1 September 2013, which prompted this article. Milton wrote that in 1919, scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire developed a far more devastating weapon: the top secret "M Device," an exploding shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine [DM].

The man in charge of developing it, Major General Charles Foulkes, called it "the most effective chemical weapon ever devised." Trials at Porton suggested that it was indeed a terrible new weapon. Uncontrollable vomiting, coughing up blood and instant, crippling fatigue were the most common reactions. The overall head of chemical warfare production, Sir Keith Price, was convinced its use would lead to the rapid collapse of the Bolshevik regime. "If you got home only once with the gas you would find no more Bolshies this side of Vologda."

A staggering 50,000 M Devices were shipped to Russia: British aerial attacks using them began on 27 August 1919 .Bolshevik soldiers were seen fleeing in panic as the green chemical gas drifted towards them. Those caught in the cloud vomited blood, then collapsed unconscious. The attacks continued throughout September on many Bolshevik-held villages .But the weapons proved less effective than Churchill had hoped, partly because of the damp autumn weather. By September, the attacks were halted then stopped.

The rest of the article defends Churchill against claims that he wanted to use "poison gas" in India and Iraq against tribesmen by suggesting that he meant tear gas but equally he could have been referring to mustard gas which "only" killed about 2.5% of the 165,000 WW1 soldiers it was used against but that was with a level of medical care I doubt Indian or Iraqi tribesmen could even begin to dream off.

Peter AU 1 , Apr 19, 2018 4:20:05 AM | 23

"The 'chemical incident' has likely been faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield."

Watching reports coming out of Syria in real time, I thought it was a genuine strike. Same as I thought the JK build up was the real thing and also the 59 missiles a year ago.

Once the dust, smoke, and the fog of war had cleared, it became apparent that this, was yet again a choreographed move, same as the missiles on Shayrat airfield.

I may well be wrong, as I do not go along with group think here, but this strike seems a preemptive move by Trump to prevent a push for for US military action in Syria that will take us to WWIII.

[Dec 02, 2019] British aerial attacks using poisining gas against Red Army in Russia in August 1919

British elite is capable to commit any crimes imaginable perusing its goals.
Notable quotes:
"... "The 'chemical incident' has likely been faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield." ..."
Apr 19, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Ghost Ship | Apr 19, 2018 3:07:17 AM | 15

OT but very relevant to the Skripal/Douma incidents.

The Guardian has an article today headlined " The taboo on chemical weapons has lasted a century – it must be preserved " which is a bare-faced lie as the Guardian should know because the British used chemical weapons against the Russian in August, 1919, less than a century ago, and the Japanese, among America's closest allies used them against the Chinese in World War 2.

The strongest case for Churchill as a chemical warfare enthusiast involves Russia, and was made by Giles Milton in The Guardian on 1 September 2013, which prompted this article. Milton wrote that in 1919, scientists at the governmental laboratories at Porton in Wiltshire developed a far more devastating weapon: the top secret "M Device," an exploding shell containing a highly toxic gas called diphenylaminechloroarsine [DM].

The man in charge of developing it, Major General Charles Foulkes, called it "the most effective chemical weapon ever devised." Trials at Porton suggested that it was indeed a terrible new weapon. Uncontrollable vomiting, coughing up blood and instant, crippling fatigue were the most common reactions. The overall head of chemical warfare production, Sir Keith Price, was convinced its use would lead to the rapid collapse of the Bolshevik regime. "If you got home only once with the gas you would find no more Bolshies this side of Vologda."

A staggering 50,000 M Devices were shipped to Russia: British aerial attacks using them began on 27 August 1919 .Bolshevik soldiers were seen fleeing in panic as the green chemical gas drifted towards them. Those caught in the cloud vomited blood, then collapsed unconscious. The attacks continued throughout September on many Bolshevik-held villages. But the weapons proved less effective than Churchill had hoped, partly because of the damp autumn weather. By September, the attacks were halted then stopped.

The rest of the article defends Churchill against claims that he wanted to use "poison gas" in India and Iraq against tribesmen by suggesting that he meant tear gas but equally he could have been referring to mustard gas which "only" killed about 2.5% of the 165,000 WW1 soldiers it was used against but that was with a level of medical care I doubt Indian or Iraqi tribesmen could even begin to dream off.

Peter AU 1 , Apr 19, 2018 4:20:05 AM | 23

"The 'chemical incident' has likely been faked. It suspiciously happened just a few days after U.S. President Trump had announced the he wanted the U.S. military to leave Syria. A year earlier a similar incident was claimed to have happened after a similar announcement by Trump. The U.S. had responded to the 2017 incident by bombing an empty Syrian airfield."

Watching reports coming out of Syria in real time, I thought it was a genuine strike. Same as I thought the JK build up was the real thing and also the 59 missiles a year ago. Once the dust, smoke, and the fog of war had cleared, it became apparent that this, was yet again a choreographed move, same as the missiles on Shayrat airfield.

I may well be wrong, as I do not go along with group think here, but this strike seems a preemptive move by Trump to prevent a push for for US military action in Syria that will take us to WWIII.

[Nov 08, 2019] England's ruling pathology; Boarding School Syndrome -- Crooked Timber

Notable quotes:
"... It is or has been an essential feature of several social systems (Sparta comes to mind obviously) that the children of the ruling class are treated brutally so they would reproduce that brutality towards the lower classes and other enemies. ..."
"... So the story may start with the boarding schools, and they may have set the tone, but the full story is closer to the story of Sparta, where an entire society is geared towards domination. ..."
"... The OP strikes me as broadly correct, and as rhyming with this recent essay in n+1 that frames American collegiate greek life as a cycle of abuse that produces the sort of abusers who are capable of running an empire: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essays/special-journey-to-our-bottom-line/ ..."
"... Confirmed by Golding himself in the essay 'Fable', specifically dealing with questions about The Lord Of The Flies , in which he wrote that experience in the Second World War compelled the conclusion that men produce evil the way bees produce honey. ..."
"... An interesting side-note is that the people who actually built British 'success' were mostly not the product of boarding schools, but the sons of families much lower in the class stratum. The navy, the East India Company and the merchants of London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol were run by these, while the upper classes were often an incompetent but domineering veneer. ..."
Nov 08, 2019 | crookedtimber.org

England's ruling pathology; Boarding School Syndrome

by Maria on November 7, 2019 George Monbiot writes movingly about how the habit of Britain's (well, mostly England's) upper middle and upper classes of sending their children to boarding school from the age of seven onward causes profound emotional damage and has created a damaged ruling class. He's not the first to notice this. Virginia Woolf drew a very clear line between the brutalisation of little boys in a loveless environment and their assumption as adults into the brutal institutions of colonialism. It's long been clear to many that the UK is ruled by many people who think their damage is a strength, and who seek to perpetuate it.

I was at a talk last week about psychoanalysis and The Lord of the Flies. The speaker convincingly argued that much of what happens in that story happens because most of the boys have been wrenched from solid daily love before they were old enough to recreate it. It's a pretty compelling lens to see that novel through and it reminded me of a teaching experience from a couple of years ago.

I was teaching a post-grad course on politics and cybersecurity and did a lecture on the Leviathan and how its conception of the conditions that give rise to order embed some pretty strong assumptions about the necessity of coercion. Basically how if you're the state and in your mind you're fighting against the return of a persistent warre of all against all, your conception of human behaviour can lead you to over-react. Also some stuff about English history around the time of Hobbes. I may have included some stills from Game of Thrones. During the class discussion, one person from, uh, a certain agency, said that yes, he could see the downside, but that Hobbes was essentially how he viewed the world.

Listening again to the tale of sensible centrist Ralph, poor, benighted (but actually very much loved by his Aunty and from a solid emotional background) Piggy, the little uns, and the utter depravity of it all – and also having forgotten the chilling final scene where the naval officer basically tells Ralph he's let himself down – something occurred to me.

Lord of the Flies is many people's touchstone for what would happen if order goes away, even though we have some good social science and other studies about how, at least in the short to medium term, people are generally quite altruistic and reciprocally helpful in the aftermath of disaster. Lord of the Flies is assumed by many to be a cautionary tale about order and the state of nature, when in reality it's the agonised working out of the unbearable fears of a group of systematically traumatised and loveless children.

Lord of the Flies isn't an origin story about the human condition and the need for 'strong' states, though we treat it as such, but rather is a horror story about the specific, brutalised pathology of the English ruling class.


Matt 11.07.19 at 9:27 am ( 1 )

How common is boarding school for the upper middle/upper class in England these days? (that's a real question, not rhetorical – I have no idea.)

I checked out Hobbes's childhood, because I couldn't remember it well, other than that he was born prematurely because of the Spanish Armada (his mother famously "giving birth to twins, him and fear".) It turns out his mother died when he was young, he was semi-abandoned to a relative who sent him (I think) a boarding school, and then to Oxford at 15. So, the theory fits him, I guess.

Henry Sidgwick and (I think) Matthew Arnold wrote about the evils inflicted by such schools even before Woolf, no doubt from first-hand experience.

Saurs 11.07.19 at 9:40 am ( 2 )
They, or some of them, are "rescued" by a walking, talking symbol of an imperial army who justified its genocide and colonization as a "civilizing" force. Yet here are our lovely white sons, murdering one another under the shadow of a mighty military vessel their government built for the domination of isles like this and to enable the exploitation of its inhabitants, nod nod wink wink. It is at this point the naval officer gets his Alanis Morissette moment.
Z 11.07.19 at 10:18 am ( 5 )
@Maria Lord of the Flies isn't an origin story about the human condition and the need for 'strong' states, though we treat it as such, but rather is a horror story about the specific, brutalised pathology of the English ruling class.

Yes! (For my pre-adolescent self, oblivious of the peculiarities of any national ruling class, it appeared to be the projection of the brutality of the social system, not a depiction of what happens when it disappears, and so were planted the first seeds of anarchism, I guess.)

SusanC 11.07.19 at 12:43 pm ( 6 )
The horror movie The Lesson (directed by Ruth Platt) is an interesting commentary on Lord of the Flies: two schoolboys are imprisoned and tortured by a crazy teacher. (In the tradition of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Wolf Creek II, etc.)

As with many horror movies, you can tell how its going to end right from the start (especially given the Lord of the Flies references), but that doesnt detract from it.

librl 11.07.19 at 1:12 pm ( 8 )
It is or has been an essential feature of several social systems (Sparta comes to mind obviously) that the children of the ruling class are treated brutally so they would reproduce that brutality towards the lower classes and other enemies.
Donald 11.07.19 at 2:05 pm ( 9 )
C.S. Lewis despised the cruelty of his boarding school. As a conservative Christian of his era he thought homosexuality was a sin but in " Surprised by Joy" he says ( in homophobic language) that the affection people found in homosexual relationships was one of the few bright spots in what was otherwise a horrible experience. He thought the pride and cruelty and backstabbing and lust for power were much worse than what he saw as the fleshly sin of gay sex.

He also has some harsh satirical takes on colonialism in his first space novel, so there might be a connection there as well.

Harry 11.07.19 at 2:37 pm ( 10 )
"How common is boarding school for the upper middle/upper class in England these days? (that's a real question, not rhetorical – I have no idea.)"

I don't have actual data to hand, but I do know boarding schools went into rapid decline in the 1990s and 2000s, as the children of people who grew up in the 60s and 70s reached the age. There are very few boarding-only schools, but a lot with a few boarders and plenty of non-boarders. Private school attendance has remained pretty constant though.

Eton College is about a 5 minute walk from Windsor Castle, but I imagine William and Harry boarded (probably to avoid the bloody security involved in getting into the Castle).

PatinIowa 11.07.19 at 4:30 pm ( 12 )
This assumes, of course, that the family automatically provides a more nurturing environment. As feminism is teaching us, bit by bit, that's a huge assumption.

I assume we wouldn't have to work too hard to generate a list of tyrants and authoritarians who grew up stable families, where one or both parents were abusive, and even where both parents were, as they say, "good enough."

Ayn Rand grew up in a fairly stable-looking family, at least from on-line bios. Of course there was a revolution during her teens, so who knows?

steven t johnson 11.07.19 at 5:47 pm ( 13 )
Some other literary comments? Matthew Arnold's father, Thomas, was a figure in Tom Brown's School Days, as he was headmaster when Hughes, the author, actually attended Rugby. One of the characters in that, Flashman, was the Flashman of the Fraser series of novels. The British school novel is back with us with the Harry Potter series of course.

It seems highly unlikely The Lord of the Flies was not intended to express the eternal human condition, especially since it is about the rotten souls even of schoolboys who were privileged to be etc. But as to Monbiot, it's not entirely clear to me that actually being wealthy or aristocratic, especially landed wealth, isn't a way of life that has quite as much to do with the psychology of the English ruling classes as child hood rearing practices.

Chris Bertram 11.07.19 at 6:20 pm ( 14 )
I was sent to a prep school in the Peak District at the age of 8 in 1967. It was ferociously cold and we were expected to play outdoor sports wearing only 1 layer. The headmaster was replaced by his 27-year-old son after a sexual indiscretion with a matron within a few months of his arrival (it was a family business) and the new headmaster used corporal punishment a great deal. I think I received over 100 strokes of the gym shoe from him between 67 and 72. On one occasion in winter, when I accidentally hit a teacher with a snowball, I was knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly on the floor by him and efforts were made to prevent me informing my parents. The very worst occasion was when a cleaner discovered that someone had shat in a bucket and the whole school was assembled so that the headmaster could demand that the culprit confess. No confession was forthcoming so we were all made to stand motionless in lines in the car park in the hot sun. Anyone who moved was taken from the line, beaten, and returned to it. All these children were aged 7-13.

The boarding school I moved to in 1972 was much better for me at least. I was never beaten (though others were), though the general appearance and ambiance was not unlike Lindsay Anderson's If Needless to say, in both schools there was a good deal of bullying among the boys and a fair amount of violence and torture. In the latter school, several teachers later went to prison for sexual offences against children and it was well known at the time I was there that some of them had a penchant for attractive boys. Fortunately, I wasn't.

ADAM ROBERTS 11.07.19 at 6:33 pm ( 15 )
Futher to Chris's (horrible!) experiences, I could add my own also from the 1970s (and into the very early 80s), although I didn't go a boarding school but a state grammar day-school. There wasn't a culture of violence, and caning was not school policy; but there was quite a lot of verbal and physical violence nonetheless. One day, during class, I was chatting with friends at the back of Chemistry one day and the teacher threw a board-rubber (thick wooden handle with a felt pad attached) at my head to shut me up. It hit me over my right eye and cut me quiet deeply: I still have the scar. There were also lots of cuffs, slaps, and so on, plenty of wounding sarcasm, several sexually dodgy teachers. My take, looking back, was that it wasn't boarding as such that was behind all this, but the fact that many of the older teachers (the Chemistry teacher for instance) were of the generation to have fought in WW2, and that this experience had damaged them in some quite deep, lasting way; and had certainly casualised them where aggression and violence was concerned.
oldster 11.07.19 at 7:08 pm ( 16 )
The pathology is larger than the boarding schools, which never trained more than a small fraction of the population. The other factor is: how did their pathology ramify throughout the ranks?

If Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton, then Trafalgar was won in the workhouses of London and Manchester. We must ask: what conditions of society made it possible to keep thousands of poor uneducated men in the penal and worse than penal conditions of serving in a man o' war for months on end? Why was mutiny as rare as it was, given that life on shipboard had (as Dr. Johnson said) all of the discomforts of life in prison, with the additional danger of drowning? What was life on shore like, that men sometimes volunteered to serve?

So the story may start with the boarding schools, and they may have set the tone, but the full story is closer to the story of Sparta, where an entire society is geared towards domination.

J 11.07.19 at 7:12 pm ( 17 )
Has anyone ever done some sort of comparison study of English Boarding schools and Canada's Indigenous Residential schools?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Indian_residential_school_system#Conditions

Chris Lay 11.07.19 at 8:30 pm ( 19 )
The OP strikes me as broadly correct, and as rhyming with this recent essay in n+1 that frames American collegiate greek life as a cycle of abuse that produces the sort of abusers who are capable of running an empire: https://nplusonemag.com/issue-34/essays/special-journey-to-our-bottom-line/
RobinM 11.07.19 at 8:53 pm ( 21 )
To my surprise I once encountered a former Fife, Scotland, primary school teacher in North Dakota, of all places, who told me the following.

One of his pupils was a nasty, brutal little bully whom he'd punished, as was the norm in Scottish schools in those days, by striking the boy's hands with a leather strap. The boy's response was to tell the teacher he would have to deal with his dad on the following day.

The next morning the teacher, standing at the school door, saw the boy coming accompanied by his father, a rather large coal miner well known in the area as a Communist militant. "Did you belt my boy," the man asked. "Yes," said the teacher. "Did he deserve it," the man asked. "Yes," said the teacher. "You did the right thing," said the man who then turned and walked away.

In other words, I'm glad Adam Roberts (@15) and oldster (@16) have done their bit towards shifting the conversation away from the childhood miseries of the privileged few towards a wider concern with a society in which brutality was -- and is -- widespread and widely accepted by perpetrators and victims alike.

J-D 11.07.19 at 9:11 pm ( 22 )
http://crookedtimber.org/2019/11/07/englands-ruling-pathology-boarding-school-syndrome/#comment-769421

I think Golding believed he was saying something eternal about the human soul.

Confirmed by Golding himself in the essay 'Fable', specifically dealing with questions about The Lord Of The Flies , in which he wrote that experience in the Second World War compelled the conclusion that men produce evil the way bees produce honey.

novakant 11.07.19 at 10:09 pm ( 23 )
I remember watching and listening to "The Wall" (and Monty Python' s "The Meaning of Life") as a teenager and asking myself: "what on earth is their problem?" – I really didn't get it, because everything seemed so alien and medieval to me.
Alan White 11.07.19 at 11:11 pm ( 24 )
A hearty second on the terrific post Maria (if I may). But I have to say that many of these comments about boarding school are truly shocking to me, a product of Northern California public education that, while certainly not socially perfect, makes me more grateful than ever for it. And as I've said before, this is why CT continues my education even in retirement!
Jack Morava 11.08.19 at 12:02 am ( 25 )
readings for extra credit:
Faustusnotes 11.08.19 at 12:02 am ( 26 )
Without wanting to detract from the point of the OP (which I agree with) it's worth bearing in mind that British non boarding schools (state and private) in the 1970s and 1980s were nasty and brutal and the British model of parenting at that time (children should be seen but not heard) was pretty loveless. Savile was roaming the halls of hospitals in the 1980s raping children and he wasn't picking on the kids of the ruling class. So when we see damaged politicians today it's not just boarding school that did it. (I say this as someone who went to state schools in the uk in the 1970s and 1980s then moved to oz in 1986 and the difference was huge).

Does anyone know if corbyn went to boarding school? Because on top of everything else he seems personally to be a decent guy.

As a further aside I would mention that the Golding view of society is also part of the reason that so many modern libertarians and liberals think that all laws and social norms are backed up by coercive power. Their entire education precludes then believing people might pay taxes or follow traffic laws because they want to cooperate with each other.

Chetan Murthy 11.08.19 at 12:28 am ( 27 )
librl @ 8: I found this series of posts on Sparta to be quite interesting: https://acoup.blog/2019/09/27/collections-this-isnt-sparta-part-vii-spartan-ends/

One of this theses is that the Spartan "education" system was really a system for the indoctrination of child soldiers (in the modern meaning) and with all the abominations that that entails.

joel hanes 11.08.19 at 3:52 am ( 28 )
I'm a little surprised that no one has yet mentioned Orwell's "Such, Such Were The Joys"
http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/joys/english/e_joys
John 11.08.19 at 3:56 am ( 29 )
There is a lot of truth to this essay but it seems to me that the problem is hell-deep more pervasive than indicated.What if most/all of our his-story is driven by the individual and collective suppressed rage of childhood abuse, which was, and still is the norm throughout the world. Four websites which illuminate the situation:

The second and third sites are linked to this site: http://www.ttfuture.org

And of course the work of Alice Miller the author of For Your Own Good. Plus the book Spare the Child by Philip Greven which is especially relevant to fundamentalist Christians in the USA

craig fritch 11.08.19 at 3:57 am ( 30 )
As a long time schoolteacher in a northern Canadian community, I recognize the common culture of the English boarding school and our residential schools. The brutality, sexual assaults and complacent do-gooding. Officially, good intentions, but the reality far messier. However a big difference is the racist assumption of "improvement".

But paramount was the fact that very young children were torn from families for years at a time, some never again seeing family.

The result is suicide, substance abuse and damaged childrearing capacity. Very different from cruel domination of the lower classes and colonial subjects.

Peter T 11.08.19 at 5:10 am ( 32 )
An interesting side-note is that the people who actually built British 'success' were mostly not the product of boarding schools, but the sons of families much lower in the class stratum. The navy, the East India Company and the merchants of London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Bristol were run by these, while the upper classes were often an incompetent but domineering veneer.

[Nov 06, 2019] British Government Disinformation Shop Lost Charity Status

Nov 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

The Integrity Initiative, as paid for by the British Foreign Office, Ministry of Defense, NATO and other such entities, will live on as a non-charitable entity with even less transparency. Its website, as well as that of Institute of Statecraft, is down. That it will now have to live in total secrecy will make it more difficult for it to recruit foreign journalists to spread its propaganda.

Since the Integrity Initiative was exposed the British government opened and financed a new secretive shop that will continue to spread anti-Russian disinformation :

On 3rd April, Foreign & Commonwealth Office (FCO) minister Alan Duncan revealed his department's 'Counter Disinformation and Media Development Programme' - which bankrolls the Institute for Statecraft and its Integrity Initiative subsidiary - was funding a new endeavour, Open Information Partnership (OIP).

The announcement, buried in a response to a written parliamentary question, was supremely light on detail - Duncan merely said the effort would "respond to manipulated information in the news, social media and across the public space". Official fanfare was also unforthcoming - there was no accompanying press release, briefing document, or even mention of the launch by any government minister or department via social media channels.

The original proposal for the Open Information Partnership , as released by 'anonymous' , included the Institute of Statecraft , a Media Diversity Institute , Bellingcat , DFR Lab (i.e. the Atlantic Council) and some others in a so called ZINC Network . On the current OIP website the Institute of Statecraft 'charity' is no longer named.

---
Previous Moon of Alabama reports on the issue:

Tim Hayward provides a list (scroll down) of a large number of articles written here and elsewhere about the Integrity Initiative . Speaking of Bellingcat:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BfLPJpRtyq4RFtHJoNpvWQjmGnyVkfE2HYoICKOGguA/mobilebas

Posted by: NOBTS | Nov 4 2019 18:45 utc | 2


karlof1 , Nov 4 2019 18:49 utc | 3

At Kit Klarenberg's Twitter , there's a long tweet thread further detailing what b has written above. I can't help be wonder how the Monty Python troop would have portrayed the Institute for Statecraft and its parent the Integrity Initiative. It appears that the governments of the English speaking nations became addicted to lying to their citizens @1900 and are unable to kick the habit and instead have actually deepened their addiction. Elsewhere on the planet, it seems that people are learning it's easier to talk straight and transparently with other people and to pool resources and combine efforts to form a community of nations and humanity to better one and all. Seems simple enough to determine which is functional and which isn't.
/div> Oops! Googlehidden. Here's one that might work. An interesting compendium: https://www.comsuregroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Bellingcats-Digital-Toolkit.pdf

Posted by: NOBTS , Nov 4 2019 18:51 utc | 5

Oops! Googlehidden. Here's one that might work. An interesting compendium: https://www.comsuregroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/06/Bellingcats-Digital-Toolkit.pdf

Posted by: NOBTS | Nov 4 2019 18:51 utc | 5

Symen Danziger , Nov 5 2019 11:34 utc | 41
Bellingcat only serves one interest, a propaganda/info laundering shop for NATO, the military industrial complex and some very rich people. The blatant lies about MH17, chemical weapons in Syria, OPCW, Russia, the list goes on and on.

By the time the people in the Netherlands find out how they have been manipulated with the MH17 narrative and the role of Bellingcat in this operation, hopefully they will torch the office of Bellingcat in The Hague and club the survivors to death like the Uktainian Nazi friends of Bellingcat did in Odessa.

The Ukrainian army shot down MH17. It was no accident. The Dutch were also involved with the 2014 coup in the Ukraine. Putting the blame on Russia is a political decision, its not based on facts. Dutch politicians are very dirty people. Burn in hell.

[Sep 17, 2019] I could make a case that the English elites have caused just as much trouble as elite Jews

Sep 17, 2019 | www.unz.com

Lochearn , says: September 16, 2019 at 11:22 pm GMT

Thanks Gilad for your courageous work. I think we should always remember the ordinary Jews, the grocers, the tailors, and all the others who have lived ordinary lives and suffered due to the activities of their elites. We should remember the radical Jews and the artists like Cohen, Dylan and Lou Reid to mention just a few. I could make a case that the English elites have caused just as much trouble as elite Jews. In fact, it was the meeting of English and Jewish elites that created the British empire.

[Sep 15, 2019] How the UK Security Services neutralised the country s leading liberal newspaper by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis

Highly recommended!
Essentially neoliberal MSM were hijacked. Which was easy to do. The current anti-Russian campaign is conducted under the direct guidance of MI6 and similar agencies
Notable quotes:
"... committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it." ..."
"... These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was marked "private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media". ..."
"... "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story." ..."
"... The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies. ..."
"... The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen". ..."
"... But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that "the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member". ..."
"... The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing. ..."
"... In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article. ..."
"... The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files." ..."
"... Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004". ..."
"... The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again. ..."
"... The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law." ..."
"... A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian." ..."
"... The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go? DM ..."
Jan 01, 2019 | dailymaverick.co.za

The Guardian, Britain's leading liberal newspaper with a global reputation for independent and critical journalism, has been successfully targeted by security agencies to neutralise its adversarial reporting of the 'security state', according to newly released documents and evidence from former and current Guardian journalists.

The UK security services targeted The Guardian after the newspaper started publishing the contents of secret US government documents leaked by National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden in June 2013.

Snowden's bombshell revelations continued for months and were the largest-ever leak of classified material covering the NSA and its UK equivalent, the Government Communications Headquarters. They revealed programmes of mass surveillance operated by both agencies.

According to minutes of meetings of the UK's Defence and Security Media Advisory Committee, the revelations caused alarm in the British security services and Ministry of Defence.

" This event was very concerning because at the outset The Guardian avoided engaging with the [committee] before publishing the first tranche of information," state minutes of a 7 November 2013 meeting at the MOD.

The DSMA Committee, more commonly known as the D-Notice Committee, is run by the MOD, where it meets every six months. A small number of journalists are also invited to sit on the committee. Its stated purpose is to "prevent inadvertent public disclosure of information that would compromise UK military and intelligence operations". It can issue "notices" to the media to encourage them not to publish certain information.

The committee is currently chaired by the MOD's director-general of security policy Dominic Wilson, who was previously director of security and intelligence in the British Cabinet Office. Its secretary is Brigadier Geoffrey Dodds OBE, who describes himself as an "accomplished, senior ex-military commander with extensive experience of operational level leadership".

The D-Notice system describes itself as voluntary , placing no obligations on the media to comply with any notice issued. This means there should have been no need for the Guardian to consult the MOD before publishing the Snowden documents.

Yet committee minutes note the secretary saying: "The Guardian was obliged to seek advice under the terms of the DA notice code." The minutes add: "This failure to seek advice was a key source of concern and considerable efforts had been made to address it."

' Considerable efforts'

These "considerable efforts" included a D-Notice sent out by the committee on 7 June 2013 – the day after The Guardian published the first documents – to all major UK media editors, saying they should refrain from publishing information that would "jeopardise both national security and possibly UK personnel". It was marked "private and confidential: not for publication, broadcast or use on social media".

Clearly the committee did not want its issuing of the notice to be publicised, and it was nearly successful. Only the right-wing blog Guido Fawkes made it public.

At the time, according to the committee minutes , the "intelligence agencies in particular had continued to ask for more advisories [i.e. D-Notices] to be sent out". Such D-Notices were clearly seen by the intelligence services not so much as a tool to advise the media but rather a way to threaten it not to publish further Snowden revelations.

One night, amidst the first Snowden stories being published, the D-Notice Committee's then-secretary Air Vice-Marshal Andrew Vallance personally called Alan Rusbridger, then editor of The Guardian. Vallance "made clear his concern that The Guardian had failed to consult him in advance before telling the world", according to a Guardian journalist who interviewed Rusbridger.

Later in the year, Prime Minister David Cameron again used the D-Notice system as a threat to the media.

" I don't want to have to use injunctions or D-Notices or the other tougher measures," he said in a statement to MPs. "I think it's much better to appeal to newspapers' sense of social responsibility. But if they don't demonstrate some social responsibility it would be very difficult for government to stand back and not to act."

The threats worked. The Press Gazette reported at the time that "The FT [Financial Times] and The Times did not mention it [the initial Snowden revelations] and the Telegraph published only a short". It continued by noting that only The Independent "followed up the substantive allegations". It added, "The BBC has also chosen to largely ignore the story."

The Guardian, however, remained uncowed.

According to the committee minutes , the fact The Guardian would not stop publishing "undoubtedly raised questions in some minds about the system's future usefulness". If the D-Notice system could not prevent The Guardian publishing GCHQ's most sensitive secrets, what was it good for?

It was time to rein in The Guardian and make sure this never happened again.

GCHQ and laptops

The security services ratcheted up their "considerable efforts" to deal with the exposures. On 20 July 2013, GCHQ officials entered The Guardian's offices at King's Cross in London, six weeks after the first Snowden-related article had been published. At the request of the government and security services, Guardian deputy editor Paul Johnson, along with two others, spent three hours destroying the laptops containing the Snowden documents.

The Guardian staffers, according to one of the newspaper's reporters, brought "angle-grinders, dremels – drills with revolving bits – and masks". The reporter added, "The spy agency provided one piece of hi-tech equipment, a 'degausser', which destroys magnetic fields and erases data."

Johnson claims that the destruction of the computers was "purely a symbolic act", adding that "the government and GCHQ knew, because we had told them, that the material had been taken to the US to be shared with the New York Times. The reporting would go on. The episode hadn't changed anything."

Yet the episode did change something. As the D-Notice Committee minutes for November 2013 outlined: "Towards the end of July [as the computers were being destroyed], The Guardian had begun to seek and accept D-Notice advice not to publish certain highly sensitive details and since then the dialogue [with the committee] had been reasonable and improving."

The British security services had carried out more than a "symbolic act". It was both a show of strength and a clear threat. The Guardian was then the only major newspaper that could be relied upon by whistleblowers in the US and British security bodies to receive and cover their exposures, a situation which posed a challenge to security agencies.

The increasingly aggressive overtures made to The Guardian worked. The committee chair noted that after GCHQ had overseen the smashing up of the newspaper's laptops "engagement with The Guardian had continued to strengthen".

Moreover, he added , there were now "regular dialogues between the secretary and deputy secretaries and Guardian journalists". Rusbridger later testified to the Home Affairs Committee that Air Vice-Marshal Vallance of the D-Notice committee and himself "collaborated" in the aftermath of the Snowden affair and that Vallance had even "been at The Guardian offices to talk to all our reporters".

But the most important part of this charm and threat offensive was getting The Guardian to agree to take a seat on the D-Notice Committee itself. The committee minutes are explicit on this, noting that "the process had culminated by [sic] the appointment of Paul Johnson (deputy editor Guardian News and Media) as a DPBAC [i.e. D-Notice Committee] member".

At some point in 2013 or early 2014, Johnson – the same deputy editor who had smashed up his newspaper's computers under the watchful gaze of British intelligence agents – was approached to take up a seat on the committee. Johnson attended his first meeting in May 2014 and was to remain on it until October 2018 .

The Guardian's deputy editor went directly from the corporation's basement with an angle-grinder to sitting on the D-Notice Committee alongside the security service officials who had tried to stop his paper publishing.

A new editor

Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger withstood intense pressure not to publish some of the Snowden revelations but agreed to Johnson taking a seat on the D-Notice Committee as a tactical sop to the security services. Throughout his tenure, The Guardian continued to publish some stories critical of the security services.

But in March 2015, the situation changed when the Guardian appointed a new editor, Katharine Viner, who had less experience than Rusbridger of dealing with the security services. Viner had started out on fashion and entertainment magazine Cosmopolitan and had no history in national security reporting. According to insiders, she showed much less leadership during the Snowden affair than Janine Gibson in the US (Gibson was another candidate to be Rusbridger's successor).

Viner was then editor-in-chief of Guardian Australia, which was launched just two weeks before the first Snowden revelations were published. Australia and New Zealand comprise two-fifths of the so-called "Five Eyes" surveillance alliance exposed by Snowden.

This was an opportunity for the security services. It appears that their seduction began the following year.

In November 2016, The Guardian published an unprecedented "exclusive" with Andrew Parker, the head of MI5, Britain's domestic security service. The article noted that this was the "first newspaper interview given by an incumbent MI5 chief in the service's 107-year history". It was co-written by deputy editor Paul Johnson, who had never written about the security services before and who was still sitting on the D-Notice Committee. This was not mentioned in the article.

The MI5 chief was given copious space to make claims about the national security threat posed by an "increasingly aggressive" Russia. Johnson and his co-author noted, "Parker said he was talking to The Guardian rather than any other newspaper despite the publication of the Snowden files."

Parker told the two reporters, "We recognise that in a changing world we have to change too. We have a responsibility to talk about our work and explain it."

Four months after the MI5 interview, in March 2017, the Guardian published another unprecedented "exclusive", this time with Alex Younger, the sitting chief of MI6, Britain's external intelligence agency. This exclusive was awarded by the Secret Intelligence Service to The Guardian's investigations editor, Nick Hopkins, who had been appointed 14 months previously.

The interview was the first Younger had given to a national newspaper and was again softball. Titled "MI6 returns to 'tapping up' in an effort to recruit black and Asian officers", it focused almost entirely on the intelligence service's stated desire to recruit from ethnic minority communities.

" Simply, we have to attract the best of modern Britain," Younger told Hopkins. "Every community from every part of Britain should feel they have what it takes, no matter what their background or status."

Just two weeks before the interview with MI6's chief was published, The Guardian itself reported on the high court stating that it would "hear an application for a judicial review of the Crown Prosecution Service's decision not to charge MI6's former counterterrorism director, Sir Mark Allen, over the abduction of Abdel Hakim Belhaj and his pregnant wife who were transferred to Libya in a joint CIA-MI6 operation in 2004".

None of this featured in The Guardian article, which did, however, cover discussions of whether the James Bond actor Daniel Craig would qualify for the intelligence service. "He would not get into MI6," Younger told Hopkins.

More recently, in August 2019, The Guardian was awarded yet another exclusive, this time with Metropolitan police assistant commissioner Neil Basu, Britain's most senior counter-terrorism officer. This was Basu's " first major interview since taking up his post" the previous year and resulted in a three-part series of articles, one of which was entitled "Met police examine Vladimir Putin's role in Salisbury attack".

The security services were probably feeding The Guardian these "exclusives" as part of the process of bringing it onside and neutralising the only independent newspaper with the resources to receive and cover a leak such as Snowden's. They were possibly acting to prevent any revelations of this kind happening again.

What, if any, private conversations have taken place between Viner and the security services during her tenure as editor are not known. But in 2018, when Paul Johnson eventually left the D-Notice Committee, its chair, the MOD's Dominic Wilson, praised Johnson who, he said, had been "instrumental in re-establishing links with The Guardian".

Decline in critical reporting

Amidst these spoon-fed intelligence exclusives, Viner also oversaw the breakup of The Guardian's celebrated investigative team, whose muck-racking journalists were told to apply for other jobs outside of investigations.

One well-placed source told the Press Gazette at the time that journalists on the investigations team "have not felt backed by senior editors over the last year", and that "some also feel the company has become more risk-averse in the same period".

In the period since Snowden, The Guardian has lost many of its top investigative reporters who had covered national security issues, notably Shiv Malik, Nick Davies, David Leigh, Richard Norton-Taylor, Ewen MacAskill and Ian Cobain. The few journalists who were replaced were succeeded by less experienced reporters with apparently less commitment to exposing the security state. The current defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, started at The Guardian as head of media and technology and has no history of covering national security.

" It seems they've got rid of everyone who seemed to cover the security services and military in an adversarial way," one current Guardian journalist told us.

Indeed, during the last two years of Rusbridger's editorship, The Guardian published about 110 articles per year tagged as MI6 on its website. Since Viner took over, the average per year has halved and is decreasing year by year.

" Effective scrutiny of the security and intelligence agencies -- epitomised by the Snowden scoops but also many other stories -- appears to have been abandoned," a former Guardian journalist told us. The former reporter added that, in recent years, it "sometimes seems The Guardian is worried about upsetting the spooks."

A second former Guardian journalist added: "The Guardian no longer seems to have such a challenging relationship with the intelligence services, and is perhaps seeking to mend fences since Snowden. This is concerning, because spooks are always manipulative and not always to be trusted."

While some articles critical of the security services still do appear in the paper, its "scoops" increasingly focus on issues more acceptable to them. Since the Snowden affair, The Guardian does not appear to have published any articles based on an intelligence or security services source that was not officially sanctioned to speak.

The Guardian has, by contrast, published a steady stream of exclusives on the major official enemy of the security services, Russia, exposing Putin, his friends and the work of its intelligence services and military.

In the Panama Papers leak in April 2016, which revealed how companies and individuals around the world were using an offshore law firm to avoid paying tax, The Guardian's front-page launch scoop was authored by Luke Harding, who has received many security service tips focused on the "Russia threat", and was titled "Revealed: the $2bn offshore trail that leads to Vladimir Putin".

Three sentences into the piece, however, Harding notes that "the president's name does not appear in any of the records" although he insists that "the data reveals a pattern – his friends have earned millions from deals that seemingly could not have been secured without his patronage".

There was a much bigger story in the Panama Papers which The Guardian chose to downplay by leaving it to the following day. This concerned the father of the then Prime Minister, David Cameron, who "ran an offshore fund that avoided ever having to pay tax in Britain by hiring a small army of Bahamas residents – including a part-time bishop – to sign its paperwork".

We understand there was some argument between journalists about not leading with the Cameron story as the launch splash. Putin's friends were eventually deemed more important than the Prime Minister of the country where the paper published.

Getting Julian Assange

The Guardian also appears to have been engaged in a campaign against the WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange, who had been a collaborator during the early WikiLeaks revelations in 2010.

One 2017 story came from investigative reporter Carole Cadwalladr, who writes for The Guardian's sister paper The Observer, titled "When Nigel Farage met Julian Assange". This concerned the visit of former UKIP leader Nigel Farage to the Ecuadorian embassy in March 2017, organised by the radio station LBC, for whom Farage worked as a presenter. Farage's producer at LBC accompanied Farage at the meeting, but this was not mentioned by Cadwalladr.

Rather, she posited that this meeting was "potentially a channel of communication" between WikiLeaks, Farage and Donald Trump, who were all said to be closely linked to Russia, adding that these actors were in a "political alignment" and that " WikiLeaks is, in many ways, the swirling vortex at the centre of everything".

Yet Cadwalladr's one official on-the-record source for this speculation was a "highly placed contact with links to US intelligence", who told her, "When the heat is turned up and all electronic communication, you have to assume, is being intensely monitored, then those are the times when intelligence communication falls back on human couriers. Where you have individuals passing information in ways and places that cannot be monitored."

It seems likely this was innuendo being fed to The Observer by an intelligence-linked individual to promote disinformation to undermine Assange.

In 2018, however, The Guardian's attempted vilification of Assange was significantly stepped up. A new string of articles began on 18 May 2018 with one alleging Assange's "long-standing relationship with RT", the Russian state broadcaster. The series, which has been closely documented elsewhere, lasted for several months, consistently alleging with little or the most minimal circumstantial evidence that Assange had ties to Russia or the Kremlin.

One story, co-authored again by Luke Harding, claimed that "Russian diplomats held secret talks in London with people close to Julian Assange to assess whether they could help him flee the UK, The Guardian has learned". The former consul in the Ecuadorian embassy in London at this time, Fidel Narvaez, vigorously denies the existence of any such "escape plot" involving Russia and is involved in a complaint process with The Guardian for insinuating he coordinated such a plot.

This apparent mini-campaign ran until November 2018, culminating in a front-page splash , based on anonymous sources, claiming that Assange had three secret meetings at the Ecuadorian embassy with Trump's former campaign manager Paul Manafort.

This "scoop" failed all tests of journalistic credibility since it would have been impossible for anyone to have entered the highly secured Ecuadorian embassy three times with no proof. WikiLeaks and others have strongly argued that the story was manufactured and it is telling that The Guardian has since failed to refer to it in its subsequent articles on the Assange case. The Guardian, however, has still not retracted or apologised for the story which remains on its website.

The "exclusive" appeared just two weeks after Paul Johnson had been congratulated for "re-establishing links" between The Guardian and the security services.

The string of Guardian articles, along with the vilification and smear stories about Assange elsewhere in the British media, helped create the conditions for a deal between Ecuador, the UK and the US to expel Assange from the embassy in April. Assange now sits in Belmarsh maximum-security prison where he faces extradition to the US, and life in prison there, on charges under the Espionage Act.

Acting for the establishment

Another major focus of The Guardian's energies under Viner's editorship has been to attack the leader of the UK Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

The context is that Corbyn appears to have recently been a target of the security services. In 2015, soon after he was elected Labour leader, the Sunday Times reported a serving general warning that "there would be a direct challenge from the army and mass resignations if Corbyn became prime minister". The source told the newspaper: "The Army just wouldn't stand for it. The general staff would not allow a prime minister to jeopardise the security of this country and I think people would use whatever means possible, fair or foul, to prevent that."

On 20 May 2017, a little over two weeks before the 2017 General Election, the Daily Telegraph was fed the story that "MI5 opened a file on Jeremy Corbyn amid concerns over his links to the IRA". It formed part of a Telegraph investigation claiming to reveal "Mr Corbyn's full links to the IRA" and was sourced to an individual "close to" the MI5 investigation, who said "a file had been opened on him by the early nineties".

The Metropolitan Police Special Branch was also said to be monitoring Corbyn in the same period.

Then, on the very eve of the General Election, the Telegraph gave space to an article from Sir Richard Dearlove, the former director of MI6, under a headline: "Jeremy Corbyn is a danger to this nation. At MI6, which I once led, he wouldn't clear the security vetting."

Further, in September 2018, two anonymous senior government sources told The Times that Corbyn had been "summoned" for a "'facts of life' talk on terror" by MI5 chief Andrew Parker.

Just two weeks after news of this private meeting was leaked by the government, the Daily Mail reported another leak, this time revealing that "Jeremy Corbyn's most influential House of Commons adviser has been barred from entering Ukraine on the grounds that he is a national security threat because of his alleged links to Vladimir Putin's 'global propaganda network'."

The article concerned Andrew Murray, who had been working in Corbyn's office for a year but had still not received a security pass to enter the UK parliament. The Mail reported, based on what it called "a senior parliamentary source", that Murray's application had encountered "vetting problems".

Murray later heavily suggested that the security services had leaked the story to the Mail. "Call me sceptical if you must, but I do not see journalistic enterprise behind the Mail's sudden capacity to tease obscure information out of the [Ukrainian security service]," he wrote in the New Statesman. He added, "Someone else is doing the hard work – possibly someone being paid by the taxpayer. I doubt if their job description is preventing the election of a Corbyn government, but who knows?"

Murray told us he was approached by the New Statesman after the story about him being banned from Ukraine was leaked. "However," he added, "I wouldn't dream of suggesting anything like that to The Guardian, since I do not know any journalists still working there who I could trust."

The Guardian itself has run a remarkable number of news and comment articles criticising Corbyn since he was elected in 2015 and the paper's clearly hostile stance has been widely noted .

Given its appeal to traditional Labour supporters, the paper has probably done more to undermine Corbyn than any other. In particular, its massive coverage of alleged widespread anti-Semitism in the Labour Party has helped to disparage Corbyn more than other smears carried in the media.

The Guardian and The Observer have published hundreds of articles on "Labour anti-Semitism" and, since the beginning of this year, carried over 50 such articles with headlines clearly negative to Corbyn. Typical headlines have included " The Observer view: Labour leadership is complicit in anti-Semitism ", " Jeremy Corbyn is either blind to anti-Semitism – or he just doesn't care ", and " Labour's anti-Semitism problem is institutional. It needs investigation ".

The Guardian's coverage of anti-Semitism in Labour has been suspiciously extensive, compared to the known extent of the problem in the party, and its focus on Corbyn personally suggests that the issue is being used politically. While anti-Semitism does exist in the Labour Party, evidence suggests it is at relatively low levels. Since September 2015, when Corbyn became Labour leader, 0.06% of the Labour membership has been investigated for anti-Semitic comments or posts. In 2016, an independent inquiry commissioned by Labour concluded that the party "is not overrun by anti-Semitism, Islamophobia or other forms of racism. Further, it is the party that initiated every single United Kingdom race equality law."

Analysis of two YouGov surveys, conducted in 2015 and 2017, shows that anti-Semitic views held by Labour voters declined substantially in the first two years of Corbyn's tenure and that such views were significantly more common among Conservative voters.

Despite this, since January 2016, The Guardian has published 1,215 stories mentioning Labour and anti-Semitism, an average of around one per day, according to a search on Factiva, the database of newspaper articles. In the same period, The Guardian published just 194 articles mentioning the Conservative Party's much more serious problem with Islamophobia. A YouGov poll in 2019, for example, found that nearly half of the Tory Party membership would prefer not to have a Muslim prime minister.

At the same time, some stories which paint Corbyn's critics in a negative light have been suppressed by The Guardian. According to someone with knowledge of the matter, The Guardian declined to publish the results of a months-long critical investigation by one of its reporters into a prominent anti-Corbyn Labour MP, citing only vague legal issues.

In July 2016, one of this article's authors emailed a Guardian editor asking if he could pitch an investigation about the first attempt by the right-wing of the Labour Party to remove Corbyn, informing The Guardian of very good inside sources on those behind the attempt and their real plans. The approach was rejected as being of no interest before a pitch was even sent.

A reliable publication?

On 20 May 2019, The Times newspaper reported on a Freedom of Information request made by the Rendition Project, a group of academic experts working on torture and rendition issues, which showed that the MOD had been "developing a secret policy on torture that allows ministers to sign off intelligence-sharing that could lead to the abuse of detainees".

This might traditionally have been a Guardian story, not something for the Rupert Murdoch-owned Times. According to one civil society source, however, many groups working in this field no longer trust The Guardian.

A former Guardian journalist similarly told us: "It is significant that exclusive stories recently about British collusion in torture and policy towards the interrogation of terror suspects and other detainees have been passed to other papers including The Times rather than The Guardian."

The Times published its scoop under a strong headline , "Torture: Britain breaks law in Ministry of Defence secret policy". However, before the article was published, the MOD fed The Guardian the same documents The Times were about to splash with, believing it could soften the impact of the revelations by telling its side of the story.

The Guardian posted its own article just before The Times, with a headline that would have pleased the government: "MoD says revised torture guidance does not lower standards".

Its lead paragraph was a simple summary of the MOD's position: "The Ministry of Defence has insisted that newly emerged departmental guidance on the sharing of intelligence derived from torture with allies, remains in line with practices agreed in the aftermath of a series of scandals following the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq." However, an inspection of the documents showed this was clearly disinformation.

The Guardian had gone in six short years from being the natural outlet to place stories exposing wrongdoing by the security state to a platform trusted by the security state to amplify its information operations. A once relatively independent media platform has been largely neutralised by UK security services fearful of being exposed further. Which begs the question: where does the next Snowden go? DM

The Guardian did not respond to a request for comment.

Daily Maverick will formally launch Declassified – a new UK-focused investigation and analysis organisation run by the authors of this article – in November 2019.

Matt Kennard is an investigative journalist and co-founder of Declassified . He was previously director of the Centre for Investigative Journalism in London, and before that a reporter for the Financial Times in the US and UK. He is the author of two books, Irregular Army and The Racket .

Mark Curtis is a leading UK foreign policy analyst, journalist and the author of six books including Web of Deceit: Britain's Real Role in the World and Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam .

[Sep 12, 2019] Dances With Bears: MARK GALEOTTI IS A FACT FAKER HIS BOOK ON RUSSIAN CRIME IS A HATE CRIME, A WAR CRIME

Sep 12, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al September 9, 2019 at 9:14 am

I only mentioned Mark 'Gerasimov' Galeotti recently linked to a MT source one of you posted and hey, presto

Dances With Bears: MARK GALEOTTI IS A FACT FAKER – HIS BOOK ON RUSSIAN CRIME IS A HATE CRIME, A WAR CRIME
http://johnhelmer.net/mark-galeotti-is-a-fact-faker-his-book-on-russian-crime-is-a-hate-crime-a-war-crime/

Repeating lies over and over makes old-fashioned Joseph Goebbels-type propaganda. Repeating lies, then contradicting them; moving them from one government-paid think-tank to another; footnoting a new lie to an older version; quoting policemen and gangsters saying fatuities; adding slang and the words of pop songs -- this is still Goebbels-type but stretched out and product-diversified to make its author more money. This is Mark Galeotti's method .
####

The rest at the link and a deep dive on Galeotti himself.

[Sep 09, 2019] Will NPR Now Officially Change Its Name to National Propaganda Radio? by Edward Curtin

The main achievement of neoliberal and imperial (warmongering) propaganda in the USA is that it achieved the complete, undisputed dominance in MSM
Pot Calling the Kettle Black: "The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield may be the fight of the 21st century."
Notable quotes:
"... Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left." ..."
"... The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites. ..."
"... Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world. ..."
Sep 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Back in the 1960s, the CIA official Cord Meyer said the agency needed to "court the compatible left."

Right-wing and left-wing collaborators were needed to create a powerful propaganda apparatus that would be capable of hypnotizing audiences into believing the myth of American exceptionalism and its divine right to rule the world.

The CIA therefore secretly worked to influence American and world opinion through the literary and intellectual elites.

Frances Stonor Saunders comprehensively covers this in her 1999 book, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA And The World Of Arts And Letters, and Joel Whitney followed this up in 2016 with Finks: How the CIA Tricked the World’s Best Writers, with particular emphasis on the complicity between the CIA and the famous literary journal, The Paris Review.

By the mid-1970s, as a result of the Church Committee hearings, it seemed as if the CIA, NSA, FBI, etc. had been caught in flagrante delicto and disgraced, confessed their sins, and resolved to go and sin no more.

Then in 1977, Carl Bernstein wrote a long piece for Esquire – “The CIA and the Media” – naming names of journalists and media (The New York Times, CBS, etc.) that worked hand-in-glove with the CIA, propagandizing the American people and the rest of the world.

It seemed as if all would be hunky-dory now with the bad boys purged from the American “free” press. Seemed to the most naïve, that is, by which I mean the vast numbers of people who wanted to re-stick their heads in the sand and believe, as Ronald Reagan’s team of truthtellers would announce, that it was “Morning in America” again with the free press reigning and the neo-conservatives, many of whom had been “converted” from their leftist views, running things in Washington.

... ... ...

...read Lansing’s July 10, 2019 testimony before the House Appropriations Sub-Committee on State, Foreign Operations and Related Programs: “United States Efforts to Counter Russian Disinformation and Malign Influence.”

Here is an excerpt:

USAGM provides consistently accurate and compelling journalism that reflects the values of our society: freedom, openness, democracy, and hope. Our guiding principles—enshrined in law—are to provide a reliable, authoritative, and independent source of news that adheres to the strictest standards of journalism…

Russian Disinformation. And make no mistake, we are living through a global explosion of disinformation, state propaganda, and lies generated by multiple authoritarian regimes around the world. The weaponization of information we are seeing today is real. The Russian government and other authoritarian regimes engage in far-reaching malign influence campaigns across national boundaries and language barriers.

The Kremlin’s propaganda and disinformation machine is being unleashed via new platforms and continues to grow in Russia and internationally. Russia seeks to destroy the very idea of an objective, verifiable set of facts as it attempts to influence opinions about the United States and its allies. It is not an understatement to say that this new form of combat on the information battlefield may be the fight of the 21st century.

Then research the history of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, the Voice of America, Radio and Television Marti, etc. You will be reassured that Lansing’s July testimony was his job interview to head National Propaganda Radio.

Edward Curtin writes, and his writing on varied topics has appeared widely over many years. He writes as a public intellectual for the general public, not as a specialist for a narrow readership. He believes a non-committal sociology is an impossibility and therefore sees all his work as an effort to enhance human freedom through understanding. His website is edwardcurtin.com

[Aug 20, 2019] London is just a big, stinking haven for dirty money.

Aug 07, 2019 | caucus99percent.com

Craig Murray on Boris Johnson, Deripaska, Russian wealth among British elites


Linda Wood on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 12:39pm

Because snoopydawg linked us to Craig Murray in an essay yesterday, I happened to see this important commentary.

Murray makes the point that much of the wealth controlling our obscenely corrupt system has come from the pillaging of Russian resources during the Yeltsin period and that the motive for demonizing Putin is to keep that wealth out of the hands of the Russian people.

HenryAWallace on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 12:51pm
On an only mildly-related and very ironic note...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch#Business_career

(When shut out of the American system his sons so vaunt, Fred Koch went to the Soviet Union, which his sons so malign, to make the Koch family fortune.)

Linda Wood on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 3:55pm
Not off-topic at all.

@HenryAWallace

Capitalist exploitation of Russia and support for Hitler are the story of the last century. From your link:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch#Business_career

This extended litigation effectively put Winkler-Koch out of business in the U.S. for several years. "Unable to succeed at home, Koch found work in the Soviet Union".[13] Between 1929 and 1932 Winkler-Koch "trained Bolshevik engineers[14] and helped Stalin's regime set up fifteen modern oil refineries" in the Soviet Union. "Over time, however, Stalin brutally purged several of Koch's Soviet colleagues. Koch was deeply affected by the experience, and regretted his collaboration."[13] The company also built installations in countries throughout Europe, the Middle East and Asia.[1] Koch partnered with William Rhodes Davis to build the third-largest oil refinery serving the Third Reich, a project which was personally approved by Adolf Hitler.[15] Koch President and COO David L. Robertson acknowledged that Winkler-Koch provided the cracking unit for the 1934 Hamburg refinery, but said that it was but one of many "iconic" American companies doing business in Germany at the time.[16]

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fred_C._Koch#Business_career

(When shut out of the American system his sons so vaunt, Fred Koch went to the Soviet Union, which his sons so malign, to make the Koch family fortune.)

HenryAWallace on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 4:35pm
Thank you, Linda Wood.

@Linda Wood

I was trying to warn away from hijacking the thread to make it about the Kochs instead of about Russia. Or about RUSSIA!, which is how I've been referring to the nation since Russiagate began.

k9disc on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 1:29pm
I Have Seen the Perestroika Model Unfolding Globally.

You open up markets and provide a fence for the local oligarchs to offload vital public infrastructure and national resources. Selling rubles for dollars was a no brainer. Rinse, repeat.

Up until the 21st Century, this was only done to the 3rd world and those of the 2nd world who didn't play ball.

I've seen the model looming over America too. The hollowing out and offshoring of America, IMO, is quite similar to the pillaging of Russia. It's just lacking the hard coup and cannon fire at the capitol.

The same banksters are financing and laundering the money to boot.

I guess sheep are just meant to be fleeced, eh?

Good on Murray for calling it out. I like that guy.

Azazello on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 1:56pm
London is just a big, stinking haven for dirty money.

This from Bloomberg: Dirty Money Spotlights Role of Family Offices as Enablers

Linda Wood on Mon, 08/05/2019 - 4:11pm
Fascinating article.

@Azazello

I've just begun reading it, and already there is mention of HSBC, which connects to Mueller, when he was FBI Director, and Comey, who was a board member of some part of HSBC.

This from Bloomberg: Dirty Money Spotlights Role of Family Offices as Enablers

Cant Stop the M... on Tue, 08/06/2019 - 7:16pm
When arguing with Leave supporters on Twitter

@Azazello

I kept telling them that, unless they dealt with the City, separating from Europe wasn't going to help them at all. It's not internationalism that's hurting them: it's the depredations of international capital. Leaving the European Union won't fix that.

While I understand that they feel like they're losing their culture and feel threatened by immigration on that account, the deeper sufferings of their lives, both economic and political, go back, not to some person with dark skin and less money speaking a foreign tongue who immigrates to Britain, but to good upstanding upper-class British financiers. And the good upstanding upper-class foreign financiers with whom those Brits have made deals.

They also might want to look into MI5 and MI6.

This from Bloomberg: Dirty Money Spotlights Role of Family Offices as Enablers

[Aug 14, 2019] Charge of anti-Semitism as a sign of a bitter factional struggle in UK Labor Party between neoliberal and alternatives to neoliberalism wings

Highly recommended!
It attests inventiveness and vicious amorality of neoliberals, who now promote the idea that criticizing neoliberalism and removing Democratic party in the USA and Labor Party in the UK from clutches of Clintonism//Brairism is inherently Anti-Semitic ;-)
Israel lobby wants to extent the anti-Semitism smear to any critique of Israel. which is of course standard dirty trick in witch hunts like neo-McCarthyism.
Notable quotes:
"... This, of course, is compounded by the over-amplifying of anti-Semitism by the media and the alacrity with which it has been taken up by Corbyn opponents, including hypocrites who floated "rootless cosmopolitan" criticisms of Ed Miliband when it suited just a few years ago. ..."
"... The resolution of the anti-Semitism crisis then is not a matter of compromise -- for each side the issue will only go away with the complete crushing and driving out of the party of the other. ..."
"... A good analysis. But, it emphasizes the point I made in the previous post, which is that, the right are currently engaged in an all out push to remove Corbyn and crush the left with the same old bureaucratic means. Whatever else Williamson may or may not be guilty of, his point that the leadership have facilitated this situation by their continual appeasement of the right is absolutely valid. Its that he is being attacked for, not anti-Semitism. ..."
"... Coming on the day when the FT have a column seriously positing that criticizing capitalism is inherently anti-Semitic, it seems to me that dancing on the head of a pin ..."
"... As many of the comments on your blog on Williamson attest, the salient feature of this - well, call it witch-hunt for the sake of argument - is the double standards where we have to be whiter than white, whilst no account whatsoever is taken of the most egregious racism elsewhere. ..."
"... The other nonsense that has grown up is that it is only those that suffer any form of discrimination who can define what that discrimination is, i.e. only Jews can define anti-Semitism, only black people can define racism against them, only women can define discrimination against women. ..."
"... That then assumes that the members of each of these groups are themselves homogeneous, and agreed in such definitions. In reality, it means that dominant elements, i.e. those connected to the ruling class and ruling ideas get to make those determinations. ..."
"... If we look at anti-Semitism, for example, it is quite clear that there is no agreement amongst Jews on what constitutes anti-Semitism. The JVL, certainly have a different definition than the JLM. ..."
"... Secker wrote a piece in the Morning Star last year comparing claims of anti-Semitism within Labour to the story of the emperor's new clothes. ..."
"... Given that the actual data, even allowing for all of the spurious and mischievous accusations of anti-Semitism in the party, made by right-wing enemies of the the party, and particularly of Corbyn and his supporters, amounts to only 0.1% of the membership, and given that of these, 40% were straight away found to be accusations against people who were not even LP members, with a further 20%, being found to have absolutely no evidence to back them, its quite possible that individual members of the LP, have never seen any instance of it. ..."
"... Take out all those mischievous and malicious allegations made in order to whip up the hysteria, so as to to damage the party, by its enemies, and you arrive at a figure of only 400 potential cases, out of a membership of 600,000, which is 1 member in 1500. ..."
"... In fact, based upon the actual facts, as opposed to the fiction and factional hysteria that is being whipped up by right-wing opponents of Corbyn and the party, and by supporters of Zionism for their own narrow political reasons, the chances are about 14: that you will never see any even potential instance of anti-Semitism, even on the narrow definition that the party has now imposed upon itself, which comes pretty close if not entirely to identifying anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, or even just criticism of the current Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu. ..."
"... In the US, Jewish groups that have long been ardent defenders of Israel have more recently come out to criticize the regime of Netanyahu, and the actions of the Israeli state. The main defenders of Zionism, besides the actual Zionists themselves, appear to be people like the AWL, who for whatever reason hitched their wagon to Zionist ideology some time ago, ..."
"... Just because the only case of stabbing I have witnessed was more than 50 years ago, does not, and should not lead me to think that knife crime was worse 50 years ago than it is today. The actual data would seem to suggest that cases of anti-Semitism were greater in the LP in previous times than they are currently, contrary to what the media and those with factional motives would have us believe. ..."
"... The apparent level of anti-semitism in Labour is a modern phenomenon turbo-charged and amplified by social media. People have their views reinforced within their bunkers where anti-Israeli memes become anti-Zionist and then become anti-Semitic. It is much easier to send an anonymous email than a letter. ..."
"... I wouldn't trust Lansman on this issue, any more than on many others. Lansman abolished democracy, to the extent it existed to begin with, by turning it into his personal fiefdom, reminiscent of the activities of Hyndman and the SDF. His position on anti-Semitism, and fighting the witch-hunt, and of appeasing the Blair-right's as they attacked Corbyn, has been appalling throughout. ..."
"... Having abolished any democracy in Momentum, which he now runs as its CEO, he also appears to want Corbyn to do the same thing with the Labour Party, abolishing its internal democratic procedures, and putting himself personally in charge of those disciplinary measures ..."
"... Its notable that, yesterday, when the Welsh Labour Grass Roots organisation came out to call for Williamson's suspension to be reversed, Kinnock and other Blair-rights immediately called for an investigation into them, ..."
"... This truly is reaching into the realms of McCarthyism, where you are found guilty not just of witchcraft, but of consorting with witches, or even having an opinion as to whether an individual charged with witchcraft is guilty, or even the extent to which the number of witches amongst might be exaggerated. ..."
"... It's not a factually accurate description of global political realities, because Israel does not control the US, if that is what the image is intended to imply. But, the message, is thereby anti-Israeli state, not anti-Semitic. It could only be considered anti-Semitic, if in fact you are a Zionist and claim that Israel and Jews are are interchangeable terms, which they are not. ..."
"... If we replace Zionism with Toryism, and Jew with British, the situation becomes fairly clear. If the we show the British state as being controlled by Tories, who implement their ideology of Toryism, in what way would criticism of the British state, under the control of such Tories, or criticism of Tories be the equivalent of British people as a whole? ..."
"... The hope of a Two-State Solution disappeared long ago, and was never credible. It simply allows Zionists to proclaim they are in favour of it, whilst doing everything to make it practically impossible, such as extending West Bank Settlements. The solution must flow from a struggle for democratic rights for Israeli Arabs, and for a right for all Arabs in occupied territories to be extended the same rights as any other Israeli, including the right to vote, and send representatives to the Knesset. As I argued thirty years ago, the longer-term solution is a Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, guaranteeing democratic rights to all, as part of building a wider Federal Republic of MENA. ..."
"... Jim Denham: imperialist lackey and sycophant turned Witch hunter in chief ..."
"... Let us be very clear about what this witch hunt is about, it is about purging from public life any credible and effective opposition to Israel in particular and more generally opposition to the imperialist barbarians of the imperialist core. It is about driving from universities, social media and intellectual life any form of opposition to the interests of the imperialists. ..."
"... A UN report has concluded that Israel deliberately targeted and killed hundreds of protesting civilians, including children and disabled people and it shot 20,000+ people (yes 20,000+!). The UN says this likely a war crime. Why are the noble defenders of the Palestinian cause in the dock and not notorious Palestinian haters like Jim Denham? ..."
"... These attacks on Corbyn and his supporters, repeated in all of the most aggressive imperialist countries, are simply a proxy attack on the Palestinian people themselves. ..."
"... Jim Denham's comment here illustrates the problem entirely. The picture he has linked to shows an alien symbiote having attached itself to the face of the statue of liberty. The statue of liberty here represents the US. The symbiote has on its back the Israeli Flag, and likewise, thereby represents the state of Israel. The picture therefore, represents the well-worn, and clearly factually wrong meme that Israel controls the US. ..."
"... But, as a Zionist organisation, the AWL and its members cannot distinguish between the state of Israel and Jews, so they cannot distinguish between criticism of the state of Israel, and criticism if Jews. For them, as for the Zionist ideology of the state of Israel, which is most clearly manifest in the ideology of its current political leadership, in the form of the Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu, with the recent introduction of blatantly racist laws that discriminate even more openly against not Jewish Israeli citizens, and with his willingness to try to keep his corrupt regime in office by going into coalition with an avowedly Neo-Nazi party that until recent times was considered beyond the pale, even by most Zionists, the term Zionism is synonymous with the term Jew. So, any criticism of Zionism, or of Israel is for them immediately equated with anti-Semitism. ..."
"... Once again Jim Denham reefuses to engage in rational debate, and again resorts instead to his assumption that Israel = Jews, as well as his crude attempts at a typical Stalinist amalgam, to conflate the views of his opponents with some hate figure. ..."
"... Again Jim Denham makes the conflation of Israel and Jews explicit when he says, "This image also plays on the tired and disgraceful antisemitic 'conspiracy theory' trope of undue Israeli (Jewish) influence on world affairs." ..."
"... The way that the right are using anti-Zionism as the equivalent for anti-Semitism, and the appeasement of that attack has led them to widen the scope of that attack. As Labour List reports , right-wing Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh, is now claiming that to be anti-capitalist is also to be "anti-Semitic". The idea was put forward also by former Blair-right spin doctor, John McTernan, who wrote an article in the FT to that same effect ..."
"... As the right-wing extend their witch-hunt against socialists in the LP to claim that Marxists are necessarily misogynist, as well as anti-Semitic – and the same logic presented by McDonagh, McTernon, and Phillips would presumably mean that the Left must also be xenophobic, homophobic, anti- Green, and many other charges they want to throw into the mix – it will be interesting to see whether and to what extent the AWL, join them in that assault, in the same way they have done in their promotion of Zionism. ..."
Aug 14, 2019 | averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com

... ... ...

The problem, however, is because this is overlaid by factional struggle ...

This, of course, is compounded by the over-amplifying of anti-Semitism by the media and the alacrity with which it has been taken up by Corbyn opponents, including hypocrites who floated "rootless cosmopolitan" criticisms of Ed Miliband when it suited just a few years ago.

Here's the thing. Just because your opponents take up an issue, some times cynically and in bad faith. and use it to inflict as much damage as they can does not mean the problem is fictitious.

Precisely because they can point to Facebook groups full of useful fools, and Twitter accounts with Corbyn-supporting hashtags acting as if the Israel lobby and "Zionists" are the only active force in British politics, this is the stuff that makes the attacks effective and trashes the standing of the party in the eyes of many Jews and the community's allies and friends.

The institutional anti-Semitism in the Labour Party is, therefore, somewhat different to the kind you find in other institutions. It is sustained by the battle for the party, a grim battlefront in a zero sum game of entrenched position vs entrenched position. As such, whatever the leadership do, whatever new processes the General Secretary introduces for one side it will never be enough because, as far as many of them concerned, the leadership are politically illegitimate; and for the other it's a sop and capitulation.

The resolution of the anti-Semitism crisis then is not a matter of compromise -- for each side the issue will only go away with the complete crushing and driving out of the party of the other. A situation that can only poison the well further, and guarantee anti-Semitism won't honestly and comprehensively be confronted.


Boffy said... 3 March 2019 at 16:42
A good analysis. But, it emphasizes the point I made in the previous post, which is that, the right are currently engaged in an all out push to remove Corbyn and crush the left with the same old bureaucratic means. Whatever else Williamson may or may not be guilty of, his point that the leadership have facilitated this situation by their continual appeasement of the right is absolutely valid. Its that he is being attacked for, not anti-Semitism.

It is first necessary to close ranks, and defeat the assault of the Right. As Marr said to Blair this morning, had Prescott announced he was forming a separate group, and was establishing his own witch-hunting bureaucratic apparatus in the party, Blair would have sacked him immediately - actually not so easy as the Deputy is elected. But the thrust is valid. Unless Corbyn deals with Watson, the Right will roll over the Left, despite the huge disparity in numbers.

Again it comes down to whether Corbyn is up for that task, or whether we need a leadership of the left with a bit more backbone to see it through.

asquith said... 3 March 2019 at 18:54
I'm afraid this IS due to the "intersectionality" cult, whereby certain groups are always privileged and wrong, and some are always oppressed and right. Jews are, according to this "analysis", the uber-privileged and uber-white.

We've heard several times that according to "intersectionality" that it's impossible to be racist against white people because racism requires both prejudice and power, and white people are by definition powerful. Therefore, anti-Semitism is dismissed because it can't be a thing because Jews are all-powerful and even more oppressive than other whites.

Those who don't subscribe to all of these beliefs are nevertheless tinged with them, which is why people who aren't staunch antisemites will nevertheless fail to take anti-Semitism seriously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66qe76gkCxo&t=166s

Ian Gibson said... 4 March 2019 at 05:30
Coming on the day when the FT have a column seriously positing that criticizing capitalism is inherently anti-Semitic, it seems to me that dancing on the head of a pin about whether the 'careless' anti-Semitism you've described means the party is institutionally anti-Semitic is rather missing the point. (OK, the column is by John McTernan, but the FT gave him column inches to argue that case, and I guess they didn't mean it as the satire it most certainly is.)

As many of the comments on your blog on Williamson attest, the salient feature of this - well, call it witch-hunt for the sake of argument - is the double standards where we have to be whiter than white, whilst no account whatsoever is taken of the most egregious racism elsewhere. We live in society: we can never, ever be that whiter than white - especially when it comes to Israel/Palestine, which is so full of contradictions and traps for the unwary (e.g. the position of the Israeli state claiming to speak for all Jewry around the world, in the way that the Board of Deputies position themselves as speaking for all British Jews - neither close to being true, but small wonder that opponents of what they do and stand for take that universality at face value.)

The fight we need to take up is to compare and contrast just how pro-active the current party is against anti-Semitism in its constitution and machinery with the glaring absence of such elsewhere, and to present a positive picture of what we are doing, rather than mumbling apologetically into our beards. We need to take the fight to the rigged system at the same time as being unstinting in rooting out the troubling stuff.

Boffy said... 4 March 2019 at 09:47
The other nonsense that has grown up is that it is only those that suffer any form of discrimination who can define what that discrimination is, i.e. only Jews can define anti-Semitism, only black people can define racism against them, only women can define discrimination against women.

That then assumes that the members of each of these groups are themselves homogeneous, and agreed in such definitions. In reality, it means that dominant elements, i.e. those connected to the ruling class and ruling ideas get to make those determinations.

If we look at anti-Semitism, for example, it is quite clear that there is no agreement amongst Jews on what constitutes anti-Semitism. The JVL, certainly have a different definition than the JLM.

But, just rationally, the concept that only those discriminated against get to define the discrimination is bonkers. Suppose you come from Somalia or some other country that practices FGM, you could argue that it is part of your cultural heritage, and that anyone seeking to prevent you from undertaking this barbaric practice was thereby racist, on your self-definition of what that discrimination against you amounts to. Or Saudis might argue that it is racist to argue against their practice of lopping off women's heads, or stoning them to death for adultery, including having been raped, etc.

Jim Denham said... 4 March 2019 at 15:25
The JVL come pretty close to arguing that there is *no* anti-Semitism in the Labour party (Jenny Manson, for instance, says she's never witnessed any)and Glyn Secker wrote a piece in the Morning Star last year comparing claims of anti-Semitism within Labour to the story of the emperor's new clothes.
Boffy said... 5 March 2019 at 09:00
Given that the actual data, even allowing for all of the spurious and mischievous accusations of anti-Semitism in the party, made by right-wing enemies of the the party, and particularly of Corbyn and his supporters, amounts to only 0.1% of the membership, and given that of these, 40% were straight away found to be accusations against people who were not even LP members, with a further 20%, being found to have absolutely no evidence to back them, its quite possible that individual members of the LP, have never seen any instance of it.

Take out all those mischievous and malicious allegations made in order to whip up the hysteria, so as to to damage the party, by its enemies, and you arrive at a figure of only 400 potential cases, out of a membership of 600,000, which is 1 member in 1500. If the average branch size if 100 active members, it means on average there is one potential case of anti-Semitism in every 15 branches. So, if you are a member in any of the other 14 branches, you would never see that one potential case of anti-Semitism.

In fact, based upon the actual facts, as opposed to the fiction and factional hysteria that is being whipped up by right-wing opponents of Corbyn and the party, and by supporters of Zionism for their own narrow political reasons, the chances are about 14: that you will never see any even potential instance of anti-Semitism, even on the narrow definition that the party has now imposed upon itself, which comes pretty close if not entirely to identifying anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism, or even just criticism of the current Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu.

In the US, Jewish groups that have long been ardent defenders of Israel have more recently come out to criticize the regime of Netanyahu, and the actions of the Israeli state. The main defenders of Zionism, besides the actual Zionists themselves, appear to be people like the AWL, who for whatever reason hitched their wagon to Zionist ideology some time ago, probably in their usual knee-jerk reaction of putting a plus sign wherever the SWP put a minus. Having done so, and as a result of the bureaucratic centrist nature of the sect, they find themselves now having to follow through on the position they adopted on the basis of the "practical politics" - opportunism - as it dictated itself to them at the time.

If, and probably more likely when, they change position, it will come as with all their previous changes of position with the assertion that "nothing has changed", as when after claiming a few years ago that the LP was a stinking corpse - as they ridiculously stood their own candidates in elections with the inevitable result - and the next minute proclaimed themselves as its most ardent militants, as they sought to use their sharp elbows to gain positions on Momentum's leading bodies!

Boffy said... 5 March 2019 at 09:22
Incidentally, on the question of "observance", the only time I have seen someone get stabbed, is more than 50 years ago, when I was at school. I've seen plenty of other violent stuff in the intervening period, for example, people getting glassed, people having wrought iron tables smashed over their heads. My sister, who is several years older than me, and was out bopping during the days of the Teddy Boys, saw more people getting slashed, in the 1950's, because the flick knife was the Ted's favoured weapon.

But, that doesn't mean that I disbelieve the media when it talks about the current spate of knife crimes. Its just that, however, terrible such crimes are for those that suffer or witness them, and no matter how much the media that has to sensationalise every story, for its own commercial purposes, talks about an epidemic or a knife crime crisis, the number of knife crimes per head of population is extremely small.

The chances that 999 out of 1,000 of us will never be the victim of, or witness knife crime does not mean it doesn't exist. But, those that then claim that the 999 out of 1,000 of us who say we have not seen it, must be somehow being dishonest, are not dealing with the facts, and are simply fuelling a moral panic.

When some phenomena is statistically insignificant, which 1 in 1,500 cases, is, and when as with many such phenomena there is no normal distribution of the occurrence of such cases - for example, knife crime will tend to be concentrated in particular areas - trying to present any kind of rational analysis based upon personal observation is a mug's game.

Just because the only case of stabbing I have witnessed was more than 50 years ago, does not, and should not lead me to think that knife crime was worse 50 years ago than it is today. The actual data would seem to suggest that cases of anti-Semitism were greater in the LP in previous times than they are currently, contrary to what the media and those with factional motives would have us believe. It is certainly thec ase that anti-Semitism is a bigger problem in the Tory party, and other right-wing organisations than it is in the LP, again not that you would know that from the reporting of it, or from the attitude of certain factional sects, such as the AWL.

Jim Denham said... 5 March 2019 at 11:14

Labour has 'much larger' group of antisemitic members which Corbyn has failed to deal with, Momentum founder warns

By Rob Merrick Deputy Political Editor The Independent, Monday 25 February 2019 16:10 |

Labour has "a much larger" group of antisemitic members than it recognises which Jeremy Corbyn has failed to "deal with", Momentum founder Jon Lansman has warned.

The Labour leader's long-standing ally said "conspiracy theorists" had infiltrated the party – a consequence of its huge surge in membership in recent years.

Mr Lansman stopped short of backing the call from Tom Watson, Labour's deputy leader, for Mr Corbyn to take personal charge of the antisemitism complaints dogging Labour.

But he said: "I do think we have a major problem and it always seems to me that we underestimate the scale of it. I think it is a widespread problem.

"I think it is now obvious that we have a much larger number of people with hardcore antisemitic opinions which, unfortunately, is polluting the atmosphere in a lot of constituency parties and in particular online. We have to deal with these people."

Speedy said... 6 March 2019 at 06:39
Approaching this from another angle...

The apparent level of anti-semitism in Labour is a modern phenomenon turbo-charged and amplified by social media. People have their views reinforced within their bunkers where anti-Israeli memes become anti-Zionist and then become anti-Semitic. It is much easier to send an anonymous email than a letter.

History is very much the tale of new technology transforming the potential of human behaviour and beliefs, and one of the oldest beliefs ("the blood libel") is anti-Semitism.

This is how Labour has changed - ie, the rise of Corbyn has coincided with the ubiquity of this technology. In fact, arguably the rise of Corbyn was aided by it.

Corbyn's nuanced position on Israel/Palestine gives permission to social media extremists.

The rest is history.

Incidentally, this is why you are less likely to confront anti-Semitism in real-life while the internet may be awash with it - there are the real and virtual identities which only occasionally bleed into each other.

Which is true and which is not? We might wonder if technology has evolved ahead of human adaptation - the "real world" filters that govern apparently "real" behaviour missing.

I'm sure even certain posters here are less bananas in "real life" than their online comments might suggest!

Boffy said... 6 March 2019 at 10:42
I wouldn't trust Lansman on this issue, any more than on many others. Lansman abolished democracy, to the extent it existed to begin with, by turning it into his personal fiefdom, reminiscent of the activities of Hyndman and the SDF. His position on anti-Semitism, and fighting the witch-hunt, and of appeasing the Blair-right's as they attacked Corbyn, has been appalling throughout.

Having abolished any democracy in Momentum, which he now runs as its CEO, he also appears to want Corbyn to do the same thing with the Labour Party, abolishing its internal democratic procedures, and putting himself personally in charge of those disciplinary measures. That truly would be the actions of a Bonapartist. That Tom Watson is prepared to do that, as he sets himself up in a situation of dual power, to confront Corbyn is no surprise that anyone who even remotely considers themselves a part of the Left should support should a move is a disgrace. Perhaps no surprise that the AWL supporters of Zionism, and the witch-hunt, appear to be doing so, then.

Its notable that, yesterday, when the Welsh Labour Grass Roots organisation came out to call for Williamson's suspension to be reversed, Kinnock and other Blair-rights immediately called for an investigation into them, and for its Secretary who sits on Labour's NEC to also be suspended, for interfering in an ongoing investigation! So, why did those same Blair-rights not call for the suspension of Watson, who immediately demanded Williamson's suspension, and withdrawal of the whip, before any investigation, or indeed of Hodge and others who on a daily basis go to the media to sally forth about cases that are under investigation, or waiting for investigation.

This truly is reaching into the realms of McCarthyism, where you are found guilty not just of witchcraft, but of consorting with witches, or even having an opinion as to whether an individual charged with witchcraft is guilty, or even the extent to which the number of witches amongst might be exaggerated.

Jim Denham's comment is a case in point. How much more "anti-Semitism" exists? What is the factual basis of the statement, as opposed to click bait headline. Even if the actual extent is 100% more than the data so far presented, that would mean that potentially 1 in 750 LP members might be guilty of some form of anti-Semitism. Its hardly an epidemic, or institutional anti-Semitism, and far less than exists in the Tory Party, which is also infected by Islamaphobia, misogyny, homophobia and xenophobia.

In fact, its probably much less than you would find in the BBC, Sky or other establishment institutions. Anti-Semitism exists, and is a problem, but that does not mean it is not being used by Labour's enemies or the proponents of Zionism for their own political ends. The real conspiracy theorists are those that try to present anti-Semitism as a conspiracy based upon infiltration of the LP, the same people who presented the support for Corbyn from 300,000 new members as really just being a case of far left entryism, by Trots.

Jim Denham said... 7 March 2019 at 09:10
This is a meme, taken from Incog Man, a far-right site. It was posted with positive endorsement by a Labour member, Kayla Bibby, a delegate to conference in fact:

Link to the meme:

https://static.timesofisrael.com/jewishndev/uploads/2019/02/ellmann-640x400.jpg

Bibby subsequently received only a formal warning, with Thomas Gardiner of Labour's Governance and Legal Unit (what used to be the Compliance Unit), saying it was only anti-Israel, and not anti-Semitic.

Not only could a Labour member post something obviously anti-Semitic, it was not deemed to be so by the Compliance Unit. I bet we all know people who would agree.

Boffy said... 7 March 2019 at 12:36
It's not a factually accurate description of global political realities, because Israel does not control the US, if that is what the image is intended to imply. But, the message, is thereby anti-Israeli state, not anti-Semitic. It could only be considered anti-Semitic, if in fact you are a Zionist and claim that Israel and Jews are are interchangeable terms, which they are not.

In fact, there are probably not an inconsiderable number of Jews, who think that the state of Israel does exercise undue influence over US policy, and certainly it seems to be the case that, in the US, more liberal Jewish groups, seem to think that one reason that the Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu, in Israel, was so supportive of Trump, and we see the same support for Trump amongst Zionists in Britain, is at least in part due to the fact that Obama had been distancing the US from its historical uncritical support for Israel.

If we replace Zionism with Toryism, and Jew with British, the situation becomes fairly clear. If the we show the British state as being controlled by Tories, who implement their ideology of Toryism, in what way would criticism of the British state, under the control of such Tories, or criticism of Tories be the equivalent of British people as a whole?

Clearly it wouldn't, because there are a majority of British people who oppose Toryism, and thereby oppose the actions of the British state under the control of the Tories. A nationalist, or racist might want to equate the nation state with the whole of its people, but the people who are doing that here, by interpreting criticism of the Israeli state with anti-Semitism, are the Zionists themselves, and their apologists, because they seek thereby to delegitimize any criticism of the state of Israel and Zionism by equating it with anti-Semitism.

That in effect makes the Zionists themselves, and their apologists anti-Semites, because in adopting this equation of Jewishness with being Zionist, and with Israel, they make all Jews thereby responsible for the actions of Zionism and of the state of Israel!

Boffy said... 7 March 2019 at 13:47
The problem for the AWL, and its members like Jim Denham, on this issue comes down to this. Until thirty years ago, the organisation, under its previous names, was an ardent defender of the ideas and traditions of Jim Cannon. Cannon's "The Struggle for a Proletarian Party" was required reading for all of its members. Then, in an about face, the organisation overnight collapsed into what Trotsky called "the petit-bourgeois Third Camp", and so became ardent defenders of the enemies of Cannon, the petit-bourgeois Third Camp of Burnham- Shachtman. That kind of wild zig-zag is typical of bureaucratic-centrist organisations, which is what the AWL is.

As part of this collapse into the petit-bourgeois Third Camp, and the moralistic politics it is based upon, the AWL also adopted the ideas of Third Campists like Al Glotzer, in relation to Israel and Zionism, as opposed to the position of Mandel, which represented a continuation of the ideas of Cannon and Trotsky. I set this out in a short blog post 12 years ago Glotzer and the Jews as Special , after the AWL had repeatedly censored it appearing on their website in response to an article setting out Glotzer's position.

Having committed themselves to the reactionary Zionist ideology that essentially underpins Glotzer's stance - the same thing idea of having lost faith in the working-class, and so having to rely on the bourgeois state, or "progressive imperialism" to accomplish the tasks of the working-class, is behind the AWL's support for NATo's war against Serbia, Iraq, Libya etc., but is also behind the politics of other Third Campists such as the SWP, that instead look to other larger forces, such as reactionary "anti-imperialist" states to carry forward its moral agenda - the AWL are left now trying to defend their position of support for the creation of a racist, expansionist state in Israel, as the inevitable consequences of that venture unfold.

For a Marxist, it is not at all difficult to say that the establishment of the state of Israel is one that we should not have supported at the time, because it would lead to the kind of consequences we see today, and yet, to say, 75 years on from the creation of that state, it is an established fact, and trying to unwind history, by calling for the destruction of that state would have even more calamitous consequences for the global working-class. It is quite easy for a Marx to say that the current nature of the Israeli state, as a racist Zionist state, based, like almost no other state in the world on a confessional basis, i.e. of being a Jewish state, a state for Jews in preference to every other ethnic/religious group flows from the ideology, and nature of its creation. But, then to argue that the answer to that is not a destruction of the state of Israel, which could only be done on the bones of millions of Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, but is to wage a working-class based struggle against that racist foundation upon which the state has been founded, and that struggle is one that must unite Jews and Arabs alike. In fact, the position of palestinians today is a mirror image of that of the Jews 75 years ago.

The hope of a Two-State Solution disappeared long ago, and was never credible. It simply allows Zionists to proclaim they are in favour of it, whilst doing everything to make it practically impossible, such as extending West Bank Settlements. The solution must flow from a struggle for democratic rights for Israeli Arabs, and for a right for all Arabs in occupied territories to be extended the same rights as any other Israeli, including the right to vote, and send representatives to the Knesset. As I argued thirty years ago, the longer-term solution is a Federal Republic of Israel and Palestine, guaranteeing democratic rights to all, as part of building a wider Federal Republic of MENA.

Anonymous said... 7 March 2019 at 16:54

Jim Denham: imperialist lackey and sycophant turned Witch hunter in chief

Let us be very clear about what this witch hunt is about, it is about purging from public life any credible and effective opposition to Israel in particular and more generally opposition to the imperialist barbarians of the imperialist core. It is about driving from universities, social media and intellectual life any form of opposition to the interests of the imperialists.

This is nothing but authoritarianism in action, censorship of political opponents and the closing down of any credible definition of free speech.

In other words this is something any leftist worth half an atom would be fighting against with all their energies.

But what do we find, pathetic pro war pro imperialists leftists and post modern liberals joining the witch hunt.

Meanwhile in the real world:

A UN report has concluded that Israel deliberately targeted and killed hundreds of protesting civilians, including children and disabled people and it shot 20,000+ people (yes 20,000+!). The UN says this likely a war crime. Why are the noble defenders of the Palestinian cause in the dock and not notorious Palestinian haters like Jim Denham?

How can anyone on the left get away with supporting and providing ideological cover for Israel How can any leftist allow a socialist movement to be sabotaged by the Israel state and its army of appalling immoral apologists?

These attacks on Corbyn and his supporters, repeated in all of the most aggressive imperialist countries, are simply a proxy attack on the Palestinian people themselves.

Boffy said... 8 March 2019 at 11:15
Jim Denham's comment here illustrates the problem entirely. The picture he has linked to shows an alien symbiote having attached itself to the face of the statue of liberty. The statue of liberty here represents the US. The symbiote has on its back the Israeli Flag, and likewise, thereby represents the state of Israel. The picture therefore, represents the well-worn, and clearly factually wrong meme that Israel controls the US.

But, as a Zionist organisation, the AWL and its members cannot distinguish between the state of Israel and Jews, so they cannot distinguish between criticism of the state of Israel, and criticism if Jews. For them, as for the Zionist ideology of the state of Israel, which is most clearly manifest in the ideology of its current political leadership, in the form of the Bonapartist regime of Netanyahu, with the recent introduction of blatantly racist laws that discriminate even more openly against not Jewish Israeli citizens, and with his willingness to try to keep his corrupt regime in office by going into coalition with an avowedly Neo-Nazi party that until recent times was considered beyond the pale, even by most Zionists, the term Zionism is synonymous with the term Jew. So, any criticism of Zionism, or of Israel is for them immediately equated with anti-Semitism.

It is what leads such Zionists to then also insist on their right to determine who is a Jew or not. The AWL do that with all those Jews, such as the JVL, who refuse to accept the AWL's definition of anti-Zionism = Anti-Semitism. Its like the old saw that the definition of a Scot is someone who wears a kilt, and when asked about Jock McTavish, from Arbroath, who does not wear a kilt, the reply comes back, then he cannot really be a Scot!

The Zionists insists on defining anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism, and thereby closing down debate. Jim Denham does that most clearly here, in his refusal to debate the actual substantive points. It is typical of the attitude of the AWL, in general which long since gave up trying to defend its bourgeois liberal, opportunist politics by rational debate, and instead turned to bureaucratic censorship, and ill-tempered invective.

Boffy said... 9 March 2019 at 08:58
Once again Jim Denham reefuses to engage in rational debate, and again resorts instead to his assumption that Israel = Jews, as well as his crude attempts at a typical Stalinist amalgam, to conflate the views of his opponents with some hate figure.

Again Jim Denham makes the conflation of Israel and Jews explicit when he says, "This image also plays on the tired and disgraceful antisemitic 'conspiracy theory' trope of undue Israeli (Jewish) influence on world affairs."

The conflation of equating Israel with the term Jew flows directly from the Zionist ideology that underpins the Israeli State, but which also adopted by the AWL, and its members like Jim Denham. It thereby effectively denies statehood to non-Jewish Israeli citizens, making them non-persons, erasing them from history, in the same way that Jim Denham has sought to do in diminishing if not entirely denying the genocides against other ethnic groups such as Native North Americans, Australian and New Zealand aboriginals etc., as a result of his Zionist privileging of the specific genocide against Jews in the Holocaust.

It is the same kind of racism, of course, that is applied by the BNP and other white nationalists, who seek to portray Britain as being a nation for white Britons, and thereby deny other Britons the right to consider themselves really British. Every socialist, can understand the racist nature of that ideology when it is applied to Britain, and elsewhere, but the AWL, and its members, like Jim Denham, deny it when it is applied to Israel, which they want to treat as being different to every other state on the planet, in defence of their Zionist ideology that privileges Israeli Jews over others, and by extension equates the term Jew with the term Israel.

Its most extreme version comes with the fascists that Netanyahu has now gone into alliance with, whose ideology states that God only put gentiels on the Earth to be slaves and serve the needs of Jews, as the chosen people! It means that they see the place of non-Jewish Israelis in those terms, as being allowed to remain in Israel only on that subservient basis. This is the ideology that the AWL is now logically tied to, in having adopted Zionism as the answer to the problems of Jewish workers rather than socialism.

And, of course, the extension of that principle for other Zionists is illustrated in their support for fascists like Orban in Hungary, who wants to adopt a similar nationalist ideology of keeping Hungary, and other "white" European nations exclusively for "whites", in the same way that Zionists want to keep Israel exclusively for Jews.

It is a sorry state when socialists have degenerated to such an extent that not only do they fail to distinguish between nationalist ideology and socialist ideology by adopting nationalist solutions to workers problems such as "nationalisation", by the capitalist state, but where, in adopting such reactionary nationalist ideology, the logic of their position drives them to supporting the idea that nation states should be exclusively for particular ethnic groups, such as Israel for the Jews, Hungary for white Christians and so on.

Boffy said... 9 March 2019 at 16:31
The way that the right are using anti-Zionism as the equivalent for anti-Semitism, and the appeasement of that attack has led them to widen the scope of that attack. As Labour List reports , right-wing Labour MP Siobhan McDonagh, is now claiming that to be anti-capitalist is also to be "anti-Semitic". The idea was put forward also by former Blair-right spin doctor, John McTernan, who wrote an article in the FT to that same effect

Channelling Jim Denham, McTernan writes,

"As the historian Deborah Lipstadt points out, anti-Semitic tropes share three elements: money or finance is always in the mix; an acknowledged cleverness that is also seen as conniving; and, power -- particularly a power to manipulate more powerful entities.

All of these feature in the criticism of Israel and the so-called Israel lobby. They can be easily moulded into a critique of capitalism, too."

The line of argument was illustrated to me some weeks ago, in a comment I received in relation to an article I wrote about Marx's analysis of fictitious capital, as part of my critique of Paul Mason's Postcapitalism . The commenter, argued that Marx's analysis of fictitious capital appeared to be simply Marx blaming bankers and money lenders, for which read Jews, for the world's ills, and was thereby simply an expression of the well-known fact that Marx was a self-hating Jew, much as the AWL, describe all those other Jews that do not share their commitment to |Zionism. The commenter as evidence of this provided a link to a literary critique of Marx's On The Jewish Question , which is cited as proving that Marx was an anti-semite.

In fact, I pointed out that in nothing that Marx had written about fictitious capital, or what I had written describing Marx's analysis of fictitious capital are bankers discussed, let alone Jewish bankers. The anonymous commenter, has, in fact, since deleted their comments, meaning that my responses to them were also deleted.
But, this is the way this right-wing witch-hunt proceeds, by throwing a net to catch whatever they can trawl in, and at the very least sowing the seeds of doubt as they require those being attacked to respond to their wild accusations. It means that any statement can be framed to mean that there is some subtext beneath the actual words and pictures that is somehow anti-Semitic, if only you know the relevant coda to unlock the true meaning, and anyone who doubts the meaning being placed upon it, is thereby a defender of the anti-Semitic message. As with the attacks on Momentum, and the initial surge of membership supporting Corbyn, it is always phrased in dark conspiratorial language, about unseen forces being behind what is seen on the surface. So, we were supposed to believe that a few hundred Trots in Britain somehow morphed into 300,000 new LP members! But, Momentum now having shown that it is a tame part of the establishment, is even able to recruit McTernan himself as a member.

The appeasement as with all witch-hunts only provokes the witch-hunters to widen the scope of their activities. The AWL, which was at the forefront of helping the witch-hunters with their shameful support for the witch-hunting of Jackie Walker, was repaid by having their own members expelled too, and having right-wing Labour MP's appear on TV, to characterise the AWL themselves as "anti-Semites", despite their well-known Zionist politics. Yet, oddly, the AWL seem to consider that a price worth paying, as their advocacy of Zionism seems to trump any other consideration for them in their politics.

Boffy said... 10 March 2019 at 11:09
It didn't take long for my comment of yesterday to be proved correct. Today we learn that Jess Phillips has claimed that Marxism is necessarily misogynist, because it places class oppression above all else, and so now claims that as well as the Left in the party being anti-Semitic, it is also misogynist. The attack of the Right, as I said yesterday will spread ever wider on this irrational basis, using all of the usual conspiratorial language that such witch-hunts have always adopted. Rather like a Dan Brown novel, it will imply that there are dark (Marxist) forces at work, of which Corbyn is the head of the coven (or even worse that some unseen Dark Overlord is really standing behind Corbyn, who is only its representative on Earth (i.e. in the LP).

It will suggest that these dark forces do not speak openly, but only in codes and symbols that have to be unlocked by the forces of Light, who like Jim Denham, can look into the minds of men and women, and see what is really going inside.

I actually found that despite the anonymous Zionist commenter to my article on Medium having deleted their comments, my replies to them, were in fact still floating around here , here , and here .

As the right-wing extend their witch-hunt against socialists in the LP to claim that Marxists are necessarily misogynist, as well as anti-Semitic – and the same logic presented by McDonagh, McTernon, and Phillips would presumably mean that the Left must also be xenophobic, homophobic, anti- Green, and many other charges they want to throw into the mix – it will be interesting to see whether and to what extent the AWL, join them in that assault, in the same way they have done in their promotion of Zionism.

[Aug 07, 2019] Integrity Initiative forthcoming reviews of forthcoming Assange book: Luke Harding can be relied on to add his 2 cents' worth of conspiracy paranoid garbage, Shaun Walker will be parsing the book for dill references and non-Russia experts like Marina Hyde and Natalie Nougat-head will want a crack as well at reviewing the book.

Aug 07, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jennifer Hor August 2, 2019 at 1:01 pm

Look out for the bad reviews from The Fraudian's writers: Luke Harding can be relied on to add his 2 cents' worth of conspiracy paranoid garbage, Shaun Walker will be parsing the book for dill references and non-Russia experts like Marina Hyde and Natalie Nougat-head will want a crack as well at reviewing the book.

Probably the only half-decent reviews will be from Mary Dejevski and Prof. Stephen Cohen but theirs will be buried in a back page or inaccessible behind an Error 404 wall.

[Aug 07, 2019] It's the 6th Division now!

Aug 07, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al August 2, 2019 at 3:48 am

It's the 6th Division now!

The Register: New British Army psyops unit fires rebrandogun, smoke clears to reveal I'm sorry, Dave
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2019/08/01/british_army_shows_us_its_cyber_ring/

This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardise it

6 (UK) Division is the new organisational home for the Army's "asymmetric edge", comprising all things "Intelligence, Counter-Intelligence, Information Operations, Electronic Warfare, Cyber and Unconventional Warfare".

Launched this morning, 6 Div is a rebranding of the formation formerly known as Force Troops Command, which covered a hotchpotch of Royal Signals, Intelligence Corps and other units, including the infamous 77 Brigade
####

Don't forget to hit the comments for hilarity!

Also, the timing of the announcement says plenty, i.e. slipping it in to the news stream when people have already gone on holiday and all the BREXIT and other bollocks. I've not seen this reported on the tv in the UK – which is currently facing severe flooding etc.

et Al August 2, 2019 at 4:07 am
Is it just me or is all the PPNN reporting that 'Putin's support has dropped to levels not seen since 2011!'. Of course they don't actually give you any numbers and cherry pick dodgy poll numbers but there really is this Pavlovian reaction anytime there is a demonstration in Russia, like undertakers gathering at an allegedly dangerous road crossing waiting for some cyclist to be dragged under a trash lorry so that they can tut tut and then profit from the cyclist's misfortune. Nix that, the PPNN are just professional versions of MacBeth's witches, something which they don't understand is a story .
Mark Chapman August 2, 2019 at 3:01 pm
Putin is in as much danger of being unceremoniously chucked out of office as he is of choking to death on his grandmother's knitting. The west is ever hopeful, and dutifully rallies to the glorification of every new dissident firebrand, but whether or not they know it, they are just going through the motions. The only group, and I mean the only one, that would benefit from Putin's overthrow would be the disaffected kreakliy and the poncy forgotten semi-intellectuals. They would be feted by the west as political visionaries, and perhaps given minor government positions to satisfy their vanity. But who else would make out like a bandit? The military? Hardly – the west, after years of giggling about Russia's decrepit military, lapsed into an uneasy silence on the subject just about the time that long-distance Kalibr cruise-missile attack took place from the Caspian Sea into Syria, and a west given meddling-room would want to disband the Russian military, if anything, down to a token force of absolutely-trustworthy sycophants who would probably be issued with American weapons. The oligarchs? Hardly – western business would be snapping up former state assets while simultaneously carrying out an 'anti-corruption drive' under the new President's imprimatur. Small businesses? Hardly – corporate interest would be in melding large state interests into the Corporate Borg, and their method is to squeeze out small business in order to expand market share. The people? Hardly – Russia would be a convenient place to move all the refugee immigrants from that entire hemisphere, while the stubborn loyalty of the population to Putin would not be forgotten.

It is no coincidence that it is always the same people who show up to bitch and carp about how dreadful Putin is, and how Russia needs American-style freedom and democracy and non-stop Pride parades and all the trappings of fresh admission to Club West. They are the only people who would stand to benefit from driving Putin out. Nobody else is interested.

Mark Chapman August 2, 2019 at 4:50 pm
They're just trying to get some mileage out of Olga what's-her-name, and make it look like a drop in Putin's poll numbers happened exactly at the moment this young political firebrand emerged. Pretty sad, really, but you can't tell 'em, and it wouldn't make any difference. They have to try, it's the same instinct that makes a dog lick its nose if you smear cheese on it. The western media would rush to interview and endorse a talking Russian toad if it said "I hate Putin".

[Aug 05, 2019] UK 'up to its neck' in Russiagate affair, says George Galloway, as secret texts reveal British role

Barr now has goods to jail major conspirators for life. It is unlikely happened but we can hope.
Notable quotes:
"... "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation. ..."
"... The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics. ..."
"... British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said. ..."
"... Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said. ..."
"... Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic. ..."
"... In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller. ..."
Jul 31, 2019 | www.rt.com

While hysteria raged about possible Russian "interference" in the 2016 US election, British intelligence officials were secretly playing a "key role" in helping instigate investigations into Donald Trump, secret texts have shown. "Turns out it was Britain that was the foreign country interfering in American affairs," former MP George Galloway told RT, speaking about the new revelations published by the Guardian about early British involvement in the 'Russiagate' investigation.

The Guardian reported on texts between former deputy FBI director Andrew McCabe and Jeremy Fleming, his then counterpart at MI5, who now heads GCHQ. The two men met in 2016 to discuss "our strange situation" – an apparent reference to Russia's alleged interference in US domestic politics.

British intelligence "appears to have played a key role in the early stages," the report said.

www.youtube.com/embed/y0X5ubiSd0M

Galloway said the revelation was not surprising because people "already knew" that British intelligence had played a part in the Russia-related investigations in the US. He recalled that it was former British spy Christopher Steele who drew up the now-infamous Steele dossier, which made multiple unverifiable and salacious claims about Trump and has since been largely discredited. Britain is "up to its neck in the whole Russiagate affair," he said.

The texts also reveal that the Brexit vote was viewed by some in the FBI as something that had been influenced by Russia.

Asked what the UK stood to gain by trying to implicate Russia in a US election scandal at a time when then-foreign secretary Boris Johnson was dismissing baseless claims of Russian interference in the Brexit campaign, Galloway noted that Johnson's comments on Russia have appeared to strangely sway between friendly and antagonistic.

Johnson is like "a sofa that bears the impression of the last person to sit upon him," the former MP quipped. What happens next will depend on who is leading the tango, "the orange man in Washington or the blonde mop-head in London."

In June 2016, the FBI opened a covert investigation codenamed 'Crossfire Hurricane' into Trump's now disproven collusion with Moscow, which was later taken over by special counsel Robert Mueller.

Ultimately, the two-year-long probe that followed came up short, producing no evidence to prove a conspiracy or collusion between Trump campaign officials and Russia

See also:

Also on rt.com Fear behind fury: As DNI, Ratcliffe could expose FISA files that Russiagaters hope stay buried

[Aug 02, 2019] Not a word about the decades-long coverup of the horrific abuse of British children by the pedophilic "elites"

Aug 02, 2019 | www.unz.com

annamaria , says: July 31, 2019 at 3:48 pm GMT

What a prime example of presstitution this article by certain Matthew Scott. https://quillette.com/2019/07/25/the-many-lies-of-carl-beech/
Here is the presstitute's coup de force -- Russia! Antisemitism!! – what else? Not a word about the decades-long coverup of the horrific abuse of British children by the pedophilic "elites" instead Matthew Scott focuses on malicious smear of a messenger.

Beech's targets were mainly "establishment" figures. Only one, the former Labour MP Greville Janner, was from the Labour Party, and his prominent position within the British Jewish community and his support for Israel made him, like Lord Brittan, a perfect target for the antisemitic agitators who gleefully climbed aboard Beech's bandwagon.

A Russian government energetically promoting [?] "anti-establishment" movements all over Europe was not about to miss an opportunity like this. George Galloway, used his platform as a presenter on the Russian state broadcaster RT.com to promote Beech's claims.

The unwelcome truth:

Greville Ewan Janner, Baron Janner of Braunstone, QC was a British politician, barrister and writer who was alleged to have abused vulnerable children, but died before court proceedings could formally establish the facts. He was an MP until 1997, and then elevated to the House of Lords. He was associated with a number of Jewish organizations including the Board of Deputies of British Jews, of which he was chairman from 1978 to 1984, and was later prominent in the field of education about the Holocaust.

Allegations that he had sexually abused children first emerged publicly in 1991, but Janner denied them and no action was taken. The accusations re-emerged shortly before Janner's death, and although the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) considered that there was enough evidence to merit prosecution, they decided that it would not be in the public interest as Janner had been diagnosed as suffering from dementia.

So convenient!
Another one with the ties to a "number of Jewish organizations:" https://www.thedailybeast.com/thatcher-protege-leon-brittan-was-a-pedophile-suspect "Thatcher Protégé Leon Brittan Was a Pedophile Suspect"

Leon Brittan, the former Home Secretary, was long accused of covering up a Westminster child-sex ring. Now that he's died, authorities say he was a suspect as well.

"England: Land of Royals, Tea and Horrific Pedophilia Coverupshttps:"//time.com/2974381/england-land-of-royals-tea-and-horrific-pedophilia-coverups/

politicians with links to Margaret Thatcher's government sexually abused vulnerable children in the 1980s and hid the truth for decades through their "chumocracy."

Most notoriously of all, Sir Jimmy Savile, a BBC children's television presenter feted by the Royal Family and Downing Street, abused 450 victims, mostly boys and girls as young as eight over 50 years.

Lord Brittan, the Home Secretary to whom Dickens handed his dossier, told reporters he could not recall anything about it. But last week Lord Brittan issued a statement remembering that he had received the dossier and had asked his officials to study its contents. Over the weekend it emerged that Lord Brittan had been interviewed as a suspect in the rape of a 19-year-old in 1967..

[Jul 24, 2019] Have you all forgotten how BOJO leaned himself out of the window, outdoing himself and his degenerate former boss by accusing Russia of poisoning the Skripals and whoever else with 'Novi-shock'?

Jul 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

nottheonly1 , Jul 24 2019 17:59 utc | 178

After having read all of the comments, I like to ask a question.

Neither in the story, nor in the comment section, I found any remark about the Skripal affair.

Have you all forgotten how BOJO leaned himself out of the window, outdoing himself and his degenerate former boss by accusing Russia of poisoning the Skripals and whoever else with 'Novi-shock'?

And this pathetic liar and accuser of Russia with as much as ZERO evidence is now at the helm of HMS Titanic?

No wonder people can't figure out what's really going on in the world. Considering his rabid "The Russians did it" tripe as FM, he should have been barred from public office for the rest of his life.

Unless, of course, it's all nothing but low grade ham theater, with everybody playing their role - including the Russians. But I do remember the kind of actions this guy wanted to take against Russia, for 'highly likely' having been behind this fairy tale of a double agent and his daughter.

So, please humor me about how much you remember of the stellar performance of this utter joke calling for sanctions and worse against Russia.

Now what?

[Jul 23, 2019] UK's May Takes Parting Shot At Putin In Desperate Diversion From Failure

Jul 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Putin was apparently explaining a fairly straightforward and, to many observers, valid assessment of international politics. Namely, that Western establishments and institutions, including the mainstream media, are experiencing a crisis in authority. That crisis has arisen over several years due to popular perception that the governance of the political class is not delivering on democratic demands of accountability and economic progress. That in turn has led people to seek alternatives from the established parties, a movement in the US and Europe which is denigrated by the establishment as "populist" or rabble rousing.

Putin was not advocating any particular politics or political figures. He was merely pointing out the valid observation that the so-called liberal establishment has become obsolete, or dysfunctional.

In her speech this week, May sought to lay on a sinister spin to Putin's remarks as being somehow him egging on authoritarianism and anti-democratic politics.

Another example of distortion came from Donald Tusk, the European Council President, who also said of Putin's interview:

"I strongly disagree with the main argument that liberalism is obsolete. Whoever claims that liberal democracy is obsolete, also claims that freedoms are obsolete, that the rule of law is obsolete and that human rights are obsolete For us in Europe, these are and will remain essential and vibrant values. What I find really obsolete are: authoritarianism, personality cults, the rule of oligarchs."

Tusk's depiction of Putin being anti-democratic, anti-human rights and anti-law is a specious misdirection, or as May would say, "cynical falsehood".

Political leaders like May and Tusk are living in denial. They seem to suffer from a charmed delusion that all is rosy with the state of Western democracy. That somehow Western states are the acme of benign "liberalism".

By blaming evident deep-seated problems of poverty and apathy towards establishment politics on "sinister" targets of "populism" and "authoritarian strong men" is a form of escapism from reality.

In May's case, she has added good reason to escape from reality. Her political career is ending in disaster and disgrace for having led Britain into a shambles over its Brexit departure from the European Union. Of course, she would like a distraction from her abysmal record, and she seemed to find one in her farewell speech by firing a dud diatribe at Putin.

But let's re-examine her self-congratulatory claim more closely. "No one comparing the quality of life or economic success of liberal democracies like the UK, France and Germany to the Russian Federation would conclude that our system is obsolete."

There are two parts to that.

First, May is giving the usual establishment spiel about presumed superiority of Western "liberal democracy" as opposed to politics and governance in Russia.

This week coming, May hands in her resignation as Conservative party prime minister to the unelected head of state, Queen Elizabeth. The British monarch and her heirs rule as official head of state by a presumed "divine order". Some democracy that is!

May's successor will either be Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt. The next prime minister of Britain will be elected solely by members of Britain's Conservative party. As the Washington Post noted this week, the Tory party represents less than one per cent of the British population. So, the new leader of the United Kingdom is being decided not by a democratic national mandate, but by a tiny minority of party members whose demographic profile is typically rightwing, ardent nationalists, pro-militarist, white and elderly males. Moreover, the "selection" of new leader comes down to a choice between two politicians of highly dubious quality whose foreign policy tendency is to play sycophants to Washington. The way Johnson and Hunt have, for example, lent support to Trump's reckless aggression towards Iran is a portent of further scraping and bowing to American warmongering typical of Britain's "special relationship".

In the second part of May's presumed virtuous liberal democracy, she hails the "quality of economic success" of her nation as opposed to Russian society.

No-one, least of all Putin, is denying that reducing poverty is a social challenge for Russia. In a recent nationwide televised Q&A, the "elected" (please note) head of the Russian state called poverty reduction a priority for his government. However, Russia certainly doesn't need advice from the United Kingdom or many other Western states on that issue.

A recent major study in Britain found that some 21 per cent of the population (14 million people) are living in poverty. Homelessness and aggravated crime figures are also off the charts due to collapsing public services over a decade of economic austerity as deliberate government policy. The inequality gap between super-rich and poverty among the mass of people has exploded to a chasm in Britain, as in the US and other Western states.

These are some of the urgent issues that Putin was referring to when he asserted the "liberal idea is obsolete". Can anyone objectively surveying the bankrupt state of Western societies honestly dispute that?

Western states are fundamentally broken down because "liberalism" is an empty term which conceals rapacious corporate capitalism and the oligarchic rule of an elite political class. The advocates of "liberalism" like Britain's May, Johnson, Hunt or Tusk are the ones who are anti-democracy, anti-human rights and anti-law. Their denial about the systemic cause of poverty and injustice within their own societies and their complicity in American imperialist warmongering in the Middle East or belligerence towards Russia and China is the true "quality" of their "democratic principles".

If that's not obsolete then what is? And that's why May took a weird parting shot at Putin in a desperate diversion from reality.

[Jul 20, 2019] FBI's spreadsheet puts a stake through the heart of Steele's dossier

Jul 20, 2019 | thehill.com

But lest anyone be tempted to think Steele's 2016 dossier is about to be mysteriously revived as credible, consider this: Over months of work, FBI agents painstakingly researched every claim Steele made about Trump's possible collusion with Russia, and assembled their findings into a spreadsheet-like document.

The over-under isn't flattering to Steele.

Multiple sources familiar with the FBI spreadsheet tell me the vast majority of Steele's claims were deemed to be wrong, or could not be corroborated even with the most awesome tools available to the U.S. intelligence community. One source estimated the spreadsheet found upward of 90 percent of the dossier's claims to be either wrong, nonverifiable or open-source intelligence found with a Google search.

In other words, it was mostly useless.

"The spreadsheet was a sea of blanks, meaning most claims couldn't be corroborated, and those things that were found in classified intelligence suggested Steele's intelligence was partly or totally inaccurate on several claims," one source told me.

The FBI declined comment when asked about the spreadsheet.

The FBI's final assessment was driven by many findings contained in classified footnotes at the bottom of the spreadsheet. But it was also informed by an agent's interview, in early 2017, with a Russian that Steele claimed was one of his main providers of intelligence, according to my sources.

The FBI came to suspect that the Russian misled Steele, either intentionally or through exaggeration, the sources said.

The spreadsheet and a subsequent report by special prosecutor Robert Mueller show just how far off the seminal claims in the Steele dossier turned out to be.

For example, U.S. intelligence found no evidence that Carter Page, during a trip to Moscow in July 2016, secretly met with two associates of Vladimir Putin Igor Sechin and senior government official Igor Divyekin -- as part of the effort to collude with the Trump campaign, as Steele reported.

Page did meet with a lower-level Rosneft official, and shook hands with a Russian deputy prime minister, the FBI found, but it was a far cry from the tale that Steele's dossier spun.

Likewise, Steele claimed that Sechin had offered Page a hefty finder's fee if he could get Trump to help lift sanctions on Moscow: "a 19 percent (privatized) stake in Rosneft in return."

That offer, worth billions of dollars, was never substantiated and was deemed by some in U.S. intelligence to be preposterous.

The inaccuracy of Steele's intelligence on Page is at the heart of the inspector general investigation specifically because the FBI represented to the FISA court that the intelligence on Page was verified and strong enough to support the FISA warrant. It was, in the end, not verified.

Another knockdown of the dossier occurred when U.S. intelligence determined former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen was not in Prague in the summer of 2016 when Steele claimed he was meeting with Russians to coordinate a hijacking of the election, the sources said.

Steele's theory about who in the Trump campaign might be conspiring with Russia kept evolving from Page to Cohen to former campaign chairman Paul Manafort. None of those theories checked out in the end, as the Mueller report showed.

Again, Steele's intelligence was wrong or unverifiable.

The salacious, headline-grabbing claim that Russians had incriminating sex tapes showing Trump engaged in depraved acts with prostitutes also met a factual dead end when the FBI interviewed the Georgian-American businessman who claimed to know about them. Giorgi Rtskhiladze told investigators "he was told the tapes were fake," according to a footnote in the Mueller report. Rtskhiladze's lawyer subsequently issued a letter taking issue with some of Mueller's characterizations.

Steele had some general things right, of course, including that the Russians were behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee's emails. Of course, there were public reports saying so when Steele reported this.

But even then, his dossier's theory of how the hackers worked, who paid them and how they communicated with Trump was determined in the FBI spreadsheet and subsequent Mueller investigation to be far from accurate.

Even State officials, who listened to Steele's theories in October 2016 -- less than two weeks before his dossier was used to support the FISA request -- instantly determined he was grossly wrong on some points.

Any effort to use Steele's belated cooperation with the inspector general's investigation to prop up the credibility of his 2016 anti-Trump dossier or the FBI's reliance on it for the FISA warrant is deeply misguided.

Rep. Mark Meadows (R-N.C.), a key defender of Trump, said he talked with DOJ officials after the most recent stories surfaced about Steele and was told the reporting is wrong. "Based on my conversations with DOJ officials, recent reports which suggest Christopher Steele's dossier and allegations are somehow deemed credible by DOJ, are simply false and not based on any confirmation from sources with direct knowledge of ongoing investigations," Meadows told me.

The FBI's own spreadsheet was so conclusive that it prompted then-FBI Director James Comey (no fan of Trump, mind you) to dismiss the document as " salacious and unverified " and for lead FBI agent Peter Strzok to text, " There's no big there there ." FBI lawyer Lisa Page testified that nine months into reviewing Steele's dossier they had not found evidence of the collusion that Steele alleged.

Two years later, Mueller came to the same conclusion: Steele's intelligence alleging a conspiracy was never verified.

The next time you hear a pundit suggesting Steele's dossier is credible or that the FBI's reliance on it as FISA evidence was justified, just picture all those blanks in that FBI spreadsheet.

They speak volumes as to what went wrong in the Russia investigation.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists' misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports .

[Jul 19, 2019] The 'Unconstitutional Animus' Against UK Labour Leader by Johanna Ross

Notable quotes:
"... A couple of weeks ago, The Times of London published an article about senior civil servants fearing U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was "too frail" to be prime minister. Reportedly they also thought he "lacks both a firm grasp of foreign affairs and the domestic agenda. ..."
"... This is the same civil service that is supposed to maintain complete neutrality and according to its code "must not act in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests." ..."
"... Corbyn fought back, arguing that it was unacceptable that civil servants were briefing newspapers on an elected politician. He demanded an independent inquiry into who was spreading such fabrications in the press and "compromising the integrity of the civil service." ..."
"... Miller, who runs the Bristol-based Organisation for Propaganda Studies, said the scheme was found to be spreading its own disinformation and openly criticizing opposition leader Corbyn and his party. ..."
"... Miller said this was clear from the very beginning of the Integrity Initiative when it was regularly engaged in tweeting or retweeting attacks on Corbyn and his closest advisors. ..."
"... Miller calls the use of taxpayers' money to interfere in domestic politics an affront to democracy. ..."
"... Chris Williamson, a Labour MP and Corbyn supporter who was trying to investigate the Integrity Initiative, found himself suspended from the party after he was targeted with allegations of anti-Semitism. ..."
"... Corbyn's call for an independent investigation into the civil service leak to the press has also, as expected, been rejected by the government. ..."
"... If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one. ..."
"... Jews in Europe and the US have gone from being heavily discriminated against to having much more influence on government than their numbers warrant. I'm going to tell the Netanyahu joke to make my point. Don't know who to credit. Kudos anyway. "It is not anti-Semitic to disagree with Benjamin Netanyahu as he is as white as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan." ..."
"... If the Integrity Initiative really is shut down, the little Simon Bracey-Lane will be free to cross the pond and campaign for Bernie just like he did in 2015 / 2016. Nah, just kiddin', his cover is blown. But seriously, campaign managers for Tulsi Gabbard best be on guard against inflation from these snakes. ..."
"... This is a joke right. You say communist and you reference China, but in the last century it was ok to ship nearly the entire industrial base of Western Democracies to China so that a bunch of fat cat tycoons, investment bankers, hedge funders et al could become so rich they finally had enough money to purchase the U.S. Government, and it looks like the government of Britain too. ..."
"... This incessant accusation of antisemitism against anyone who supports justice for Palestinians does seem to be effective. A decade ago when I first noticed this smear tactic I assumed it would be self defeating on the part of the Zionists and their backers. It sort of seemed obvious that such a tactic would be self limiting with the broader world beginning to reject such slander. However, it seems the smear is more effective today than it was ten years ago. So depressing. Watching Corbyn's supporters ripping apart his own base in the Labour Party in an effort to appease the Israelis is appalling -- it seems the more that is conceded the more aggressive the Zionist become. Ten years ago it was proper to describe the West Bank as "occupied territory", soon it will be considered antisemitic to even go that far. ..."
"... in 2015, an unnamed, serving British general was quoted saying that if a Corbyn government implemented his well-established anti-imperial and anti-nuke agenda, "there would be mass resignations at all levels [of the military] and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html ..."
"... As Mayhew noted, 'the turning point' was the speech of George Marshall the US Secretary of State in June 1947. From 'the middle of 1947 onwards, decisions were taken towards uniting the free world, at the expense of widening the gap with the Communist world our immediate objective changed, from "one world" to "one free world"'. ..."
"... . That is what all of this is about: this is all a campaign by capitalists, plutocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, aristocrats, to keep expandable, pitiful average plebs from ever voting for something better than corporate serfdom and debt slavery. ..."
Jul 19, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

The 'Unconstitutional Animus' Against UK Labour Leader July 16, 2019 • 39 Comments

Johanna Ross spoke with David Miller, a propaganda researcher, after the recent publicity of U.K. civil service murmurings about Jeremy Corbyn's "fitness."

By Johanna Ross
in Edinburgh, Scotland
Special to Consortium News

A couple of weeks ago, The Times of London published an article about senior civil servants fearing U.K. opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn was "too frail" to be prime minister. Reportedly they also thought he "lacks both a firm grasp of foreign affairs and the domestic agenda."

This is the same civil service that is supposed to maintain complete neutrality and according to its code "must not act in a way that unjustifiably favours or discriminates against particular individuals or interests."

Corbyn fought back, arguing that it was unacceptable that civil servants were briefing newspapers on an elected politician. He demanded an independent inquiry into who was spreading such fabrications in the press and "compromising the integrity of the civil service."

Controversial BBC graphic seeking to link Corbyn to Russia.

For David Miller, a professor of political sociology at the University of Bristol, who investigates concentrations of power and ways to hold them accountable, the idea that the British civil service may not be impartial in its operations is hardly surprising.

Far from ever being objective, he told Consortium News that the civil service now clearly has "an unconstitutional animus against a potential Corbyn government and has been briefing against it one way or another through various agencies for some time now."

Catalog of Smears

Indeed, the anti-Corbyn bias within the establishment has been obvious in the catalog of smears on Corbyn and his team since he came to the Labour leadership; from allegations of being a "Soviet sleeper" to being "anti-Semitic" and now to questions about his overall fitness.

David Miller: Faction fight against Corbyn. (University of Bristol)

Miller said most of the allegations were created by a number of organisations and individuals who are "involved in a faction fight with the Corbyn leadership."

Noam Chomsky, a leading U.S. social critic, is among those who have spoken out against what he termed a "witch hunt" against the Labour leader and his supporters.

Whether or not anti-Semitism exists in the party, Miller said the accusations are out of hand. "Almost everyone who says anything which is either critical of Israel or critical of the party's response to the anti-Semitism crisis is denounced as an anti-Semite," Miller said. "The question is how long will it be before everyone sees that the people who are involved in this have overreached themselves."

Attempts to undermine potential socialist governments are of course, not new.

Miller gives the example of the Zinoviev case – when a fake letter was published in the Daily Mail in 1924 just prior to the general election, suggesting Communists in Britain were taking orders from Moscow. The goal was clearly to undermine the British Labour movement.

Miller also points to the case of former Prime Minister Harold Wilson. "Despite what may now be said by some elements of the security state," Miller said that British agencies were engaged in an active plot to undermine Wilson's elected government.

As another example, Miller offered the "Information Research Department," first proposed in 1947 and sold to the cabinet as a bipartisan, anti-Communist and anti-American propaganda operation. In fact, Miller described it as a "secret, covert, anti-Communist propaganda operation which in the 70s was engaged in undermining the Wilson government."

Today, Miller said, similar agencies in the U.K. government are doing the same thing.

Harold Wilson in 1986. (Allan Warren, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons)

Integrity Initiative

As an example, Miller cites the Integrity Initiative; organized by the government's Institute for Statecraft, which has a stated mission of countering "Russian disinformation and malign influence by harnessing existing expertise and establishing a network of experts, opinion formers and policy makers to educate national audiences in the threat and to help build national capacities to counter it." Its website is incidentally now empty pending an investigation into the "theft of its data" – after a hack exposed detail of the extent to which the government-funded program was itself engaged in disinformation.

Miller, who runs the Bristol-based Organisation for Propaganda Studies, said the scheme was found to be spreading its own disinformation and openly criticizing opposition leader Corbyn and his party.

"Corbyn has recently said in relation to the most recent criticism from the civil service that there are people in the establishment that are trying to undermine Corbyn, his office, his advisors and supporters of him," Miller said. "And that's what the Integrity Initiative was doing."

Cartoon published by Punch after the Zinoviev letter was released, depicting a Bolshevik campaigning for Ramsay MacDonald, head of the short-lived Labour government of 1924. (Wikimedia Commons)

Miller said this was clear from the very beginning of the Integrity Initiative when it was regularly engaged in tweeting or retweeting attacks on Corbyn and his closest advisors.

Miller calls the use of taxpayers' money to interfere in domestic politics an affront to democracy.

"A government-funded project was engaged in attacking the leader of the opposition," Miller said, "which is unconstitutional and something the U.K. civil service should not be involved in they crossed the line when they started attacking Corbyn. And when we look back on this period, the Integrity Initiative, its funding by the Foreign Office and its base in British military intelligence will be one of the strands of the activities which will be seen to have been a secret state campaign against the elected leader of the Labour party."

Miller would like to see an investigation into the attacks on Corbyn and whether they had been effectively funded by the Foreign Office, but doesn't hold out much hope of that happening.

Six months ago, Shadow Home Secretary Emily Thornberry demanded answers to how this could have happened, with no result.

And Chris Williamson, a Labour MP and Corbyn supporter who was trying to investigate the Integrity Initiative, found himself suspended from the party after he was targeted with allegations of anti-Semitism.

Corbyn's call for an independent investigation into the civil service leak to the press has also, as expected, been rejected by the government.

Johanna Ross is a freelance journalist based in the United Kingdom.

If you enjoyed this original article, please consider making a donation to Consortium News so we can bring you more stories like this one.


Michael McNulty , July 18, 2019 at 05:52

After he won the second round to remain Labour Party leader Corbyn should have left the party to form a new socialist party, taking his large following and their subscriptions with him. He would have had three years behind him with a new movement, one which would not have had the back-stabbers and poisoners he's having to deal with daily. It would have been quite established now and a real political force. I think the Labour Party is so polluted that the left must break away; it's the only way we can overturn the excesses and failures of neo-liberalism which for most people is a truly dreadful system.

Maz Palmer , July 17, 2019 at 15:02

They are all much worse than bozos (or Bezos); they are all plutocrats, oligarchs, neo-liberal neo-fascist capitalists. That is what all of this is about: this is all a campaign by capitalists, plutocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, aristocrats, to keep expandable, pitiful average plebs from ever voting for something better than corporate serfdom and debt slavery.

Hopelb , July 17, 2019 at 21:52

Upvote!

Piotr Berman , July 17, 2019 at 14:55

"lacks both a firm grasp of foreign affairs and the domestic agenda."

It makes me wonder how Teresa May and her Cabinet, including the next PM, fares in such assessment. Nincompoops, loud mouths, poodles, and worshipers of woodoo economics.

James , July 17, 2019 at 14:22

I get it. Corbyn is Pro-Palestinian, anti-war and Pro-Worker so they are trying to get rid of him.

All I see are articles attacking him. Are there people/forces behind him supporting him? Is his support significant among other Labour MP's and the Public at large?

Piotr Berman , July 17, 2019 at 16:11

The problem is that UK public opinion is quite chaotic at this point and "everything is possible". At some point, four parties had roughly the same poll numbers: Tories, Brexit, Labour and LibDems. However, in the last two weeks Labour and Tories gained with Labour ahead. In a system with single seat districts, "anything can happen", and a recent by-election suggested that Labour may have an advantage in "foot soldiers", volunteers who walk around a district chatting up voters. The internal fights in Labour attracted many new members, and from the point of view of "sensible folks in the Establishment", this is the worst type of rubble. No respect for monarchy, the Trident, necessity of low taxes on business and the rich and so on. And anti-Semitic to boot.

So the meaning of "Corbyn is frail" is that while he himself seems mild mannered, his victory will unleashed the unwashed hordes wrecking everything which is good and he hold dear, like the monarchy, the Trident and so on.

Piotr Berman , July 17, 2019 at 16:45

The problem is that UK public opinion is quite chaotic lately and "everything is possible". At some point, four parties had roughly the same poll numbers: Tories, Brexit, Labour and LibDems. However, in the last two weeks Labour and Tories gained with Labour ahead. In a system with single seat districts, "anything can happen", and a recent by-election suggested that Labour may have an advantage in "foot soldiers", volunteers who walk around a district chatting up voters. The internal fights in Labour attracted many new members, and from the point of view of "sensible folks in the Establishment", this is the worst type of rabble. No respect for the monarchy, the Trident, the necessity of low taxes on business and the rich and so on. And anti-Semitic to boot.

So the meaning of "Corbyn is frail" is that while he himself seems mild mannered, his victory would unleashed unwashed hordes wrecking everything which is good and that we hold dear, like the monarchy, the Trident and so on.

Jeff Ewener , July 17, 2019 at 13:26

Gob-smacking. To call a man with the intelligence, experience, sensitivity & integrity of Jeremy Corbyn "unfit" to be the British Prime Minister, while a monstrosity like Boris Johnson is standing on the doorstep of Number 10 – just takes the breath away.

rosemerry , July 17, 2019 at 15:45

Not to mention the former "New Labour" leaders whose policies fell far away from the traditional policies Corbyn has held to and which caused so many Britons to support him as leader.

Hayman Fan , July 18, 2019 at 11:49

Integrity? Are you joking? Corbyn has been anti-EU for 40 years. In fact, he is the only main party leader who voted leave in the last people's vote (aka the referendum). But he has tried to hid that fact. He has been sitting on the fence and playing politics with the issue. Many fools in Britain believe Corbyn is a remainer. A man of integrity would have explained to the British people his long held position on the EU and Brexit. But he didn't do that because he isn't a man of integrity. He wants to con his way into power and if he gets there (looking unlikely right now), he and his Stalinist henchpeople will wield that power ruthlessly.

Richard Kuper , July 17, 2019 at 12:37

Fascinating article. May we repost it on jvl.org.uk?

Eddie , July 17, 2019 at 12:36

Comment that I posted on the Malware article do not post.

Zenobia van Dongen , July 17, 2019 at 11:39

In English-speaking countries anti-Semitic is just a code word for pro-Islamic. Miller himself is deeply involved in efforts to make extremist Islam respectable and justifying terrorist indoctrination.

Simeon Hope , July 17, 2019 at 13:05

Okay, I'll take your comment as made in good faith but you will need to back it up with good evidence. Where is it?

Qui? , July 18, 2019 at 03:22

Palestinians are semites, as the rest of the Arabs. So who is the real antisemite now?

Truth first , July 17, 2019 at 11:37

A "communist" who is against war, nukes and massive inequality is OK by me.

Hayman Fan , July 18, 2019 at 07:28

Is it indeed. Then your are a fool. Pol Pot was a communist who was against war and nukes and massive inequality. But implementing totalitarism by force didn't turn out well for the Cambodian people. And it wouldn't turn out well for the British people either. Except for Corbyn and his henchpeople of course.

dean 1000 , July 17, 2019 at 10:42

Jews in Europe and the US have gone from being heavily discriminated against to having much more influence on government than their numbers warrant. I'm going to tell the Netanyahu joke to make my point. Don't know who to credit. Kudos anyway. "It is not anti-Semitic to disagree with Benjamin Netanyahu as he is as white as the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan."

Given the influence of US and European Jews it is well past time for them to stop screaming anti-semitism when someone has a divergent opinion. They should stop using Semitic people as human shields.

The left also likes to hurl anti-Semitism at political opponents when they don't have a relevant answer.

Unfounded criticism of Jews is anti-Jewish rather than anti-Semitic. Call it what it is.

Ron Striebig , July 17, 2019 at 06:26

As Albert Einstein says Capitalism is an Evil supported by those who are terrified of Jeremy Corbyn because like Jesus he is a true Socialist

Que Nelle , July 17, 2019 at 05:52

To be accused of antisemitism by zionists that champion the racist entity israel, is a badge of honor.

Vivian O'Blivion , July 17, 2019 at 03:30

If the Integrity Initiative really is shut down, the little Simon Bracey-Lane will be free to cross the pond and campaign for Bernie just like he did in 2015 / 2016. Nah, just kiddin', his cover is blown. But seriously, campaign managers for Tulsi Gabbard best be on guard against inflation from these snakes.

Hayman Fan , July 17, 2019 at 02:51

Guys be careful with this. Corbyn is a communist. He is surrounded by Stalinists. Their modus operandi is entryism + free stuff + perpetual attacks on cultural norms. They used to laud the USSR. Then Venezuala. Now China. If they ever manage to grab power, they will stamp on individual liberty. Just like China does. The Muslim vote is very important to them and whilst they despise conventional religions, they will happily 'buy' Muslim votes with anti Israeli and anti Semitic rhetoric. The loudest voices speaking up against Corbyn and his henchpeople are on the left. Be a little bit circumspect.

Truth first , July 17, 2019 at 11:36

A "communist" who is against war, nukes and massive inequality is OK by me.

Simeon Hope , July 17, 2019 at 13:09

Errr what ? Israel does enough on its own to show how anti-Arab and undemocratic it is without the need for Jeremy Corbyn to add anything. I'm a socialist. I support what Mr Corbyn is doing to promote socialism in the UK. There's not the slightest evidence he's an anti-Semite, and the tiny amount of anti-Semitism in the Labour party is dwarfed by what's emanating from the right against Jews and Muslims.

Just say no , July 17, 2019 at 13:58

This is a joke right. You say communist and you reference China, but in the last century it was ok to ship nearly the entire industrial base of Western Democracies to China so that a bunch of fat cat tycoons, investment bankers, hedge funders et al could become so rich they finally had enough money to purchase the U.S. Government, and it looks like the government of Britain too. That's where we are today.

There may be "communists" lurking somewhere mostly in the imagination who are trotted out whenever a left person obtains a plurality. What has happened to Jeremy Corbyn is horrifying and we have our own issues in the U.S. with the endless smears and lies regarding the candidacy of Bernie Sanders. We live in a world of fabrication, sanctions enough to go around for everyone. Even the little state of RI is sanctioned by Moody's for having the effrontery to pass a bill which "gives too much away to labor" but Moody's and the other ratings agencies gave triple AAA ratings to junk during the "great recession" plain and simple, and no one cared. We need a Nuremburg trial for Capitalism and all its practioners.

Piotr Berman , July 18, 2019 at 00:33

"You say communist and you reference China, "

You are wrong is several ways. First, "There may be "communists" lurking somewhere mostly in the imagination who are trotted out whenever a left person obtains a plurality." Corbyn was observed to be a threat the moment he was elected Labour leader, something that stumped large segments of "informed public". Due to the surprise element, the anti-Semitic angle was not exploited properly, with possible exception of some Zionist whack jobs who harranged him. Instead, two points were raised that really jolted my attention.

First, Corbyn was sooo extreme that he advocated discontinuation of Trident program and even, horror!, the entirety of British nuclear arms program. You could as well raise huge signs ?????? ?y???? ???????! on English shores.

Second, his bicycling habits were compared to China during the orthodox Communist year, when riding on non-descript bikes was heavily supported by pre-Capitalist leadership.

Mind you, a person of note may ride a bike without shame, but not the cheap and aged specimen favored by Corbyn. Finally, compromising photos were found showing Corbyn relaxing and revealing his red socks.

Paul Merrell , July 17, 2019 at 23:40

@ "Hayman Fan"

A rather dubious name, methinks. See https://preview.tinyurl.com/y3us8776

Sounds like you just couldn't stand not posting a troll comment on an article about your own activities, yes?

ToivoS , July 16, 2019 at 22:54

This incessant accusation of antisemitism against anyone who supports justice for Palestinians does seem to be effective. A decade ago when I first noticed this smear tactic I assumed it would be self defeating on the part of the Zionists and their backers. It sort of seemed obvious that such a tactic would be self limiting with the broader world beginning to reject such slander. However, it seems the smear is more effective today than it was ten years ago. So depressing. Watching Corbyn's supporters ripping apart his own base in the Labour Party in an effort to appease the Israelis is appalling -- it seems the more that is conceded the more aggressive the Zionist become. Ten years ago it was proper to describe the West Bank as "occupied territory", soon it will be considered antisemitic to even go that far.

David G , July 16, 2019 at 21:21

In addition, in 2015, an unnamed, serving British general was quoted saying that if a Corbyn government implemented his well-established anti-imperial and anti-nuke agenda, "there would be mass resignations at all levels [of the military] and you would face the very real prospect of an event which would effectively be a mutiny." https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/british-army-could-stage-mutiny-under-corbyn-says-senior-serving-general-10509742.html

David G , July 16, 2019 at 21:07

" the 'Information Research Department,' first proposed in 1947 and sold to the cabinet as a bipartisan, anti-Communist and anti-American propaganda operation."

"Anti-American" is a slip, right? I assume it was pro-American (or pro-USAian).

David Miller , July 17, 2019 at 04:17

My apologies, I was paraphrasing the work of Lyn Smith in her article on IRD in Millennium in 1980. It should really be 'anti capitalist'. According Smith the founder of IRD (Christopher Mayhew) put forward a plan to set up a cold war propaganda agency:

'Mayhew put forward his ideas: the campaign should be as positive as possible laying stress on the merits of Social Democracy but, he pointed out "we shouldn't appear as defenders of the status quo but should attack Capitalism and Imperialism along with Russian Communism" In fact at this early stage, the idea was more of a "third force" propaganda attacking Capitalism as well as communism (this, however, was not to last for, as later documents reveal, anti Communism soon cam to the fore).'(Covert British Propaganda: The Information Research Department: 1947-77, Millennium, 9(1), p68-9)

In fact the idea that it would be anti capitalist was a ruse used by Mayhew to deceive the left members of the British cabinet. As my colleague and I Will Dinan summarised in our book A Century of Spin (Pluto Press, 2008, p130-1):

IRD was not created with the knowing support of the Labour Cabinet. The author of the paper which went to the cabinet – Christoper Mayhew – was a Labour right winger and cold warrior. He dissembled to the cabinet about the purpose and function of the IRD by claiming that it was to be a 'Third Force' campaign, understood as policy intended by the left to be independent of both the US and the USSR. According to Mayhew himself:

I thought it was necessary to present the whole campaign in a positive way, in a way which Dick Crossman and Michael Foot would fi nd it hard to oppose. And they were calling for a Third Force so I recommended in the original paper I put to Bevin that we call it a Third Force propaganda campaign.

As Mayhew noted, 'the turning point' was the speech of George Marshall the US Secretary of State in June 1947. From 'the middle of 1947 onwards, decisions were taken towards uniting the free world, at the expense of widening the gap with the Communist world our immediate objective changed, from "one world" to "one free world"'.

It is interesting, in this light, to reflect what might/will happen once a Corbyn government is elected with – how should we put this – a minority of leftists in the cabinet.

David G , July 17, 2019 at 15:27

Very interesting! I guess the propagandists back then had a little more finesse than the idiotic bludgeoning the US/UK establishment is laying on us these days. Thanks for the clarification, David Miller!

Jeff Harrison , July 16, 2019 at 21:05

The British Political Class has the same problem as the American Political Class – No integrity, No Honesty, No ethics. Just the sort of bozos we need running countries.

Maz Palmer , July 17, 2019 at 14:59

They are all much worse than bozos (or Bezos); they are all plutocrats, oligarchs, neo-liberal neo-fascist capitalists. That is what all of this is about: this is all a campaign by capitalists, plutocrats, oligarchs, monarchs, aristocrats, to keep expandable, pitiful average plebs from ever voting for something better than corporate serfdom and debt slavery.

[Jul 15, 2019] Are Yanks and Brits Going Their Separate Ways- by Pat Buchanan

Notable quotes:
"... Sir Kim Darroch's secret cable to London was leaked to the Daily Mail, wherein he called the Trump administration "dysfunctional unpredictable faction-riven diplomatically clumsy and inept," the odds on his survival as U.K. ambassador plummeted. ..."
"... his departure in any case, is hilarious. The British aristocracy today are a den of pedophiles and corrupt, war mongering scum. ..."
"... Britain an ally? Not since the end of WW2, I think. In Orwell's "1984" the island of Great Britain is called Airstrip One. Orwell understood, I think, that Britain had become a mere vassal of the "cousins" across The Pond. At best Britain is a remora to the American shark, gobbling tidbits that escape the American maw ..."
"... I would say, that since the 1970's, the US and the UK have been fast going down together. They have both lost their identity. ..."
"... They are the ideological centers Neoliberalism, de-industrialization, outsourcing, multiculturalism, political correctness and SJWism, and both have disconnected extractive elites. It's an Anglo-Jewish thing that's also pulling down Canada, Australia and New Zealand. ..."
"... "there are no permanent allies, only permanent interests" or something to that effect ..."
"... The alliance in question is good for bankers in New York and London. But as for the rest of us .. not so much. ..."
"... 'Special relationship' is shorthand for the British ruling class trying to manipulate U.S. foreign policy, much like Zionists today. ..."
"... Given examples are fake. It was American forces who covertly destroyed the USS Maine in order to start a war with Spain for territorial control. The Zimmermann letter was created by British Intelligence as a means of helping America into a war it's people didn't want to be a part of. Britain didn't tilt towards the confederacy it hedged it's bets with both sides in order to exploit the civil war for it's own gain ..."
"... Outside the EU, the UK will be on its own and fairly isolated. That makes it the best ally and prey for the USA. The UK will offer to act an USA agent in the region, a sort of christian Israel. ..."
"... Now that Trump has his state visit out of the way and has had afternoon tea with the Queen, there is nothing to stop him turning on the UK like a rabid dog. The leaked diplomatic cables said nothing that anybody who reads a newspaper didn't already know, and clearly the 'outrage' is fake ..."
"... To be honest Britain and the U.S. never did have any interests in common. The U.S. saw Britain as an economic and imperial rival to be destroyed or neutered. They chose neutering. ..."
"... Our elites and yours get on great together. ..."
"... The divide is between the elites on one hand and the peoples on the other ..."
Jul 15, 2019 | www.unz.com

When Sir Kim Darroch's secret cable to London was leaked to the Daily Mail, wherein he called the Trump administration "dysfunctional unpredictable faction-riven diplomatically clumsy and inept," the odds on his survival as U.K. ambassador plummeted.

When President Donald Trump's tweeted retort called Darroch "wacky," a "stupid guy" and "pompous fool" who had been "foisted on the US," the countdown to the end began.


Rurik , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:18 am GMT

Kim's departure do not cancel out that American interest.

(I made sure I left out the laughable and ludicrous title)

But his departure in any case, is hilarious. The British aristocracy today are a den of pedophiles and corrupt, war mongering scum.

If there was a shed of decency in England, Tony Blair would be in a cage, every member of the BBC who facilitated Jimmy Savil's serial predations would be in a cage. And the person who handed the scrip for the controlled demolition of building seven to the BBC journalist, would be interrogated to the n'th, to find out who knew and how.

But instead that rotting nation is busy jailing a young man for calling attention to serial gang rape of England's school girls, while the pedophile elites are busy trying to figure out how to tell the British people that the ruse of "democracy' has been a charade all along, and that they're not going to get their precious Brexit, because their feudal lords at the ((ECB)) would consider that inconvenient.

not cancel out that American interest

"American interest", eh? What pray might that possibly be? What even, is an American?

If you arrive here illegally, and step foot on the soil, many Americans, (obviously most of the Democrats) consider you an American in better standing than the citizens whose ancestors have lived in these lands and fought in her wars, for untold generations.

So if there's really no such thing as an American, and the courts have decided that the Constitution applies to every person on the planet, then cyphering who exactly is an American, when all 7+ billion people in the world are, is a tricky thing.

And as for that elusive "American interest", it seems that too is a conundrum. Are the Eternal Wars, an American interest? Were the bank bailouts, an American interest? Or a Wall Street, international finance – interest.

Those are the things the American tax-slave is forced to shovel trillions of dollars out for, but I hardly see how doing so serves the American people whatsoever. Indeed, quite the contrary.

For decades now, the snakes holed up in DC and London- are the greatest enemies the American people have ever known.

Ironically, if I were to scan the horizon for a nation who's principles actually are aligned with that of the American people, vs. our enemies in DC and London, I'd have to say that it's Putin's Russia that fills that ticket.

The only nation on the planet were our most heroic and iconic American patriot had to flee for his life to, to escape torture and death by our enemies in DC. When he tried to point out that our government is a den of traitorous scoundrels.

Russia is the only nation that has reined in the most recent catastrophic follies in our Eternal Wars for Israel.

Were it not for Russia, many more thousands of our young men and women would have perished by now in myriad wars in the Middle East to bolster Israel.

And many more trillions of dollars would have been borrowed to that end, all on the leger for the children and grandchildren of the American people.

Russia is the actual American people's most unlikely ally, in spite of "our" elites.

Britain is a rotting carcass of a once great empire. But like the ZUS, it allowed itself to be 'Jewed', and so now it's dying a humiliating and ignoble death.

If there's any lesson to all of this, it is don't go the way of England, and allow the perfidy of your elites, to abase your nation's future to it's most intractable enemy.

Begemot , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:32 am GMT

Britain an ally? Not since the end of WW2, I think. In Orwell's "1984" the island of Great Britain is called Airstrip One. Orwell understood, I think, that Britain had become a mere vassal of the "cousins" across The Pond. At best Britain is a remora to the American shark, gobbling tidbits that escape the American maw.

SeekerofthePresence , says: July 12, 2019 at 1:06 am GMT
@Begemot

Airstrip One and Ingsoc. https://www.youtube.com/embed/cBUI3jjEXgc?feature=oembed

Jacques Sheete , says: July 12, 2019 at 1:45 am GMT

I don't think that Britain ever was an ally. It, like the parasite known as Israel, has long squeezed Uncle Sucker for everything it could snatch.

Common language, culture, banking mafiosi, pedophiles etc., etc., blah, blah blah, notwithstanding, to hell with the SoBs. And they can stuff their Rhodes "scholars," too.

Miro23 , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:27 am GMT

Yet, in terms of language, culture, ethnicity, history, geography, America has no more natural ally across the sea. And the unfortunate circumstances of Sir Kim's departure do not cancel out that American interest.

I would say, that since the 1970's, the US and the UK have been fast going down together. They have both lost their identity.

They are the ideological centers Neoliberalism, de-industrialization, outsourcing, multiculturalism, political correctness and SJWism, and both have disconnected extractive elites. It's an Anglo-Jewish thing that's also pulling down Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

Miro23 , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:04 am GMT
@Miro23

And the world capitals of the Zio-Glob are New York, Washington, London, Paris and Tel Aviv. For example, they orchestrated the destruction of the Middle East, and are currently maneuvering for the destruction of Iran, and they're the ones facing off against Russia and China

Russia and China are outside their orbit, and are pushing back in places like Syria and Venezuela , and R&C are looking at economic alternatives to the dollar reserve currency and international payments through SWIFT.

I would expect currently neutral border zones to pull away from the West. Eastern Europe towards Russia and Japan and SE Asia towards China.

NYMOM , says: July 12, 2019 at 4:52 am GMT

I guess Churchill was corrrect when he said "there are no permanent allies, only permanent interests" or something to that effect

I think, at this point, we might be better off looking to a newly re-constructed Russia as an ally than an ailing Great Britian which seems to be falling apart at the seams.

Kevin Frost , says: July 12, 2019 at 9:27 am GMT

Anglo-American 'natural alliance'? The alliance of these two countries has seriously weakened the traditional constitution of both countries. I take the view that W.S. Churchill has much to answer for. It was he, more than anyone, who undermined the traditional policy of both countries.

Prior to Pearl Harbour, and in spite of America's entry into the First War, the vast majority of Americans still held to the advise of outgoing president Washington when he said: 'let us trade, with all nations, and by all means. But let it stop at that'. No European wars is what Washington meant.

Churchill did everything he could to undermine this policy but as he did, he also subverted Great Britain's old policy. Palmerston said that British policy was predicated upon permanent interests not permanent allies – or enemies for that matter.

Since the Second War Britain has become a dog on a leash, nothing more. Churchill did what he did to save the empire, not England; he really lost both. But the worst loss of all was the American republic that in the post war period grasped after universal empire and destroyed itself in the process. The alliance in question is good for bankers in New York and London. But as for the rest of us .. not so much.

peter mcloughlin , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:24 am GMT

There are strong ethnic and cultural links between Britain and the United States. But, as Patrick Buchanan points out, these factors did not prevent conflict between the two. What forms relationships are interests. They cut across all apparently unifying principles: family, kin, nation, religion, ideology, politics – everything. The 'Zimmerman Telegram' was a decisive factor in the US joining the First World War, its implications so vital to core American interests.
https://www.ghostsofhistory.wordpress.com/

David Stanley , says: July 12, 2019 at 12:46 pm GMT

The email was leaked on orders of the Foreign Office (SIS.) It's purpose is irrelevant to U.S interests. It's about UK politics and the establishment controlling intra party shenanigans. Very entertaining!!

Kolya Krassotkin , says: July 12, 2019 at 2:38 pm GMT

We have had no moral reason to continue our special relationship with the UK since arch-villain, Sir Tony Blair, turned it into The Caliphate of Albion.

The countries of Churchill and Thatcher and of Reagan and Kennedy(JFK) are dead. Time to stop fashioning international policies and programs according to historical realities that ended at least a generation ago.

Amerimutt Golems , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:45 pm GMT

America has no more natural ally across the sea. And the unfortunate circumstances of Sir Kim's departure do not cancel out that American interest.

'Special relationship' is shorthand for the British ruling class trying to manipulate U.S. foreign policy, much like Zionists today.

The Monroe Doctrine was essentially British Foreign Minister George Canning's idea while Scottish-born Canadian spy William Stephenson undermined American isolationists during WWII.

Selling War: The British Propaganda Campaign Against American "Neutrality" in World War II by Nicholas J. Cull is a good read. Equally insightful is this 1975 interview of Sir Oswald Mosley who was against the Polish guarantee.

Alan , says: July 12, 2019 at 3:46 pm GMT

Given examples are fake. It was American forces who covertly destroyed the USS Maine in order to start a war with Spain for territorial control. The Zimmermann letter was created by British Intelligence as a means of helping America into a war it's people didn't want to be a part of. Britain didn't tilt towards the confederacy it hedged it's bets with both sides in order to exploit the civil war for it's own gain. It's easy to alter history to suit an argument. There is no special relationship, just many touch points for mutual exploitation at the expense of their respective populations.

Curmudgeon , says: July 12, 2019 at 6:49 pm GMT
@Rurik acy. Dimwits like Darroch receive their "Sir" by being put on the "Honours list" by politicians. The titles are not hereditary. There may well be pedophiles and war mongering scum among the aristocracy, just as there are in every "elite". However, note that "Sir" Jimmie Savile and "Lord" Janner who were at the centre of the pedophile scandal did not have hereditary titles, they were "life peers". Titled elites – yes, aristocrats – no.

One reason the treasonous POS Blair passed legislation to do away with the hereditary seats in the House of Lords, is that they, as the real aristocracy, opposed most of the "New Labour" agenda, and often asked embarrassing questions.

Virgile , says: July 12, 2019 at 9:19 pm GMT

Outside the EU, the UK will be on its own and fairly isolated. That makes it the best ally and prey for the USA. The UK will offer to act an USA agent in the region, a sort of christian Israel.

Happy to free themselves from the EU diktat, the British will soon discover that they are getting the diktat now from the USA and Israel. Good luck!

Jonathan Mason , says: July 12, 2019 at 11:28 pm GMT

Now that Trump has his state visit out of the way and has had afternoon tea with the Queen, there is nothing to stop him turning on the UK like a rabid dog. The leaked diplomatic cables said nothing that anybody who reads a newspaper didn't already know, and clearly the 'outrage' is fake.

Darroch was a bright young man who grew up in public housing and made a success of his career. He will retire a little earlier than expected, but will no doubt benefit from speaking fees, publishing his memoirs, etc. with much more name recognition that he would otherwise have had. He will probably be glad to get out of steamy Washington early.

dfordoom , says: Website July 13, 2019 at 4:40 am GMT
@NYMOM

I guess Churchill was corrrect when he said "there are no permanent allies, only permanent interests" or something to that effect

I think you'll find that that was Lord Palmerston.

dfordoom , says: Website July 13, 2019 at 4:48 am GMT
@bob sykes

We have literally nothing in common with UK/AU/CA/NZ, and we should stop the idea that there is a special relationship with any of them. There isn't.

I agree.

To be honest Britain and the U.S. never did have any interests in common. The U.S. saw Britain as an economic and imperial rival to be destroyed or neutered. They chose neutering.

Not that the destruction of Britain as a great power bothers me. The British were responsible for doing an immense amount of harm.

The same applies to the Australia-U.S. "alliance" – two nations with zero interests in common. To the extent that Australia has a natural ally it's China.

Gordo , says: July 13, 2019 at 11:35 am GMT

All in all, a bad week for the British Foreign Office when one of its principle diplomats is virtually declared persona non grata

principal. Oh and our Foreign Secretary, Boris, was a US citizen until 2016, no-one cared, if your IRS hadn't started asking him questions about his tax returns he would still be a US citizen. Our elites and yours get on great together.

The divide is between the elites on one hand and the peoples on the other.

[Jul 13, 2019] The return of Weimar Berlin - Lawlessness, Inequality, Extremism, Divisiveness and Crime

Notable quotes:
"... You hypocrites! You build monuments for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors , we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of His messengers ..."
"... this entire Russian collusion meme seems as though it is an hysterical reaction to the spin put out by the Clinton political faction and their neoliberal enablers after their shocking loss in the 2016 Presidential election. ..."
"... the financial corruption and private pilfering using public power, money laundering and the kind of soft corruption that is rampant amongst our new elite is all there ..."
"... We are reassured and misled by the same kinds of voices that have always served the status quo and the monied interests, the think tanks, the so-called 'institutes,' and the web sites and former con men who offer a constant stream of thinly disguised propaganda and misstatements of principle and history. We are comforted by their lies. ..."
"... We wish to strike a deal with the Lord, and a deal with the Devil -- to serve both God and Mammon as it suits us. It really is that cliché. And it is so finely woven into the fabric of our day that we cannot see it; we cannot see that it is happening to us and around us. ..."
"... It has always been so, especially in times of such vanity and greed as are these. Then is now. There is nothing new under the sun. And certainly nothing exceptional about the likes of us in our indulgent self-destruction. ..."
Feb 13, 2019 | jessescrossroadscafe.blogspot.com

"He drew near and saw the city, and he wept for it saying, 'If you had only recognized the things that make for peace. But now you are blinded to them. Truly, the days will come when your enemies will set up barriers to surround you, and hem you in on every side. Then they will crush you into the earth, you and your children. And they will not leave one stone upon another, because you did not recognize the way to your salvation.'"

Luke 19:41-44

"You hypocrites! You build monuments for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, 'If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of His messengers.'"

Matthew 23:29-30

...the results of the Senate GOP finding no evidence of 'collusion' with Russia by the Trump Administration to influence the results of the presidential election..

This last item is not surprising, because this entire Russian collusion meme seems as though it is an hysterical reaction to the spin put out by the Clinton political faction and their neoliberal enablers after their shocking loss in the 2016 Presidential election.

Too bad though, because the financial corruption and private pilfering using public power, money laundering and the kind of soft corruption that is rampant amongst our new elite is all there. And by there we mean on both sides of the fence -- which is why it had to take a back seat to a manufactured boogeyman.

... ... ...

There is a long road ahead before we see anything like a resolution to this troubling period in American political history.

We look back at other troubled periods and places, and either see them as discrete and fictional, a very different world apart, or through some rosy lenses of good old times which were largely benign and peaceful. We fail to see the continuity, the similarity, and the commonality of a dangerous path with ourselves. As they did with their own times gone by. Madness blinds its acolytes, because they wish it so. They embrace it to hide their shame.

We are reassured and misled by the same kinds of voices that have always served the status quo and the monied interests, the think tanks, the so-called 'institutes,' and the web sites and former con men who offer a constant stream of thinly disguised propaganda and misstatements of principle and history. We are comforted by their lies.

People want to hear these reassuring words of comfort and embrace it like a 'religion,' because they do not wish to draw the conclusions that the genuine principles of faith suggest (dare we say command in this day and age) in their daily lives. They blind themselves by adopting a kind of a schizoid approach to life, where 'religion' occupies a discrete, rarefied space, and 'political or economic philosophy' dictates another set of everyday 'practical' observances and behaviors which are more pliable, and pleasing to our hardened and prideful hearts.

We wish to strike a deal with the Lord, and a deal with the Devil -- to serve both God and Mammon as it suits us. It really is that cliché. And it is so finely woven into the fabric of our day that we cannot see it; we cannot see that it is happening to us and around us.

And so we trot on into the abyss, one exception and excuse and rationalization for ourselves at a time. And we blind ourselves with false prophets and their profane theories and philosophies.

As for truth, the truth that brings life, we would interrupt the sermon on the mount itself, saying that this sentiment was all very well and good, but what stocks should we buy for our portfolio, and what horse is going to win the fifth at Belmont? Tell us something useful, practical! Oh, and can you please fix this twinge in my left shoulder? It is ruining my golf game.

"Those among the rich who are not, in the rigorous sense, damned, can understand poverty, because they are poor themselves, after a fashion; they cannot understand destitution. Capable of giving alms, perhaps, but incapable of stripping themselves bare, they will be moved, to the sound of beautiful music, at Jesus's sufferings, but His Cross, the reality of His Cross, will horrify them. They want it all out of gold, bathed in light, costly and of little weight; pleasant to see, hanging from a woman's beautiful throat."

Léon Bloy

No surprise in this. It has always been so, especially in times of such vanity and greed as are these. Then is now. There is nothing new under the sun. And certainly nothing exceptional about the likes of us in our indulgent self-destruction.

Are you not entertained?

[Jul 09, 2019] Looks like UK elite is trying to influence the 2020 election

Notable quotes:
"... The UK's Skripal affair lured Trump into expelling diplomats, later making him look too trigger happy. ..."
"... In addition, I am sure the UK's intelligence would never do any of this without the OK from US intelligence. ..."
Jul 09, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

aspnaz , Jul 9 2019 0:02 utc | 83

This is a blatant UK and US intelligence hit job aimed at influencing the 2020 election:

- "UK hijacks oil tanker": Message="UK is prepared to take action against Iran, why is Trump so war shy"

- "Trump asks Iran before bombing": Message=ditto the above.

- "Diplomatic cables released "accidentally" by UK Foreign Office": Message="Even the UK is getting tired of confused Trump"

Come on folks, stop analysing it with endless "what if"'s and see it for what it is.

Prepare for much more of this: The UK's Skripal affair lured Trump into expelling diplomats, later making him look too trigger happy. Now they are trying to make him look indecisive, stupid and reluctant to stand with his closest allies: notice how Bolton has receded into the background to avoid the flak?

In addition, I am sure the UK's intelligence would never do any of this without the OK from US intelligence.

[Jul 01, 2019] The Return of Sammy Glick by Martin Sieff

Notable quotes:
"... As I documented on March 9 on this platform in my article " What Makes Gavin Run ?" Williamson knows no shame or integrity and is the living embodiment of the repulsive, two-faced backstabber, intriguer and liar Sammy Glick in the great writer Budd Schulberg's legendary 1941 novel of Hollywood "What Makes Sammy Run?" So he is a natural fit for Johnson, whose entire career has been dictated by similar shameless, reckless lies, opportunism and crass incompetence. ..."
"... According to many UK media reports – which Williamson understandably denies – his most effective weapons are bullying, bluster and threats. These are patterns of behavior which those who have worked for him or who have bothered following his career over the years find extremely convincing and in character (or, rather, lack of it). ..."
"... Putting Williamson in charge of such a delicate, nervously balanced and ultra-sensitive province is like appointing a Sith Lord as head of the Jedi Knights in "Star Wars" or putting the late Boston underworld mass murderer Whitey Bulger in charge of the FBI. ..."
"... Because like attracts like, competent honorable people in any country and culture seek to promote and advance others with the same qualities and empty, shallow sociopaths and confidence tricksters similarly admire and advance people exactly like themselves. ..."
Jun 30, 2019 | www.strategic-culture.org

As I documented on March 9 on this platform in my article " What Makes Gavin Run ?" Williamson knows no shame or integrity and is the living embodiment of the repulsive, two-faced backstabber, intriguer and liar Sammy Glick in the great writer Budd Schulberg's legendary 1941 novel of Hollywood "What Makes Sammy Run?" So he is a natural fit for Johnson, whose entire career has been dictated by similar shameless, reckless lies, opportunism and crass incompetence.

No one gets every, or usually most, professional predictions right, and in the news business sensible people make the best of their brilliant insights – or lucky guesses – when they can. But I have seldom hit a hole-in-one prediction that came true as quickly as my column on Williamson did.

On March 9, Williamson, after only a decade in the UK main chamber of parliament, the ancient House of Commons was still riding high and making a fool of himself insulting major nations from Russia to China and also the UK's badly-needed European allies as the most incompetent defense chief in the modern history of his nation.

On May 1, less than two months after my article appeared – and with no causality that I could see – Williamson was humiliatingly sacked by his benefactor, Prime Minister Theresa May after being accused of leaking highly confidential national security information to the media.

Williamson immediately turned on his long-time benefactor Mrs. May savagely and helped drive her from office – which was admittedly long overdue. She resigned on June 7, just over a single month after sacking him.

Williamson then joined May's arch-enemy, former foreign secretary Boris Johnson, who had relentlessly schemed to topple her for years and joined Johnson's own campaign to win the leadership of the rapidly disintegrating Conservative Party and thence become prime minister.

At the time of writing, Johnson remains far in the lead in the contest to replace May as prime minister despite repeated attacks on his character, utter lack of political consistency, convictions or achievement and his entertainingly squalid private life.

Johnson is twice divorced with neither marriage lasting longer than five years and he is now being accused of screaming rows with his 20-years-younger girl friend that may or may not have involved him hitting her, which he naturally denies.

Through all this Williamson, who like Johnson himself does not lack for energy in the service of his own ambition, has been rounding up support for his new master among Conservative Party Members of Parliament.

According to many UK media reports – which Williamson understandably denies – his most effective weapons are bullying, bluster and threats. These are patterns of behavior which those who have worked for him or who have bothered following his career over the years find extremely convincing and in character (or, rather, lack of it).

Reports are also circulating in the UK media – which are usually well-connected and informed on such matters – that Williamson is holding out to be reappointed as the UK's defense chief or as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Northern Ireland is my native land and is tiny in size. But over the past century and more it has repeatedly displayed an infinite capacity for generating wars, embarrassment and catastrophe for both Ireland and the UK, which otherwise get along easily and well.

Putting Williamson in charge of such a delicate, nervously balanced and ultra-sensitive province is like appointing a Sith Lord as head of the Jedi Knights in "Star Wars" or putting the late Boston underworld mass murderer Whitey Bulger in charge of the FBI.

Therefore it will probably happen.

Because like attracts like, competent honorable people in any country and culture seek to promote and advance others with the same qualities and empty, shallow sociopaths and confidence tricksters similarly admire and advance people exactly like themselves.

On Monday, June 24, without mentioning Williamson once, one of the UK's most experienced and respected journalists, war correspondents and historians, Sir Max Hastings wrote a scathing article in the liberal "Guardian" newspaper entitled "I was Boris Johnson's boss: he is utterly unfitted to be prime minister."

Therefore Johnson will re-elevate Williamson, either to drive Northern Ireland back into civil war or destroy the remaining security of the entire UK as defense secretary once again. And Williamson will remain loyal, until he in his turn sees the chance to stab Johnson in the back and briefly rule as prime minister until he in his own turn is politically knifed and toppled by one of his own hand-picked sociopaths.

And Sammy Glick will rise again – on the suffering and smashed lives of everyone else.

[Jun 24, 2019] I find it amusing to see Europeans cast stones at its brothers across the pond, especially when their countries /EU support every action of the US

Jun 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Pft , Jun 23, 2019 7:16:10 PM | 146

William Gruff @98

The British, French and Spanish colonized North America before the US existed. The US was made of British citizens who were organized by the illuminated to create a country free of monarchy and not controlled by religion.

The indigenous population and imported African slaves in British North America actually fared much better than some of those in the Caribbean controlled by Dutch, French and Spanish masters

One must look at the US as an extension of the illuminated European Elites with a early working class that was forced to America as indentured servants (actually white slaves) or to avoid prison for the crime of being in debt. Today the working class is no better off being debt/wage slaves with the same illuminated elite in control

Indeed, looking at the havoc created in the world from Europeans since 1492, including the creation of the US and Europes colonialism and slavery and terrible wars through the mid 20th century, I find it amusing to see Europeans cast stones at its brothers across the pond, especially when their countries /EU support every action of the US

We are all psycho killers in the eyes of the rest of the world

[Jun 16, 2019] When false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it becomes almost impossible to correct lies.

Jun 16, 2019 | www.politico.com

Leda Cosmides at the University of California, Santa Barbara, points to her work with her colleague John Tooby on the use of outrage to mobilize people: "The campaign was more about outrage than about policies," she says. And when a politician can create a sense of moral outrage, truth ceases to matter. People will go along with the emotion, support the cause and retrench into their own core group identities. The actual substance stops being of any relevance.

Brendan Nyhan, a political scientist at Dartmouth University who studies false beliefs, has found that when false information is specifically political in nature, part of our political identity, it becomes almost impossible to correct lies.

... ... ...

As the 19th-century Scottish philosopher Alexander Bain put it, “The great master fallacy of the human mind is believing too much.” False beliefs, once established, are incredibly tricky to correct. A leader who lies constantly creates a new landscape, and a citizenry whose sense of reality may end up swaying far more than they think possible.

[Jun 14, 2019] The Hitlerization of Jeremy Corbyn (Among Others) by C.J. Hopkins

Notable quotes:
"... After nearly 40 years of privatization and restructuring, British society is on the brink of being permanently transformed into the type of savage, neo-feudal, corporatist nightmare that the USA already is. ..."
"... Thus, they need to Hitlerize Corbyn, so they can fold him into their official narrative, Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis ..."
"... In the USA, the populist insurgency is primarily a right-wing phenomenon (because, again, there is no Left to speak of). Thus, the neoliberal ruling classes are focused on Hitlerizing Donald Trump, and stigmatizing the millions of Americans who voted for him as a bunch of Nazis. Hitlerizing Trump has been ridiculously easy (he almost Hitlerizes himself), but the ultimate goal is to delegitimize the populist sentiment that put him into office. That sentiment is primarily neo-nationalist. So it's a one-front counter-insurgency op (i.e., neoliberalism versus neo-nationalism). ..."
"... And this is why Corbyn had to be Hitlerized, and why Putin, Trump, Assad, Gabbard, Assange, the "Yellow Vest" protesters in France, and anyone else opposing global neoliberalism has to be Hitlerized. ..."
Jun 14, 2019 | www.unz.com

I realize that both the neoliberal establishment and the neo-fascist fringe disagree with me, and that both are determined (for different reasons) to conflate the two in the public's mind, but that's my take, and I'm sticking to it. I don't think the world is controlled by "the Jews." I think it's controlled by global capitalism.

Go ahead, call me a conspiracy theorist. Here's how the anti-Semitism panic in the United Kingdom looks to me.

After nearly 40 years of privatization and restructuring, British society is on the brink of being permanently transformed into the type of savage, neo-feudal, corporatist nightmare that the USA already is. The global capitalist ruling classes are extremely pleased about this state of affairs. They would now like to finish up privatizing Britain, so they can get on with privatizing the rest of Europe. The last thing they need at this critical juncture is Jeremy Corbyn to become prime minister and start attempting to remake their nascent neoliberal marketplace into a society you know, where healthcare is guaranteed to all, you don't need a mortgage to buy a train ticket, and people don't have to eat out of trash bins.

Unlike in the USA, where there is no functional political Left, and where the non-parliamentary "two-party system" is almost totally controlled by the corporatocracy, in the UK, there are still a few old-fashioned socialists, and they have taken back the Labour Party from the neoliberal Blairite stooges that had been managing the transformation of Britain into the aforementioned neo-feudal nightmare. Jeremy Corbyn is the leader of these socialists. So the corporatocracy needs to destroy him, take back control of the Labour Party, and turn it back into a fake left party, like the Democratic Party in the USA, so they can concentrate on crushing the right-wing populists. Thus, they need to Hitlerize Corbyn, so they can fold him into their official narrative, Democracy vs. The Putin-Nazis .

And, see, this is what makes the corporatocracy's War on Populism so seemingly psychotic at least to anyone paying attention.

In the USA, the populist insurgency is primarily a right-wing phenomenon (because, again, there is no Left to speak of). Thus, the neoliberal ruling classes are focused on Hitlerizing Donald Trump, and stigmatizing the millions of Americans who voted for him as a bunch of Nazis. Hitlerizing Trump has been ridiculously easy (he almost Hitlerizes himself), but the ultimate goal is to delegitimize the populist sentiment that put him into office. That sentiment is primarily neo-nationalist. So it's a one-front counter-insurgency op (i.e., neoliberalism versus neo-nationalism).

In the UK, things are not that simple. There, the neoliberal ruling classes are waging a counter-insurgency op against populist forces on two major fronts: (1) the Brexiters (i.e., nationalism); and (2) the Corbynists (i.e., socialism). They're getting hit from both the left and right, which is screwing up the official narrative (according to which the "enemies of democracy" are supposed to be right-wing neo-nationalists). So, as contradictory and absurd as it sounds, they needed to conflate both left and right populism into one big scary Hitlerian enemy. Thus, they needed to Hitlerize Corbyn. Presto Labour Anti-Semitism crisis!

Now, anyone who is isn't a gibbering idiot knows that Jeremy Corbyn is not an anti-Semite and the Labour Party is not a hive of Nazis. It's a testament to the power of the corporate media that such a statement even needs to be made but, of course, that's the point of the smear campaign the neoliberal corporate media have been waging for the last three years.

Smear campaigns are simple and effective. The goal is to force your target and his allies into proclaiming things like, "I am not an anti-Semite," or "I've never had sex with underage boys," or whatever smear you want to force them to deny. You don't have to prove your target guilty. You're just trying to conjure up a "reality" in which every time someone thinks of your target they associate him with the content of your smears.

The corporate media have done just that, to Jeremy Corbyn, to Donald Trump, to Putin, and to assorted lesser figures. They did it to Sanders in 2016. They are doing it now to Tulsi Gabbard . The goal is not only to smear these targets, but also, and more so, to conjure a "world" that reifies the narrative of their smears a binary "good versus evil" world, a world in which whatever they want to accuse their targets of being linked to (e.g., terrorism, fascism, racism, or whatever) is the official enemy of all that is good.

Since the Brexit referendum and the election of Trump, the ruling classes have conjured up a world where "democracy" is perpetually under attack by a global conspiracy of "Russians" and "Nazis" (just as they previously conjured up a world where it was perpetually under attack by "terrorists"). They have conjured up a post-Orwellian reality in which "democracy" (i.e., global capitalism) is the only alternative to "neo-fascism" (i.e., anything opposed to global capitalism).

And this is why Corbyn had to be Hitlerized, and why Putin, Trump, Assad, Gabbard, Assange, the "Yellow Vest" protesters in France, and anyone else opposing global neoliberalism has to be Hitlerized. Socialism, nationalism it makes no difference, not to the global capitalist ruling classes. There are always only two sides in these "worlds" that the ruling classes conjure up for us, and there can be only one official enemy. The official enemy of the moment is "fascism." Therefore, all the "bad guys" are Hitler, or Nazis, or racists, or anti-Semites, or some other variation of Hitler.

The fact that this "reality" they have conjured up for us is completely psychotic makes it no less real. And it is only going to get more insane until the corporatocracy restores "normality." So, go ahead, if you consider yourself "normal," and try to force your mind to believe that Jews are no longer safe in Great Britain, or in Germany, or France, or the USA, and that Donald Trump is a Russian asset, and is also literally Adolf Hitler, and an anti-Semitic white supremacist who is conspiring with Israel and Saudi Arabia in their campaign to destroy Iran and Syria, which are allies of his Russian masters, as is Venezuela, which he is also menacing, and that Jeremy Corbyn's secret plan is to turn the UK into Nazi Germany, with the support of Trump, who is trying to destroy him, and that the Yellow Vests are Russian-backed fascists, and that Julian Assange is a rapist spy who conspired with Russia to get Trump elected, which is why Trump wants to prosecute him, just as soon as he finishes wiping out the Jews, or protecting them from Jeremy Corbyn, or from Iran, or brainwashing Black Americans into reelecting him in 2020 with a handful of Russian Facebook ads.

Go ahead, try to reconcile all that or whatever, don't. Just take whatever medication you happen to be on, crank up CNN, MSNBC, or any other corporate media channel, and report me to the Internet Police for posting dangerous "extremist" content. You know, in your heart, I probably deserve it.

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant Paperbacks. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

[Jun 14, 2019] MI5 'unlawfully' handled bulk surveillance data, lawsuit reveals

Jun 14, 2019 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

et Al June 11, 2019 at 8:05 am

SkyNudes: MI5 'unlawfully' handled bulk surveillance data, lawsuit reveals
https://news.sky.com/story/mi5-unlawfully-handled-bulk-surveillance-data-lawsuit-reveals-11739729

The security service is accused of breaking the law and documents state the "the task [of complying with it] was too large".

"The documents show extraordinary and persistent illegality in MI5's operations, apparently for many years," said civil liberties organisation Liberty, which is bringing the case.

"The existence of what MI5 itself calls 'ungoverned spaces' in which it holds and uses large volumes of private data is a serious failure of governance and oversight, especially when mass collection of data of innocent citizens is concerned."
####

Incompetent? No. Don't give a shit? Yes.

It won't make a blind bit of difference as the security service have broad brush surveillance powers and the 'National Security' exception behind them. At least they are not handing over that data to their terrorist sponsoring Gulf brothers Oh, hang on, can't rule anything out!

[Jun 11, 2019] Luke Harding is back with one of his bullshit exclusives in the Guardian.

This is "Integrity Initiative" at work...
Jun 11, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Ghost Ship , Jun 11, 2019 11:01:51 AM | 134
That arsehole Luke Harding is back with one of his bullshit exclusives in the Guardian .
Leaked documents reveal Russian effort to exert influence in Africa
Exclusive: Kremlin ally Yevgeny Prigozhin leading push to turn continent into strategic hub, documents show
by Luke Harding and Jason Burke
The only thing you really need to know about the exposé:
The leaked documents were obtained by the Dossier Center, an investigative unit based in London. The centre is funded by Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the Russian businessman and exiled Kremlin critic.
The Guardian obviously has no shame for publishing such an article but then it has never explained the claims of Manafort meeting with Assange in the Ecuadorean embassy. As for the article, my reaction was "so fucking what?".

The British French and Americans have fucked up large parts of Africa while the Soviet Union/Russia was indirectly responsible for eradicating that cancerous growth, the apartheid state of South Africa, a single act that was better than all the good things that the United Kingdom, France and the United States have ever done in Africa

[Jun 08, 2019] What the Latest Secret Government File Says About UK Middle East Policy Consortiumnews

Jun 08, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

What the Latest Secret Government File Says About UK Middle East Policy June 4, 2019 • 12 Comments

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Mark Curtis details why a 1941 document might still be so sensitive in 2019 that the British government is refusing to release it.

By Mark Curtis
British Foreign Policy Declassified

<img src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/10/mark-curtis-130x130.png" alt="" width="100" height="100" /> T he British government is refusing to release a 1941 file on Palestine, as it might "undermine the security" of Britain and its citizens.

Why would a 78-year-old document be seen as so sensitive in 2019? One plausible reason is that it could embarrass the British government in its relations with Israel and Iraq, and may concern a long but hidden theme in British foreign policy: creating false pretexts for military intervention.

The Colonial Office document, at the National Archives in London, was uncovered by journalist Tom Suarez and concerns the "activities of the Grand Mufti [Haj Amin al-Husseini] of Jerusalem" in 1940-41.

<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37069" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Al-Husayni1929head-526x700.jpg" alt="" width="526" height="700" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Al-Husayni1929head-526x700.jpg 526w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Al-Husayni1929head-301x400.jpg 301w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Al-Husayni1929head-768x1022.jpg 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Al-Husayni1929head-160x213.jpg 160w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Al-Husayni1929head.jpg 1317w" sizes="(max-width: 526px) 100vw, 526px" />

The Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Haj Amin Effendi el-Husseini. (Wikimedia Commons)

After the assassination of Lewis Andrews, British district commissioner for Galilee, in September 1937, the British Government dismissed al-Husseini from his post as president of the Supreme Muslim Council and decided to arrest all members of the Arab Higher Committee, including Husseini.

He took refuge in the Noble Sanctuary (al-Haram al-Sharif), fled to Jaffa and then Lebanon, and ended up in Iraq, where he played a role in the Iraqi national anti-British movement.

He spent the Second World War moving between Berlin and Rome and took part in the propaganda war against Britain and France through Arabic radio broadcasts.

Plan to 'Clip the Mufti's Wings'

In April 1941, nationalist army officers known as the Golden Square staged a coup in Iraq, overthrowing the pro-British regime, and signaled they were prepared to work with German and Italian intelligence. In response, the British embarked on a military campaign and eventually crushed the coup leaders two months later.

But Suarez discovered in the files that the British were already wanting such a "military occupation of Iraq" by November 1940 -- well before the Golden Square coup gave them a pretext for doing so.

The reason was that Britain wanted to end "the mufti's intrigues with the Italians." One file notes: "We may be able to clip the mufti's wings when we can get a new government in Iraq. FO [Foreign Office] are working on this." Suarez notes that a prominent thread in the British archive is: "How to effect a British coup without further alienating 'the Arab world' in the midst of the war, beyond what the empowering of Zionism had already done."

<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37073" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Palestinian_delegation_1929.jpg" alt="" width="1015" height="717" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Palestinian_delegation_1929.jpg 5451w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Palestinian_delegation_1929-400x283.jpg 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Palestinian_delegation_1929-768x543.jpg 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Palestinian_delegation_1929-700x495.jpg 700w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Palestinian_delegation_1929-160x113.jpg 160w" sizes="(max-width: 1015px) 100vw, 1015px" />

An Arab protest gathering against British policy in Palestine, 1929. (Wikimedia Commons)

As British troops closed in on Baghdad, a violent anti-Jewish pogrom rocked the city, killing more than 180 Jewish Iraqis and destroying the homes of hundreds of members of the Jewish community who had lived in Iraq for centuries. The Farhud (violent dispossession) has been described as the Iraqi Jews' Kristallnacht, the brutal pogrom against Jews carried out in Nazi Germany three years earlier.

There have long been claims that these riots were condoned or even orchestrated by the British to blacken the nationalist regime and justify Britain's return to power in Baghdad and ongoing military occupation of Iraq.

Historian Tony Rocca noted : "To Britain's shame, the army was stood down. Sir Kinahan Cornwallis, Britain's ambassador in Baghdad, for reasons of his own, held our forces at bay in direct insubordination to express orders from Winston Churchill that they should take the city and secure its safety. Instead, Sir Kinahan went back to his residence, had a candlelight dinner and played a game of bridge."

1953 Coup in Iran

Could this be the reason that U.K. censors want the file to remain secret after all these years? It would neither be the first, nor the last time that British planners used or created pretexts to justify their military interventions.

In 1953, the covert British and U.S. campaign to overthrow the elected nationalist government of Mohammad Mosaddegh in Iran included a "false flag" element. Agents working for the British posed as supporters of the communist Tudeh party, engaging in activities such as throwing rocks at mosques and priests, in order to portray the demonstrating mobs as communists. The aim was to provide a pretext for the coup and the Shah of Iran's taking control in the name of anti-communism.

Three years later, in 1956, Britain also secretly connived to create a pretext for its military intervention in Egypt. After Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalized the Suez Canal and Britain sought to overthrow him, the British and French governments secretly agreed with Israel that the latter would first attack Egypt. Then, London and Paris would dispatch military forces on the pretext of separating the warring parties, and seize the canal. The plan went ahead but failed, largely owing to U.S. opposition.

<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37071" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suez_Canal_Egypt_satellite_view.jpg" alt="" width="1920" height="1080" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suez_Canal_Egypt_satellite_view.jpg 1920w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suez_Canal_Egypt_satellite_view-400x225.jpg 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suez_Canal_Egypt_satellite_view-768x432.jpg 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suez_Canal_Egypt_satellite_view-700x394.jpg 700w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/Suez_Canal_Egypt_satellite_view-160x90.jpg 160w" sizes="(max-width: 1920px) 100vw, 1920px" />


Satellite view of southern part of Suez Canal in Egypt. (Axelspace Corporation via Wikimedia Commons)

Five years later, in 1961, it was a similar story in Kuwait. This little-known British intervention was publicly justified on the basis of an alleged threat from Iraq, but the declassified files that I have examined suggest that this "threat" was concocted by British planners. When Kuwait secured independence in June 1961, Britain was desperate to protect its oil interests and to solidify its commercial and military relations with the Kuwaiti regime. The files suggest that the British therefore needed to get the Kuwaitis to "ask" Britain for "protection."

Kuwait Intervention

On June 25, 1961, Iraqi ruler Abdul Karim Qasim publicly claimed Kuwait as part of Iraq. Five days later, Kuwait's emir formally requested British military intervention, and on July 1, British forces landed, eventually numbering around 7,000.

But the alleged Iraqi threat to Kuwait never materialized. David Lee, who commanded the British air force in the Middle East in 1961, later wrote that the British government "did not contemplate aggression by Iraq very seriously."

Indeed, the evidence suggests that the emir was duped into "requesting" intervention by the British, and his information on a possible Iraq move on Kuwait came almost exclusively from British sources. The files show that the "threat" to Kuwait was being pushed by the British embassy in Baghdad but contradicted by Britain's consulate in Basra, near the Kuwaiti border, which reported no unusual troop movements.

<img aria-describedby="caption-attachment-37070" src="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PikiWiki_Israel_7886_quotprayerquot_in_ramat-gan.jpg" alt="" width="1004" height="753" srcset="https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PikiWiki_Israel_7886_quotprayerquot_in_ramat-gan.jpg 2048w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PikiWiki_Israel_7886_quotprayerquot_in_ramat-gan-400x300.jpg 400w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PikiWiki_Israel_7886_quotprayerquot_in_ramat-gan-768x576.jpg 768w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PikiWiki_Israel_7886_quotprayerquot_in_ramat-gan-700x525.jpg 700w, https://consortiumnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/06/PikiWiki_Israel_7886_quotprayerquot_in_ramat-gan-160x120.jpg 160w" sizes="(max-width: 1004px) 100vw, 1004px" />

Monument "Prayer" in Tel Aviv in memory of the Jews who were killed in Iraq in the Pogrom "Farhud" (1941) and in the 1960s. (Avishai Teicher via Wikimedia Commons)

British intervention was intended to reassure Kuwait and other friendly Middle Eastern regimes that were key to maintaining the British position in the world's most important region. The prime minister's foreign policy adviser said that letting go of Kuwait would have meant that "the other oil sheikhdoms (which are getting richer) will not rely on us any longer."

By the time we reached the invasion of Iraq in 2003, creating false pretexts for interventions had become a familiar theme in British foreign policy.

Matter of Routine

To return to the 1941 document, British authorities have had a policy of either censoring, "losing" or destroying historical files that could undermine relations with current governments.

In 2012, an official review concluded that "thousands of documents detailing some of the most shameful acts and crimes committed during the final years of the British empire were systematically destroyed to prevent them falling into the hands of post-independence governments," according to a report in The Guardian .

The files covered policies such as the abuse and torture of insurgents in Kenya in the 1950s, the alleged massacre of 24 unarmed villagers in Malaya in 1948, and the army's secret torture center in Aden in the 1960s.

Other papers have been hidden for decades in secret foreign office archives, beyond the reach of historians and members of the public, and in breach of legal obligations for them to be transferred into the public domain.

Whatever is in the 1941 document, if the British government is withholding its release for fear of upsetting relations with key allies, this would be less than surprising and more a matter of routine.

Mark Curtis is an historian and analyst of U.K. foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of "Secret Affairs: Britain's CollU.S. ion with Radical Islam."

This article is from his website, British Foreign Policy Declassified.


dean 1000 , June 5, 2019 at 14:51

Students, starting with HS juniors should be required to read and write a report on articles like this one. It wouldn't have to be comprehensive.
Just five or six well linked articles like this one on US, British, French, German, Soviet, and Japanese Government activities during and after WWII would give students a realistic idea of the kind of world they will be living in.

Litchfield , June 5, 2019 at 11:17

Thank you, Mark Curtis.
This is an important contribution to the effort, which must be ongoing, to flesh out the contours of the history of false flags, provocations, invented outrages, covert attacks, and the propaganda that depends on such stage-managed events etc. etc. that have been ongoing for centuries.

The public needs to see a constant stream of evidence of these occurrences in order to become, finally, skeptical of claims of outraged innocence by the malevolent perpetrators of these attacks and the warmongers who profit from the ensuing wars.

This is doubtless why anyone who pulls aside the curtain on these crimes will feel that greatest heat.
Viz.: Assange. Viz.: Refusal to publish docs that should be in the public domain by now.
The ironclad inference that can be drawn by all refusals to declassify documents is that they contain information not that endangers "national security" but that would lead to a redefinition of "national security." actually is. Citizens would see that these subterfuges have led to national and international insecurity and the enrichment of a few at the expense of thousands and thousands of lives and national treasure -- of all countries involved.

The crackdown on the ABC in Australia shows that the suppression of information as a strategy is being expanded.
It is of a piece with Australia's refusal to protect its citizen Julian Assange.
Disgusting and terrifying.
How many are there of the caliber of Assange, Curtis, Hastings, Webb, Karioukou (sp? ), Snowden, and other journo-whistleblowers?

Sally Snyder , June 5, 2019 at 08:00

As shown in this article, previously classified documents from the United States show that there was growing concern that anti-Iran sanctions could push Iran "over the brink":

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/09/the-risk-of-sanctions-pushing-iran-over.html

Both the United Kingdom and the United States seem incapable of realizing that their geopolitical machinations have long-term impacts that are completely unanticipated.

Rick jarvis , June 5, 2019 at 07:02

There's nothing to suggest that the murderous and exploitive policies of the UK Government during the demise of the British Empire as enumerated by Mark Curtis in his extroidinary research into the crimes of empire are any less extreme and repugnant than those of the US empire which in decline manifests its worst tendancies to maintain its hegemony. In an era before the internet and wikileaks its no surprise how the abject and obsessive secrecy of the UK Government was instrumental in hiding these crimes behind the posturing of its liberal humanitarian credentials...

[Jun 05, 2019] Neoliberal mantra: Blessed are the job creators

Notable quotes:
"... You know we can't touch the corporations - they are sacrosanct because they are the supposed "job creators" - this one title gives them carte blanche to act however they like, to make spurious claims about economies faltering, businesses going offshore and unemployment. They also donate heavily to the political parties. ..."
Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Anomander64 -> Davesnothereman , 3 Jun 2018 16:44

Shhhh... whatever you do, don't ever let them hear you criticizing the "job creators" or there will be trouble.

You know we can't touch the corporations - they are sacrosanct because they are the supposed "job creators" - this one title gives them carte blanche to act however they like, to make spurious claims about economies faltering, businesses going offshore and unemployment. They also donate heavily to the political parties.

Repeat after me:

"Blessed are the job creators"
"Blessed are the job creators"
"Blessed are the job creators"
"For THEY shall inherit the wealth"

[Jun 01, 2019] Grenfell, Windrush Skripal -- Theresa May's Tainted Legacy by Johanna Ross

Notable quotes:
"... However, Williamson was not alone in his anti-Russian stance. It was under May's leadership that the controversial government-funded Integrity Initiative program really began to flourish. Designed to "counteract Russian propaganda" it instead deceptively engaged in spreading disinformation about Russia and even the UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, by hiring journalists, academics and commentators who would all sing from the same hymn sheet when it came to discourse about Russia in the press. ..."
"... What was most chilling about the revelations in the Integrity Initiative hacked documents was the extent to which policy makers within the inner workings of the establishment are apparently obsessed about an imminent "Russian threat" and are prepared to go to considerable lengths to persuade the British population of this. ..."
"... Even more unnerving was the discussion that there was need for some event to be staged in order to heighten the U.K. population's awareness of a Russian threat. The timing was uncanny: this was not long before the poisoning took place of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which has, along with multiple discrepancies in the British narrative, led some analysts to ask whether the whole incident was indeed orchestrated by British secret services. ..."
"... Staged or not, May's handling of the Skripal incident left much to be desired. Even her experience of handling the Litvinenko affair as home secretary hadn't taught her a great deal. Before any concrete evidence was produced to implicate the Russian government in the poisoning, May was already issuing ultimatums to the Russian president. Her infamous phrase that the government concluded it was "highly likely" Russia was responsible for the poisoning even entered itself into the Russian vocabulary and became something of a household joke in Russia. ..."
"... So what can we expect from the next prime minister of the not-so-Great Britain? Whoever it is has their work cut out not only to unite the Conservative party, but the country. In terms of improving relations with Russia -- as long as the Tories remain in power, and the "deep state" or civil service continues to push its aggressive anti-Russian agenda -- , we are unlikely to see any significant change in policy. ..."
"... The UK under May has continued to serve as a “coalition partner” in the US-Saudi-Israeli Axis engineered and perpetuated dirty war against the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies. Let’s not forget Theresa May’s well practiced phrase, “like the United States, we believe”: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39591476 . May has consistently believed US claims about the April 2017 Khan Shaykhoun incident, the April 2018 Douma incident, and other alleged chemical “attacks” in Syria. ..."
"... The UK under May also has remained the base for two leading disinformation operations supporting the the assault against Syrian government: Rami Abdulrahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat. ..."
"... As of 31 March 2018, the British government had provided £38.4m in funding to the Al Qaeda allied White Helmets propaganda organization. In April 2018 the Trump administration suspended funding of the White Helmets. The US had provided more than $33 million to support the group since 2013. ..."
"... The British government remains a primary funder of the White Helmets propaganda organization. Posing as an impartial rescue force, the White Helmets work exclusively side-by-side armed militants including US State Department, UN, and EU designated foreign terrorist organizations. Their primary function is not “rescuing” anyone, but to manage a public relations campaign aimed at swaying public and political opinion, leveraging “humanitarian” sympathy worldwide ..."
"... In November 2016, video showed two White Helmets members staging a rescue operation for the Mannequin Challenge meme. In May 2017, video showed White Helmets members removing a man’s body following his execution by armed militants in Daraa. In June 2017, a member of the White Helmets was suspended indefinitely for assisting armed militants in the burial of mutilated corpses of Syrian government soldiers. ..."
"... Apropos, the last two paras about the Civil Service in Britain; Up until the last 2 decades or so, some of the brightest and best talents entered the Civil Service, good pay, good career prospects and good pension. Then this was hollowed out, everything ‘public sector’ was vilified and privatized and starved of funding. ..."
"... The race to the bottom is keenly contested. ..."
"... Without Russian money they are certainly not the world’s 6th largest economy and it appears that unless they want to side with China against the USA which is improbable, no impossible, they will lose Chinese Capital as well after Brexit. ..."
"... And again, a Mr. Jim Mellon a for real billionaire, several times over I should think, the same guy who carpetbagged Russia after the collapse of the CCCP. His gleanings were called “privatization”… of poor mother Russia. ..."
"... The US has it’s own deep state problem of civil servants, especially alphabet soup agencies who are accustomed to operating in the dark and think that they, not the political appointees make policy ..."
Jun 01, 2019 | consortiumnews.com


InfoRos

UK Prime Minister Theresa May's political career officially ended in tears last Friday, as the woman who declared that she would provide "strong and stable" leadership when she came to power three years ago, but who proved in the end to be not quite so strong or stable as she broke down in front of the press outside 10 Downing Street.

She had in fact, arguably one of the most disastrous records of a UK prime minister to date. A total of 50 cabinet resignations since she took office , far more than any of her recent predecessors; together with scandals such as the Grenfell Tower disaster , Windrush scandal , hostile environment policy and record levels of homelessness and poverty. And that's not to mention her inability to deliver Brexit, which effectively led to her demise.

Indeed however tempting it may be to feel sorry for May -- she has been surrounded by political vultures all vying for her position for months now -- one is minded of the words of British political commentator Owen Jones who, when asked recently if he felt sorry for the prime minister, noted that May's tears were simply those of self-pity and were absent at times when they would have been appropriate, such as in the aftermath of the Grenfell Tower fire, which claimed 72 lives.

'Permanent Crisis'

One may be inclined to think that if she was so unsuccessful on the domestic front, then perhaps in the area of foreign policy May could have had a better record. No such luck. We only have to look at the considerable deterioration in relations with Russia to understand that under her leadership, Britain's standing in the world has diminished. Prominent British journalist Patrick Cockburn has even gone as far to say that Britain is now "entering a period of permanent crisis not seen since the 17th century."

But arguably back in the 17th century the U.K. was more competent in the art of diplomacy than it is now. May's defense minister, Gavin Williamson, with his comment that Russia should "go away and shut up" epitomized the extraordinary lack of finesse and savoir-faire the May government had when dealing with Russia.

His bellicose tone unfortunately went hand-in-hand with a completely misplaced notion of Russia presenting to the UK some kind of genuine threat, as he argued earlier this year that the UK had to "enhance its lethality" against such well-resourced states, as opposed to concentrating its energies on Islamic terror groups. He was then accused by fellow politicians of "sabre-rattling" in what were widely seen as misguided and provocative statements.

However, Williamson was not alone in his anti-Russian stance. It was under May's leadership that the controversial government-funded Integrity Initiative program really began to flourish. Designed to "counteract Russian propaganda" it instead deceptively engaged in spreading disinformation about Russia and even the UK Labour Party leader, Jeremy Corbyn, by hiring journalists, academics and commentators who would all sing from the same hymn sheet when it came to discourse about Russia in the press.

What was most chilling about the revelations in the Integrity Initiative hacked documents was the extent to which policy makers within the inner workings of the establishment are apparently obsessed about an imminent "Russian threat" and are prepared to go to considerable lengths to persuade the British population of this.

May with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hangzhou, China, 2016. (Wikimedia Commons)

Uncanny Timing

Even more unnerving was the discussion that there was need for some event to be staged in order to heighten the U.K. population's awareness of a Russian threat. The timing was uncanny: this was not long before the poisoning took place of ex-double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, which has, along with multiple discrepancies in the British narrative, led some analysts to ask whether the whole incident was indeed orchestrated by British secret services.

Staged or not, May's handling of the Skripal incident left much to be desired. Even her experience of handling the Litvinenko affair as home secretary hadn't taught her a great deal. Before any concrete evidence was produced to implicate the Russian government in the poisoning, May was already issuing ultimatums to the Russian president. Her infamous phrase that the government concluded it was "highly likely" Russia was responsible for the poisoning even entered itself into the Russian vocabulary and became something of a household joke in Russia.

The decision to publicly accuse another state of attempting murder on British soil with evidence that only amounted to "a nerve agent of a type produced by Russia," was utterly reckless, not only deeply harming relations with Russia, but undermining the credibility of the U.K. as a whole. And despite it being an attempt to bolster the PM's position at a time when desperately needed to generate support for her upcoming Brexit white paper – this itself, given a delayed Brexit and divided country, proved fruitless.

So what can we expect from the next prime minister of the not-so-Great Britain? Whoever it is has their work cut out not only to unite the Conservative party, but the country. In terms of improving relations with Russia -- as long as the Tories remain in power, and the "deep state" or civil service continues to push its aggressive anti-Russian agenda -- , we are unlikely to see any significant change in policy.

One could hope that a certain Boris Johnson, himself named after a Russian émigré, and the leading candidate to replace May, could seek to build bridges in this regard, but his record on the Skripal case leaves room for doubt. The PM is after all a figurehead, and the UK civil service remains a driving force of policy-making.

As former Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair once said: "You cannot underestimate how much they [the civil service] believe it's their job to actually run the country and to resist the changes put forward by people they dismiss as 'here today, gone tomorrow' politicians. They genuinely see themselves as the true guardians of the national interest, and think that their job is simply to wear you down and wait you out." Says it all really .

This article originally appeared on InfoRos .

Johanna Ross is a freelance journalist based in the United Kingdom.

Tags: Brexit Johanna Ross Russia Russia-gate Sergei Skripal Theresa May Tony Blair


one , May 31, 2019 at 15:41

As one reads this article it is primarily remarkably how closely it resembles America’s past, present and future. Of course, England has long been known as Washington’s lap dog. Unsurprisingly, what we seem to be best at is sales and PR. The UK is far from the only “ally” we have that has followed us off the cliff.

And as the various publics look down and see the snake pit into which our style of “democracy” and Winners Take All capitalism actually means they want out. Unfortunately, the winners and our leaders have taken all already, including not only the money, but the power. The shameful scams of NATO and politicizing the EU turned out to be new ways to suck the lifeblood out of the earths “Others,” both in our countries and in the “Others” in Africa, Asia, and everything above and below our borders.

So how do we get out of this? We don’t. Every empire from Cyrus To Babylon, Alexander’s to The Pharaohs’ and Heraclius, the Spanish, Portuguese, and British have collapsed in the dust and led to long periods of darkness, inhabited by The Four Horsemen of The Apocalypse.

If you look around us, still mostly living in luxury unknown to the ancient non-winners, all of the signs are there. In the multiple-party system in most of “free” Europe or our Two-party system there’s but decline. Boris won’t save England and none of the truly potentially electable quacks in our Democrats list are going to get us out of this. Clinton didn’t, Obama didn’t and what’s up won’t. No one but Tulsi Gabbard even talks about or has a foreign policy beyond being for peace and plenty for all. Sure. Dumb.

I hate to sound gloomy-doomy, because I’m not. I’m a writer and a writer is an observer. Watching all of this, including my own 2008 economic demise, is fascinating. Gabbard isn’t going to be elected. We’ll get our own Mrs. May maybe, or more Trump, Bolt-on or the fat guy who will initiate some wars that we’ll win like we did with Vietnam and Afghanistan, Iraq, etc. ad nauseum. I’m not saying be dumb; I’m saying be realistic, analytical, interested, and vocal, but come the collapse, be physically and psychologically prepared (everything that Hillary wasn’t, for example.)

Abe , May 31, 2019 at 12:51

The UK under May has continued to serve as a “coalition partner” in the US-Saudi-Israeli Axis engineered and perpetuated dirty war against the Syrian government and its Russian and Iranian allies. Let’s not forget Theresa May’s well practiced phrase, “like the United States, we believe”: https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-39591476 . May has consistently believed US claims about the April 2017 Khan Shaykhoun incident, the April 2018 Douma incident, and other alleged chemical “attacks” in Syria.

The UK under May also has remained the base for two leading disinformation operations supporting the the assault against Syrian government: Rami Abdulrahman’s Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Eliot Higgins’ Bellingcat.

As of 31 March 2018, the British government had provided £38.4m in funding to the Al Qaeda allied White Helmets propaganda organization. In April 2018 the Trump administration suspended funding of the White Helmets. The US had provided more than $33 million to support the group since 2013.

The British government remains a primary funder of the White Helmets propaganda organization. Posing as an impartial rescue force, the White Helmets work exclusively side-by-side armed militants including US State Department, UN, and EU designated foreign terrorist organizations. Their primary function is not “rescuing” anyone, but to manage a public relations campaign aimed at swaying public and political opinion, leveraging “humanitarian” sympathy worldwide.

As of 31 March 2018, the British government had provided £38.4m in funding to the White Helmets. In April 2018 the Trump administration suspended funding of the White Helmets. The US had provided more than $33 million to support the group since 2013.

In November 2016, video showed two White Helmets members staging a rescue operation for the Mannequin Challenge meme. In May 2017, video showed White Helmets members removing a man’s body following his execution by armed militants in Daraa. In June 2017, a member of the White Helmets was suspended indefinitely for assisting armed militants in the burial of mutilated corpses of Syrian government soldiers.

On the night of 21 July 2018, Israel allowed 422 people – 98 White Helmet volunteers and their family members – to cross the Israeli annexed Syrian Golan Heights and into Jordan. A Syrian government official condemned the evacuation of White Helmets as a “criminal operation” that had revealed “the terrorist nature” of the group. In September 2018, the UK granted asylum to about 100 White Helmet staff and relatives that had been evacuated to Jordan.

AnneR , May 31, 2019 at 09:22

Good Riddance to very Bad Rubbish (mind you that also applies to the whole of the Tory lot plus the Blairites).

Yes May’s government has much to make amends for – and not just for and to the survivors of Grenfell Towers, the Windrush Generation families, but also to: the Yemenis, the Chagossians, the Syrians. It would have behooved her to have a smaller wardrobe and a larger, effective compassion for those the (imperialist) British have done over numerous times up to and including today. Even small gestures of real compassion, of real recognition of the ugliness of Britian’s imperial past wrongdoings by way of simple apology are apparently beyond her and her government (including the Civil Service).

As for Britain’s “standing” – it is about bloody time that this small island off the western Eurasian coast put up and shut up and retired. Why on earth should it have any *standing*? What *good* has it ever done? (And I ask this as someone born there, whose father was in the army helping to maintain the Raj – much to my much later disgust, though, disgracefully, not his.)

Bob of Bonsall , May 31, 2019 at 05:11

To be fair, and as much as it pains me to do so, I must point out that the Grenfell tragedy and Windrush fiasco were as much due to Labour decisions as they were to Tory incompetence.

John A , May 31, 2019 at 03:01

Apropos, the last two paras about the Civil Service in Britain; Up until the last 2 decades or so, some of the brightest and best talents entered the Civil Service, good pay, good career prospects and good pension. Then this was hollowed out, everything ‘public sector’ was vilified and privatized and starved of funding.

For these reasons, most of the ‘brightest and best’ now shun the Civil Service for a career in casino banking and similar avenues instead. The calibre of Civil Service advice has nose-dived accordingly.

As with everything else in Britain post Thatcher, everything is for sale, get rich quick, plod along with little or no pay increases and less and less job security, or starve homeless on the streets are the options available these days.

Zhu , May 31, 2019 at 04:51

Sounds like the USA!

Douglas Turnbull , May 30, 2019 at 22:20

The continuing barbaric capitalist nightmare and its sad psychopathic 1% and the destructive antics of its sycophants...

Tom Kath , May 30, 2019 at 20:13

“Something rotten” is not restricted to the state of Denmark, Britain, or USA. It is not even restricted to the “West”, so we must seek more fundamentally for the source of this world’s abject immoral disgustingness. The race to the bottom is keenly contested.

KiwiAntz , May 30, 2019 at 20:09

At last, for the long suffering Brits? The Maybot has finally danced her “Robotic Dance” off the World scene to the cheers & high fives of most of the British people, who have thoroughly had a gutsful of her duplicitous behaviour & disastrous mishandling of Brexit!

And the article lists her shameful record during the period she was Prime Minister, especially the Glenfell Tower tragedy & her pathetic response along with the criminal culpability of the disgusting Conservative Tory Party & its role in this travesty?

Their murderous Policies & austerity directly led to this disgrace? So its good riddance to a contemptible woman, a abject failure & a loser who was good for absolutely nothing except walking on stages & doing really bad dance moves!

LJ , May 30, 2019 at 18:39

She was all the Tories could come up with to keep Corbyn out of the office of Prime Minister. There should certainly have been a General Election after David Cameron crashed the ship of state with Brexit.

Boris Johnson would certainly complete that job so someone else will have to play dartboard until the next election. Despite what the Guardian and BBC and the rest say. And in spite of the Zionist attack on Corbyn he will be Prime Minister. Long Overdue. Britain is Great no more.

Without Russian money they are certainly not the world’s 6th largest economy and it appears that unless they want to side with China against the USA which is improbable, no impossible, they will lose Chinese Capital as well after Brexit.

Good. I hope Scotland votes for Independence. Wales should as well. Britain deserves to go to hell after their history as an Empire. London is 41% foreign born. Just who are they anyway? The British? We here in the USA, or rather younger people here in the USA should take a good look at what happens over the next 5 years there and put it your memory banks.

elmerfudzie , May 30, 2019 at 17:37

Tainted tenure indeed! No one asks the right questions anymore. For example, where did all that Brexit cash come from? As I commented previously at CONSORTIUMNEWS and it is redacted here; “The Panama Papers signaled a need for radical change(s) in the EU banking laws. Hiding money, legit or not from, fair and open taxation, has become increasingly difficult for the upper crust….”

The BREXIT cash originated, no surprise folks, from a Gibraltar based firm, where a Mr Arron Banks (big bucks Banks) a guy with money to burn, with corporate holdings in the Isle of Man and too, one of his buddies, an Alan Kentish of the STM group specializing in, oh you’ll love this, offshore wealth preservation! LOL

And again, a Mr. Jim Mellon a for real billionaire, several times over I should think, the same guy who carpetbagged Russia after the collapse of the CCCP. His gleanings were called “privatization”… of poor mother Russia. Well, to make a long story short, Mr Kentish, the original pro-BREXITeer was arrested in Gibraltar under the UK’s Crime Act for such suspicious money funneling(s). My oh my Ms May, what strange political bedfellows you seem to have!

Jeff Harrison , May 30, 2019 at 17:37

Here today, gone to lunch as the late Douglas Adams put it. The US has it’s own deep state problem of civil servants, especially alphabet soup agencies who are accustomed to operating in the dark and think that they, not the political appointees make policy. Their thinking is bolstered by Congresses who stonewall and delay approving personnel for leadership positions in the civil service.

[May 28, 2019] Fake Dossier -Creator Steele Refuses To Cooperate With AG Barr s Probe

May 28, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Having been practically a recluse since since the 'fake dossier' alleging links between Donald Trump and Russia that he produced was published by BuzzFeed in January 2017, Christophe Steele has reportedly refused to cooperate with AG Barr's probes

Reuters reports that , according to a source with knowledge of the situation, Steele, a former Russia expert for the British spy agency MI6, will not answer questions from prosecutor John Durham , named by Barr to examine the origins of the investigations into Trump and his campaign team.

However, buried deep in Reuters story is the same source claiming that Steele might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department's Inspector General into how U.S. law enforcement agencies handled pre-election investigations into both Trump and Clinton.

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In the past Steele has cooperated, willingly being interviewed twice in the special counsel's investigation, and submitting answers in writing to the Senate Intelligence Committee, but apparently this time he is not willing.

With Steel refusing to cooperate, Joe DiGenova, former U.S. Attorney warned Monday on WMAL radio's Mornings on the Mall radio show,

"this is full scale war," adding that "we are heading toward a gigantic, gigantic fight...

The intelligence community, which includes the FBI, is in full resistance to disclosing what they did during the presidential campaign ."

Sara Carter reports that DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz is expected to release his report on the FBI's handling of the investigation into Trump within weeks.

These investigation will hold those in the intelligence and law enforcement community accountable, depending on what evidence is discovered. This reporter is hearing from sources that it will be scathing. Those who abused their power and weaponized the tools meant to target America's enemies against a political opponents should be held accountable . Tags Politics Law Crime


Joiningupthedots , just now link

It seems reasonable to demand Steele's extradition to America to explain his part in the conspiracy.

I mean is being a party to the conspiracy, attempted treason and sedition of the attempted overthrow of an elected President not at least as important as Julian Assange who only made public some documents that someone else removed?

Whats the phrase again.........SLAM DUNK?

ufos8mycow , 2 minutes ago link

Steele might cooperate with a parallel inquiry by the Justice Department's Inspector General

Because the IG doesn't have prosecutorial power.

takeaction , 4 minutes ago link

Oh these fuckers are scared to death. Comey lashing out at Trump...on and on. This is going to be great...and Trump will play it perfect right into the election. And BIDEN was part of all of it. What a great next 6 years.

...never forget SETH.

Finally...is Ruth Ginsburg still alive?

Meat Hammer , 4 minutes ago link

If you haz nussing to hide you haz nussing to feah.

LordMaster , 7 minutes ago link

Funny, I was recently de-platformed on Twitter for tweeting to GCHQ (British Intelligence) that the UK's sordid involvement in spying on the Trump campaign would be exposed and "no amount of British bluster could refute it...".

JCW Industries , 7 minutes ago link

He'll talk to (((Horowitz))), but not Barr. Another reason not to trust the IG whitewash. Sure seems like Obstruction of Justice to me.

Fedaykinx , 7 minutes ago link

Wait, wasn't he willing to cooperate with a different investigation? I wonder what's changed, Mr. Steele?

Cman5000 , 9 minutes ago link

Poster boy for rendition!

DarkPurpleHaze , 5 minutes ago link

He's lucky to still be walking around given his extensive knowledge of how this went down.

Maybe he'll cooperate and go into a witness protection program of sorts or simply just disappear.

[May 26, 2019] Global Elites Started The Russia Nonsense by Thomas Farnan

Russiagate is definitely connected to military industrial complex. But it is also connect to the attempt of neoliberal elite to cements cracks in the neoliberal facade of the US global empire by using external scapegoat. British elite was traditionally Russophobic as they competed for influence with Russia and tried to prevent alliance of Germany and Russia.
Notable quotes:
"... The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that's how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence". ..."
"... Unconventional candidate Donald Trump " rattled Washington " to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO's continued relevance and questioned America's foreign policy in Ukraine. ..."
"... That's when this "Putin's candidate" stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats " egged on by Ukrainians " who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat " in the dossier. ..."
"... Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let's fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense. ..."
May 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Thomas Farnan via Human Events,

Attorney General William Barr has turned the attention of the Russia probe to its origin. Who started this and why? The answer, as in all the best crime dramas, is probably hiding in plain sight.

On August 11, 2018" I wrote :

The British aristocracy has a condescending view of the hoi polloi who voted for Brexit, regarding them as easily manipulated Pygmalion-like by smarter people. They assumed Vladimir Putin was somehow playing Professor Henry Higgins to the flower girls who voted to reject the EU, because that's how they see the world. Among the Cambridge class, this simple prejudice renders Russian collusion a first principle with no need for supporting evidence".

Without supporting evidence to prove their fantastical worldview, the global elite set out to manufacture some.

...

President Eisenhower " the furthest thing from a conspiracy theorist America has ever produced " famously warned in his farewell address to beware "the military industrial complex"

The great funding pipeline that makes Washington D.C. the wealthiest region in America feeds mostly on military spending which still, nearly thirty years removed from the Cold War, requires a Russian enemy.

Unconventional candidate Donald Trump " rattled Washington " to its core in March 2016 when he wondered about NATO's continued relevance and questioned America's foreign policy in Ukraine.

That's when this "Putin's candidate" stuff started among both Republicans and Democrats " egged on by Ukrainians " who almost certainly fed Steele the fake kompromat " in the dossier.

Russia may be a convenient boogeyman that serves as a necessary foil to both sides in the Washington establishment. But, for once, let's fight the real enemy: the global elites who started this nonsense.


novictim , 41 minutes ago link

Why all the fuss about Russia? Liberal elites – who tended to love the Soviet Union – hate present day Russia, which dares to assert nationality and culture against the pieties of the one-world-order crowd.

I can confirm. This is what American Leftist Operatives who travel to Russia to organize coops, etc have told me.

novictim , 50 minutes ago link

Also note that, while Russia is the designated Villain, the real threat since the 1980s onward has actually been the Chinese. But the up until now had managed to co-opt both Parties via the doctrine of constructive engagement and NeoLiberal Free Trade.

"Make China prosperous and the factory of the world and then it will adopt Republican Democracy!", they said.

Ya. Not so much.

Russia was the excuse to build the high tech fighters but no one dared to name China for fear of losing financial support coming from industries now dependent on the good graces of the Chinese Communist Party.

Thank your lucky stars that someone had the ability and ego to step in and expose this mess for what it was.

novictim , 57 minutes ago link

military - industrial - congressional complex (MICC)

Do not leave out the USA House and Senate. We know that many of these dirt bags are just as slimy as those in the Labour or Tory parties.

King Friday the 13th , 3 hours ago link

The word "hysteria" isn't used nearly enough in analyses like these. Hysteria is almost defined by the complete absence of thought or rationality, which characterizes the useful idiots who are the target of this propaganda.

mendigo , 4 hours ago link

Our government is too easily manipulated to serve narrow interest groups (with money) rather than the interest of the nation (as constuted) or of the people (who generally dont have money). Also the legal system does not seem to be serving the law - has dispensed with the concept of intent.

Those who strive to serve and benefit from interests of industry or foreign governments should be investigated and tried for treason (where warranted)

The Bushes and Cheney and Hitlary should be tried for war crimes.

Boing, Microsoft, Google should be broken up.

[May 26, 2019] May Ends In June by W Stephen Gilbert

It is unclear whether May really wanted to implement Brexit deal but at least she negotiated several EU offers. It was UK Parliament that rejects the offers.
I think May claim to fame might be not her failure in Brexit negotiation, but orchestration of infamous Skripals poisoning false flag and the bout of Russophobia, as well as her attempt to interfere with the 2016 elections in the USA.
Notable quotes:
"... History will not be kind to Theresa May. By the standards she forthrightly set herself at the outset of her premiership, she has been a dismal failure. ..."
"... she became, in George Osborne's devastating phrase, "a dead woman walking". ..."
"... a political nonentity of such crushing mediocrity and insignificance that even when standing in direct sunlight she casts no shadow. A third-rate office manager elevated light years beyond her intellectual capacity, professional capabilities and pay grade. A national embarrassment and global laughing stock ..."
"... When May was elected Tory leader and hence prime minister, the field of choice was notable for its lightweight uniformity. ..."
"... the quality of leadership of the party has been modest at best for years. Among Tory leaders since the war, only Margaret Thatcher has managed to catch the climate of her time and impose her personality on a discernible period, however much one may deplore that climate and that period. ..."
"... What is striking about Conservative politics is that those who wish to hold onto power and wealth for their own class and who have the ambition and talent and imagination to make a difference do not go into politics. They become entrepreneurs, traders, speculators. There is too much regulation and self-abnegation in politics for such people. Look back over the leadership of the Tory party and you get to Harold Macmillan before you encounter anyone who came from a (brief) career in business. ..."
"... We are now told that she is "a patriot" – the last refuge of a political scoundrel – and that she has "tried her best", which was clearly grossly inadequate to the task ..."
"... The wars are over for Britain. Become a global reliable trading nation that honors contracts and business ties, the very elements that made Britain Great. It sure has not been the Wars especially the poodle wars. You laugh at May's tears and under performance but you may as well be looking at yourselves. ..."
"... Why should Britain be holding Venezuela Gold on behalf of Donald Trump? There is no yield in this, there is no value but a soiled reputation as an unreliable trader. Banks in Britain should be honest dealers not playing politics with contracts. ..."
"... It's not clear that all MI5/MI6 operatives are remainers. I suspect they are as divided as everyone else. The gang who attacked Trump simply did it because it was business and not personal. They even outsourced to Steele because they thought it might be cheaper. Outsourcing is perceived as cool in government circles and makes people feel good about themselves. It's the deep state offering value for money. ..."
"... May has done precisely what she was tasked to do by the Establishment: First to "negotiate" a Withdrawal deal that "Only the loser of a major war would agree to" after wasting two years, then do everything else possible to delay Brexit as long as possible and water it down to the point that the UK would even with a "delivered Brexit" still essentially be bound to the EU indefinitely. ..."
"... The final irony here is that it is ultimately only Parliament's duplicity and treachery, in spite of the fact that Parliament desperately wanted to ensure the UK "Remain", which has prevented her and the Globalists from achieving their goals through what they believed to be a process of "subtle subterfuge". ..."
"... She will indeed go down in history as a footnote of no significance or perhaps as the PM who showed the greatest betrayal of the British people on behalf of the Establishment ..."
May 26, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by W Stephen Gilbert via Off-Guardian.org,

History will not be kind to Theresa May. By the standards she forthrightly set herself at the outset of her premiership, she has been a dismal failure. She proposed that, contrary to most impartial expectation, she would be a socially liberal prime minister who would strive to relieve the economic pressure on the poorest members of British society (the briefly famous "just about managing"), but the only small concessions towards the relief of poverty that have been wrung from her government have done nothing to reduce the incidence of homelessness, food banks and wage rates that undershoot the demands made by private landlords, services starved of funds and price rises.

And that's without even mentioning Brexit.

Following the self-inflicted disaster of the 2017 general election, in which May utterly failed to project herself with any conviction as "strong and stable", she became, in George Osborne's devastating phrase, "a dead woman walking".

That campaign was the most complacent, least effective ever fought by a major political party in Britain, and the only explanation for the media's astonishment at the result can be that editors and columnists had so convinced themselves that they had rendered Jeremy Corbyn, in their description of choice, "unelectable" that they could see no outcome other than a thumping Tory victory. What they could not see was that Corbyn is an inspired and inspiring campaigner, while May is as dull as ditchwater.

The social media commentator Aidan Daley summed her up admirably: "Mayvis: a political nonentity of such crushing mediocrity and insignificance that even when standing in direct sunlight she casts no shadow. A third-rate office manager elevated light years beyond her intellectual capacity, professional capabilities and pay grade. A national embarrassment and global laughing stock ".

This unsparing but unarguable buttonholing raises a historical problem for the Conservative Party that shows no sign of quick resolution. When May was elected Tory leader and hence prime minister, the field of choice was notable for its lightweight uniformity. Given the length of her cabinet experience, May clearly outshone her rivals, if not in charisma (a quality conspicuously lacking from the field). But the quality of leadership of the party has been modest at best for years. Among Tory leaders since the war, only Margaret Thatcher has managed to catch the climate of her time and impose her personality on a discernible period, however much one may deplore that climate and that period.

What is striking about Conservative politics is that those who wish to hold onto power and wealth for their own class and who have the ambition and talent and imagination to make a difference do not go into politics. They become entrepreneurs, traders, speculators. There is too much regulation and self-abnegation in politics for such people. Look back over the leadership of the Tory party and you get to Harold Macmillan before you encounter anyone who came from a (brief) career in business.

Comparing May with Thatcher and Macmillan is instructive.

May has failed to create any sort of arresting public persona for herself. Aside from the tiresome bromide "Brexit means Brexit", she has turned no phrase that immediately summons her to mind. Who could essay her political philosophy, other than hanging on grimly against insuperable odds and paying heed to no advice?

She has no imagination, no resourcefulness, no wit and no management skills. When pressed, she retreats to prepared responses, regardless of their irrelevance to the question in hand. We are now told that she is "a patriot" – the last refuge of a political scoundrel – and that she has "tried her best", which was clearly grossly inadequate to the task .

The mainstream media will be eternally grateful to her for betraying emotion at the end of her resignation statement, thereby providing the "human interest" angle that cements the moment in history and will be trotted out in every story about the May premiership for ever after, much like Thatcher's tear-stained face in the back of the limo as it pulled away from Downing Street for the last time. Whether this emotion sits appropriately with the "dignity" that her admirers are rushing to credit to her is a question for others to ponder.

Attention now turns to her successor. Vast though the field is, it is again notable for its lightweight nature. Smart money will be on Rory Stewart, already a media darling and a politician unusually capable of sounding thoughtful and candid. He also has the advantage of having led a colourful pre-politics life, thereby bringing instincts to his politics from beyond the confines of career consultants and spads. But most speculation centres on Boris Johnson, despite the high level of suspicion that he generates among Tory MPs. He is said to be enthusiastically supported at the grassroots.

In this as in other aspects, he brings to mind Donald Trump. If Rory Stewart would offer a safe pair of hands, Johnson would suggest a Trump-like level of gaffes and embarrassments, thrills and spills.


CashMcCall , 5 hours ago link

Britain's Chief problem is that it has become a US poodle for nothing. Essentially insolvent and small Britain indulges in middle East Wars and US Sanctions and Boycotts. What do they get in return? Nothing at all.

This is a giant hangover from WWII. It wasn't enough that WWII destroyed Britain, the US had to take advantage of it in the Anglo American loan and Bretton Woods.

Anyone that has studied WWII knows it was the Russians that killed Germany, not the US and most certainly not Britain, though cracking the Enigma was certainly useful. But it was Brute force of the Russians a KURSK that laid waste to Germany.

The US came out of the War essentially unscathed. Britain was bombed out rubble. The US took full advantage with hard terms in their Anglo American Loan.

The relationship of the US to Britain is more like Abusive parent to abused child. It is anything but equals. The US only calls on Britain for British Intelligence, or military support to do something stupid like engage in the Iraq war. The poodle does as told.

ARM was founded in Britain. Now sold to Softbank in Japan. It was the INTEL giant killer. Had Britain not been a poodle to the US, this one company would have been a driving force in 5G. But the Abusive parent, essentially told the Brits who could and could not associate with ARM. Now in an even more abused poodle Japan, the world's most emasculated nation. Brits take their marching order from Donald Trump a bloody moron.

The Tide is out on the British Empire. It is irrelevant at this point what happens with Brexit. Stall long enough and nobody will care. Instead of branching out and leading in 5G, they are following their abused parent into the dark ages.

Britain should be making its own deals with China while the US is foundering under Turmp. Some businesses are such as Rolls Royce that is offering a Rolls Royce jet engine plant to forward China's local and narrowbody jets. Britain can come in and be a reliable partner with Huawei and get access to the largest markets in global history China and Asia. Instead the Gov. wants the UK to be just a US poodle lucky to get a few scraps.

Protectionism can NEVER work in Britain. The Isles NEED TRADE. They cannot survive without out it. Yet here they are with their brilliant engineering taking orders from Donald Trump the idiots idiot.

May was just a symptom of the Poodle problem. Do as told, show no spine and live in the shadow of the USA abuser parent. That is why NO PM in the UK casts a shadow. They are under the oppressive shadow of the US. Taking orders, Killing off British soldiers for nothing.

The wars are over for Britain. Become a global reliable trading nation that honors contracts and business ties, the very elements that made Britain Great. It sure has not been the Wars especially the poodle wars. You laugh at May's tears and under performance but you may as well be looking at yourselves.

Brexit under the shadow of the USA just strengthens the choke chain in Trump's insane hand. You become dependent on an unreliable country with the most unreliable administration in US History. As they do now, they dictate where you may trade and to whom you may sell your products... and you go along with it like an obedient abused child seeking approval of the Parent Abuser.

Get some spine and break ties with the USA that are carrying you into the abyss. Why should Britain be holding Venezuela Gold on behalf of Donald Trump? There is no yield in this, there is no value but a soiled reputation as an unreliable trader. Banks in Britain should be honest dealers not playing politics with contracts. Every country in the world is looking at this British poodle conduct. No country wants to deal with a poodle that refuses to return assets or that weaponizes Trade. You are cutting your throats for any future global investment FOR NOTHING!

caesium , 5 hours ago link

It's not clear that all MI5/MI6 operatives are remainers. I suspect they are as divided as everyone else. The gang who attacked Trump simply did it because it was business and not personal. They even outsourced to Steele because they thought it might be cheaper. Outsourcing is perceived as cool in government circles and makes people feel good about themselves. It's the deep state offering value for money.

GreatUncle , 6 hours ago link

May achieved what she set out to do being a BREMAINER from the outset.

To block, stall and prevent at all costs BREXIT.

As a BREXIT supporter thank you May because you created a new party in the process as an alternative to the fake" Conservative BREXIT party" and the EU Labour Custom Union slaves". I swear Labour = Democrats in the US and their belief in social slavery to them.

When can we get them EU election figures ... as this is going to be such fun if the BREXIT party manages to achieve an overwhelming vote it is like a 2nd referendum on the previous referendum. ... Fingers crossed here though because you just know MI5 / MI6 and all the other mercenaries are going to be ballot stuffing like **** and with no exit polls to prevent the electoral fraud they will be carrying out on the orders of their paymasters.

philipat , 7 hours ago link

Spare the tears, **** you got exactly what you deserved for your betrayal of British democracy whilst constantly lying and pretending to support both UK AND US values.

May has done precisely what she was tasked to do by the Establishment: First to "negotiate" a Withdrawal deal that "Only the loser of a major war would agree to" after wasting two years, then do everything else possible to delay Brexit as long as possible and water it down to the point that the UK would even with a "delivered Brexit" still essentially be bound to the EU indefinitely.

The final irony here is that it is ultimately only Parliament's duplicity and treachery, in spite of the fact that Parliament desperately wanted to ensure the UK "Remain", which has prevented her and the Globalists from achieving their goals through what they believed to be a process of "subtle subterfuge".

The ONLY way forward now is a "Hard" Brexit because Parliament has rejected everything else, it is still the legal default position which does NOT legally require approval by Parliament and it restores the negotiating position with the EU that May deliberately pissed away over two years. And the lesson here to other countries wanting to get out of the clutches of Brussels is this; If you want to leave the EU, JUST LEAVE. Let the Bureaucrats work out the details later; they aren't that important.

She will indeed go down in history as a footnote of no significance or perhaps as the PM who showed the greatest betrayal of the British people on behalf of the Establishment

**** off and go away to enjoy the corrupt benefits of your service to the Globalists until you RIP.

Dr. Acula , 8 hours ago link

May fits in with the other Prime Ministers of the Paedoph Isles:

"Rules which bar sex offenders from working with children are 'unfair' and even convicted paedophiles should have the right to adopt, a leading legal academic has said."

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/conservative/8201521/Sex-offenders-including-paedophiles-should-be-allowed-to-adopt-Theresa-May-told.html

"UK Government Under Gordon Brown Urged Police not to Investigate Muslim Child Rape Gangs"

https://voat.co/v/pizzagate/3239461

[May 23, 2019] Reading Docherty and MacGregor opened my eyes. WW I is the watershed moment. It began via the machinations of a cabal. The devastation they wrought is continued today by their successors.

May 23, 2019 | www.unz.com

Jus' Sayin'... , says: Next New Comment May 22, 2019 at 3:41 pm GMT

A great analysis that says a lot that needs to be said.

I have just one quibble with the following reference:

"In a way, they are a new incarnation of the Cecil Rhodes Society. "

In fact, Rhodes was a secondary player in a much larger network organized by the British colonial administrator, Alfred Milner ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfred_Milner,_1st_Viscount_Milner ). The prominent American historian, Carroll Quigley ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carroll_Quigley ), first uncovered this network during research in the 1950s.

The two British historians, Gerry Docherty and Jim MacGregor, expanded on Quigley's work and wrote two meticulously researched and documented accounts of their findings:

(1) "Hidden History: The Secret Origins of the First World War" ( https://www.amazon.com/Hidden-History-Secret-Origins-First/dp/1780576307/ref=sr_1_2?crid=3MB722Y6Y5J4E&keywords=hidden+history&qid=1558539022&s=books&sprefix=Hidden+History%2Caps%2C137&sr=1-2 )

and

(2) "Prolonging the Agony: How The Anglo-American Establishment Deliberately Extended WWI by Three-and-a-Half Years."( https://www.amazon.com/Prolonging-Agony-Anglo-American-Three-Half/dp/1634241568/ref=sr_1_1?keywords=Prolonging+the+agony&qid=1558539238&s=books&sr=1-1-catcorr )

Anyone with an interest in 20th century history who is unfamiliar with these books owes it to himself to read them. For some forty years I have had an amateur historian's interest in WW I and read widely in the standard literature on that topic. Reading Docherty and MacGregor opened my eyes. Much that seemed inexplicable became clear, seemingly unconnected events suddenly correlated. WW I is the watershed moment that has defined the twentieth century and continues to define the twenty-first. It began with the machinations of a cabal. The devastation they wrought is continued today by their successors.

[May 19, 2019] Why The Takedown Of Heinz-Christian Strache Will Strengthen The Right

Notable quotes:
"... In July 2017 Strache and his right hand man Johann Gudenus, who is also the big number in the FPOe, get invited for dinner to a rented villa on Ibiza, the Spanish tourist island in the Mediterranean. They are told that the daughter of a Russian billionaire plans large investments in Austria. It was said that she would like to help his party. The alleged daughter of the Russian billionaire, who is actually also Austrian, and her "friend" serve an expensive dinner. Alcohol flows freely. The pair offers a large party donation but asks for returns in form of mark ups on public contracts. ..."
"... Unknown to Strache the villa is professionally bugged with many hidden cameras and microphones. ..."
"... The right-wing parties will use the case to boost their legitimacy. ..."
"... Strache was obviously set up by some intelligence services, probably a German one with a British assist. The original aim was likely to blackmail him. But during the meeting on Ibiza Strache promised and did nothing illegal. Looking for potential support for his party is not a sin. Neither is discussing investments in Austria with a "daughter of a Russian oligarch." Some boosting while drunk is hardly a reason to go to jail. When the incident provided too little material to claim that Strache is corrupt, the video was held back until the right moment to politically assassinate him with the largest potential damage to his party. That moment was thought to be now. ..."
"... The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami. It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions. ..."
"... The political assassination of Christian Strache is unjust. What was done during the 2007-8 banking crisis was utterly corrupt and also unjust. Instead of going to jail the bankers were rewarded with extreme amounts of money for their assault on the well being of the people. The public was then told that it must starve through austerity to make up for the loss of money. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

During the last days a right wing politician in Austria was taken down by using an elaborate sting. Until Friday Heinz-Christian Strache was leader of the far right (but not fascist) Freedom Party of Austria (FPOe) and the Vice Chancellor of the country. On Friday morning two German papers, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung and Der Spiegel published (German) reports (English) about an old video that was made to take Strache down.

The FPOe has good connections with United Russia, the party of the Russian President Putin, and to other right-wing parties in east Europe. It's pro-Russian position has led to verbal attacks on and defamation of the party from NATO supporting and neoliberal circles.

In July 2017 Strache and his right hand man Johann Gudenus, who is also the big number in the FPOe, get invited for dinner to a rented villa on Ibiza, the Spanish tourist island in the Mediterranean. They are told that the daughter of a Russian billionaire plans large investments in Austria. It was said that she would like to help his party. The alleged daughter of the Russian billionaire, who is actually also Austrian, and her "friend" serve an expensive dinner. Alcohol flows freely. The pair offers a large party donation but asks for returns in form of mark ups on public contracts.

Unknown to Strache the villa is professionally bugged with many hidden cameras and microphones.


A scene from the video. Source: Der Falter (vid, German)

During the six hour long party several schemes get proposed by the "Russian" and are discussed. Strache rejects most of them. He insists several times that everything they plan or do must be legal and conform to the law. He says that a large donation could probably be funneled through an endowment that would then support his party. It is a gray area under Austrian party financing laws. They also discuss if the "Russian" could buy the Kronen Zeitung , Austria's powerful tabloid, and use it to prop up his party.

The evening goes on with several bottles of vodka on the table. Starche gets a bit drunk and boosts in front of the "oligarch daughter" about all his connections to rich and powerful people. He does not actually have these.

Strache says that, in exchange for help for his party, the "Russian" could get public contracts for highway building and repair. Currently most of such contracts in Austria go to the large Austrian company, STRABAG, that is owned by a neoliberal billionaire who opposes the FPOe. At that time Strache was not yet in the government and had no way to decide about such contracts.

At one point Strache seems to understand that the whole thing is a setup. But his right hand man calms him down and vouches for the "Russian". The sting ends with Strache and his companion leaving the place. The never again see the "Russian" and her co-plotter. Nothing they talked about will ever come to fruition.

Three month later Strache and his party win more than 20% in the Austrian election and form a coalition government with the conservative party OeVP led by Chancellor Sebastian Kurz. Even while the FPOe controls several ministries, it does not achieve much politically. It lacks a real program and the government's policies are mostly run by the conservatives.

Nearly two years after the evening on Ibiza, ten days before the European parliament election in which Strache's party is predicted to achieve good results, a video of the evening on Ibiza is handed to two German papers which are known to be have strong transatlanticist leanings and have previously been used for other shady 'leaks'. The papers do not hesitate to take part in the plot and publish extensive reports about the video.

After the reports appeared Strache immediately stepped down and the conservatives ended the coalition with his party. Austria will now have new elections.

On Bloomberg Leonid Bershidsky opines on the case:

Strache's discussion with the Russian oligarch's fake niece shows a propensity for dirty dealing that has nothing to do with idealistic nationalism. Nationalist populists often agitate against entrenched, corrupt elites and pledge to drain various swamps. In the videos, however, Strache and Gudenus behave like true swamp creatures, savoring rumors of drug and sex scandals in Austrian politics and discussing how to create an authoritarian media machine like Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's.

I do not believe that the people who voted for the FPOe (and similar parties in other countries) will subscribe to that view. The politics of the main stream parties in Austria have for decades been notoriously corrupt. Compared to them Strache and his party are astonishingly clean. In the video he insists several times that everything must stay within the legal realm. Whenever the "Russian" puts forward a likely illegal scheme, Starche emphatically rejects it.

Bershidsky continues:

Strache, as one of the few nationalist populists in government in the European Union's wealthier member states, was an important member of the movement Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini has been trying to cobble together ahead of the European Parliament election that will take place next week. On Saturday, he was supposed to attend a Salvini-led rally in Milan with other like-minded politicians from across Europe. Instead, he was in Vienna apologizing to his wife and to Kurz and protesting pitifully that he'd been the victim of a "political assassination" -- a poisonous rain on the Italian right-winger's parade.
...
This leaves the European far right in disarray and plays into the hands of centrist and leftist forces ahead of next week's election. Salvini's unifying effort has been thoroughly undermined, ...

This is also a misreading of the case. The right-wing parties will use the case to boost their legitimacy.

Strache was obviously set up by some intelligence services, probably a German one with a British assist. The original aim was likely to blackmail him. But during the meeting on Ibiza Strache promised and did nothing illegal. Looking for potential support for his party is not a sin. Neither is discussing investments in Austria with a "daughter of a Russian oligarch." Some boosting while drunk is hardly a reason to go to jail. When the incident provided too little material to claim that Strache is corrupt, the video was held back until the right moment to politically assassinate him with the largest potential damage to his party. That moment was thought to be now.

But that Strache stepped down after the sudden media assault only makes him more convincing. The right-wing all over Europe will see him as a martyr who was politically assassinated because he worked for their cause. The issue will increase the right-wingers hate against the 'liberal' establishment. It will further motivate them: "They attack us because we are right and winning." The new far-right block Natteo Salvini will setup in the European Parliament will likely receive a record share of votes.

Establishment writers notoriously misinterpret the new right wing parties and their followers. This stand-offish sentence in the Spiegel story about Strache's party demonstrates the problem:

In the last election, the party drew significant support from the working class, in part because of his ability to simplify even the most complicated of issues and play the common man, even in his role as vice chancellor.

The implicit thesis, that the working class is too dumb to understand the "most complicated of issues", is not only incredibly snobbish but utterly false. The working class understands very well what the establishment parties have done to it and continue to do. The increasing vote share of the far-right is a direct consequence of the behavior of the neoliberal center and of the lack of real left alternatives.

Last week, before the Strache video appeared, Craig Murray put his finger on the wound:

The massive economic shock following the banking collapse of 2007–8 is the direct cause of the crisis of confidence which is affecting almost all the institutions of western representative democracy. The banking collapse was not a natural event, like a tsunami. It was a direct result of man-made systems and artifices which permitted wealth to be generated and hoarded primarily through multiple financial transactions rather than by the actual production and sale of concrete goods, and which then disproportionately funnelled wealth to those engaged in the mechanics of the transactions.

...

The rejection of the political class manifests itself in different ways and has been diverted down a number of entirely blind alleys giving unfulfilled promise of a fresh start – Brexit, Trump, Macron. As the vote share of the established political parties – and public engagement with established political institutions – falls everywhere, the chattering classes deride the political symptoms of status quo rejection by the people as "populism". It is not populism to make sophisticated arguments that undermine the received political wisdom and take on the entire weight of established media opinion.

If one wants to take down the far right one has to do so with arguments and good politics for the working class. Most people, especially working class people, have a strong sense for justice. The political assassination of Christian Strache is unjust. What was done during the 2007-8 banking crisis was utterly corrupt and also unjust. Instead of going to jail the bankers were rewarded with extreme amounts of money for their assault on the well being of the people. The public was then told that it must starve through austerity to make up for the loss of money.

While I consider myself to be a strong leftist who opposes the right wherever possible, I believe to understand why people vote for Strache's FBOe and similar parties. When one talks to these people issues of injustice and inequality always come up. The new 'populist' parties at least claim to fight against the injustice done to the common men. Unlike most of the establishment parties they seem to be still mostly clean and not yet corrupted.

In the early 1990s Strache actually flirted with violent fascists but he rejected their way. While he has far-right opinions, he and his like are no danger to our societies. If we can not accept that Strache and his followers have some legitimate causes, we will soon find us confronted with way more extreme people. The neoliberal establishment seems to do its best to achieve that.

Posted by b on May 19, 2019 at 01:10 PM | Permalink

[May 19, 2019] Intel agencies of the UK and US are guilty of fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing fake analysis and operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers. ..."
"... the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Couple of factors not mentioned. one is Israel and the other is more sinister still and tied to the conclusions to be drawn from the Mueller report.

it may be true that Skripal helped Steele with some elements of the dossier compiled by Steele, via SKripals handler Pablo Miller. It may be true that Skripal went "stir crazy" and an attempt was made to silence him and his daughter - permanently, because they simply cold not be trusted. a similar motivation could be drawn up against Russia - with the two Russians visiting Salisbury used as diversionary "stool pigeons". It may be true that the "poisoning" was self inflicted and was in fact a murder/suicide attempt as a result of depression along the ines "what's the point of it all".

what is true is that May was judge, jury and executioner in convicting Russia of the poisoning and refused to follow an evidence based discovery process that lies at the heart of the UK justice system - by hiding behind those powers that the UK intelligence community "needs" in order to protect british (not russian, british) citizens from the sinister influences of foreign powers.

what ought to be apparent is

- the same tactics used by the special prosecutor to investigate the "Russia collusion" smoke screen erected by the howler monkeys in the US intel agencies (aided and abetter by howler monkeys in UK intel agencies) to stymie the US executive branch (Trump) are likely to be used by the the UK government and some more as well - in true Le Carre fashion, but with much dumber and less principled actors than Smiley's people.

these tactics prevented (and continue to prevent) investigation and prosecution of heinous corruption within the obama administration of the previous 8 years - these howler monkey intelligence agency tactics include(d) entrapment, honeypots, racketeering, blackmail, de facto kidnapping (in the case of Skripals), bribery, wire fraud, unauthorized wire-tapping, breach of authorized intel agency activities (like the FBI operating overseas and the CIA operating domestically in the US, false and unverified claims in FISA warrants, NSA providing unauthorized information to the CIA and FBI etc)

- given the howler monkey activities of the alphabet soup, it is not beyond the imagination to draw parallels with the CIA's reporting and analysis of situations on the ground wherever they operate to provide intel ahead of military activity. the DOD has already proved complicit by hiring Halper (for hundreds of thousands of dollars) to assist with the entrapment of Trump operative Papadopoulos. Mifsud is likely a CIA, not a Russian, asset.

- given that we have ample evidence of the howler monkeys in the alphabet soup seeking to facilitate a coup against a sitting US president, it is certainly plausible that - as with the US goverment sponsoring the mujaheedin, isis and al qaeda in afghanistan to fight the russians in late 80's early 90's, Iraq yellow cake and WMD - that the howler monkeys paid the white helmets to ovethrow assad and foment civil war in Syria - thus causing the migration of some 5 million syrians into europe, iraq, turkey, jordan, turkey and lebanon.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_Helmets_(Syrian_Civil_War)

so , the case is that howler monkey activity in intel agencies of the UK and US (add (F)rance to get FUKUS) are guilty of the manufacture of human conflict by fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing shitty analysis (howler monkeys are only good at swinging in trees and flinging ****) and generally operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity.

this can only be brought into sharp relief if howler monkey activities were instead shown to be powers for good rather than the geo-political risks that persist in Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Yemen, Libya and so on and so forth.

Never mind how much past conflicts in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and so on relied on evidence and analysis thrown at us by the howler monkeys in the tree tops, how much of what we we are doing now is a fabrication causing needless suffering by civilian (not politicians or military engaged in conflict) populations?

the criminal activities of howler monkeys, like Strzok, Page, Brennan, McCabe, SUSAN RICE, Comey, Ohr, BIDEN, OBAMA, etc in the USA are bad enough (whilst hardly impacting civilian life in the US - BUT - the tactics used have been deployed to starve, cause disease, "dumb down", reduce life chances all over the middle east and elsewhere for countless millions of people.

there are equivalents of strzok, page, ohr right throughout the US and UK government "machines" operating overseas. think about that. crimes exposed by Barr et al in the US - against a sitting president - are replicated wherever howler monkeys operate overseas as well.

[May 19, 2019] The OPCW, Douma, The Skripals

Notable quotes:
"... The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East. ..."
"... Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense. ..."
"... A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time. ..."
"... The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation. ..."
"... The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know. ..."
"... The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect. ..."
"... Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later). ..."
"... The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all. ..."
"... She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day. ..."
"... If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East. ..."
"... So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility? ..."
"... This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first. ..."
"... If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this. ..."
"... But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval. ..."
"... The UK were the most vocal about Syria, and desperately tried to drum up support over Skripal, but it all came to nothing much in the end. ..."
"... Theresa May's political career still hangs by a thread, and her "Falklands moment", at best, staved off the inevitable for a few months. A washout in the EU elections, a very real threat from Farage's Brexit party, and rumblings inside her own party, make her position as unstable as ever. ..."
"... In the US, generally speaking, it seems that the Trump admin – or at least whichever interested parties currently have control of the wheels of government – have called time on war in Syria. Instead, they've moved on to projects in Venezuela and North Korea, and even war with Iran. ..."
"... The failure of the Douma false flag to cause the war it was meant to cause, and the vast collection of evidence that suggests it was a false flag, should be spread far and wide. Not just because it's a truth which vindicates the smeared minority in the alternate media. ..."
May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Off-Guardian.org,

In view of the latest revelations from the leaked report, which seem to prove that at least some elements of the Douma "chemical attack" were entirely staged, we want to take look back at the chaotic events of Spring 2018.

The following is an extract from an article by Catte originally published April 14th last year, which takes on a greater weight in light of certain evidence – not only that the Douma attack was faked, but that the OPCW is compromised.

You can read the whole article here .

* * *

PRIMARILY UK INITIATIVE?

The neocon faction in the US is usually (and reasonably) regarded as the motivator behind much of the western aggression in the Middle East.

Since at least 2001 and the launch of the "War on Terror" the US has led the way in finding or creating facile excuses to fight oil wars and hegemonic wars and proxy wars in the region. But this time the dynamics look a little different.

This time it really looks as if the UK has been setting the pace of the "response".

The fact (as stated above) that Mattis was apparently telegraphing his own private doubts a)about the verifiability of the attacks, and b)about the dangers of a military response suggests he was a far from enthusiastic partaker in this adventure.

Trump's attitude is harder to gauge. His tweets veered wildly between unhinged threats and apparent efforts at conciliation. But he must have known he would lose (and seemingly has lost) a great part of his natural voter base (who elected him on a no-more-war mandate) by an act of open aggression that threatened confrontation with Russia on the flimsiest of pretexts.

Granted the US has been looking for excuses to intervene ever more overtly in Syria since 2013, and in that sense this Douma "initiative" is a continuation of their longterm policy. It's also true Russia was warning just such a false flag would be attempted in early March. But in the intervening month the situation on the ground has changed so radically that such an attempt no longer made any sense.

A false flag in early March, while pockets of the US proxy army were still holding ground in Ghouta would have enabled a possible offensive in their support which would prevent Ghouta falling entirely into government hands and thereby also maintain the pressure on Damascus. A false flag in early April is all but useless because the US proxy army in the region was completely vanquished and nothing would be gained by an offensive in that place at that time.

You can see why Mattis and others in the administration might be reluctant to take part in the false flag/punitive air strike narrative if they saw nothing currently to be gained to repay the risk. They may have preferred to wait for developments and plan for a more productive way of playing the R2P card in the future.

The US media has been similarly, and uncharacteristically divided and apparently unsure. Tucker Carlson railed against the stupidity of attacking Syria. Commentators on MSNBC were also expressing intense scepticism of the US intent and fear about possible escalation.

The UK govt and media on the other hand has been much more homogeneous in advocating for action. No doubts of the type expressed by Mattis have been heard from the lips of an UK government minister. Even May, a cowardly PM, has been (under how much pressure?) voicing sterling certitude in public that action HAD to be taken.

Couple this with the – as yet unverified – claims by Russia of direct UK involvement in arranging the Douma "attack", and the claims by Syria that the perps are in their custody, and a tentative storyline emerges. It's possible this time there were other considerations in the mix beside the usual need to "be seen to do something" and Trump's perpetual requirement to appease the liberal Russiagaters and lunatic warmongers at home. Maybe this time it was also about helping the UK out of a sticky problem.

THE SKRIPAL CONSIDERATION

Probably the only thing we can all broadly agree on about the Skripal narrative is that it manifestly did not go according to plan. However it was intended to play out, it wasn't this way. Since some time in mid to late March it's been clear the entire thing has become little more than an exercise in damage-limitation, leak-plugging and general containment.

The official story is a hot mess of proven falsehoods, contradictions, implausible conspiracy theories, more falsehoods and inexplicable silences were cricket chirps tell us all we need to know.

The UK government has lied and evaded on every key aspect.

  1. It lied again and again about the information Porton Down had given it
  2. Its lawyers all but lied to Mr Justice Robinson about whether or not the Skripals had relatives in Russia in an unscrupulous attempt to maintain total control of them, or at least of the narrative.
  3. It is not publishing the OPCW report on the chemical analyses, and the summary of that report reads like an exercise in allusion and weasel-wording. Even the name of the "toxic substance" found in the Skripals' blood is omitted, and the only thing tying it to the UK government's public claims of "novichok" is association by inference and proximity.

Indeed if current claims by Russian FM Lavrov turn out to be true, a "novichok" (whatever that precisely means in this case) may not have been the only substance found in those samples, and a compound called "BZ", a non-lethal agent developed in Europe and America, has been discovered and suppressed in the OPCW report (more about that later).

None of the alleged victims of this alleged attack has been seen in public even in passing since the event. There is no film or photographs of DS Bailey leaving the hospital, no film or photographs of his wife or family members doing the same. No interviews with Bailey, no interviews with his wife, family, distant relatives, work colleagues.

The Skripals themselves were announced to be alive and out of danger mere days after claims they were all but certain to die. Yulia, soon thereafter, apparently called her cousin Viktoria only to subsequently announce, indirectly through the helpful agency of the Metropolitan Police, that she didn't want to talk to her cousin – or anyone else – at all.

She is now allegedly discharged from hospital and has "specially trained officers helping to take care of" her in an undisclosed location. A form or words so creepily sinister it's hard to imagine how they were ever permitted the light of day.

Very little of this bizarre, self-defeating, embarrassing, hysterical story makes any sense other than as a random narrative, snaking wildly in response to events the narrative-makers can't completely control.

Why? What went wrong? Why has the UK government got itself into this mess? And how much did the Douma "gas attack" and subsequent drive for a concerted western "response" have to do with trying to fix that?

IS THIS WHAT HAPPENED?

If a false flag chemical attack had taken place in Syria at the time Russia predicted, just a week or two after the Skripal poisoning, a lot of the attention that's been paid to the Skripals over the last month would likely have been diverted. Many of the questions being asked by Russia and in the alt media may never have been asked as the focus of the world turned to a possible superpower stand-off in the Middle East.

So, could it be the Skripal event was never intended to last so long in the public eye? Could it be that it was indeed a false flag, or a fake event, as many have alleged, planned as a sketchy prelude to, or warm up act for a bigger chemical attack in Syria, scheduled for a week or so later in mid-March – just around the time Russia was warning of such a possibility?

Could it be this planned event was unexpectedly canceled by the leading players in the drama (the US) when the Russians called them out and the rapid and unexpected fall of Ghouta meant any such intervention became pointless at least for the moment?

Did this cancelation leave the UK swinging in the wind, with a fantastical story that was never intended to withstand close scrutiny, and no second act for distraction?

So, did they push on with the now virtually useless "chemical attack", botch it (again), leaving a clear evidence trail leading back to them? Did they then further insist on an allied "response" to their botched false flag in order to provide yet more distraction and hopefully destroy some of that evidence?

This would explain why the UK may have been pushing for the false flag to happen (as claimed by Russia) even after it could no longer serve much useful purpose on the ground, and why the Douma "attack" seems to have been so sketchily done by a gang on the run. The UK needed the second part to happen in order to distract from the first.

It would explain why the US has been less than enthused by the idea of reprisals. Because while killing Syrians to further geo-strategic interests is not a problem, killing Syrians (and risking escalation with Russia) in order to rescue an embarrassed UK government is less appealing.

And it would explain why the "reprisals" when they came were so half-hearted.

If this is true, Theresa May and her cabinet are currently way out on a limb even by cynical UK standards. Not only have they lied about the Skripal event, but in order to cover up that lie they have promoted a false flag in Syria, and "responded" to it by a flagrant breach of international and domestic law. Worst of all, if the Russians aren't bluffing, they have some evidence to prove some of the most egregious parts of this.

This is very bad.

But even if some or all of our speculation proves false, and even if the Russian claims of UK collusion with terrorists in Syria prove unfounded, May is still guilty of multiple lies and has still waged war without parliamentary approval.

This is a major issue. She and her government should resign. But it's unlikely that will happen.

So what next? There is a sense this is a watershed for many of the parties involved and for the citizens of the countries drawn into this.

Will the usual suspects try to avoid paying for their crimes and misadventures by more rhetoric, more false flags, more "reprisals"? Or will this signal some other change in direction?

We'll all know soon enough.

* * *

Back to today...

...and while things have moved on, we're still puzzling over all the same issues.

All these questions stand, and are important, but more important than all of that is the lesson: They tried it before, and just because it didn't work doesn't mean they won't try it again.

Last spring, the Western powers showed they will deploy a false flag if they need too, for domestic or international motives. And they have the motives right now.

The UK were the most vocal about Syria, and desperately tried to drum up support over Skripal, but it all came to nothing much in the end.

Theresa May's political career still hangs by a thread, and her "Falklands moment", at best, staved off the inevitable for a few months. A washout in the EU elections, a very real threat from Farage's Brexit party, and rumblings inside her own party, make her position as unstable as ever.

Britain had the most to gain, of all NATO countries, and that is still true. We don't know what they might do.

This time they might even receive greater support from France this time around – since Macron is facing a revolution at home and would kill (possibly literally) for a nice international distraction.

In the US, generally speaking, it seems that the Trump admin – or at least whichever interested parties currently have control of the wheels of government – have called time on war in Syria. Instead, they've moved on to projects in Venezuela and North Korea, and even war with Iran.

That's not to say Syria is safe, far from it. They are always just one carefully place false-flag away from all-out war. Last year, Mattis (or whoever) decided war with Syria was not an option – that it was too risky or complicated. That might not happen next time.

Clearly, the US hasn't totally seen sense in terms of stoking conflict with Russia – as seen by the decision to pull out of the INF Treaty late last year. And further demonstrated by their attempts to overthrow Russia's ally Nicolas Maduro. Another ripe candidate for a false flag.

The failure of the Douma false flag to cause the war it was meant to cause, and the vast collection of evidence that suggests it was a false flag, should be spread far and wide. Not just because it's a truth which vindicates the smeared minority in the alternate media.

But because recognising what they were trying to do last time , is the best defense when they try it again next time .

[May 16, 2019] I have never seen such transparently obvious bullshit from UK elite befores"

May 16, 2019 | www.unz.com

Tsigantes , says: May 9, 2019 at 5:14 pm GMT

@MarkU Bravo!

As to their "cleverness", there was a time when UK politicians were known for their slippery qualities and subtlety, but those days are long gone. What we have now is barefaced lies, relying purely on repetition and monolithic corporate media ownership. They are not winning arguments because they are clever, I have never seen such transparently obvious bullshit before.

'Clever is as clever does' – once said with a snort – is a compliment too far for the deeply corrupted, vulgar, mediocre nobodies who comprise the self-styled 'elites'. In this group 'cleverness' simply means the lies they are paid to say repeated loudly and often. And because they have the reins on power, the non-compliant are punished by thugs.

[May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan

Highly recommended!
May 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Whitney: Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan

by Tyler Durden Sat, 05/11/2019 - 11:05 48 SHARES Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

Sometime in the next 4 weeks, the Justice Department's inspector general will release an internal review that will reveal the origins of the Trump-Russia investigation. Among other matters, the IG's report is expected to determine "whether there was sufficient justification under existing guidelines for the FBI to have started an investigation in the first place." Critics of the Trump-collusion probe believe that there was never probable cause that a crime had been committed, therefore, there was no legal basis for launching the investigation.

The findings of the Mueller report– that there was no cooperation or collusion between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign– seem to underscore this broader point and suggest that the fictitious Trump-Russia connection was merely a pretext for spying on the campaign of a Beltway outsider whose political views clashed with those of the foreign policy establishment.

In any event, the upcoming release of the Horowitz report will formally end the the first phase of the long-running Russiagate scandal and mark the beginning of Phase 2, in which high-profile officials from the previous administration face criminal prosecution for their role in what looks to be a botched attempt at a coup d'etat.

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Here's a brief summary from political analyst, Larry C. Johnson, who previously worked at the CIA and U.S. State Department:

" The evidence is plain–there was a broad, coordinated effort by the Obama Administration, with the help of foreign governments, to target Donald Trump and paint him as a stooge of Russia. The Mueller Report provides irrefutable evidence that the so-called Russian collusion case against Donald Trump was a deliberate fabrication by intelligence and law enforcement organizations in the US and UK and organizations aligned with the Clinton Campaign." ( "How US and Foreign Intel Agencies Interfered in a US Election" , Larry C. Johnson, Consortium News)

Bingo. Attorney General William Barr has already stated his belief that spying on the Trump campaign "did occur" and that, in his mind, it is "a big deal". He also reiterated his commitment to thoroughly investigate the matter in order to find out whether the spying was adequately "predicated", that is, whether the FBI followed the required protocols for such spying, or not. Barr already knows the answer to this question as he is fully aware of the fact that the FBI used information that they knew was false to obtain warrants to spy on the Trump campaign. Having no hard evidence of cooperation with the Kremlin, senior-level FBI officials and their counterparts at the Obama Justice Department used parts of an "opposition research" document (The Trump Dossier) that they knew was unreliable to procure warrants that allowed them to treat a presidential campaign the same way the intelligence agencies treat foreign enemies; using electronic surveillance, wiretapping, confidential informants and "honey trap" schemes designed to gather embarrassing or incriminating information on their target. Barr knows all of this already which is why the Democrats are doing everything in their power to discredit him and have him removed from office.

https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4855

His determination to "get to the bottom of this" is not just a threat to the FBI, it's a threat to multiple agencies that may have had a hand in this expansive domestic espionage operation including the CIA, the NSA, the DOJ, the State Department and, perhaps, even the Obama White House. No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes, but Barr appears to be serious about finding out.

Here's Barr again:

"Many people seem to assume that the only intelligence collection that occurred was a single confidential informant .I would like to find out whether that is in fact true. It strikes me as a fairly anemic effort if that was the counterintelligence effort designed to stop the threat as it's being represented."

In other words, Barr knows that the Trump campaign was riddled with spies and he is going to do his damnedest to find out what happened. He also knows that the FISA warrants were improperly obtained using the shabby disinformation from an opposition research "hit piece" (The Steele Dossier) that was paid for by Hillary Clinton and the DNC, just like he knows that government agents had concocted a strategy for leaking classified information to the media to fuel the public hysteria. Barr knows most of what happened already. It's just a matter of compiling the research in the proper format and delivering it in a way that helps to emphasize how trusted government agents abused their power by pursuing a vicious partisan plot to either destroy the president's reputation or force him from office. Like Barr said, that's a "big deal".

The name that seems to feature larger than all others in the ongoing Trump-Russia saga, is James Comey, the former FBI Director who oversaw the spying operations that are now under investigation at the DOJ. But was Comey really the central figure in these felonious hi-jinks or was he a mere lieutenant following directives from someone more powerful than himself? While the preponderance of new evidence suggests that the FBI was deeply involved, it does not answer this crucial question. For example, just this week, a report by veteran journalist John Solomon, showed that former British spy Christopher Steele admitted to Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kathleen Kavalec that his "Trump Dossier" was "political research", implying that the contents couldn't be trusted because they were shaped by Steele's political bias. Kavalec passed along this information to the FBI which shrugged it off and then, just days later, used the dossier to obtain warrants to spy on members of the Trump campaign. Think about that for a minute. The FBI had "written proof . that Steele had a political motive", but went ahead and used the dossier to procure the warrants anyway. That's what I'd call a premeditated felony.

But evidence of wrongdoing is not proof that Comey was the ringleader, he was just the hapless sad sack who was left holding the bag. The truth is, Comey was just a reluctant follower. The real architect of the Trump-Russia treachery was the boss-man at the nation's premier intelligence agency, the CIA. That's where the headwaters of this shameful burlesque are located, in Langley. More on that in a minute, but first check out this excerpt from an article at The Hill which sums up Comey's role fairly well:

(There) "will be an examination of whether Comey was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director and attorney general. This, above all, is what's causing the 360-degree head spin.

"There are early indicators that troubling behaviors may have occurred in all three scenarios. Barr will want to zero in on a particular area of concern: the use by the FBI of confidential human sources, whether its own or those offered up by the then-CIA director.

In addition, the cast of characters leveraged by the FBI against the Trump campaign all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources ("assets," in agency vernacular) shared at times with the FBI. From Stefan Halper and possibly Joseph Mifsud, to Christopher Steele, to Carter Page himself, and now a mysterious "government investigator" posing as Halper's assistant and cited in The New York Times article, legitimate questions arise as to whether Comey was manipulated into furthering a CIA political operation more than an FBI counterintelligence case." ( "James Comey is in trouble and he knows it" , The Hill)

Why is the Inspector General so curious as to whether Comey "was unduly influenced by political agendas emanating from the previous White House and its director of national intelligence, CIA director? And why did Comey draw from "a cast of characters " . that "all appear to have their genesis as CIA sources"??

Could it be that Comey was just an unwitting pawn in a domestic regime change operation launched by former CIA Director John Brennan, the one public figure who has expressed greater personal animus towards Trump than all the others combined? Could Trump's promise to normalize relations with Russia have intensified Brennan's visceral hatred of him given the fact that Russia had frustrated Brennan's strategic plans in Ukraine and Syria? Keep in mind, the CIA had been arming, training and providing logistical support to the Sunni militants who were trying to overthrow Syrian president Bashar al Assad. Putin's intervention crushed the jihadist militias delivering a humiliating defeat to Generalissimo Brennan who, soon after, left office in disgrace. Isn't this at least part of the reason why Brennan hates Trump?

Regular readers of this column know that I have always thought that Brennan was the central figure in the Trump-Russia charade. It was Brennan who first referred the case to Comey, just as it was Brennan who "hand-picked" the analysts who stitched together the dodgy Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) (which said that "Putin and the Russian government aspired to help Trump's election chances.") It was also Brennan who persuaded Harry Reid to petition Comey to open an investigation in the first place. Brennan was chief instigator of the Trump-Russia fiasco, the omniscient puppet-master who persuaded Clapper and Comey to do his bidding while still-unidentified agents strategically leaked stories to the media to inflame passions and sow social unrest. At every turn, Brennan was there guiding the perfidious project along. According to journalist Philip Giraldi, the CIA may have even assisted in the obtaining of FISA warrants on Trump campaign aids as this excerpt from an article at The Unz Review indicates:

"Brennan was the key to the operation because the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) court refused to approve several requests by the FBI to initiate taps on Trump associates and Trump Tower as there was no probable cause to do so but the British and other European intelligence services were legally able to intercept communications linked to American sources. Brennan was able to use his connections with those foreign intelligence agencies, primarily the British GCHQ, to make it look like the concerns about Trump were coming from friendly and allied countries and therefore had to be responded to as part of routine intelligence sharing. As a result, Paul Manafort, Carter Page, Donald Trump Jr., Jared Kushner and Gen. Michael Flynn were all wiretapped. And likely there were others. This all happened during the primaries and after Trump became the GOP nominee." ( "The Conspiracy Against Trump" , Philip Giraldi)

Can you see how important this is? The FBI was having trouble getting warrants to spy on the Trump campaign, so Brennan helped them out by persuading his foreign intelligence allies (the British and other European intelligence services) to come up with bogus "intercepted communications linked to American sources," which helped to secure the FISA warrants. We have no idea of what these foreign agents heard on these alleged intercepted communications, all we know is that they were effectively used to achieve Brennan's ultimate objective, which was to acquire the means of taking down Trump via a relentless and expansive surveillance campaign.

According to a report in The Guardian (where the story first appeared.):

"GCHQ (British Government Communications Headquarters) played an early, prominent role in kickstarting the FBI's Trump-Russia investigation, which began in late July 2016. One source called the British eavesdropping agency the "principal whistleblower". ("British spies were first to spot Trump team's links with Russia ", The Guardian)

Okay, so Brennan twisted a few arms and got his foreign Intel buddies to make uncorroborated claims that got the investigative ball rolling, but then what? If there was any meat to Brennan's foreign intel, then Mueller would have dug it up and used it in his report, right? But he didn't. Why?

Because there was nothing there, the whole thing was a sham from the get go. Brennan probably "sexed up" the intelligence so it would sound like something it really wasn't. (Think: WMD) Again, if there was even a scintilla of hard evidence that Trump's campaign assistants were in bed with Russia, Mueller would have shrieked it from every mountaintop across America. But he didn't, because there wasn't any. There was no cooperation, no conspiracy and no collusion. Trump was falsely accused. End of story.

Here's more from the same article:

"The Guardian has been told the FBI and the CIA were slow to appreciate the extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow ahead of the US election." (Guardian)

"The extensive nature of contacts between Trump's team and Moscow"???

Really? This is precisely the type of hyperventilating journalism that fueled the absurd conspiracy theory that the president of the United States was a Russian agent. It's hard to believe that we're even discussing the matter at this point.

There was an interesting aside in John Solomon's article that suggests that he might be thinking along the same lines. He says: "One legal justification cited for redacting the Oct. 13, 2016, email is the National Security Act of 1947, which can be used to shield communications involving the CIA or the White House National Security Council."

Why would Solomon draw attention to "to shielding communications involving the CIA or the White House", after all, the bulk of his article focused on the State Department and the FBI? Is he suggesting that the CIA and Obama White House may have been involved in these spying shenanigans, is that why Kavalec's damning notes (which stated that Steele's dossier could not be trusted.) have been retroactively classified?

Take a look at this email from the FBI's chief investigator in the Russia collusion probe, Peter Strzok, to his fellow agents in April 2017.

"I'm beginning to think the agency (CIA) got info a lot earlier than we thought and hasn't shared it completely with us. Might explain all those weird/seemingly incorrect leads all these media folks have. Would also highlight agency as source of some leaks." -Peter Strzok.

Ha! So even the FBI's chief investigator was in the dark about the CIA's shadowy machinations behind the scenes. Clearly, Brennan wanted to prevent the other junta leaders from fully knowing what he was up to.

All of this is bound to come out in the inspector general's report sometime in the next month or so. Both Attorney General William Barr and IG Horowitz appear to be fully committed to revealing the criminal leaks, the illegal electronic surveillance, the improperly obtained FISA warrants, and the multiple confidential human sources (spies) that were placed in the Trump campaign. They are going to face withering criticism for their efforts, but they are resolutely moving forward all the same. Bravo, for that.

Bottom line : The agents and officials who conducted this seditious attack on the presidency never thought they'd be held accountable for their crimes. But they were wrong, and now their day of reckoning is fast approaching. The main players in this palace coup are about to be exposed, criminally charged and prosecuted. Some of them will probably wind up in jail.

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."


DocBerg , just now link

Please wake me up from my hibernation if any of these cretins are actually prosecuted effectively, much less punished, as they richly deserve.

JCW Industries , 3 minutes ago link

Nothing will happen. IG report will show nothing. Look who's doing it. (((Horowitz))).....the DS protects its own

notfeelinthebern , 18 minutes ago link

So we should probably be sanctioning GB, instead of Russia? It would be the right thing to do? No?

Gonzogal , 6 minutes ago link

There is ZERO evidence that Russia played ANY role in the 2016 USSA election and yet are sanctioned to the max, threatened with war etc. HOWEVER there IS proof of the UK/GCHQ involvement.

I am waiting to see if Trump still goes to the UK in June or if he tells them he is "busy with more important things at home" aka F...off.

Amy G. Dala , 2 minutes ago link

Remember when Gowdy asked Brennan for evidence, and Brennan does reply with a straight face:

"We don't deal in evidence."

Mister Brennan, thou has dost protest too loudly, for too long . . .

Idaho potato head , 19 minutes ago link

Apocalypse, I would say that word describes it pretty well.

Middle English Apocalipse "Revelation (the New Testament book)," borrowed from Anglo-French, borrowed from Late Latin apocalypsis "revelation, the Book of Revelation," borrowed from Greek apokálypsis "uncovering, disclosure, revelation," from apokalyp-, stem of apokalýptein "to uncover, disclose, reveal" (from apo- APO- + kalýptein "to cover, protect, conceal," of uncertain origin) + -sis -SIS

Joebloinvestor , 24 minutes ago link

Anyone notice NO ******* COMMENT from UK intelligence about their ex-spies being involved in a US election?

I kind of expected one "throwaway" to be found with a hole behind his ear.

Idaho potato head , 13 minutes ago link

'highly likely'. would be typical english understatement.

bh2 , 30 minutes ago link

"No one knows yet how far up the political food-chain the skulduggery actually goes"

Too kind. We all know it is impossible that Susan Rice did not know -- she would have to authorize the FBI to conduct any foreign spying operations.

And if Susan Rice knew, it is impossible that Barack Obama didn't know. And approved of it, if only by not putting a stop to it.

The string that hasn't been pulled yet is the role of British intelligence. Brennan is obviously not a very bright man. He's a post-turtle, so how a dull-witted former communist ended up as head of the CIA is yet another story that needs looking into.

Was he actually a British mole?

The intersection of British establishment political goals and donated assets in the operation of this plot is nakedly obvious. It will be for Barr to expose that "angle", with the distinct possibility the ultimate origin of this scheme was the Blairite UK civil service who wished to eliminate a potentially powerful political actor who repeatedly and strongly indicated his unreserved support for Brexit.

Philthy_Stacker , 45 minutes ago link

All the things you mentioned were obfuscated by Clinton, Obama, Bush, Clinton, Bush Sr., Cheney, several Generals, heads of state, foreign intelligence. Do you think someone just snaps a finger and the MIC disappears?

You conflate 'past' leadership with the current. The deep state is crumbling. We need to keep digging and indicting until Rothschild takes a one way rocket off planet Earth.

It will only end when treasonous traitor hang by their necks. I'm still hoping and informing others.

joego1 , 36 minutes ago link

Only the wheels that grind the sheeple work right now.

wadalt , 50 minutes ago link

"I've talked to the members of the Israeli government at the highest levels. I know who they want elected here. It's not Hillary Clinton." – Former NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani

The TRUMP Collusion wasn't with the Russians , but with APARTHEID Israhell.

But NO ONE will investigate that.

M.A.G.A. is out

K.A.K.A. is in (Keep America Kabalah Again)

http://cufpa.wordpress.com/2018/01/07/trumps-jewish-agenda/

KJWqonfo7 , 34 minutes ago link

It's difficult to look at him with that repugnant grin on his rat face.

boring_man , 54 minutes ago link

"Some of them will probably wind up in jail."

"The wheels of justice turn slowly, but grind exceedingly fine."

"Though the mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He all."

Henry Wadsworth Longellow

Patience is an integral part of of those interested in true "justice"

man will fail, and at times shirk his duty to God and each other,,,,,,,,,,,,,our Great Judge misses no thing,,,,,,,

- now there's yer dinner -

boring

Dumpster Elite , 1 hour ago link

I know what occurred...it was a coup attempt.

I won't believe that ANYTHING will be done about it. Prove me wrong, Barr. I remain a non-believer that anything bad happens to the Deep State.

Pa Kettle , 1 hour ago link

The definitive exposé:

"CIA Crimes: How John Brennan Weaponized the CIA and FBI, and Conspired with Russia and Harry Reid to Frame Trump"

PART A
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=1362

PART B
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=1443

PART C
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=1525

PART D
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=2241

PART E
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=2423

PART F
https://chaletbooks.com/chaletreports/?p=2463

Philthy_Stacker , 52 minutes ago link

Sorry Ashton, Dan Bongino figured it out 2 years ago. Your book is weak.
https://www.amazon.com/Spygate-Attempted-Sabotage-Donald-Trump/dp/1642930989
Ashton is a day late and a dollar short. Hats off to Dan Bongino, the real 'exposer'.
Investigative reporting by:
John Solomon and Sara Carter.

[May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus

Highly recommended!
A foreign intelligence asset was used to justify surveillance of Trump[ and some of his associates
Notable quotes:
"... What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent? ..."
"... The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant"). ..."
"... The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale. ..."
"... Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power. ..."
"... I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors. ..."
"... if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know? ..."
"... Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost. ..."
"... Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance. ..."
"... From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. ..."
"... He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI. ..."
"... its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered. ..."
"... Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this? ..."
"... A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies. ..."
"... It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries ..."
"... If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary. ..."
"... An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him ..."
"... A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination ..."
"... 'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.' ..."
"... I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief. ..."
"... Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it. ..."
"... Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs. ..."
"... Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly: ..."
"... Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. ..."
"... One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...? ..."
"... What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this? ..."
"... Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun? ..."
"... British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy. ..."
"... British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion. ..."
"... Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, ..."
"... I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people. ..."
"... still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources ..."
"... I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia. ..."
"... Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are. ..."
"... It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things ..."
Aug 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

The revelations from US Government records about the FBI/Intel Community plot to take out Donald Trump continue to flow thanks to the dogged efforts of Judicial Watch. The latest nugget came last Friday with the release of FBI records detailing their recruitment and management of Britain's ostensibly retired Intelligence Officer, Christopher Steele. He was an officially recruited FBI source and received at least 11 payments during the 9 month period that he was signed up as a Confidential Human Source.

You may find it strange that we can glean so much information from a document dump that is almost entirely redacted . The key is to look at the report forms; there are three types--FD-1023 (Source Reports), FD-209a (Contact Reports) and FD-794b (Payment Requests). There are 15 different 1023s, 13 209a reports and 11 794b payment requests covering the period from 2 February 2016 thru 1 November 2016. That is a total of nine months.

These reports totally destroy the existing meme that Steele only came into contact with the FBI sometime in July 2016. It is important for you to understand that a 1023 Source Report is filled out each time that the FBI source handler has contact with the source. This can be an in person meeting or a phone call. Each report lists the name of the Case Agent; the date, time and location of the meeting; any other people attending the meeting; and a summary of what was discussed.

What is clear from the new records is that Christopher Steele, a foreign intelligence officer, had frequent and extensive contacts with the FBI. Who was his FBI Case Agent?


richardstevenhack , a day ago

Indeed we do need more information.

The main thing I want to know is WHEN was the decision made to tar Trump with Russia - both at the FBI (and likely CIA) and at the DNC (over the leak) - and WHO was the deciding entity - Comey, Brennan, Clinton, Obama or someone else? And perhaps who came up with the idea in the first place (at the DNC, it was very likely Alexandra Chalupa, the Ukrainian-American DNC "consultant").

We can be pretty sure this predates any alleged Russian "hacking" (unless it occurred as a result of alleged Russian hacking of the DNC in 2015).

This needs to be pinned down if anyone is to be successfully prosecuted for creating this treasonous hoax.

chris chuba , 5 hours ago
A very closely related topic, Victor Davis Hanson is onto something but it is darker than he suggests, https://www.nationalreview.... Paraphrasing, he gives the typical, rally around the flag we must stop the Russians intro but then documents how govt flaks abused their power to influence our elections and then makes the point, 'this is why the public is skeptical of their claims'.

The bad thing is that our MSM is so reverent of our Intel agencies that I see them encouraged to increasingly put their hand on the scale.

Recently, I saw arm flailing by a Congressman, Dan Coats, and Mueller about how the Russians are still at it. They are trying to disrupt or influence the 2018. Really, then I demand to get a list of the pro-Kremlin candidates. How long before the mere threat of being outed as a Kremlin agent is used to punish elected officials if they are not sufficiently hawkish or don't support certain programs. Unchallenged claims by Intel agencies gives them a lot of political power.

I am skeptical. Russia has a lot of fish to fry, why would they expend resources on midterm elections. Now everyone in the U.S. hates them, both traditional hawk Republicans and born again uber-hawk Democrats. There is a tiger behind both doors.

Leonardo Facchin , 20 hours ago
Thanks for the explanation.

What I can't figure out is: if Steele had been a CHS since at least February of 2016, what was the purpose of passing the Dossier to the FBI through Fusion GPS? Why not just going to his FBI handler? Was Steele collaboration with Fusion even in compliance with FBI regulations? Did the FBI know?

Publius Tacitus -> Leonardo Facchin , 17 hours ago
Because part of the plan was to leak the information in order to damage Trump. FBI could not do that. Would have exposed them to some real legal jeopardy. This was a dual track strategy. Diabolical almost.
blue peacock -> Leonardo Facchin , 13 hours ago
Don't forget the Nellie Ohr (Fusion GPS) -> Bruce Ohr (DOJ) back channel. The husband & wife tag team. Yes, the same Nellie that was investigating using ham radio to communicate to avoid NSA mass surveillance.

From the very beginning that information about all this was slowly leaking from the Congressional investigation, this whole thing smelled very fishy. Then add intense effort at DOJ & FBI to obstruct and obfuscate. And the unhinged tweets and interviews by Brennan, Clapper & Comey. And of course the media narrative that Rep. Nunes, Goodlatte and others were endangering "national security" by casting aspersions on the "patriotic" law enforcement and intelligence agencies.

Paul M -> Leonardo Facchin , 16 hours ago
He was working with FBI and GPS at the same time. GPS was in the dark supposedly about his work with the FBI and Steele got their approval to hand over what he had delivered to GPS to the FBI as a cover for his work with the FBI.

Of course, he had most likely already done so and its also likely FBI had some input into the content of what was delivered to GPS, and more importantly what was not delivered.

David Habakkuk , 4 hours ago
PT,

Fascinating.

Re the 'standing agreement to not recruit each other's intelligence personnel for clandestine activities.' As Steele was not by this time a current employee of MI6, was the FBI in technical violation of this?

The point is not merely a quibble. A central question in regard to Steele, as with quite a number of former intelligence/law enforcement/military people who have started at least ostensibly private sector operations, is how far these are being used as 'cover' for activities conducted on behalf of either the state agencies for which they used to work, or other state agencies.

It is at least possible that one advantage of such arrangements may be that they make it possible to evade the letter of agreements between intelligence agencies in different countries.

Another related matter has to do with the termination of Steele as a 'Confidential Human Source.'

It has long seemed to me that it was more than possible that this was not to be taken at face value. If, as seems likely, both current and former top FBI and DOJ people – very likely Mueller as well as Comey, Strzok and many others – were intimately involved in the conspiracy to subvert the constitution, then a means of making it possible for Steele to combine feeding information to the FBI while also engaging in 'StratCom' via the MSM could have been necessary.

An obvious means of 'squaring the circle' would have been to issue a formal 'termination' to Steele, while creating 'back channels' to those who were officially supposed not to be talking to him.

A report yesterday by John Solomon in 'The Hill' quotes from messages exchanged between Steele and Bruce Ohr after the supposed termination.

(See http://thehill.com/person/d... .)

When on 31 January 2017 – well after the publication of the dossier by BuzzFeed – Ohr provided reassurance that he could continue to help feed information to the FBI, Steele texted back:

"If you end up out though, I really need another (bureau?) contact point/number who is briefed. We can't allow our guy to be forced to go back home. It would be disastrous."

At that point, Solomon tells us that 'Investigators are trying to determine who Steele was referring to.' This seems to me a rather important question. It would seem likely, although not certain, that he is talking about another Brit. If he is, would it have been someone else employed by Orbis? Or someone currently working for British intelligence? What is the precise significance of 'forced to go back home', and why would this have been 'disastrous'?

Another crucial paragraph:

'In all, Ohr's notes, emails and texts identify more than 60 contacts with Steele and/or Simpson, some dating to 2002 in London. But the vast majority occurred during the 2016-2017 timeframe that gave birth to one of the most controversial counterintelligence probes in American history.'

The earlier contacts may be of little interest, but there again they may not be.

As it happens, it was following Berezovsky's arrival in London in October 2001 that the 'information operations' network he created began to move into high gear. It is moreover clear that this was always a transatlantic operation, and also fragments of evidence suggest that the FBI may have had some involvement from early on.

I have just finished taking a fresh look at Sir Robert Owen's travesty of a report into the death of Litvinenko. In large measure, this develops claims originally made in Christopher Steele's first attempt to provide a convincing account of why figures close to Putin might have thought it made sense to assassinate that figure, and to do so with polonium. The sheer volume of fabrication which has been deployed in an attempt to defend the patently indefensible almost beggars belief.

The original attempt came in a radio programme broadcast by the BBC – which was to become known to some of us as the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – on 16 December 2006, presented by Tom Mangold, a familiar 'trusty' for the intelligence services.

(A transcript sent out from the Cabinet Office at the time is available on the archived 'Evidence' page for the Inquiry, at http://webarchive.nationala... , as HMG000513. There is an interesting and rather important question as to whether those who sent it out, and those who received it, knew that it was more or less BS from start to finish.)

The programme was wholly devoted to claims made by the former KGB operative Yuri Shvets, who was presented as an independent 'due diligence' expert, without any mention of the rather major role he had played in the original 'Orange Revolution.'

Back-up was provided by his supposed collaborator in 'due diligence', the former FBI operative Robert 'Bobby' Levinson. No mention was made of the fact that he had been, in the 'Nineties, a, if not the lead FBI investigator into the notorious Ukrainian Jewish mobster Semyon Mogilevich.

The following March Levinson would disappear on the Iranian island of Kish, on what we now know was a covert mission on behalf of elements in the CIA.

Just as a question arises as to whether Steele is essentially acting on behalf of MI6, a question also arises as to whether the FBI leadership were knowledgeable about, and possibly involved with, the various shenanigans in which Shvets and Levinson were involved. Given that claims about Mogilevich have turned out to be central to 'Russiagate', that seems a rather important issue, and I am curious as to whether Ohr's communications with Steele may cast any light on it.

Jack -> David Habakkuk , 2 hours ago
David

Apparently the FBI got Deripaksa to fund the rescue of Levinson from Iran. Furthermore apparently FBI personnel maybe including McCabe visited with Deripaksa and showed him the Steele dossier. He supposedly had a nice guffaw and dismissed it as nonsense. So on the one hand while they make Russia out to be the most evil they play footsie with Russian oligarchs.

Keith Harbaugh , 19 hours ago
Thanks for this informative article.

Thinking about "Christopher Steele was terminated as a Confidential Human Source for cause.", something that doesn't seem to have gotten as much attention is that Peter Strzok failed his poly:

Seems rather surprising to me. Anyone have any comment on this?

TTG , an hour ago
Steele's relationship with the FBI extends far further back than February 2016. Shortly after he left MI6, he contracted with the Football Association to investigate possible FIFA corruption. Once he realized the massiveness of this corruption he contacted his old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crimes Task Force in 2011. Thus began his association with the FBI as a CHS. That investigation culminated in the 2015 FIFA corruption indictments and convictions. His initial contact with old friends at the FBI Eurasian Crime Task Force is awfully similar to his contacting these same friends in 2016 after deciding his initial Trump research was potentially bigger than mere opposition research.
FB , 3 hours ago
One thing I don't understand...we have the anti-Trumpers saying that Donald Junior meeting with a Russian national to get 'dirt' on Hillary is illegal...due to some law about candidates collaborating with foreigners or something like that...[obviously I'm foggy on the technical details]... Yet we know that the Hillary campaign worked with a foreign national, Steele, to get dirt on Trump...how is this not the same...?

Even worse is that the FBI was using this same foreign agent that a presidential candidate had hired to get dirt on an opponent... Even knowing nothing about legalities this just doesn't look very good...

Wally Courie , 4 hours ago
Stupid question? As the Col. has explained, the President can declassify any document he pleases. So, why doesn't Donaldo unredact the redacted portions of these bullcrap docs? What is he afraid of? That the Intel community will get mad and be out to get him? Isn't time for him to show some cojones?
blue peacock , 16 hours ago
What role did Stefan Halper and Mifsud play as Confidential Human Sources in all this?
akaPatience , 19 hours ago
Why was British Intelligence allegedly collecting and passing along info about Donald Trump in the first place? Or could this have been a pretext created to give cover and/or support to the agenda here in the US to insure his defeat? Could a foreign intelligence source such as this trigger/facilitate/justify the US counterintelligence investigation of Trump, or give cover to a covert investigation that may have already begun?
Navstéva يزور 🐐 -> akaPatience , 17 hours ago
British intelligence was collecting / passing on info about Trump because of his campaign stance on NATO (he said it was obsolete), his desire to end regime change wars (he castigated the fiasco in Iraq, took Bush to task over it etc.), and his often stated desire to get along with Russia (and China). Trump also talked of ending certain economic policies (NAFTA, TPP, etc.) and reenacting others (Glass-Steagall, the American System of Economics i.e. Hamilton, Carey, Clay), If Trump had acted on those, which he has not so far, he would changed the entire world system, a system in place since the end of WW II, or earlier. That was a risk too big to take without some kind of insurance policy - I believe Christopher Steele was that insurance policy.
unmitigatedaudacity -> Navstéva يزور 🐐 , 16 hours ago
British Intelligence is verifiably the foreign source with the most extensive and effective meddling in the 2016 election. Perfidious Albion.
Bryn Nykrson -> Navstéva يزور 🐐 , 14 hours ago
Or, GSHQ was hovering up signint on Trump campaign early-on (using domestics US resources and databases via their 5-Eyes "sharing agreement" with NSA) cuz Brennan asked them to do it? And therefore without having to mess about with any formal FISA warrant thingy's ... But, then use what might be found (or plausibly alleged) to try to get a proper FISA warrant later on (July 2016)? 'Parallel Discovery' of sorts; with Fusion GPS also a leaky cut-out: channelling media reports to be used as confirmation of Steele's "raw intelligence" in the formal FISA application(s)?
Biggee Mikeee -> akaPatience , 17 hours ago
Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates,

" Trump announced his run for President in 2015. I'm pretty sure that every intel service on the planet was watching him, they would be derelict not to. GCHQ may have been collecting intel on all the candidates, "

That's a good question, could it legally enable an end run around the FISC until enough evidence was gathered for a FISC surveillance authorization?.

richardstevenhack -> Biggee Mikeee , 13 hours ago
I've heard that the Echelon system is used by the Five Eyes IC to do something similar. The Brits spy on US, and give the NSA the data so the NSA can evade US laws prohibiting spying on us, and we return the favor to help them evade what (few) laws they have that prohibits spying on their people.

Only a matter of time until someone figured out the same method could be used to "meddle" in national affairs.

akaPatience -> Biggee Mikeee , 15 hours ago
I understand, but still wonder why the US would need to rely so much on British intelligence sources such as Steele about a very high profile American citizen and businessman -- aren't our intelligence services competent enough to have known and discovered as much if not more about Trump than other countries' intelligence services? I've read that Steele's cover was blown 20 years ago and he hasn't even been to Russia since, so I wonder why he was considered such a reliable source by both the US and UK? In my opinion as an absolute naif about such things, Steele seems like he may be a has-been when it comes to Russia.
DianaLC -> akaPatience , 4 hours ago
Here is a simple explanation from someone who knows almost nothing about how any of the people in power work: Most of them are not as clever and smart as they think they are. And most of the regular people who are just citizens are smarter than these people think they are.

It's simply that their arrogant assessment of their own superiority caused them to do really stupid things.

[May 10, 2019] The key role of British intelligence in Spydate (aka Russiagate)

Notable quotes:
"... Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration. ..."
"... Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove. ..."
"... Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend. ..."
"... Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services. ..."
"... Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books. ..."
"... Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times. ..."
"... Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia. ..."
"... Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations. ..."
"... Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case. ..."
"... Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia. ..."
"... House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case. ..."
"... If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated. ..."
May 03, 2019 | www.theepochtimes.com

Originally from: Spygate The True Story of Collusion [Infographic] by Jeff Carlson ( October 12, 2018 Updated: May 3, 2019 )

Intelligence

UK and Australian intelligence agencies also played meaningful roles during the 2016 presidential election.

Britain's GCHQ was involved in collecting information regarding then-candidate Trump and transmitting it to the United States. In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, the head of GCHQ, flew from London to meet personally with then-CIA Director John Brennan, The Guardian reported.

Hannigan's meeting was noteworthy because Brennan wasn't Hannigan's counterpart. That position belonged to NSA Director Mike Rogers. In the following year, Hannigan abruptly announced his retirement on Jan. 23, 2017 -- three days after Trump's inauguration.

As GCHQ was gathering intelligence, low-level Trump campaign foreign-policy adviser George Papadopoulos appears to have been targeted after a series of highly coincidental meetings. Maltese professor Josef Mifsud, Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, FBI informant Stefan Halper, and officials from the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) all crossed paths with Papadopoulos -- some repeatedly so.

Christopher Steele, who authored the dossier on Trump, was an MI6 agent while the agency was headed by Sir Richard Dearlove. Steele retains close ties with Dearlove.

Dearlove has ties to most of the parties mentioned. It was he who advised Steele and his business partner, Chris Burrows, to work with a top British government official to pass along information to the FBI in the fall of 2016. He also was a speaker at the July 2016 Cambridge symposium that Halper invited Carter Page to attend.

Dearlove knows Halper through their mutual association at the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. Dearlove also knows Sir Iain Lobban, a former head of GCHQ, who is an advisory board member at British strategic intelligence and advisory firm Hakluyt , which was founded by former MI6 members and retains close ties to UK intelligence services.

Halper has historical connections to Hakluyt through Jonathan Clarke, with whom he has co-authored two books.

Downer, who met Papadopoulos in a May 2016 meeting established through a chain of two intermediaries, served on the advisory board of Hakluyt from 2008 to 2014. He reportedly still maintains contact with Hakluyt officials. Information from his meeting with Papadopoulos was later used by the FBI to establish the bureau's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. Downer has changed his version of events multiple times.

The Steele dossier was fed into U.S. channels through several different sources. One such source was Sir Andrew Wood, the former British ambassador to Russia, who had been briefed about the dossier by Steele. Wood later relayed information regarding the dossier to Sen. John McCain, who dispatched David Kramer, a fellow at the McCain Institute, to London to meet with Steele in November 2016. McCain would later admit in a Jan. 11, 2017, statement that he had personally passed on the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey.

Trump, after issuing an order for the declassification of documents and text messages related to the Russia-collusion investigations -- including parts of the Carter Page FISA warrant application -- received phone calls from two U.S. allies saying, "Please, can we talk." Those "allies" were almost certainly the UK and Australia.

In a Twitter post , Trump wrote that the "key Allies called to ask not to release" the documents.

Questions to be asked are why is it that two of our allies would find themselves so opposed to the release of these classified documents that a coordinated plea would be made directly to the president? And why would these same allies have even the slightest idea of what was contained in these classified U.S. documents?

Britain and Australia appear to know full well what those documents contain, and their attempt to prevent their public release appears to be because they don't want their role in events surrounding the 2016 presidential election to be made public.

Fusion GPS/Orbis/Christopher Steele

Glenn Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal reporter, is co-founder of Fusion GPS, along with Peter Fritsch and Tom Catan. Fusion was hired by the DNC and the Clinton campaign through law firm Perkins Coie to produce and disseminate the Steele dossier used against Trump. The dossier would later be the primary evidence used to obtain a FISA warrant on Carter Page on Oct. 21, 2016.

<img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/10/Glenn-Simpson.jpg" alt="" width="185" height="220" /> Glenn Simpson, co-founder of Fusion GPS. The company was hired by the Clinton campaign and the DNC–through law firm Perkins Coie–to produce the dossier on Trump.

Christopher Steele, who retains close ties to UK intelligence, worked for MI6 from 1987 until his retirement in 2009, when he and his partner, Chris Burrows, founded Orbis Intelligence. Steele maintains contact with British intelligence, Sir Richard Dearlove , and UK intelligence firm Hakluyt.

Steele appears to have been represented by lawyer Adam Waldman, who also represented Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. We know this from texts sent by Waldman. On April 10, 2017, Waldman sent this to Sen. Mark Warner:

"Hi. Steele: would like to get a bi partisan letter from the committee; Assange: I convinced him to make serious and important concessions and am discussing those w DOJ; Deripaska: willing to testify to congress but interested in state of play w Manafort. I will be with him next tuesday for a week."

Steele also appears to have lobbied on behalf of Deripaska, who was discussed in emails between Bruce Ohr and Steele that were recently disclosed by the Washington Examiner:

"Steele said he was 'circulating some recent sensitive Orbis reporting' on Deripaska that suggested Deripaska was not a 'tool' of the Kremlin. Steele said he would send the reporting to a name that is redacted in the email."

Fusion GPS was also employed by Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya in a previous case. Veselnitskaya was involved in litigation pitting Russian firm Prevezon Holdings against British-American financier William Browder. Veselnitskaya hired U.S. law firm BakerHostetler, who, in turn, hired Fusion GPS to dig up dirt on Browder. Veselnitskaya was one of the participants at the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting, at which she discussed the Magnitsky Act .

Fox News reported on Nov. 9, 2017, that Simpson met with Veselnitskaya immediately before and after the Trump Tower meeting.

A declassified top-secret Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court report released on April 26, 2017, revealed that government agencies, including the FBI, CIA, and NSA, had improperly accessed Americans' communications. The FBI specifically provided outside contractors with access to raw surveillance data on American citizens without proper oversight.

Communications and other data of members of the Trump campaign may have been accessed in this way.

Nellie Ohr
<img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/10/Nellie-Ohr-.jpg" alt="Nellie Ohr" width="185" height="252" />
Nellie Ohr, the wife of high-ranking DOJ official Bruce Ohr, was hired by Fusion GPS to work on the dossier on Trump.

Bruce and Nellie Ohr have known Simpson since at least 2010 and have known Steele since at least 2006. The Ohrs and Simpson worked together on a DOJ report in 2010 . In that report, Nellie Ohr's biography lists her as working for Open Source Works, which is part of the CIA. Simpson met with Bruce Ohr before and after the 2016 election.

Bruce Ohr had been in contact repeatedly with Steele during the 2016 presidential campaign -- while Steele was constructing his dossier. Ohr later actively shared information he received from Steele with the FBI, after the agency had terminated Steele as a source. Interactions between Ohr and Steele stretched for months into the first year of Trump's presidency and were documented in a number of FD-302s -- memos that summarize interviews with him by the FBI.

Spy Traps

In an effort to put forth evidence of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, it appears that several different spy traps were set, with varying degrees of success. Many of these efforts appear to center around Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and involve London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, who has ties to Western intelligence, particularly in the UK.

Papadopoulos and Mifsud both worked at the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP). Mifsud appears to have joined LCILP around November 2015 . Papadopoulos reportedly joined LCILP sometime in late February 2016 after leaving Ben Carson's presidential campaign. However, some reports indicate Papadopoulos joined LCILP in November or December of 2015. Mifsud and Papadopoulos reportedly never crossed paths until March 14, 2016, in Italy.

Mifsud introduced Papadopoulos to several Russians, including Olga Polonskaya, whom Mifsud introduced as "Putin's niece," and Ivan Timofeev, an official at a state-sponsored think tank called the Russian International Affairs Council. Both Papadopoulos and Mifsud were interviewed by the FBI. Papadopoulos was ultimately charged with a process crime and was recently sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying to the FBI. Mifsud was never charged by the FBI.

Throughout this period, Papadopoulos continuously pushed for meetings between Trump campaign officials and Russian contacts but was ultimately unsuccessful in establishing any meetings.

Papadopoulos met with Australian diplomat Alexander Downer on May 10, 2016. The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting has been portrayed as a chance encounter in a bar. That does not appear to be the case.

Papadopoulos was introduced to Downer through a chain of two intermediaries who said Downer wanted to meet with Papadopoulos. Another individual happened to be in London at exactly the same time: the FBI's head of counterintelligence, Bill Priestap. The purpose of Priestap's visit remains unknown.

The Papadopoulos–Downer meeting was later used to establish the FBI's counterintelligence investigation into Trump–Russia collusion. It was repeatedly reported that Papadopoulos told Downer that Russia had Hillary Clinton's emails. This is incorrect.

George Papadopoulos
<img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2018/10/10/George-Papadopoulos-1028769226-1200x1497.jpg" alt="George Papadopoulos" width="187" height="234" /> Foreign policy adviser to the Trump campaign was approached by several individuals with ties to UK and U.S. intelligence agencies. (Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images)

According to Downer, Papadopoulos at some point mentioned the Russians had damaging information on Hillary Clinton.

"During that conversation, he [Papadopoulos] mentioned the Russians might use material that they have on Hillary Clinton in the lead-up to the election, which may be damaging,'' Downer told The Australian about the Papadopoulos meeting in an April 2018 article. "He didn't say dirt, he said material that could be damaging to her. No, he said it would be damaging. He didn't say what it was."

Downer, while serving as Australia's foreign minister, was responsible for one of the largest foreign donations to the Clinton Foundation: $25 million from the Australian government.

Unconfirmed media reports, including a Jan. 12, 2017, BBC article , have suggested that the FBI attempted to obtain two FISA warrants in June and July 2016 that were denied by the FISA court. It's likely that Papadopoulos was an intended target of these failed FISAs.

Interestingly, there is no mention of Papadopoulos in the Steele dossier. Paul Manafort, Carter Page, former Trump lawyer Michael Cohen, Gen. Michael Flynn, and former Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski are all listed in the Steele dossier.

Papadopoulos may have started out assisting the FBI or CIA and later discovered that he was being set up for surveillance himself.

After failing to obtain a spy warrant on the Trump campaign using Papadopoulos, the FBI set its sights on campaign volunteer Carter Page. By this time, the counterintelligence investigation was in the process of being established, and we know now that it was formalized with no official intelligence. The FBI needed some sort of legal cover. They needed a retroactive warrant. And they got one on Oct. 21, 2016. The Page FISA warrant would be renewed three times and remain in force until September 2017.

Stefan Halper met with Page for the first time on July 11, 2016, at a Cambridge symposium , just three days after Page's July 2016 Moscow trip. As noted previously, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove was a speaker at the symposium. Halper and Dearlove have known each other for years and maintain several mutual associations.

Page was already known to the FBI. The Page FISA warrant application references the Buryakov spy case and an FBI interview with Page. Current information suggests there was only one meeting between Page and the FBI in 2016. It happened on March 2, 2016. It was in relation to Victor Podobnyy, who was named in the Buryakov case.

Page, who cooperated with the FBI on the case, almost certainly was providing testimony or details against Podobnyy. Page had been contacted by Podobnyy in 2013 and had previously provided information to the FBI. Buryakov pleaded guilty on March 11, 2016 -- nine days after Page met with the FBI on the case -- and was sentenced to 30 months in prison on May 25, 2016. On April 5, 2017, Buryakov was granted early release and was deported to Russia.

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said in August that exculpatory evidence on Page exists that wasn't included by the DOJ and the FBI in the FISA application and subsequent renewals. The exculpatory evidence likely relates specifically to Page's role in the Buryakov case.

If the FBI failed to disclose Page's cooperation with the bureau or materially misrepresented his involvement in its application to the FISA Court, it means that the FBI's Woods procedures, which govern FISA applications, were violated.

Page has not been arrested or charged with any crime related to the investigation.

Jeff Carlson is a regular contributor to The Epoch Times. He also runs the website TheMarketsWork.com and can be followed on Twitter @themarketswork.

[May 08, 2019] Clapper admits FBI's actions 'meet the dictionary definition' of 'spying'

Notable quotes:
"... But in a widely-overlooked interview on CNN on May 3, Clapper admitted that spying had occurred. When asked by Wolf Blitzer whether spying had occurred, Clapper said that "it's not a term of art used by intelligence people" but admitted that "I guess it meets the dictionary definition of surveillance or spying, a term I don't particularly like." ..."
"... Going by the alias Azra Turk, this yet-unknown woman was reportedly sent to meet with Papadopoulos by one of the FBI agents who had previously spoken at Halper's Cambridge Intelligence Seminars." Washington Examiner ..."
"... I have suggested before that Clapper and the FISA court judges are the weakest spots in the array of Russiagate conspirators. The FISA judges are suggested to the Chief Justice by the DoJ for appointment. This occurs after close vetting for probable compliance with anything communicated by DoJ as desired outcomes in cases brought to them. After all, who knows them better than the DoJ lawyers who argue in the courts they come from? ..."
"... Clapper is a weakling filled boundless ambition and handicapped by limited intelligence. He has no particular allegiance to anything or anyone except himself and will seek forgiveness for his misdeeds if pressed hard. ..."
May 08, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"James Clapper admits FBI's actions 'meet the dictionary definition' of 'spying'" Wash Examiner

""I was amazed at that and rather disappointed that the attorney general would say such a thing," Clapper said. "The term 'spying' has all kinds of negative connotations and I have to believe he chose that term deliberately."

But in a widely-overlooked interview on CNN on May 3, Clapper admitted that spying had occurred. When asked by Wolf Blitzer whether spying had occurred, Clapper said that "it's not a term of art used by intelligence people" but admitted that "I guess it meets the dictionary definition of surveillance or spying, a term I don't particularly like."

Clapper conceded this point following a May 2 story in the New York Times that revealed that a woman who had been posing as the assistant of Stefan Halper, a Cambridge University professor who himself had worked as a Trump campaign informant on behalf of the FBI, was herself working undercover for the FBI. Going by the alias Azra Turk, this yet-unknown woman was reportedly sent to meet with Papadopoulos by one of the FBI agents who had previously spoken at Halper's Cambridge Intelligence Seminars." Washington Examiner

------------

I have suggested before that Clapper and the FISA court judges are the weakest spots in the array of Russiagate conspirators. The FISA judges are suggested to the Chief Justice by the DoJ for appointment. This occurs after close vetting for probable compliance with anything communicated by DoJ as desired outcomes in cases brought to them. After all, who knows them better than the DoJ lawyers who argue in the courts they come from?

Clapper is a weakling filled boundless ambition and handicapped by limited intelligence. He has no particular allegiance to anything or anyone except himself and will seek forgiveness for his misdeeds if pressed hard.

If Lindsay Graham needs initial targets for his very own "witchhunt," he should start with these people. pl

https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/james-clapper-admits-fbis-actions-meet-the-dictionary-definition-of-spying


Jack , 08 May 2019 at 12:50 AM

Sir

I don't think Lindsey is gonna do much other than showboat. The only person who should have the motive and has the power to take action is Trump. I'm skeptical he has the wherewithal to push it through. He'll likely delegate to Barr and who knows if Barr really wants to rock the boat.

Robert , 08 May 2019 at 09:30 AM
The way the South Korean's pronounced Clapper's name was priceless--"Crapper"--and appropriate, too. Always broke me up.
walrus , 08 May 2019 at 12:09 PM
The smoking gun; FBI conspired with HRC;

https://thehill.com/opinion/white-house/442592-steeles-stunning-pre-fisa-confession-informant-needed-to-air-trump-dirt#.XNIAVvr8PT0.twitter

Fluesterwitz , 08 May 2019 at 12:09 PM
The dictionary definition of 'spying':

"to watch secretly usually for hostile purposes"

I suppose the legal definition is somewhat different, otherwise this seems to be a confession, doesn't it?

[Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks. ..."
"... Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done. ..."
"... President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free. ..."
"... The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence, ..."
"... According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. ..."
"... This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. ..."
"... Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control. ..."
"... In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department. ..."
"... The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA. ..."
"... As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. ..."
"... Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia. ..."
"... The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected. ..."
"... This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest. ..."
"... Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know: ..."
"... War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff. ..."
"... The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages. ..."
"... That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers. ..."
Apr 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

The British Role in 'Russiagate' Is About to Be Fully Exposed April 8, 2019 20190408-russiagate-exposed-brits.pdf The "fake news" media has now dropped its pretense of having ever had any intention of allowing the truth -- as documented in U.S. Attorney General Barr's summary of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's report, exonerating President Donald Trump of having "conspired or coordinated with the Russian government" -- to thoroughly refute the Russiagate "Big Lie." Soon, however, it is certain that the deliberate, British Intelligence-originated, military-grade disinformation campaign carried out against the United States, including to this day, will be exposed.

The truth is, that a foreign government did indeed meddle in the American Presidential election, in a failed attempt to fix the outcome, but it was not Russia. It was the City of London, and the Five Eyes imperial intelligence services of the British Commonwealth, along with treasonous, "Tory" American elements. If that admission is forced to the surface, through the vigorous actions of all that oppose the presently dominant Big Lie tyranny, that revelation will shock and liberate people all over the world. The mental stranglehold of "fake news" media outlets can be permanently broken. That is the task of the next days and weeks.

"It's hard to find a black cat in a dark room, especially if there is no cat," says the Chinese proverb. Yet, although the Mueller report was called a "nothing burger," it was not: it still presented the potentially lethal lie that twelve Russian gremlins, code-named Guccifer 2.0, hacked the DNC. Sundry media meatheads thus continue to blog and broadcast about "what else is really there."

The false Russian hack story, still being repeated, marches on, undeterred, like the emperor without any clothes. One lame-brained variation, promoted in order to cover up the British role, states that Hillary Clinton, rather than Trump, colluded with the Russians. It is being repeated by Republicans and Democrats alike, some of them malicious, some of them confused, and all of them completely wrong. The media, such as the failed New York Times and various electronic media, must be forced to either admit the truth, or be even more thoroughly discredited than they already have been. They must stop their constant repetition of this Joseph Goebbels-like Big Lie. There must be a vigorous dissemination of the truth by all those journalists, politicians, activists and citizens that love truth more than their own assumptions, including about President Trump, or other dearly-held systems of false belief.

Apart from documenting the presence of "former" British intelligence agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 head Sir Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ head Robert Hannigan at the center of the Russiagate campaign against President Trump for the past several years, we must, in order to expose this successfully, identify not only what was actually done and who was doing it, but the deeper policy motivation: why it was done.

A New Cultural Paradigm

The world is actually on the verge of ending the military conflicts among the major world powers, such as Russia, China, the United States, and India. These four powers, and not the City of London, are the key fulcrum around which a new era in humanity's future will be decided. A new monetary and credit system brought into being through these four powers would foster the greatest physical economic growth in the history of humanity. In addition, discussions involving Italy working with China on the industrialization of the African continent (discussions which could soon also involve the United States) show that sections of Europe want to join China's Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and leave the dying trans-Atlantic financial empire behind.

The recent announcement of a United States commitment to return to the Moon by 2024 can, in particular, become the basis for a proposal to other nations -- for example, China, Russia, and India, all of whom are space powers of demonstrated capability -- to resolve their differences on Earth in a higher, joint mission. As Russia's Roscosmos Director Dmitry Rogozin said in a recent interview:

"I am a fierce proponent of international cooperation, including with Americans, because their country is big and technologically advanced, and they can make good partners Especially since personal and professional relations between Roscosmos and NASA at the working level are great."

There is also the possibility of ending the danger of thermonuclear war. President Trump, speaking on April 4 of the prospects for world peace, stated:

"Between Russia, China, and us, we're all making hundreds of billions of dollars worth of weapons, including nuclear, which is ridiculous. I think it's much better if we all got together and didn't make these weapons those three countries I think can come together and stop the spending and spend on things that are more productive toward long-term peace."

This is a statement of real importance. Such an outlook is a rejection of the "perpetual crisis/perpetual war" outlook of the Bush-Obama Administration, a four-term "war presidency" which was abruptly, unexpectedly ended in 2016. The British were not amused.

It is to stop this new cultural paradigm, pivoted on the Pacific and the potential Four Powers alliance, that British imperial forces have deployed. The 2016 election of President Trump, and his personal friendship with President Xi Jinping and desire to work with President Putin, are an intolerable strategic threat to the eighteenth-century geopolitics of the British empire. They have repeatedly used Russiagate to disrupt the process of deliberation among Presidents Xi, Trump, and Putin, thus increasing the danger of war. Russiagate, in the interest of international security, must be ended by exposing it for the utter fraud that it is.

The Truth Set Free

President Donald Trump has no vested interest in protecting the British "special relationship." From his second day in office, Trump declared that he would clean out the intelligence agencies. If Trump were to do that, however, the real, tragic history of America's last 50 years would be exhumed from that swamp. Shining a light into that darkness would illuminate the world. The American people would stop playing Othello to the City of London's Iago. They would denounce the British "special relationship," never again to fight imperial wars for the greater glory of the British Empire. They would learn the true story of Vietnam, of Iraq 1991 and Iraq 2003, of Libya 2011, and many other conflicts, special operations, and assassinations. The American people would know the truth, and the truth would set them free.

The current insurrection against the United States Presidency is part of a global strategic battle: will a conspiracy of republican forces overcome the modern day British imperial system, centered in the hot money centers of the City of London and Wall Street, or will the oligarchical system once again triumph, immiserating all but the very wealthy? That is the real issue of the insurrection against the maverick American president being conducted by the London and NATO-centered enforcers of the old world. To paraphrase the American Declaration of Independence,

"The history of the present Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the undermining of the United States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world."


DOCUMENTATION

While Robert Mueller found that there was "no collusion" between Donald Trump or the Trump Campaign and Russia, he also filed two indictments regarding alleged Russian interference in the 2016 election. The first alleges that 12 members of Russian Military Intelligence hacked the DNC and John Podesta and delivered the purloined files to WikiLeaks for strategic publication before the July 2016 Democratic National Convention and in October 2016, one month before the election. The second indictment charges the Internet Research Agency, a Russian internet merchandising and marketing firm, with running social media campaigns in the U.S. in 2016 designed to impact the election. When the fuller version of the Mueller report becomes public, it is certain to recharge the claims of Russian interference based on the so-called background "evidence" supporting these indictments.

The good news, however, is that investigations in the United States and Britain, have unearthed significant contrary evidence exposing British Intelligence, NATO, and, to a lesser extent, Ukraine, as the actual foreign actors in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. We provide a short summary of the main aspects of that evidence to spark further investigations of the British intelligence networks, entities, and methods at issue, internationally. More detailed accounts concerning specific aspects of what we recite here can be found on our website.

The Russian Hack That Wasn't

The Veterans Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, an association of former U.S. intelligence officials, have demonstrated that the Russian hack of the DNC alleged by Robert Mueller, was more likely an internal leak, rather than a hack conducted over the internet. William Binney, who conducted the main investigations for the VIPS, spent 30 years at the National Security Agency, becoming Technical Director. He designed the sorts of NSA programs that would detect a Russian hack if one occurred. Binney conducted an actual forensic examination of the DNC files released by WikiLeaks, and the related files circulated by the persona Guccifer 2.0, who Robert Mueller claims is a GRU creation. Binney has demonstrated that the calculated transfer speeds and metadata characteristics of these files are consistent with downloading to a thumb drive or storage device rather than an internet-based hack. This supports the account by WikiLeaks of how it obtained the files. According to WikiLeaks and former Ambassador Craig Murray, they were obtained from a person who was not a Russian state actor of any kind, in Washington, D.C. WikiLeaks offered to tell the Justice Department all about this, and actual negotiations to this effect were proceeding in early 2017, when Senator Mark Warner and FBI Director James Comey acted to sabotage and end the negotiations.

Further, as opposed to the hyperbole in the media and in Robert Mueller's indictment, analysis of the Internet Research Agency's alleged "weaponization" of Facebook in 2016 involved a paltry total of $46,000 in Facebook ads and $4,700 spent on Google platforms . In an election in which the major campaigns spend tens of thousands of dollars every day on these platforms, whatever the IRA thought it was doing in its amateurish and juvenile memes and tropes was like throwing a stone in the ocean. Most of these activities occurred after the election and never mentioned either candidate. The interpretation that these ads were designed to draw clicks and website traffic, rather than influence the election, must be considered.

The "evidence" for Mueller's GRU hacking indictment was provided, in part, by CrowdStrike, the DNC vendor that originated the claims that the Russians had hacked that entity. CrowdStrike is closely associated with the Atlantic Council's Digital Research Lab (DRL), an operation jointly funded by NATO's Strategic Communications Center and the U.S. State Department, to counter Russian "hybrid warfare." CrowdStrike has been caught more than once falsely attributing hacks to the Russians and the Atlantic Council's DRL is a font of anti-Russian intelligence operations.

The British Target Trump

According to CIA Director John Brennan's Congressional testimony, the British began complaining loudly about candidate Trump and Russia in late 2015. Brennan's statements were echoed in articles in The Guardian . According to Brennan, intelligence leads about Trump and Russia had been forwarded to Brennan from both British intelligence and from Estonia. The former head of the Russia Desk for MI6 and protégé of Sir Richard Dearlove, Christopher Steele, fresh from working for British Intelligence, the FBI, and U.S. State Department in the 2014 Ukraine coup, assembled in 2016 a phony dossier called Operation Charlemagne, claiming widespread Russian interference in European elections, including in the Brexit vote. By the spring of 2016, Steele was contributing to a British/U.S. intelligence task force on the Trump Campaign which had been convened at CIA headquarters under John Brennan's direction.

This task force targeted Trump campaign volunteers Carter Page and George Papadopoulos in entrapment operations on British soil, using British agents, during the spring and summer of 2016. The personnel employed in these operations all had multiple connections to the British firm Hakluyt, to Steele's firm Orbis, and to the British military's Integrity Initiative. Sometime in the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, then head of GCHQ, flew to Washington to brief John Brennan personally. Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ shortly after the election, sparking widespread speculation that the British were making an attempt at damage control.

Michael Flynn and Paul Manafort were already on the radar and under investigation by the same British, Dearlove-centered intelligence network and by Christopher Steele specifically. Flynn had been defamed by Dearlove and Stefan Halper, as a possible Russian agent way back in 2014 because he spoke to Russian researcher Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner sponsored by Dearlove's Cambridge Security Forum. Or, at least that was the pretext for the targeting of Flynn, who otherwise defied British intelligence by exposing Western support for terrorist operations in Syria and sought a collaborative relationship with Russia to counter ISIS. Manafort was under FBI investigation throughout 2014 and 2015, largely in retaliation for his role in steering the Party of the Regions to political power in Ukraine.

In 2016, the Manafort investigation migrated to the Democratic National Committee with direct assistance provided by Ukrainian state intelligence. This effort was led by Alexandra Chalupa, an admirer of Stepan Bandera and other heroes of Nazi history in Ukraine. Chalupa also had deep connections to British-oriented networks at the U.S. State Department.

In or around June 2016, Christopher Steele began writing his dirty and bogus dossier about Trump and Russia. This is the dossier which claimed that Trump was compromised by Putin and that Putin was coordinating with Trump in the 2016 election. The main "legend" of this full-spectrum information warfare operation run from Britain, was that Donald Trump was receiving "dirt" on Hillary Clinton from Russia. The operations targeting Page and Papadopoulos consisted of multiple attempts to plant fabricated evidence on them which would reflect what Steele himself was fabricating in the dirty dossier. At the very same time, the infamous June 2016 meeting at Trump Tower was being set up. That meeting involved the Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya, who, it was alleged in a series of bizarre emails written by British publicist Ron Goldstone to set up the meeting, could deliver "dirt" on Hillary Clinton direct from the Russian government. Veselnitskaya didn't deliver any such dirt. But the entire operation was being monitored by State Department intelligence agent Kyle Parker, an expert on Russia. Parker's emails reveal deep ties to the highest levels of British intelligence and much chatter between them about Trump and Russia.

A now-changed version of the website for Christopher Steele's firm, Orbis, trumpeted an expertise in information warfare operations, and the networks in which Steele runs are deeply integrated into the British military's Integrity Initiative. The Integrity Initiative is a rapid response propaganda operation using major journalists in the United States and Europe to carry out targeted defamation campaigns. Its central charge, according to documents posted by the hacking group Anonymous, is selling the United States and Western Europe on the immediate need for regime change in Russia, even if that involves war.

Much has been made by Republicans and other lunkheads in the U.S. Congress of Steele's contacts with Russians for his dossier. They claim that such contacts resulted in a Russian disinformation operation being run through the duped Christopher Steele. Nothing could be further from the truth.

MI6's Dirty Dossier on Donald Trump: Full-Spectrum Information Warfare

On its face, Steele's dossier would immediately be recognized as a complete fabrication by any competent intelligence analyst. He cites some 32 sources inside the Russian government for his fabricated claims about Trump. What they allegedly told him is specific enough in time and content to identify them. To believe that the dossier is true or that actual Russians contributed to it, you must also believe that that the British government was willing to roll up this entire network, exposing them, since the intention was for the dossier's wild claims to be published as widely as possible. By all accounts, Britain and the United States together do not have 32 highly placed sources inside the Russian government, nor would they ever make them public in this way or with this very sloppy tradecraft. Steele's fabrication also uses aspects of readily available public information, such as the sale of 19% of the energy company Rosneft, (the alleged bribe offered to Carter Page for lifting sanctions) to concoct a fictional narrative of high crimes and misdemeanors.

Other claims in the dossier were published, publicly, in various Ukrainian publications. The famous claim that Trump directed prostitutes to urinate on a bed once slept upon by Barack Obama seems to be plagiarized from similarly fake 2009 British propaganda stories about Silvio Berlusconi spending the night with a prostitute in a hotel room in Rome, "defiling" Putin's bed. According to various sources in the United States, this outrageous claim was made by Sergei Millian. George Papadopoulos has stated that he believes Millian is an FBI informant, recounting in his book how a friend of Millian's blurted this out when Millian, Papadopoulos and the friend were having coffee.

The final nail in this case has been provided by The Hill 's John Solomon. He says that Steele told former Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr about the sources for the dirty dossier. According to Solomon, Ohr's notes reveal one main source, a former senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States. But, as anyone familiar with the territory would know, there is no such retired senior Russian intelligence official living in the United States whose entire life is not controlled by the CIA.

Despite its obvious fake pedigree, Steele's dossier was laundered into the Justice Department repeatedly, by the CIA and State Department and the Obama White House. It was used to obtain FISA surveillance warrants turning key members of the Trump Campaign into walking microphones. It was circulated endlessly by the Clinton Campaign to a network of reporters in the U.S. known to serve as scribes for the intelligence community. John Brennan used it to conduct a special emergency briefing of the leading members of the U.S. Congress charged with intelligence responsibilities in August of 2016 and to brief Harry Reid, who was Senate Majority Leader at the time. All of this activity meant that the salacious accusation that Trump was a Putin pawn and the FBI was investigating the matter, leaked out and was used by the Clinton Campaign to defame Trump for its electoral advantage. When Trump won, Steele's nonsense received the stamp of the U.S. intelligence community and official currency in the campaign to take out the President.

As a result of Congressional investigations of Russiagate, it has become abundantly clear that the British operation against Trump was aided and abetted by the Obama White House, the State Department, the CIA, the FBI, and personalities associated with the National Endowment for Democracy. The individuals involved might be named Veterans of the 2014 Ukrainian Coup, since all of them also worked on this operation. It is no accident that Victoria Nuland, the case agent for the Ukraine coup, played a major role in bolstering Steele's credentials for the purpose of selling his dirty dossier to the media and to the Justice Department. This went so far as Steele giving a full scale briefing on his fabricated dossier at the State Department in October 2016.

Out of the Ukraine coup, an entire military-centered propaganda apparatus arose, first through NATO, and then out from there to military units and diplomatic centers in the U.S., Europe, and Britain, to run low intensity operations, and black propaganda, against Russia.

The British end of the operation includes the Integrity Initiative, the 77th Brigade, and NATO's Strategic Communications Center. In the United States, the Integrity Initiative has been integrated into the Global Engagement Center at the U.S. State Department. Most certainly, this operation is poised again to intervene in the U.S. elections; the British House of Lords have stated explicitly, in their December 2018 report, British Foreign Policy in a Shifting World Order, that Donald Trump must not be re-elected.

This is why the British are yelping that under no circumstances can the classified documents concerning their role in the attempted coup against Donald Trump be declassified. It would end their leverage over the United States and much of Europe. That is why these documents must indeed be declassified, and parallel investigations by citizens and government officials concerned with ending the imperial system, otherwise known as the current "war party," must begin in earnest.

Sign the Petition: President Trump, Declassify the Docs on the British Role in Russiagate


Robert , April 24, 2019 at 14:35

"in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe"

Perhaps add mainstream media to the list of such sincere believers, they will fire their own real journalists.

David Walters , April 24, 2019 at 13:14

"This doesn't mean that Russia would never use hackers to interfere in world political affairs or that Vladimir Putin is some sort of virtuous girl scout, it just means that in a post-Iraq invasion world, only herd-minded human livestock believe the unsubstantiated assertions of opaque and unaccountable government agencies about governments who are oppositional to those same agencies."

Absolutely correct.

Anyone who still believes what the IC says if a moron. As Pompeo recently said to the student body of Texas A&M University, my alma matta, the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steel. He went on the explain that the CIA has courses to teach their agent that dark "art".

Eileen Kuch , April 24, 2019 at 18:13

Right, David Walters, and see Pompous Pompeo now. The only truths he's told was to a student body of Texas A&M University – his own alma mater – the CIA's job is to lie, cheat and steal.
Even though he's left his post as CIA Director and assumed his current post of Secretary of State. Pompous Pompeo continues his CIA traits of lying, cheating, and stealing. It's in a way similar to a phrase, "A leopard never changes its spots". This is why the DPRK govt issued a Persona Non Grata on Pompous Pompeo – that he isn't a bona fide diplomat, but a CIA official.

CWG , April 22, 2019 at 17:15

Here's my take on the 'Russian Collusion Deep State LIE.

There was NO Russian Collusion at all to get Trump in the White House. Most probably, Putin would have favored Clinton, since she could be bought. Trump can't.

What did happen was illegal spying on the Trump campaign. That started late 2015, WITHOUT a FISA warrant. They only obtained that in 2016, through lying to the FISA Court. The basis for that first warrant was the Fusion GPS Steele Dossier.

Ever since Trump won the election, they real conspirators knew they had a problem. That was apparent ever after Devin Nunes did the right thing by informing Trump they were spying on him.

Since they obtained those FISA warrant through lying to the FISA Court (which is treason) they needed to cover that up as quickly as possible.

So what did they do? Instead of admitting they lied to the FISA Court they kept on lying till this very day. The same lie through which they obtained the FISA warrants to spy on the Trump campaign was being pushed openly.

The lie is and was 'Trump colluded with the Russians in order to win the Presidential Election'.

They knew from day one Trump didn't do anything wrong. They did know they spied on Trump through lying to the FISA Court, which again, is treason. According to the Constitution, lying to the FISA court= Treason.

In order to avoid being indicted and prosecuted, they somehow needed to 'take down' the Attorney General. At all costs, they needed to try and hide what really happened.

So there they went. 'Trump colluded with the Russians. Not just Trump, but the entire Trump campaign!'.

'Sessions should recuse himself', the propaganda MSM said in unison. 'Recuse, recuse'.

Sessions, naively recused himself. Back then, even he probably didn't know the entire story. It was only later on that Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon found out it had been Hillary who ordered and paid the Steele Dossier.

The real conspirators hoped that through the Special Counsel rat Mueller they might be able to achieve three main objectives.

1: Convince the American people Russia indeed was meddling in the Presidential Election.

2: Find any sort of dirt on Trump and/or people who helped him win the Election in order to 'take them down'.

Many people were indicted, some were prosecuted. Yet NONE of them were convicted for a crime that had ANYTHING to with with the elections. NONE.

They stretched it out as long as possible. 'The longer you repeat a lie, the more people are willing to believe the lie'.

So that is what they did. They still do it. Mueller took TWO years to brainwash as many people as possible. 'Russian Collusion, Russian Collusion. Russia. Russia. Russia. Russia. Rusiaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhhh ..

Why did they want to make sure they could keep telling that lie as long as possible?

Because they FEAR people will learn the truth. There was NEVER any Russian Collusion with the Trump campaign.

There was spying on the Trump campaign by Obama in order to try and make Hillary win the Presidential Election.

That is the actual COLLUSION between the Clinton Campaign and a weaponized Obama regime!!

So what did 'Herr Mueller' do?

He took YEARS to come up with the conclusion that the Trump campaign did NOT collude with Russia.

The MSM tried to make us all believe it was about that. Yet it was NOT.

His conclusive report is all about the question 'did or didn't the Trump campaign collude with the Russians'.

Trump exonerated, and the MSM only talks about that. Trump, Trump, Trump.

They still want us all to believe that was what the Mueller 'investigation' was all about. Yet it was not.

The most important objective of the Mueller 'investigation' was not to 'investigate'.

It was to 'instigate' that HUGE lie.

The same lie which they used to obtain the FISA warrant on the Trump campaign.

"Russia'.

So what has 'Herr Mueller' done?

A: He finds ZERO evidence at all which proves the Trump campaign colluded with ANY Russians.

And now the huge lie, which after all was the main objective right from the get go. (A was only a distraction)

B: Russians hacked the DNC.

That is what they wants us all to believe. That Russia somehow did bad stuff.

Now it was not Russia who did bad stuff.

It was Obama working together with the Clinton campaign. Obama weaponized his entire regime in order to let Clinton win the Presidency.

That is the REAL collusion. The real CRIME. Treason!

In order to create a 'cover up' Mueller NEEDED to instigate that Russia somehow did bad things.

That's what the Mueller Dossier is ALL about. They now have 'black on white' 'evidence' that Russia somehow did bad things.

Because if Russia didn't do anything like that, it would make us all ask the fair question 'why did Obama spy on the Trump Campaign'.

Let's go a bit deeper still.

Here's a trap Mueller created. What if Trump would openly doubt the LIE they still push? The HUGE lie that Russia did bad things?

After all, they NEED that LIE in order to COVER UP their own crime.

If Trump would say 'I do not believe Russia did anything to influence the elections, I think Mueller wrote that to COVER UP the real crime', what would happen?

They would say 'GOTCHA now, see Trump is colluding with Russia? He even refuses to accept Russia hacked the DNC, this ultimately proofs Trump indeed is a Russian asset'.

They believe that trap will work. They needed that trap, since if Russia wasn't doing anything wrong, it would show us all THEY were the criminals.

They NEED that lie, in order to COVER UP.

That is the 'Insurance Policy' Stzrok and Page texted about. Even Sarah Carter and Jon Solomon still don't seem to see all that.

They should have attacked the HUGE lie that Russia was somehow hacking the DNC. That is simply not true. It's a Mueller created LIE.

That LIE = the Insurance Policy.

What did they need an Insurance Policy for? They want us all to believe that was about preventing Trump from being elected.

Although true, that is only A.

They NEEDED an Insurance Policy in the unlikely case Trump would become President and would find out they were illegally spying on him!

The REAL crime is Obama weaponized the American Government to spy on even a duly elected President.

What's the punishment for Treason?

About Assange and Seth Rich.

Days after Mueller finishes his 'mission' (Establish the LIE Russia did bad things) which seems to be succesfull, the Deep State arrest the ONLY source who could undermine that lie.

Assange Since he knows who is (Seth Rich?) and who isn't (Russia) the source.

If Assange could testify under oath the emails did not come from Russia, the LIE would be exposed.

No coincidences here. I fear Assange will never testify under oath. I actually fear for his life.

Deniz , April 23, 2019 at 13:48

While I wholeheartedly agree with you that Obama and Clinton are criminals, the far less convincing part of your argument is that Trump is not now beholden to the same MIC interests. Bolton, Abrahams, Pompeo, Pence his relationship with Netanyahu, the overthrow of Madura are all glaring examples that contradict the Rights narrative that he is some type of hero. Trump may not have colluded with Russia, but he does seem to be colluding with Saudia Arabia, Israel, Big Oil and the MIC.

Whether one is on the Right or Left, the house is still made of glass.

boxerwars , April 22, 2019 at 17:13

RE: "A Russian Agent Smear"
:::

Was Pat Tillman Murdered?
JUL 30, 2007

I don't know, but it seems increasingly conceivable. Just absorb these facts:

O'Neal said Tillman, a corporal, threw a smoke grenade to identify themselves to fellow soldiers who were firing at them. Tillman was waving his arms shouting "Cease fire, friendlies, I am Pat [expletive] Tillman, damn it!" again and again when he was killed, O'Neal said

In the same testimony, medical examiners said the bullet holes in Tillman's head were so close together that it appeared the Army Ranger was cut down by an M-16 fired from a mere 10 yards or so away.
The motive? I don't know. It's still likeliest it was an accident. But there's some mysterious testimony in the SI report about nameless snipers. A reader suggests the following interpretation:

News this weekend said that there were "snipers" present and the witnesses didn't remember their names. I believe that's code in the Army–these guys were Delta. In the Tillman incident, these snipers weren't part of the unit and they were never mentioned publicly before. That's a key indicator that they weren't supposed to be acknowledged.

If you've ever read Blackhawk Down, Mark Bowden explains how he grew frustrated because interviewed Rangers kept referring to "soldiers from another unit" while claiming they didn't know the unit ID or the soldiers' names. It took him months to crack the unit ID and find people from Delta who were present at the fight.

Randy Shugart and Gary Gordon, the Delta operators who earned Medals of Honor in Mogadishu, have always been identified as snipers, too.

If my theory is correct, the Delta guys could have fired the shots – a three-round burst to the forehead from 50 yards is impossible for normal soldiers and Rangers, but is probably an easy shot for those guys. But because Delta doesn't officially exist and Tillman was a hero, nobody in the Army would want to have to explain exactly how the event went down. Easier just to claim hostile fire until the family forced them to do otherwise.
This makes some sense to me, although we shouldn't dismiss the chance he was murdered. Tillman was a star and might have aroused jealousy or resentment. He also opposed the Iraq war and was a proud atheist. In Bush's increasingly sectarian military, that might have stirred hostility. I don't know. But I know enough to want a deeper investigation. My atheist readers will no doubt admire the way Tillman left this world, according to the man who was with him:

As bullets flew above their heads, the young soldier at Pat Tillman's side started praying. "I thought I was praying to myself, but I guess he heard me," Sgt. Bryan O'Neal recalled in an interview Saturday with The Associated Press. "He said something like, 'Hey, O'Neal, why are you praying? God can't help us now."'

(Maybe the Congress can )

////// The USA is aghast with "smears" and "internal investigations" and promised but never produced "White Papers" 'as the world turns' and circles continents Dominated by American Military Power / Predominantly Barbarous / Uncivilized Use of Force / and Arrogantly Effective in it's use of Dominating Military Power.

\\\\ The Poorer Peoples of the World accept their lots-in-life with some acceptance of reality vis-a-vis the "lot-in-life" they've been alleged/assigned.

/// But How Do We Accept The Fact that our Self-Sacrificiing Hero,Pat Tillman, was slaughtered in Afghanistan,
(WITH POSITIVE PROOF) – by his own Fellow American soldiers – ???

!!!! What i'm say'n is, if Tillman represents the Life Surrendering "American Hero"
WHY DID HIS FELLOW "AMERICAN SOLDIERS" ASSASSINATE & MURDER HIM ???????

AND WHY IS THIS STORY BURIED ALONG WITH MANY OTHER SMEAR Stories
that provide prophylactic protection for all the Trump pianist prophylaxis cover

Up for the Right Wing theft of American Democracy under FDR
In favor of Ayn Rand's prevalent OBJECTIVISM under Trump.

"Capitalism and Altruism
are incompatible
capitalism and altruism
cannot coexist in man,
or in the same society".

President Trump represents
Stark & Total Capitalism
Just as "Conservative Party"
Core is in The Confederacy
AKA; The RIGHT WING

The Right Wing of US Gov't
Is All About PRESERVING
Confederate States' Laws
Written by Thomas Jefferson

Prior to The Constitution, which
became the Received/Judicial
Constitutional Law of the Land in
The Republic of the "United States"

Elizabeth K. Burton , April 23, 2019 at 12:50

It's not enough that Trump is clearly a classic narcissist whose behavior will continue to deteriorate the more his actions and statements are attacked and countered? You know what happens when narcissists are driven into a corner by people tearing them down? They get weapons and start killing people.

There is already more than ample evidence to remove Donald Trump from office, not the least being he's clearly mentally unfit. Yet the Democrats, some of whom ran for office on a promise to impeach, are suddenly reticent to act without "more investigation". Nancy Pelosi stated on the record prior to release of the Mueller report impeachment wasn't on the agenda "for now". She's now making noises in the opposite direction, but that's all they are: noise.

The bottom line is the Clintonite New Democrats currently running the party have only one issue to run on next year: getting rid of Donald Trump. They still operate under the delusion they will be able to use him to draw off moderate Republican voters, the same ones they were positive would come out for Hillary Clinton in '16. Their multitude of candidates pay lip service to progressive policy then carefully walk back to the standard centrist positions once the donations start coming, but the common underlying theme was and continues to be "Donald Trump is evil, and we need to elect a Democrat."

In short, without Donald Trump in the Oval Office, the Democrat Party has no platform. They need him there as a target, because Mike Pence would be impossible for them to beat. They are under orders, according to various writers who've addressed the Clinton campaign, to block Bernie Sanders and his platform at all costs; and they will allow the country to crash and burn before they disobey those orders. That means keeping Donald Trump right where he is through next November.

Eddie S , April 24, 2019 at 21:14

Exactly right, EKB -- - you can't ballroom dance without a partner! Also reminds me of the couples you occasionally run into where one partner repeatedly runs-down the other, and you get the feeling that the critical partner doesn't have much going on in his/her life so they deflect that by focusing on the other partner

Johnny Ryan S , April 22, 2019 at 13:38

Why did the DNC not allow the FBI to investigate the so-called" Russian hacked" emails? Rather, they hire CrowdStrike did you know:
1)Obama Appoints CrowdStrike Officer To Admin Post Two Months Before June 2016 Report On Russia Hacking DNC
2) CrowdStrike Co-Founder Is Fellow On Russia Hawk Group, Has Connections To George Soros, Ukrainian Billionaire
3) DNC stayed that the FBI never asked to investigate the servers – that is a lie.
4) CrowdStrike received $100 million in investments led by Google Capital (since re-branded as CapitalG) in 2015. CapitalG is owned by Alphabet, and Eric Schmidt, Alphabet's chairman, was a supporter of Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election. More than just supporting Clinton, leaked emails from Wikileaks in November 2016 showed that in 2014 he wanted to have an active role in the campaign.

-daily caller and dan bongino have been bringing these points up since 2016.

Deniz , April 22, 2019 at 12:36

The Right is currently salivating over the tough law enforcement rhetoric coming out of Barr and Trump.

It reminds me of when Obama was running for office in 2008 when everyone, including myself, was in awe of him. What kept slipping into his soaring anti-intervention speeches, was a commitment to the good war in Afghanistan, which seemed totally out of place with the rest of his rhetoric. The fine print was far more reflective of his administration actions as the rest of it his communications turned out to be just telling people what they wanted to hear.

War with Afghanistan was Obama's payoff to the MIC, just as Russia is now Trump's payoff.

Herman , April 22, 2019 at 11:09

The argument about not inserting Rich and the download is a good one as a defense strategy but doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails. We can only hope that pursuing the truth and producing it will have a cumulative effect and the illusory truth effect will include this truth.

Red Douglas , April 22, 2019 at 16:00

>>> ". . . doesn't help with finding the truth about the emails."

The important truth about the emails is in their authenticity and in the contents. No one has even attempted to claim that they are not authentic or that the contents we've seen are other than the actual contents of the authentic messages.

Why should we much care how they were acquired and provided to the publisher?

Lily , April 22, 2019 at 17:55

That is what i think. People should not concentrate on how, who and where. This is just a smokescreen to avoid talking about the content of the emails and Hillary Clinton's disgusting actions. She is a criminal and a murderess just like Obama and Tony Blair are lyers and mass murderers.

All three of them are free, earning millions with their publicity whereas two brave persons who were telling the truth have been tortured and are still in jail. Reality has become like the most horrible nightmare. Everything simply seems to have turned upside down. No writer would invent such a primitive plot. And yet it is the unbelievable reality.

Dump Pelousy , April 23, 2019 at 13:21

I totally agree with you, and in fact believe that this whole 22month expensive and mind numbing circus has been played out JUST to keep the public from knowing what the emails actually said. Can you imagine Madcow focusing with such ferocity on John Pedesta as she has on Putin, by discussing what he wrote during a presidential campaign to "influence the election" ? We'd be a different country now, not fighting our way thru the McCarthite Swamp she helped create.

[Apr 28, 2019] Sounds like Brennan's CIA laundered information to EX-CIA Nellie Ohr when she was working for Fusion GPS who then laundered this info to Steele

Apr 28, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Sam , 28 April 2019 at 04:31 PM

While I knew about Nellie Ohr and her DOJ husband , what I didn't know was that while she worked for Fusion GPS , fusion was a FBI contractor that had access to NSA database until Admiral Rogers shut it down .

Sounds Like Brennan's CIA laundered information to EX-CIA Nellie Ohr when she was working for Fusion GPS who then laundered this info to Steele , another person employed by Fusion who then gave this back to Bruce Ohr of DOJ who then gave it to the FBI . And they all got paid for their " research " . This then was used to deceive the FISA court . But Admiral Rogers went to this court and warned Trump of the spying and violations of constitutional rights . Shortly after Obama fired admiral Rogers . Sounds fishy to me ? what do you think ?

[Apr 27, 2019] The Noose Tightens on the British Empire

Notable quotes:
"... Deerlove was also directly involved in setting up several Trump Campaign operatives for fake links to Russia (George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Gen. Flynn), together with British intelligence assets Joseph Mifsud and CIA asset Stefan Halper, a close ally of Deerlove at Cambridge. ..."
"... Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Tuesday that he will immediately investigate three cases of suspected "set ups," efforts to create fake connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians, all directly run by British operatives: the Mifsud role with Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer in falsely connecting George Papadopoulos to Russian spies; Halper and Deerlove setting up Gen. Flynn with fake Russian connections; and the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, set up by the slimy British operative Rob Goldstone. ..."
Apr 18, 2019 | larouchepac.com

On Thursday morning, Attorney General William Barr is scheduled to release the Mueller report, with redactions, according to laws regarding security and the privacy of Grand Jury proceedings. While the Trump haters and conspirators are preparing various operations to keep Russiagate going, despite the report's exoneration of Trump's imagined "collusion," the reality that the British ran the entire operation, as identified from the beginning by EIR, is now bursting out into the open, and is threatening to be the subject of criminal investigations in the Department of Justice and in the Congress.

The Daily Caller's Chuck Ross on Tuesday ran an article titled: "Former British Spymaster Has Flown Under the Radar in Russia Probe, Despite Links to Key Figures." He names Richard Deerlove, MI6 chief from 1999 to 2004, as a key operative working with fellow MI6 operative Christopher Steele, the author of the now discredited dossier on Trump's supposed collusion with Russia. Deerlove was also directly involved in setting up several Trump Campaign operatives for fake links to Russia (George Papadopolous, Carter Page, Gen. Flynn), together with British intelligence assets Joseph Mifsud and CIA asset Stefan Halper, a close ally of Deerlove at Cambridge.

Meanwhile, Rep. Devin Nunes, the ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, told Fox News Tuesday that he will immediately investigate three cases of suspected "set ups," efforts to create fake connections between the Trump campaign and the Russians, all directly run by British operatives: the Mifsud role with Australian Ambassador Alexander Downer in falsely connecting George Papadopoulos to Russian spies; Halper and Deerlove setting up Gen. Flynn with fake Russian connections; and the infamous Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, set up by the slimy British operative Rob Goldstone.

What's more, the VIPS (Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity) issued a public Memorandum for President Trump on Tuesday, called "The Fly in the Mueller Ointment," warning him that the Mueller report, despite finding no evidence of collusion, maintains the lie that the Russians hacked leading Democratic Party computers and provided their emails to Wikileaks, falsely described as a Russian front. Detailing their forensic proof that the emails were downloaded, not hacked, the VIPS warn the President that if these lies are allowed to stand, the idea that Trump was elected due to Russian "interference" in the election will remain, "and that melody will linger on for the rest of your presidency, unless you seize the moment.... You are the President, and there may be no better time than now to face them down." (see Bill Binney interview with LPAC.)

... ... ...

[Apr 27, 2019] Top German Journalist Admits Mainstream Media Is Completely Fake We All Lie For The CIA

Apr 27, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

03/28/2016 With the increasing propaganda wars, we thought a reminder of just how naive many Westerners are when it comes to their news-feed. As Arjun Walia, of GlobalResearch.ca, notes, Dr. Ulfkotte went on public television stating that he was forced to publish the works of intelligence agents under his own name, also adding that noncompliance with these orders would result in him losing his job.

He recently made an appearance on RT news to share these facts:

I've been a journalist for about 25 years, and I was educated to lie, to betray, and not to tell the truth to the public.

But seeing right now within the last months how the German and American media tries to bring war to the people in Europe, to bring war to Russia -- this is a point of no return and I'm going to stand up and say it is not right what I have done in the past, to manipulate people, to make propaganda against Russia, and it is not right what my colleagues do and have done in the past because they are bribed to betray the people, not only in Germany, all over Europe.

[Apr 24, 2019] Integrity Initiative - Driving A Wedge Between Russia and the West

Images deleted.
Notable quotes:
"... RT has been able to capitalise on growing mistrust of western media among westerners. During the breaking of the coverage of many political scandals, RT articles aggressively raised issues that many felt were not being pursued by the western media, which is frequently seen as covering up non-PC stories. Many users believe that RT is willing to talk about incidents that western media will not, a belief that RT actively encourages. As such, many users of a both far-right and far-left disposition are willing to listen to RT, even being aware of RT's control by the government, rather than western media. ..."
"... On page four of this this interesting sentence we find the following sentence: " Driving a wedge between Russians and government is key. " ..."
"... It is interesting to see that Integrity Initiative was ahead of the game when it came to punishing Russia for its involvement in Crimea's move to independence from Ukraine to the point that their greatest hope was that there would be regime change in Russia. ..."
"... As you can see from these documents, Integrity Initiative, a government-funded, not-for-profit charity has a mandate to ensure that the West is immune to Russia's ongoing propaganda campaign by providing propaganda of its own. ..."
Jan 21, 2019 | viableopposition.blogspot.com
While it received relatively little coverage from the Western mainstream media establishment, a recent 42 megabyte upload on an Anonymous server provides us with an inside glimpse into the genesis of the Western anti-Russia narrative.
According to the documents, an organization (rather ironically) named Integrity Initiative with the moniker "Defending Democracy Against Disinformation" was organized to mobilize global public opinion against Russia and its agenda as you can see on the organization's "About" webpage:

The non-for-profit charity was set up in 2015 as a partnership of several independent organizations led by The Institute for Statecraft. It claims that it is dedicated to " education in good governance and to enabling societies to adapt to a rapidly changing world. ", a rather benign mission statement. In its first two years, it was funded by private individuals, however, funding for 2017 and 2018 was largely provided by governments, particularly the United Kingdom, reflecting the U.K.'s appreciation of the " importance of the threat, and a wish to support civil society programmes seeking to rebuild the ability of democratic societies to resist large scale, malicious disinformation and influence campaigns."
According to the documents a number of organizations including the United States Department of State, the U.K.'s Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO), NATO, Facebook and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense were looking to fund the Integrity Initiative as you can see here:

Integrity Initiative states the following about its services:
" It is inevitable that a programme tackling disinformation in Europe finds itself spending much of its time addressing the activities of the Russian State, including those carried out through its intelligence services. The Kremlin has invested more operational thought, intent and resource in disinformation, in Europe and elsewhere in the democratic world, than any other single player. "

Not surprisingly, Integrity Initiative has comments on the leaking of its own documents by Anonymous:

" We note both the attempts by Russian state propaganda outlets to amplify the volume of this leak; and the suggestion by a major Anonymous-linked Twitter account that the Kremlin subverted the banner of Anonymous to disguise their responsibility for it...


It is of course a matter of deep regret that Integrity Initiative documents have been stolen and posted on line, still more so that, in breach of any defensible practice, Russian state propaganda outlets have published or re-published a large number of names and contact details. We have not yet had the chance to analyse all of the documents, so cannot say with confidence whether they are all genuine or whether they include doctored or false material.


Although it is clear that much of the material was indeed on the Integrity Initiative or Institute systems, much of it is dated and was never used. In particular, many of the names published were on an internal list of experts in this field who had been considered as potential invitees to future cooperation. In the event, many were never contacted by the Integrity Initiative and did not contribute to it. Nor were these documents therefore included in any funding proposals. Not only did these individuals have nothing to do with the programme – they may not even have heard of us. We are of course trying to contact all named individuals for whom we have contact details to ensure that they are aware of what has happened. "

With that background, let's look at four of the documents that were posted.

1.) A undated document discussing Russia's use of social media as a proxy for propaganda:

Note the following comments regarding Russia Today aka RT:

" RT has been able to capitalise on growing mistrust of western media among westerners. During the breaking of the coverage of many political scandals, RT articles aggressively raised issues that many felt were not being pursued by the western media, which is frequently seen as covering up non-PC stories. Many users believe that RT is willing to talk about incidents that western media will not, a belief that RT actively encourages. As such, many users of a both far-right and far-left disposition are willing to listen to RT, even being aware of RT's control by the government, rather than western media. "

Here is a page from the document which discusses the target audiences for Russian social media propaganda:

Note that the memo clearly states that Russian media outlets like RT and Sputnik are targeting an audience that is "distrusting of statecraft and major media groups.". I wonder why Westerners would be distrusting of their own media?

2.) A 2017 document outlining plans for developing an American arm of Integrity Initiative:

Note that the writer of the memo states that the West is badly in need of a reassertion of U.S. leadership and that America needs to rebuild its understanding of Russia and how to deal with it. It also notes that the international community needs to rebuild its understanding of Russia to ensure that Western governments get the popular support that democracies require (i.e. a strongly anti-populist movement).

3.) An undated document showing how Integrity Initiative is planning to expand "expert clusters" to other nations including Austria, Canada, Poland, Portugal, Sweden and Switzerland among others:

4.) A January 2015 document showing Integrity Initiative's views on setting up anti-Russia sanctions with the goal of changing Russia's behaviour, peace in Ukraine, a return of Crimea and, most importantly, possible regime change in Russia:

On page four of this this interesting sentence we find the following sentence: " Driving a wedge between Russians and government is key. "

It is interesting to see that Integrity Initiative was ahead of the game when it came to punishing Russia for its involvement in Crimea's move to independence from Ukraine to the point that their greatest hope was that there would be regime change in Russia.

As you can see from these documents, Integrity Initiative, a government-funded, not-for-profit charity has a mandate to ensure that the West is immune to Russia's ongoing propaganda campaign by providing propaganda of its own. It's certainly a good thing that Integrity Initiative has the "real truth" and is willing to pressure us into seeing the global geopolitical quagmire with its 20/20 vision. Apparently, integrity in this post-truth era is in the eye of the beholder/purveyor.

[Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda

Highly recommended!
"Carnage needs to destroyed" mentality is dominant among the USA neoliberal elite and drives the policy toward Russia.
They all supported neoconservative extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda directed on weakening Russian and establishing of world dominance. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya. ..."
"... And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'

In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background, which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.'

There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.

This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.

And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area.

Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.

The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.

In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry – the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.

Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier, which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.

(See http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/20/what-really-happened-robert-levinson-cia-iran-454803.html .)

Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio 4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets, backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.

The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available – evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.

Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.

What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest a sale had been completed.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.

All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder. For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.

(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews both with Mogilevich and Levinson at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/panorama/transcripts/transcript_06_12_99.txt )

In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.

Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions north of the Litani.

These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.

What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.

Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking 'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.

Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.

So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.

All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate Russia in supplying materials.

There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)

It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional, Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.

It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here, a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.

Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.

In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.

Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain, but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)

That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:

'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear limited life components and you can read for weeks).'

(For this and other articles by Kaszeta, as also his bio, see http://strongpointsecurity.co.uk ')

What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility, in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of ones which lasted longer.

For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.

What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.

In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'

According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?

As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.

In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties, and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another day.

A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.

Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.

Posted at 03:42 PM in As The Borg Turns , Habakkuk , Russia , Russiagate | Permalink


james , 03 February 2018 at 04:33 PM

thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..

it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..

JohnB , 03 February 2018 at 05:17 PM
David,

Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.

turcopolier , 03 February 2018 at 06:02 PM
james

It is the closest of all international intelligence relationships. It started in WW2. Before that the Brits were though of as a potential enemy. pl

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 03 February 2018 at 06:10 PM
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
catherine , 03 February 2018 at 06:22 PM
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.

Re: Levinson

# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.

# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson went to Jablonski with it.

# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson? The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing came of it.

I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.

Ishmael Zechariah , 03 February 2018 at 06:54 PM
DH,

As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.

I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".

Be safe.

Ishmael Zechariah

Rd , 03 February 2018 at 07:31 PM
Babak Makkinejad said in reply to turcopolier...

The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
..and US is the one who has been paying for it since 1979!!!

kooshy said in reply to Ishmael Zechariah... , 03 February 2018 at 08:21 PM
IZ
My guess is, that he is unpredictable, instantaneous and therefore can't be consistent and reliable, useful idiot needs to be predictable.
kooshy , 03 February 2018 at 08:43 PM
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. "

David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making. Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

different clue , 03 February 2018 at 08:49 PM
Ishmael Zechariah,

( reply to comment 6),

I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.

It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate.

And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.

So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.

Jack , 03 February 2018 at 08:54 PM
David,

Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.

In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.

Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century endorsed her.

Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in. Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling the Borg pundits.

SmoothieX12 -> kooshy... , 03 February 2018 at 09:51 PM
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.

Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:10 PM
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.
kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:24 PM
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier on atlantic side.
catherine said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:21 AM
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''

The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.

'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'

In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]

'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'

State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union

aleksandar , 04 February 2018 at 04:41 AM
David,

About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS.

Fred said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 08:40 AM
Babak,

"they got US to bail them out during WWII" And how would things have worked out had we not done so?

Fred , 04 February 2018 at 08:46 AM
David,

"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time."

Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.

Anna said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 08:48 AM
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
turcopolier , 04 February 2018 at 08:54 AM
Anna

The powerful are often remarkably ignorant. pl

Babak Makkinejad -> Fred... , 04 February 2018 at 10:08 AM
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion, did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 11:53 AM
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Kooshy said in reply to catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting, even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such an escalation.
Phodges said in reply to turcopolier ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:23 PM
Sir

It seems we are being defeated by Cicero's enemy within. Zion is achieving what no one could hope to achieve by force of arms.

David Habakkuk -> catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 01:17 PM
catherine,

In response to comment 5.

I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain more pointers.

It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.

An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian attempts to get hold of him. An extract:

'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'

(See http://defiancethebook.com/legal/habeas/petition.htm .)

Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.

Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:

'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'

(See http://konanykhin.com/news/the-konanykhine-case.html .)

So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has changed.

For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:

'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [£1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign passports for its "very, very special clients".

'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".

(For a 'Guardian report, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/sep/23/julianborger ; for the actual testimony, see http://archives-financialservices.house.gov/banking/92299ger.pdf .)

Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter, Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:

'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'

(For the transcript presented in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ )

When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.

(For the first part of the exchanges of comments, the second apparently having become unavailable, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2008/07/litvinenko_killing_had_state_i.html )

She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator, David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.

Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.

What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary claim about Shvets:

'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.

'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.

'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'

Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling her as to the side for which he was working.

It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.

An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria' was actually credible.

This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking, and for similar action against Syria.

Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.

There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.

A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing. This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High') might be a start.

Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')

The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one feel as though one wanted to throw up.

Thomas , 04 February 2018 at 01:24 PM
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.}

No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.

SmoothieX12 -> Anna... , 04 February 2018 at 01:39 PM
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.

My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.

Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.

Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.

james said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 04 February 2018 at 03:01 PM
there seems to be no shortage of money for these blatant propaganda exercises..
Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 04:14 PM
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914. Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
begob , 04 February 2018 at 05:20 PM
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 06:20 PM
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.

The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.

spy killer , 04 February 2018 at 06:55 PM
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
English Outsider -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 07:23 AM
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google also allows searches with more than one term. This link -

https://twitter.com/pat_lang

- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories" on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.

If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.

"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.

The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations" (hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many of the contributors know it from inside.

In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible, but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.

jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 08:11 AM
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.

So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.

Babak Makkinejad -> jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 08:29 AM
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Sid Finster said in reply to Jack... , 05 February 2018 at 10:26 AM
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.

The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.

Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.

Sid Finster said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 05 February 2018 at 10:31 AM
Explain Marshall Miller's role in this, please. He is someone I know quite well. I also know one of the Chalupas.
begob said in reply to jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 10:56 AM
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat of the BEF.
turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 11:18 AM
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break - David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 11:19 AM
Yes, I am Iranian. All "Babak"s are Iranians - except some obscure ones that are Rus - Babakov.
Anna , 05 February 2018 at 02:07 PM
The hard, blinding truth: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Thomas said in reply to turcopolier ... , 05 February 2018 at 02:08 PM
Colonel,

This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.

Richardstevenhack , 05 February 2018 at 02:36 PM
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.

And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.

Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."

Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.

Seriously, read this! The whole thing!

Rampant abuse and possible contempt of Court: what you need to know about the GOP memo
http://theduran.com/rampant-abuse-contempt-court-analysis-gop-memorandum/

blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 03:25 PM
Sen Grassley releases memo heavily redacted by DOJ/FBI.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-05/grassley-graham-blast-fbi-censoring-memo-calling-criminal-probe-trump-dossier

"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "

I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI is lying.

What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that are based on classified documents.

turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 04:38 PM
FM

We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status. You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are, in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you. You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl

Kooshy said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 04:46 PM
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from Northeestern
blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 04:55 PM
...would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

Aye. Aye. Sir!

+1

That is why some of us believe the Patriot Act and FISA are both unpatriotic and unconstitutional. SCOTUS disagrees with the few of us.

Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 05:03 PM
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist. I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians - they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
English Outsider , 05 February 2018 at 06:31 PM
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.

David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because of that.

The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as "salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling around unsupervised?

The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but for the general public, that bit more untenable.

So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.

I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?

kooshy , 05 February 2018 at 07:49 PM
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type, they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 07:59 PM
EO

Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to pay him until he left UK service. pl

English Outsider , 06 February 2018 at 05:10 AM
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.

Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK side.

English Outsider -> Cortes... , 06 February 2018 at 05:53 AM
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about the "golden showers"? "

I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.

So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.

Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.

But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK get mixed up in it?

David Habakkuk -> Sid Finster... , 06 February 2018 at 06:19 AM
Sid Finster,

In response to comment 53.

When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.

A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella.

When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.

His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques, and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.

So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'

The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.

(This initial post by me, and later posts by me on that site, are at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/uid:1857/diary. Three posts David Loepp and I produced jointly in December 2012, which have a lot on Scaramella and Shvets, are on his page there, at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/de%20Gondi/diary .)

The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December 2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:

'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic- Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'

Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:

'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them [presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'

The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':

'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI. Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini. Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'

In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography – which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella which had been described in the wiretap request.

As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.

In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.

Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.

'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with him.'

From a fax dated 7 November 2005:

'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re: Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'

From a fax dated 5 December 2005:

'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'

In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be in a chaotic state.

However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus justifications.

Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.

(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)

And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence in the Inquiry.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.

Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.

The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')

Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 09:40 AM
Thank you David Habakkuk. Truly sordid and deplorable. WWIII to be initiated on basis of lies.
Jack , 06 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
David

You may already know this but Steele was a no show in a UK court for a deposition on the libel suit.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/05/christopher-steele-is-no-show-in-london-court-in-civil-case-over-dossier.amp.html

Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 01:18 PM
I know something of spectroscopy. The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis itself or its instrumentation. The paragraph that you have quoted:

"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."

And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics - which did not and could not exist in this situation.

LeaNder , 07 February 2018 at 09:16 AM
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there is to know?

I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.

Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.

By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.

According to Google search there are no other links then your articles here:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf

**********

JAN RICHARD BÆRUG
The Collapsing Wall. Hybrid Journalism. A Comparative Study of Newspapers and Magazines in Eight Countries in Europe

Available online. Haven't read it yet, but journalism as hidden public relations transfer belt would be one of my minor obsessions. ...

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 07 February 2018 at 11:23 AM
I wonder too; their command of the English idiom is very au currant - noticed "opt in/opt out" reference? Too American.

They clearly are not native speakers of German.

LeaNder said in reply to kooshy... , 07 February 2018 at 12:30 PM
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_Island#Economy

Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.

Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those? The German link is different. How about the Iranian? or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?

LeaNder said in reply to LeaNder... , 07 February 2018 at 01:14 PM
correcting myself #94:

another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s

I see Sergei seems to share my interest in the literary genre: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Ivanov#Personal

[Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state -- Ukraine. ..."
"... But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad ..."
Jul 24, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

likbez , July 24, 2018 12:23 am

@run75441 July 23, 2018 2:02 pm

Best bet is for Russia to want to trade with the US and Europe. The gas pipeline will not be enough leverage on Germany as it provides 9% of their needs.

Yes. And that's against the USA interests (or more correctly the US-led neoliberal empire interests). North Stream is a problem as the goal is to economically weaken Russia, tie the EU to the USA via energy supplies and support our new client state -- Ukraine.

As you know, nothing was proven yet in Russiagate (and DNC hacks looks more and more like a false flag operation, especially this Guccifer 2.0 personality ), but sanctions were already imposed. And when the US government speaks "Russia" in most cases they mean "China+Russia" ;-). Russia is just a weaker link in this alliance and, as such, it is attacked first. Russiagate is just yet another pretext after MH17, Magnitsky and such.

To me the current Anti-Russian hysteria is mainly a smokescreen to hide attempt to cement cracks in the façade of the USA neoliberal society that Trump election revealed (including apparent legitimization of ruling neoliberal elite represented by Hillary).

And a desperate attempt to unite the society using (false) war propaganda which requires demonization of the "enemy of the people" and neo-McCarthyism.

But this is also related to attempts to prevent/weaken the alliance of Russia and China. As geopolitical consequences of this alliance for the USA-led neoliberal empire are very bad (for example, military alliance means the end of the USA global military domination; energy alliance means that is now impossible to impose a blockade on China energy supplies from Middle East even if Iran is occupied)

In this sense the recent descent into a prolonged fit of vintage Cold War jingoistic paranoia is quite understandable. While, at the same time, totally abhorrent. My feeling is that unless Russia folds, which is unlikely, the side effects/externalities of this posture can be very bad for the USA. In any case, the alliance of Russia and China which Obama administration policies forged spells troubles to the global neoliberal empire dominated by the USA.

Trump rejection of existing forms of neoliberal globalization is one sign that this process already started and some politicians already are trying to catch the wind and adapt to a "new brave world" by using preemptive adjustments.

Which is why all this Trump-Putin summit hysteria is about.

Neither hard, nor soft neoliberals want any adjustments. They are ready to fight for the US-led neoliberal empire till the last American (excluding, of course, themselves and their families)

[Apr 21, 2019] George Papodopoulus was entrapped by individuals linked to British MI-6 and the CIA with offers to provide meetings with Russians and Putin. The Mueller account is a lie

Highly recommended!
Apr 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

And there is more. George Papodopoulus was entrapped by individuals linked to British MI-6 and the CIA with offers to provide meetings with Russians and Putin. The Mueller account is a lie:

In late April 2016, Papadopoulos was told by London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, immediately after Mifsud 's return from a trip to Moscow, that the Russian government had obtained "dirt" on candidate Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. One week later, on May 6, 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to candidate Clinton.

Papadopoulos shared information about Russian "dirt " with people outside of the Campaign, and the Office investigated whether he also provided it to a Campaign official. Papadopoulos and the Campaign officials with whom he interacted told the Office that they did · not recall that Papadopoulos passed them the information. Throughout the relevant period of time and for several months thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government. That meeting never came to pass.

Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular .

Mifsud's alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud's LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor's name and biography had been removed from the campus' website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for "years."

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: "[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo]."

The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: " Training program on International Security which was organised by Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy." The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant for a number of reasons.

This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three -- Sater and Greenber -- alleged Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community.

[Apr 21, 2019] Special Counsel Mueller -- Disingenuous and Dishonest by Larry C Johnson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... As I noted in my previous piece-- The FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Trump --Sater was an active FBI undercover informant. ..."
"... An honest prosecutor would have and should have disclosed this fact. He, Sater, was the one encouraging the Trump team to cozy up to Russia. Mueller does not disclose one single instance of Trump or Cohen or any of the Trump kids calling Sater on the carpet and chewing his ass for not bringing them deals and not opening doors in Russia. Omitting this key fact goes beyond simple disingenuity. It is a conscious lie. ..."
"... The circumstantial evidence indicates that Sater was doing this at the behest of FBI handlers. We do not yet know who they are. ..."
"... We also have the case of Michael Caputo and Roger Stone being approached by a Russian gangster named Henry Greenberg. ..."
"... How does a guy like Vorkretsov/Greenberg, with an extensive criminal record and circumstantial ties to the Russian mob gain entrance into the United States? Very simple answer. He too was an FBI informant : ..."
"... Please take time to read the full dossier at democrat dossier . This is more than an odd coincidence. This is a pattern. The FBI was targeting the Trump campaign and personnel in a deliberate effort to implicate them in wanting to work with Russians. ..."
"... Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular . ..."
"... A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.” ..."
"... WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].” ..."
"... This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three--Sater and Greenber--alleged Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community. ..."
"... Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the new boss same as the old boss. ..."
"... Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and the Russian Federation . THe IRGC being labelled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism. ..."
"... You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence conference. ..."
"... The Special Relationship is hopefully entering the divorce stage. None too soon. Great work, Mr. Johnson. ..."
Apr 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

While President Trump is correct to celebrate the Mueller Report’s conclusion that no one on Trump’s side of the ledger attempted to or succeeded in collaborating or colluding with the Russian Government or Russian spies, there remains a dark cloud behind the silver lining. And I am not referring to the claims of alleged obstruction of justice. A careful reading of the report reveals that Mueller has issued findings that are both disingenuous and dishonest. The report is a failed hatchet job. Part of the failure can be attributed to the amount of material that Attorney General Barr allowed to be released. It appears that Bill Barr's light editing may have been intended to expose the bias and sloppiness of Mueller and his team.

Let us start with the case of trying to build a Trump Tower in Moscow. If you were to believe that the Steele Dossier accurately reported Vladimir Putin's attitude towards Trump, then a Trump real estate deal in Moscow was a slam dunk. According to one of Steele's breathless reports:
The Kremlin's cultivation operation on TRUMP also had comprised offering him various lucrative real estate development business deals in Russia, especially in relation to the ongoing 2018 World Cup soccer tournament. How ever, so far, for reasons unknown, TRUMP had not taken up any of these.
Then there is reality. The impetus, the encouragement for the Moscow project came from one man--Felix Sater.
In the late summer of 2015, the Trump Organization received a new inquiry about pursuing a Trump Tower project in Moscow. In approximately September 2015, Felix Sater . . . contacted Cohen on behalf of I.C. Expert Investment Company (I.C. Expert), a Russian real-estate development corporation controlled by Andrei Vladimirovich Rozov.J07 Sater had known Rozov since approximately 2007 and, in 2014, had served as an agent on behalf of Rozov during Rozov's purchase of a building in New York City.30S Sater later contacted Rozov and proposed that I.C. Expert pursue a Trump Tower Moscow project in which I.C. Expert would license the name and brand from the Trump Organization but construct the building on its own. Sater worked on the deal with Rozov and another employee of I.C. Expert. (see page 69 of the Mueller Report).
To reiterate--if the Steele Dossier was based on truthful intelligence then the Trump organization only had to sit back, stretch out their hands and seize the moment. Instead, little Felix Sater keeps coming back to the well. In January 2016, according to the Mueller report,
Sater then sent a draft invitation for Cohen to visit Moscow to discuss the Trump Moscow project,along with a note to "[t]ell me if the letter is good as amended by me or make whatever changes you want and send it back to me."

After a further round of edits, on January 25, 2016, Sater sent Cohen an invitation -- signed by Andrey Ryabinskiy of the company MHJ -- to travel to "Moscow for a working visit" about the "prospects of development and the construction business in Russia," "the various land plots available suited for construction of this enormous Tower," and "the opportunity to co-ordinate a follow up visit to Moscow by Mr. Donald Trump..

This produced nothing. No deal, no trip. But Sater persisted:

Beginning in late 2015, Sater repeatedly tried to arrange for Cohen and candidate Trump, as representatives of the Trump Organization, to travel to Russia to meet with Russian government officials and possible financing partners. . . .

Into the spring of 2016, Sater and Cohen continued to discuss a trip to Moscow in connection with the Trump Moscow project. On April 20, 2016, Sater wrote Cohen, " [t)he People wanted to know when you are coming?,,

On May 4, 2016, Sater followed up:

“I had a chat with Moscow. ASSUMING the trip does happen the question is before or after the convention. I said I believe, but don't know for sure, that's it's probably after the convention. Obviously the pre-meeting trip (you only) can happen anytime you want but he 2 big guys where [sic) the question. I said I would confirm and revert.”

On May 5, 2016, Sater wrote to Cohen:

“Peskov would like to invite you as his guest to the St. Petersburg Forum which is Russia's Davos it's June 16-19. He wants to meet there with you and possibly introduce you to either Putin or Medvedev, as they are not sure if 1 or both will be there. This is perfect. The entire business class of Russia will be there as well.”

On June 14, 2016, Cohen met Sater in the lobby of the Trump Tower in New York and informed him that he would not be traveling at that time.

Why was Felix Sater the one repeatedly identified pushing to arrange deals with the Russians and yet did not face any subsequent charges by the Mueller team? Sater had been working as part of the Trump team since 2003. Why is it that the proposed deals and travel to Moscow came predominantly from Felix Sater?

As I noted in my previous piece--The FBI Tried and Failed to Entrap Trump--Sater was an active FBI undercover informant. He had been working with the FBI since 1998. When he agreed to start working as an undercover informant aka cooperator in December 1998 guess who signed off on the deal? Andrew Weissman. You can see the deal here. It was signed 10 December 1998.

An honest prosecutor would have and should have disclosed this fact. He, Sater, was the one encouraging the Trump team to cozy up to Russia. Mueller does not disclose one single instance of Trump or Cohen or any of the Trump kids calling Sater on the carpet and chewing his ass for not bringing them deals and not opening doors in Russia. Omitting this key fact goes beyond simple disingenuity. It is a conscious lie.

The circumstantial evidence indicates that Sater was doing this at the behest of FBI handlers. We do not yet know who they are.

But Sater's behavior and status as an FBI Informant was not an isolated incident. We also have the case of Michael Caputo and Roger Stone being approached by a Russian gangster named Henry Greenberg. According to democratdossier.com:

Greenberg's birth name is Gennady Vasilievich Vostretsov, the son of Yekatrina Vostretsova and Vasliy Vostretsov. He later adopted new names twice as a result of two different marriages and became Gennady V. Arzhanik and later Henry Oknyansky. Henry Greenberg is not a legal alias, but he uses it quite commonly in recent years.
But you would not know this from reading the Mueller report. Mr. Disingenuous strikes again:
In the spring of 2016, Trump Campaign advisor Michael Caputo learned through a Florida-based Russian business partner that another Florida-based Russian, Henry Oknyansky (who also went by the name Henry Greenberg), claimed to have information pertaining to Hillary Clinton . Caputo notified Roger Stone and brokered communication between Stone and Oknyansky.

Oknyansky and Stone set up a May 2016 in-person meeting. 260 Oknyansky was accompanied to the meeting by Alexei Rasin, a Ukrainian associate involved in Florida real estate. At the meeting, Rasin offered to sell Stone derogatory information on Clinton that Rasin claimed to have obtained while working for Clinton. Rasin claimed to possess financial statements demonstrating Clinton's involvement in money laundering with Rasin's companies. According to Oknyansky, Stone asked if the amounts in question totaled millions of dollars but was told it was closer to hundreds of thousands. Stone refused the offer, stating that Trump would not pay for opposition research.

How does a guy like Vorkretsov/Greenberg, with an extensive criminal record and circumstantial ties to the Russian mob gain entrance into the United States? Very simple answer. He too was an FBI informant:

In an affidavit, Vostretsov explained to an immigration judge he worked for the FBI for 17 years throughout the world, including in the US, Iran and North Korea. He explained in the same paperwork the FBI granted him several temporary visas to visit the US in exchange for information about criminal activities.

Please take time to read the full dossier at democrat dossier. This is more than an odd coincidence. This is a pattern. The FBI was targeting the Trump campaign and personnel in a deliberate effort to implicate them in wanting to work with Russians.

And there is more. George Papodopoulus was entrapped by individuals linked to British MI-6 and the CIA with offers to provide meetings with Russians and Putin. The Mueller account is a lie:

In late April 2016, Papadopoulos was told by London-based professor Joseph Mifsud, immediately after Mifsud 's return from a trip to Moscow, that the Russian government had obtained "dirt" on candidate Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. One week later, on May 6, 2016, Papadopoulos suggested to a representative of a foreign government that the Trump Campaign had received indications from the Russian government that it could assist the Campaign through the anonymous release of information that would be damaging to candidate Clinton.

Papadopoulos shared information about Russian "dirt " with people outside of the Campaign, and the Office investigated whether he also provided it to a Campaign official. Papadopoulos and the Campaign officials with whom he interacted told the Office that they did · not recall that Papadopoulos passed them the information. Throughout the relevant period of time and for several months thereafter, Papadopoulos worked with Mifsud and two Russian nationals to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and the Russian government. That meeting never came to pass.

Once again, the Mueller team treats the provocateur -- -i.e., Joseph Mifsud -- -as some simple guy with ties to Russia's political elites. Another egregious lie. Mifsud was not working on behalf of Russia. He was deployed by MI-6. Disobedient Media has been on the forefront of exposing Mifsud's ties to western intelligence in general and the Brits in particular.

Mifsud’s alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud’s LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor’s name and biography had been removed from the campus’ website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for “years.”

WikiLeaks Editor-in-Chief Julian Assange likewise noted the connection between Mifsud and Smith in a Twitter thread, additionally pointing out his connections with Saudi intelligence: “[Mifsud] and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight-year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link University in Rome and appear to both be present in this [photo].”

The photograph in question originated on Geodiplomatics.com, where it specified that Joseph Mifsud is indeed standing next to Claire Smith, who was attending a: “…Training program on International Security which was organised by Link Campus University and London Academy of Diplomacy.” The event is listed as taking place in October, 2012. This is highly significant for a number of reasons.

This is not a mere matter of Mueller and his team "failing" to disclose some important facts. If they were operating honestly they should have investigated Mifsud, Greenberg and Sater. But they did not. Two of the three--Sater and Greenber--alleged Russian stooges have ties to the FBI. And Mifsud has been living and working in the belly of the intelligence community.

When you put these facts together it is clear that there is real meat on the bone for Barr's upcoming investigation of the "spying" that was being done on the Trump campaign by law enforcement and intelligence. These facts must become a part of the public consciousness. The foreign country that worked feverishly to meddle in the 2016 Presidential election and the subsequent rule of Donald Trump is the United Kingdom. Russia is the patsy.

turcopolier, 20 April 2019 at 10:44 PM

IMO the FBI leadership, Clapper, Brennan and his flunkies were working with the Brits at some senior level of their IO apparatus to screw Trump. Mueller's testimony before the Congress should be revelatory of his true position.

falcemartello, 20 April 2019 at 11:28 PM

Don't hold your breath .The so called deep state which in reality are our plutocratic oligarchical class that win. Look at the new boss same as the old boss.

It was obvious from way back in June 2016 when most of the fabricated /novella known as the Steele Dossier was floating around and the role Fusion GPS played in the Clinton POTUS machine. There is a lot out there but as per usual smokey mirrors and deception.

I live you with this one thought.

Look at all the hair triggers that have been laid out with the TRUMP regime since he became POTUS with regards to the ME and the Russian Federation . THe IRGC being labelled a terrorist organization and further more both Dems and Repub are trying to introduce a bill that labels the Russian Federation as a sponsor of terrorism.

You just can't make this stuff up. Least we forget replacing the meme of ASSAD HAS TO GO TO MADURRO HAS TO GO. War is a racket and as per usual we the sheeple just fall for it. Ret. Col Wilkerson lays all out at last years Israeli influence conference.

Rick Merlotti

The Special Relationship is hopefully entering the divorce stage. None too soon. Great work, Mr. Johnson.

[Apr 19, 2019] The UK government and the media, had lost all moral authority

Not only they lost all moral authority. UK MSM became openly neofascist in some areas exceeeding the press of Third Riech and the USSR in distortions and falsifications. .
Notable quotes:
"... Corruption of government and media, is also exceedingly dangerous, for everyone's mental health. People begin to subconsciously know that they are being lied to, but they cannot accept it, because the lies conflict with their worldview, which quite naturally is based on trust for authority, and that nice man reading the news on TV. ..."
"... In 2004, Karl Rove in The Bush Government " Guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [ ] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do' ..."
Apr 17, 2019 | craigmurray.org.uk
Charles Bostock , April 17, 2019 at 11:40

Even if the Skripal affair WAS staged, you shouldn't get too excited about it. In fact, you should be rather pleased because it would demonstrate that the tired, incompetent old UK is still capable of mounting an operation of which young, vigorous, competent Russia would be proud.

The UK can fake events with the best of them! I would find that reassuring rather than deplorable because it's a nasty world out there.

John2o2o , April 17, 2019 at 19:07

I shouldn't be anything. The whole thing shames the UK and is an insult to Russia and it's people.

Tony_0pmoc , April 17, 2019 at 11:44

The Government and the media, have not been telling the whole truth for a long time. Sometimes they blatantly lie. Most people still believe most of what they say, as there is an in-built trust of authority, for some very good historical reasons. The Skripal story, made it obvious to a large number of people, that some of it could not be true. Most still believe it or din't take much notice. The arrest of Julian Assange made it clearer, to an even larger number of people, that the government and the media, had lost all moral authority. Still many people didn't take much notice, or were convinced by the lies in the media, that he was a rapist and should be in jail.

The lies and corruption from government, is now increasingly out in the open. I believe that this is deliberate. I also think that it is exceedingly dangerous for society for multiple reasons. We are conditioned to accept authority as our moral guide. They act as an example of acceptable behaviour. If society as a whole, behaved like government, all trust would break down. Virtually all functions of society are based on trust. Without such trust, nothing will work.

Corruption of government and media, is also exceedingly dangerous, for everyone's mental health. People begin to subconsciously know that they are being lied to, but they cannot accept it, because the lies conflict with their worldview, which quite naturally is based on trust for authority, and that nice man reading the news on TV.

I believe this has all been pre-planned, and it will result in a disastrous effect on all society, unless something happens to bring the governments and media back to truth and sanity. I have no idea what that might be, but I expect it will not be pleasant.

The following was an early warning of the mass insanity affecting The US Government. It has spread like a highly infectious disease.

In 2004, Karl Rove in The Bush Government " Guys like me were 'in what we call the reality-based community,' which he defined as people who 'believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality.' [ ] 'That's not the way the world really works anymore,' he continued. 'We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality -- judiciously, as you will -- we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do'

[Apr 18, 2019] It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga

British propaganda is clearly as close to neofascist propaganda as one can get... British neocons are even closer to neofascists then the US neocons. And British security services are closer to the Third Reich security services then any other.
Skripals is a such a grandiose false flag operation that Gellen (of operation Gladio fame) probably would be amazed and humbled.
Notable quotes:
"... The official narrative of the Salisbury incident is ever-fluctuating. Seemingly each and every article, news segment, official statement or documentary about any element of the case contains new information, requiring the established account to be at least partially rewritten and/or contradicting established elements of the story.... ..."
"... If nothing else, that Haynes was willing to transmit an apparently obvious fiction speaks volumes about the willingness of mainstream journalists to parrot each and every fresh claim in the Skripal case, even if it wildly conflicts with what they themselves have written previously. ..."
"... Oh dear oh dear.. It appears the UK may be denying there were any poor ducks involved... https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1118409471754153984 ..."
Apr 18, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Apr 17, 2019 2:19:31 PM | link

It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga--like Russiagate--can be concluded to be a very serious hoax, and that there's no reason whatsoever to trust anything said by UK's Tory government.

Undaunted, Kit Klarenberg provides further Skripal update in an extensively detailed article that moves him to conclude:

"The official narrative of the Salisbury incident is ever-fluctuating. Seemingly each and every article, news segment, official statement or documentary about any element of the case contains new information, requiring the established account to be at least partially rewritten and/or contradicting established elements of the story....

"If nothing else, that Haynes was willing to transmit an apparently obvious fiction speaks volumes about the willingness of mainstream journalists to parrot each and every fresh claim in the Skripal case, even if it wildly conflicts with what they themselves have written previously."

Klarenberg's tweet response to Haynes is devastating:

"Difficult to verify your version of events given it involves nameless officials. Knowing you're often used by security services to peddle propaganda seemed a reasonable assumption they'd urged you to backtrack your earlier advocacy as story detonates official #Skripal narrative."

It seems highly reasonable to conclude the NY Times item has blown away any remaining truthfulness to the Skripal Saga and the entire Saga--like Russiagate--can be concluded to be a very serious hoax, and that there's no reason whatsoever to trust anything said by UK's Tory government.

S.O. , Apr 17, 2019 3:34:15 PM | link

Oh dear oh dear.. It appears the UK may be denying there were any poor ducks involved...https://twitter.com/haynesdeborah/status/1118409471754153984

[Apr 17, 2019] If you had watched Skripal's saga you might have noticed something: The UK s propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany.

Notable quotes:
"... The Steele dossier is British, Orbis intelligence = British, Institute for statecraft / Integrity Initiative = British, Skripal defection. Location, evidence, statements = British, the list goes on and on. ..."
"... The UK's propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. ..."
Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

S.O. , Apr 17, 2019 9:48:02 AM | link

@75

The Steele dossier is British, Orbis intelligence = British, Institute for statecraft / Integrity Initiative = British, Skripal defection. Location, evidence, statements = British, the list goes on and on.

You'd think someone might have noticed something of a trend by now.

Gravatomic , Apr 17, 2019 10:07:57 AM | link

They just don't bother anymore, the level of double black psy-ops and gaslighting is a mine field of disinformation. That's what you get when Washington - Obama, gives the green light to propagandizing their people. It's escalated, like we haven't noticed, under Trump despite his pathetic attempts at assuring folks it's fake news.
Gravatomic , Apr 17, 2019 10:20:02 AM | link
The UK's propaganda machine rivals and even surpasses Soviet Russia and Nazi Germany. I watched about 10 minutes of a documentary about Easter Island, as an example, and it was revisionist to the nth degree. Just absolute rubbish insinuating that white European travelers destroyed the Island. This is what British kids are now being marinated in, "He who controls the past"

[Apr 17, 2019] A bridge from fiction to reality

Apr 17, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Koen , Apr 16, 2019 6:13:59 PM | link

B, here's a remarkable fact: The Skripal Novichok perfume bottle assassination story is is eerily similar to episode 2 of BBC show 'Killing Eve' where an assassin uses a perfume bottle to kill her target and where later an innocent person accidentally dies after coming into contact with said perfume bottle.

The episode aired around a month after the Skripal attack but well before the other 2 people fell ill and the perfume bottle theory emerged.

[Apr 16, 2019] Trump excessive love of children: 400 children killed since January 2019 in Yemen and 85,000 have died from malnutrition in the past 3 and a half years and Trump vetoes resolution to end U.S. involvement.

Notable quotes:
"... Is the NYT promoting Gina Haspel as someone who deserves a more influential position than the nation's top torturer? She wouldn't be the first such criminal being subtly encouraged to try for DJT's job in the future. ..."
"... And there was a video of him bringing her to the microphone on the subject of 5G which amazed me: Trump Invites Ivanka To Talk About 5G Deployment In The U.S. I think Trump truly believes Ivanka is presidential material! ..."
"... Tinfoil-hat opinion time: if you have a credible threat against Ivanka, you control Trump. If you want to gain a different kind of leverage - like to talk him into quitting in 2020 - promise him you'll work hard to put her in the White House. ..."
"... Still tin-foiling, but I think a version of this happened in 1992. Iran Contra was closing in, and the Democrats had the goods on Bush Senior. I buy into the conspiracy notion Bush Sr. was offered a deal where the matter would be dropped if he left office, and with a "sweetener" that one of his boys would be advanced to the White House. This didn't hurt the Powers That Be, for the chosen democrat was a rare Pro-Choice Republican posing as a democrat. ..."
"... Bill Clinton was a warmongering neocon nut who governed domestically as a Republican. ..."
"... The problem lies with people in generation after generation being fooled by the same or similar ruses used before, which is why The Who exhorted people to not let themselves "get fooled again." ..."
"... The UK & EU both face crises caused by their adherence to Neoliberal economics, but Neoliberal governments hold sway in almost every EU nation and UK despite the damage they've caused. ..."
"... Here's a link for anyone who still doesn't believe Trump is on the dark side: Trump vetoes resolution ending U.S. involvement in Yemen ..."
"... Looks like Trump is only a compassionate humanitarian on behalf of Syrian kids. With 14 school children killed in Yemen a week ago, not so much. ..."
"... Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. ..."
"... The Brits were lying, Haspel was lying, and either Trump believed her or pretended to. ..."
Apr 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Apr 16, 2019 8:13:24 PM | link

Karlof1 @ 36:

By "meaningful intellectual activity", Craig Murray is referring to critical thinking skills, having an open mind and being able to consider all options and possibilities. We can agree that Theresa May and the people who make up her Cabinet and government, and a sizeable proportion of the Tories, may well be deficient in these activities.

I have read something of how David Cameron worked his way up to leadership of the British Conservatives years ago. Coming from a wealthy family (his father was a stockbroker who enjoyed posthumous notoriety when his name surfaced in the Panama Papers), Cameron went to the "right" schools (which count Prince Andrew and Prince Edward as former students, btw), Eton College and then Oxford University where he enrolled in the politics / economics course that prepares students for careers in politics - it's popularly called "PPE". After university he went to work for the Conservative Party.

You could say Cameron's path had already been mapped out for him and the decision was not his to deviate from it. Probably the same can be said of some other people in Theresa May's Cabinet.

And what can be said of a UK Defence Secretary of whom the love of his life is a pet Mexican tarantula?

Kiza , Apr 16, 2019 8:14:28 PM | link

@ lysias 49

You are being sarcastic, tongue in cheek, correct? I also wonder who could have done such a thing?

But seriously, the value of Solzhenitsyn is not in the quality of his prose, which is very difficult to read, then in the relevance of his topics. He did document how power over others and ultimately totalitarianism manifest themselves in the fallible human nature. Humans cannot rule themselves properly, but usually psychopaths must rule (use & abuse) others. A whole system can be created on top of psychopathy of a few individuals (does this ring a bell?). Of course, the claim that Solzhenitsyn was a critic of Communism is equivalent to the claim that Animal Farm is a description of Communism. Both are good social critique turned into yet another political/brainwashing tool. It is art because it describes human nature across artificial boundaries, especially the ideological one: left versus right.

On another matter, I have started skipping comments where Trump is being bashed. In addition to being leftist TDS, this is a perfect indication that the commenter has got no clue what is really going on, so how could he/she explain anything to others?

Zachary Smith , Apr 16, 2019 8:34:23 PM | link
@ Jen #59
Is the NYT promoting Gina Haspel as someone who deserves a more influential position than the nation's top torturer? She wouldn't be the first such criminal being subtly encouraged to try for DJT's job in the future.

If an idea like that ever gets into Trump's head, Haspel is a goner. Have you noticed how he said he considered Ivanka for the World bank?

"Donald Trump reveals he considered making Ivanka head of World Bank because she's 'good with numbers'"

And there was a video of him bringing her to the microphone on the subject of 5G which amazed me: Trump Invites Ivanka To Talk About 5G Deployment In The U.S. I think Trump truly believes Ivanka is presidential material!

Tinfoil-hat opinion time: if you have a credible threat against Ivanka, you control Trump. If you want to gain a different kind of leverage - like to talk him into quitting in 2020 - promise him you'll work hard to put her in the White House.

Still tin-foiling, but I think a version of this happened in 1992. Iran Contra was closing in, and the Democrats had the goods on Bush Senior. I buy into the conspiracy notion Bush Sr. was offered a deal where the matter would be dropped if he left office, and with a "sweetener" that one of his boys would be advanced to the White House. This didn't hurt the Powers That Be, for the chosen democrat was a rare Pro-Choice Republican posing as a democrat.

Bill Clinton was a warmongering neocon nut who governed domestically as a Republican.

As it turns out, the "smart one" (Jeb) lost his first step by not immediately getting to be Governor of Florida. That left the Codpiece Commander, and all his sins were airbrushed away, the Supreme Court intervened, and he entered the White House. Good deal for Pappy Bush, BTW. Him and Reagan got to keep their gold shine, and President Dumbya did all which was expected of him.

karlof1 , Apr 16, 2019 8:59:37 PM | link
Thanks Jen & Piotr for your comments regarding my take on Murray's missive.

The problem lies with people in generation after generation being fooled by the same or similar ruses used before, which is why The Who exhorted people to not let themselves "get fooled again."

The UK & EU both face crises caused by their adherence to Neoliberal economics, but Neoliberal governments hold sway in almost every EU nation and UK despite the damage they've caused.

It's certainly a muddle. Trump vetoing the legislation to cease supporting Saudi in Yemen will further help the turn to the East. And tomorrow will bring something else.

Circe , Apr 16, 2019 9:13:41 PM | link
@66 karlof1

Here's a link for anyone who still doesn't believe Trump is on the dark side: Trump vetoes resolution ending U.S. involvement in Yemen

donkeytale , Apr 16, 2019 9:15:37 PM | link
Newsflash: Trump vetoes Congressional resolution to end military support for the war in Yemen.

Any of the Trump Dick Suckers care to comment? Babble-on @14? Your take please. Never enough dissembling wrt Trump.

Circe , Apr 16, 2019 9:48:08 PM | link
@61Jackrabbit

Looks like Trump is only a compassionate humanitarian on behalf of Syrian kids. With 14 school children killed in Yemen a week ago, not so much.

https://twitter.com/UNICEF_Yemen/status/1115531708063940608

400 children killed since January 2019 in Yemen and 85,000 have died from malnutrition in the past 3 and a half years and Trump vetoes resolution to end U.S. involvement.

Trump whitewashers have a lot of work to do.

S , Apr 16, 2019 11:17:30 PM | link
@Mataman #9:
The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals.

Perhaps Donald Trump has a soft spot for ducks because of Donald Duck?

Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 11:26:59 PM | link
Now Haspel can boast that she grabbed him by the duckie .
Zachary Smith , Apr 16, 2019 11:40:11 PM | link
@ Bart Hansen #69

So far as I understand your question, the Neocon York Times link from above had this about the kids and the ducks:

Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.

The Brits were lying, Haspel was lying, and either Trump believed her or pretended to.

[Apr 16, 2019] Why is Skripals false flag stained May, who demonstrated her inability to real a decent deal with EU on Brexist is still in power in GB?

Notable quotes:
"... If May and her Tories are examples of the "intellectual incapacity of the conservative mind," then why are they still in power and been able to keep their contrived scandals from sinking them? ..."
Apr 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Apr 16, 2019 2:52:02 PM | link

Craig Murray's lament about the Notre Dame fire has an interesting twist that allows him to opine after citing John Stuart Mill:

"I have always believed that right wing 'thought' is a misnomer, and right wing views are rather characterised by absence of meaningful intellectual activity."

Hmm... It appears the right wing controls most every Western government and that of several other important nations. So, how did they gain control if not through the exercise of "meaningful intellectual activity"? Certainly those trolls acting on behalf of the Right Wing are often idiots, but those exercising actual power have obviously used their heads to gain and maintain their positions.

If May and her Tories are examples of the "intellectual incapacity of the conservative mind," then why are they still in power and been able to keep their contrived scandals from sinking them?

Underestimating your enemy is a Cardinal Sin whether in war or politics. IMO, Murray has done just that.

bevin , Apr 16, 2019 6:44:58 PM | link

karlofi@36

May is still in power for two reasons.

The first is that, since the Cameron/Liberal coalition, which preceded the vote on the EU, the British Constitution has been amended top allow a government which consistently loses votes in the Commons to remain in power. Before this Act (The Fixed Parliament Act or some such name) it was impossible for games such as those that May has been playing not to lead to the fall of the ministry.

The second is that, as the recent defection of Labour MPs -- forming the Independent Group -- reminds us, the Parliamentary Labour Party includes a majority of members both opposed to a Corbyn government and afraid of a General Election. Whenever a No Confidence motion seems likely to pass they ensure that their votes save the government-a tactic the 'Deputy Leader' Watson confessed was his own.

As a historian you will know that it has been a consistent demand of reformers in the UK that the Septennial Act of 1715 (passed to save the government from having to face an angry electorate inclined to Jacobitism) be replaced by annually elected Parliaments.

In the US this tradition was reflected in the setting of two year terms for the House. In the People's Charter, Annual Parliaments were one of the six demands.

One thing I can assure you, from personal knowledge acquired over seven decades, Mill was right about the Tories being supported by stupid voters and Murray is right about the Tory party at the highest levels, being staffed by idiots.

[Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The U.S. alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year ago the Washington Post described the scene: ..."
"... Today the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel's relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position. They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its own purpose: ..."
"... Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives. ..."
"... Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option. ..."
"... If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in cooperation with the British government, lied to Trump about the incident. Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced policy of better relations with Russia. The ruse worked. ..."
"... The NYT piece does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were fake. It pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not out to manipulate him: ..."
"... The job of the CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own policies. ..."
"... The 1970s movie 3 Days of The Condor is about the evils of the See Eye A. Also they create trial balloon in the movie about taking middle east oil. This later happens in real life with NeoCon See Eye A stooges - Poppy Bush then later GW Bush-Cheney, Clintons and Oboma all agency owned men. ..."
"... The head of the See Eye A is to serve the elites-Central banksters not the President. They did not serve JFK. Any President who crosses the central bankers aka roth-schilds ends up dead. ..."
"... It is interesting to see that nations that have traditionally been pro-American feel that the threat posed by American power is growing. ..."
"... Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter. ..."
"... Photos of fake dead ducks and fake sickened children confirm the Skripal story is, in turn, completely fake. It says a lot that the NY Times either does not know this or that its contempt for its readership matches the contempt by which the intelligence agencies hold for their putative boss. ..."
"... Thanks for bringing this Skripal segment to light, b, as most of us don't read the NY Times in any form. Haspel likely had a hand in the planning of the overall scheme of which the Skripal saga and Russiagate are interconnected episodes. Clearly, the Money Power sees the challenge raised by Russia/China/Eurasia as existential and is trying to counter hybridly as it knows its wealth won't save it from Nuclear War. ..."
"... after integrity initiative, we know the uk is full of shite on most everything... thus, the msm will not be talking about integrity initiative.. ..."
"... once Teresa May has spoken in Parliament, and Trump committed to expelling embassy staff, there is no way any alternative version of the truth is possible. ..."
"... Skripal of course was a colleague of Steele, and possibly the only person he asked to get info for the dossier beyond what Nellie Ohr had already given him. His evidence might have been crucial. The CIA and others have a strong motive to kill Skripal and a stronger one to blame the Russians. ..."
"... The fact that the 'Dirty Dossier' and the 'Skripal "story"' both originate in one and the same small town in the UK, tells you all you need to know about both. ..."
"... Haspel will not be fired. ..."
"... It is clear the USA, France, Israel and UK are fasting approaching ungovernable .. no one in government can keep the lies of the other hidden, and none of the governed believes anyone in government, the MSM, the MIC or the AIG (ATT, Intel and Google). .. ..."
"... The actors in government, their lawyers, playmates and corporations have become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. ..."
Apr 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

An ass kissing portrait of Gina Haspel, torture queen and director of the CIA, reveals that she lied to Trump to push for more aggression against Russia.

In March 2018 the British government asserted, without providing any evidence, that the alleged 'Novichok' poisoning of Sergej and Yulia Skripal was the fault of Russia. It urged its allies to expel Russian officials from their countries.

The U.S. alone expelled 60 Russian officials. Trump was furious when he learned that EU countries expelled less than 60 in total. A year ago the Washington Post described the scene:
President Trump seemed distracted in March as his aides briefed him at his Mar-a-Lago resort on the administration's plan to expel 60 Russian diplomats and suspected spies.

The United States, they explained, would be ousting roughly the same number of Russians as its European allies -- part of a coordinated move to punish Moscow for the poisoning of a former Russian spy and his daughter on British soil.

"We'll match their numbers," Trump instructed, according to a senior administration official. "We're not taking the lead. We're matching."

The next day, when the expulsions were announced publicly, Trump erupted, officials said. To his shock and dismay, France and Germany were each expelling only four Russian officials -- far fewer than the 60 his administration had decided on.

The president, who seemed to believe that other individual countries would largely equal the United States, was furious that his administration was being portrayed in the media as taking by far the toughest stance on Russia.

The expulsion marked a turn in the Trump administration's relation with Russia:

The incident reflects a tension at the core of the Trump administration's increasingly hard-nosed stance on Russia: The president instinctually opposes many of the punitive measures pushed by his Cabinet that have crippled his ability to forge a close relationship with Russian President Vladi­mir Putin.

The past month, in particular, has marked a major turning point in the administration's stance, according to senior administration officials. There have been mass expulsions of Russian diplomats, sanctions on oligarchs that have bled billions of dollars from Russia's already weak economy and, for the first time, a presidential tweet that criticized Putin by name for backing Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad.

Today the New York Times portraits Gina Haspel's relation with Trump. The writers seem sympathetic to her and the CIA's position. They include an anecdote of the Skripal expulsion decision that is supposed to let her shine in a good light. But it only proves that the CIA manipulated the president for its own purpose:

Last March, top national security officials gathered inside the White House to discuss with Mr. Trump how to respond to the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, the former Russian intelligence agent.

London was pushing for the White House to expel dozens of suspected Russian operatives, but Mr. Trump was skeptical.
...
During the discussion, Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director, turned toward Mr. Trump. She outlined possible responses in a quiet but firm voice, then leaned forward and told the president that the "strong option" was to expel 60 diplomats.

To persuade Mr. Trump, according to people briefed on the conversation, officials including Ms. Haspel also tried to show him that Mr. Skripal and his daughter were not the only victims of Russia's attack.

Ms. Haspel showed pictures the British government had supplied her of young children hospitalized after being sickened by the Novichok nerve agent that poisoned the Skripals. She then showed a photograph of ducks that British officials said were inadvertently killed by the sloppy work of the Russian operatives.

Ms Haspel was not the first to use emotional images to appeal to the president, but pairing it with her hard-nosed realism proved effective: Mr. Trump fixated on the pictures of the sickened children and the dead ducks. At the end of the briefing, he embraced the strong option.

The Skripal case was widely covered and we followed it diligently (scroll down). There were no reports of any children affected by 'Novichok' nor were their any reports of dead ducks. In the official storyline the Skripals, before visiting a restaurant, fed bread to ducks at a pond in the Queen Elizabeth Gardens in Salisbury.

They also gave duck-bread to three children to do the same. The children were examined and their blood was tested. No poison was found and none of them fell ill . No duck died. (The duck feeding episode also disproves the claim that the Skripals were poisoned by touching a door handle.)

If the NYT piece is correct, the CIA director, in cooperation with the British government, lied to Trump about the incident. Their aim was to sabotage Trump's announced policy of better relations with Russia. The ruse worked.

The NYT piece does not mention that the pictures Gina Haspel showed Trump were fake. It pretends that her lies were "new information" and that she was not out to manipulate him:

The outcome was an example, officials said, of how Ms. Haspel is one of the few people who can get Mr. Trump to shift position based on new information.

Co-workers and friends of Ms. Haspel push back on any notion that she is manipulating the president. She is instead trying to get him to listen and to protect the agency, according to former intelligence officials who know her.

The job of the CIA director is to serve the president, not to protect the agencies own policies. Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was had, and fire Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her protector who likely had a role in the game:

Ms. Haspel won the trust of Mr. Pompeo, however, and has stayed loyal to him. As a result, Mr. Trump sees Ms. Haspel as an extension of Mr. Pompeo, a view that has helped protect her, current and former intelligence officials said.

Posted by b on April 16, 2019 at 08:37 AM | Permalink


Russ , Apr 16, 2019 9:02:41 AM | link

I don't see how it's possible to manipulate someone (and especially the US president) into doing something they don't want to do with lies like the ones described here. On the contrary presidents, CEOs etc. favor the staffers who tell them the kind of lies they want to hear in order to reinforce what they wanted to do in the first place.

I've never seen any reason to alter my first position on Trump, that like any other president he does what he wants to do.

Jerry , Apr 16, 2019 9:14:30 AM | link
The 1970s movie 3 Days of The Condor is about the evils of the See Eye A. Also they create trial balloon in the movie about taking middle east oil. This later happens in real life with NeoCon See Eye A stooges - Poppy Bush then later GW Bush-Cheney, Clintons and Oboma all agency owned men.

The joke 7in the final scene Robert Redford tells See Eye A man Cliff Robertson that he gave all the evidence to the NY Times. What a joke. The NY Times and the Wash Post are the mouthpieces for the SEE Eye A. The AP news sources most of their stories from those two papers and other lackey See Eye A newspapers.

One final criticism in moon's story. The head of the See Eye A is to serve the elites-Central banksters not the President. They did not serve JFK. Any President who crosses the central bankers aka roth-schilds ends up dead.

manny , Apr 16, 2019 9:15:16 AM | link
Ms. Haspel, then deputy C.I.A. director

After this, she got the top job, so what is the real lesson here? Sociopathic liars get promoted....or you can tell the truth, try to be honorable and fade into obscurity.. In a nest of psychos, you have to really be depraved to become the top psycho...

Nuke it for orbit, it's the only way to be sure...

Sally Snyder , Apr 16, 2019 9:35:40 AM | link
Here is an article that looks at whether nations around the world regard the United States or Russia as the greater threat to their nation:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2019/03/which-is-greater-threat-russia-or.html

It is interesting to see that nations that have traditionally been pro-American feel that the threat posed by American power is growing.

donkeytale , Apr 16, 2019 9:40:06 AM | link
b

Backing up Russ's point, when will you realise the "buck stops" on Trump's desk for any and all departments he oversees, which are run by his appointees? Trump is dedicated to creating a neoconservative foreign policy melded to a neoliberal economic policy favouring his corporate fascist sponsors. Recently, you've been all over the Assange indictment, Trump's relationship with Nuttyahoo and the related rollback of JCPOA. Is this what you want to see continued into a second term?

There is much evidence to show Trump and the GOP working steadily towards a "democracy" where Congress is castrated (one might say the system castrates Congress anyway), opposing candidates are jailed, opposition votes are suppressed and the media is weakened to the point where no one can tell the difference.

They haven't got there quite yet but once the judiciary is controlled by GOP ideologues it's game over. And McConnell is dedicating his life to make that the reality ASAP.

Meanwhile back at the ranch we are dedicated to knocking down any and all potential opposition to this GOP hostile takeover for some reason I've yet to fathom.

BM , Apr 16, 2019 9:42:46 AM | link
Hopefully Trump will hear about the anecdote, recognize how he was had, and fire Haspel. He should not stop there but also get rid of her protector who likely had a role in the game[Pompeo]

Hopefully yes to all four propositions. Why am I sceptical though (except conceivably the first)?

Mataman , Apr 16, 2019 9:45:30 AM | link
The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals. He's the first POTUS in decades I believe to not even pretend to like dogs by having an official White House dog and every policy his Administration can take against animals, they have taken. I'm not even sure I buy the spin that he cared about dead kids either. And NYT readers know this about him, so I don't understand what the point of peddling this fiction is other than to paint Torture Queen in some kind of good light (and we KNOW that she certainly doesn't care about dead anything).
the pair , Apr 16, 2019 10:08:18 AM | link
another example of trump's stupidity and pathological inability to think for himself. he gets his views from fox and his policy from bolton. his equally vapid daughter and kushner whine to him about sooper sad syria pictures they saw in a sponsored link while googling for new tmz gossip.

even worse that this is the twat in charge of one of russiagate's main instigating "deep state" agencies. he spent the entirety of his presidency railing against their various lies then takes this wankery at face value. it's just like the "chinese soldiers in venezuela"; if those pictures were legit they'd have been splattered over every front page and permanently attached to screeching cnn and msnbc segments demanding trump "finally get tough" on "putin's russia".

my only surprise is that she didn't tell him about british babies ripped from incubators and dipped in anthrax powder.
the nyt shilling for a soCIopAth? not that surprising.

Twiki , Apr 16, 2019 10:43:11 AM | link

The consultant in emergency medicine at Salisbury hospital wrote to The Times, shortly after the Skripal incident. His choice of words was odd, and some have said they indicate no novichok poisoning occurred. Leaving that to one side, his letter certainly puts paid to the idea that more than three people (the Skripals and the policeman, DCI Bailey) were poisoned. https://www.onaquietday.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/DocSaysNoNerveAgentInSalisbury.jpg
bjd , Apr 16, 2019 10:43:51 AM | link
" the nerve agent attack in Britain on Sergei V. Skripal, "

There was no attack on the Skripals. or on anyone else. The Russophobia in whose context it falls, is of a higher order, in which a fabricated narrative of a Skripal-like attack had an important function. The Skripals were perfectly happy to lend their name to the fabrication, and are living happily, probably in New Zealand.

Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 10:59:48 AM | link
The Daily Beast article that b linked to describes how many serious, well-informed people felt that Haspel was unsuitable to lead the CIA. Even more strange and troubling was that Haspel was supported by Trump's nemesis, John Brennan.

Despite all that, MAGA Trump still nominated her. Any notion that Trump is at odds with, or "manipulated" by, Haspel, Bolton, or Pompeo is just propaganda. We've seen such reporting before (esp. wrt Bolton) and Trump has taken no action.

Babyl-on , Apr 16, 2019 11:04:28 AM | link
I see that Trump derangement is alive and well here at MoA. Commenters talk as if Trump is the first president stupid enough to be manipulated by the security agencies and shadow government sometimes referred to as a "deep state". People don't have to be historians or look back to Rome, just read the books about how the great general who "won WWII" was used by the oligarchy which had full control of US foreign policy throughout Eisenhower's term in office.

Works produced after WWII, C. Wright Mills, The Power elite was written in 1956,The Brothers and The Divil's Chessboard each about the Dulles Brothers and how they operated US foreign policy for the interests of the oligarchy, and the work Peter Phillips, GIANTS: The Global Power Elite and the work of David Rothkopf which thoroughly describes the feudal system under which the Western cultures are ruled.
The US government is a pantomime it is a show it has no power.

How many here can honestly say they understand that the US dollar itself and the ENTIRE GLOBAL FINANCIAL SYSTEM is privately owned. Why do you think the "banks were bailed out"? because the banks were in power not the government. The US is 22 trillion in debt - the oligarchy is the creditor - take over the US gov. and you have a powerless pile of debt.

Around 6,000 people control 85% of global assets until that changes nothing will change. The oligarchy won virtually all the mines and control the price of all basic commodities necessary for modern life, the internet, oil of course and more.

What is failing and what has failed over and over for 500 years is Western Civilization and its three "great religions" which preach obedience, oppression, domination by a one god suffocating mythology.

But the oligarchy doesn't own just the basic commodities, it owns the religions and it owns the drugs and all illegal trade as well.

Western "civilization" is really nothing more than one vast feudal kingdom, with royal courts in DC, Tel Aviv and Ryiadh. Wheather there is a god or not, religion is made of flesh and blood not miracles. No Rabbi or Priest or Imam claims visitations by god to instruct them on doctrine - they are flesh and blood and they want power so they behave like sycophants to the money they need to expand their power...all for the good souls under their care.

Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 11:16:08 AM | link
Correction @13 Trump's supposed nemesis. Trump has brought several friends and associates of his enemies into his Administration:
  • VP Pence: John McCain's buddy
  • Bolton: a neocon (neocons were "Never Trump", remember?)
  • Wm Barr: close with Mueller
  • Haspel: Brennan's gal at CIA
And Trump himself was close to the Clintons.
lysias , Apr 16, 2019 12:00:59 PM | link
Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter.
Jose Garcia , Apr 16, 2019 12:08:01 PM | link
What can we expect from a tv personality who became a US president? A man who ran with an advertisement worthy of a business man like him, "Make America Great Again." How does he go about doing it? Giving more money to the military industrial-Congressional complex, even though we are really flat broke. Using aggressive tactics used by Wall Street in hostile company takeovers to really intimidate other nations. And hire and place those he really agrees with in important positions who really reflect his true feelings. I'm sure when he spoke with Haspel before offering her the job, he brought up the topic of torture and agreed with her on its use on terrorists.
Jackrabbit , Apr 16, 2019 12:24:11 PM | link
lysias @18: conspired to stop Trump's candidacy

I think there's a reasonable case to be made that they conspired not to stop Trump but to further speculation of Trump's "collusion" with Russia (what would later be known as Russiagate). The "collusion" and "Russia meddled" accusations are what fueled the new McCarthyism.

juliania , Apr 16, 2019 12:28:54 PM | link
I'll just add to Jerry's comment at #3 that the final line in the movie "Day of the Condor" is something like "But will they print it?" which really spoke to the message of the film in its entirety. The condor being an endangered bird for whom the hero is named, and the beginning outrage being the brutal murder of book lovers researching useable plot details for the 'company'makes this message current and applicable to what we see in the Skripal case. And instead of librarians, we now have online commenters, a doughty breed, and we have Assange.

Instead of 'Will they print it?' I am wondering 'Will they make another movie about it?'

"Day of the Condor: Part Two." Some Day.

Ross , Apr 16, 2019 12:41:17 PM | link
Remind me, where is Yulia Skripal these days? Well and truly 'disappeared' it seems. The mask is off. the snarling face of the beast is there for all to see.
Kiza , Apr 16, 2019 12:49:37 PM | link
What a total waste of an article discussing a story published in NYT or WaPo.

b, the World has divided itself into those who consume alternative media such as this and stupidos who consume MSM. There is nothing in-between that you are attempting to discuss and dissect here. NYT = cognitive value zero.

Fake News not worth one millisecond of our time, not even to decode what the regime wants us to know, we know all that already. Personally, I am only interested in the new methods of domestic repression, what is next after the warning of Assange arrest, future rendition and torture. The Deep Stare appears to be coming out into open, will it soon get rid of the whole faux democracy construct and just use iron fist to rule? It already impose its will as the rule of law. All of the Western block is heading in this direction.

jayc , Apr 16, 2019 1:00:38 PM | link
Photos of fake dead ducks and fake sickened children confirm the Skripal story is, in turn, completely fake. It says a lot that the NY Times either does not know this or that its contempt for its readership matches the contempt by which the intelligence agencies hold for their putative boss.
Piotr Berman , Apr 16, 2019 1:11:24 PM | link
The story veers into complete fiction when it claims that pictures of dead ducks had any effect on Trump. He doesn't like, nor care about animals. Mataman | Apr 16, 2019 9:45:30 AM

This assumes that Trump would primarily care about the ducks (and children) when he approved a massive expulsion, rather that his image and "ah, in that case it would look bad if we do not do something really decisive".

In any case, I was thinking why NYT would disclose something like that. The point is that readers of Craig Murray (not so few, but mostly Scottish nationalists who are also leftist and have scant possibilities and/or inclination to vote in USA) and MoonOfAlabama would quickly catch a dead fish here, but 99.9% of the public is blissfully unaware of any incongruences in the "established" Skripal narrative.

Piotr Berman , Apr 16, 2019 1:22:03 PM | link
BTW, it is possible that the journalist who scribbled fresh yarn obtained from CIA did it earnestly. Journalists do not necessarily follow stories that they cover -- scribbling from given notes does not require overtaxing the precious attention span that can be devoted to more vital cognitive challenges. I am lazy to find the link, but while checking for news on Venezuela, I stumbled on a piece from Express, a British tabloid, where Guaido was named a "figurehead of the oposition" supported by "450 Western countries". My interpretation was that more literate journalists were moved for to more compelling stories as Venezuela went to the back burner.
JOHN CHUCKMAN , Apr 16, 2019 1:28:11 PM | link
Yes, indeed, the Skripal Affair is one of the obviously contrived stunts we've seen. Just outrageous in its execution. On a par with the US having a man who didn't even run for president of Venezuela swear himself in and then pressure everyone to accept him as president.

Interesting, I had no idea Gina Haspel - aka, The Queen of Blood - played a role. I thought it was all original dirty work by Britain's Theresa May. Boy, I hope people are through with the false notion that if women just get into leadership, the world will become a better gentler place.

Here's some interesting background:

Noirette , Apr 16, 2019 1:28:44 PM | link
Macron was (afaik?) the only EU 'leader' who was quoted in the MSM as bruiting re. the Skripal affair a message like:

.. no culpability in the part of Russia has been evidenced .. for now...

I suppose he was enjoined to shut his gob right quick (have been reading about brexit so brit eng) as nothing more in that line was heard.

Hooo, the EU expelled a lot of Russ. diplomats, obeying the USuk, which certainly created some major upsets on the ground.

Some were expelled, went into other jobs, other places, but then others arrived, etc. The MSM has not made any counts - lists - of names numbers - etc. of R diplos on the job - anywhere. As some left and then others arrived.

Once more, this was mostly a symbolic move, if extremely nasty, insulting, and disruptive.

Theresa May's speech re. Novichok, Independent 14 March 2018:

.. on Monday I set out that Mr Skripal and his daughter were poisoned with a Novichok: a military grade nerve agent developed by Russia. Based on this capability, combined with their record of conducting state sponsored assassinations – including against former intelligence officers whom they regard as legitimate targets – the UK Government concluded it was highly likely that Russia was responsible for this reckless and despicable act. ..

https://ind.pn/2XcAIk4

Cost her a consequent amount of political capital. - Everyone knows the Skripal story is BS.

semiconscious , Apr 16, 2019 1:31:34 PM | link
@25 & @26:

imo, the media has, once again, simply taken its lead from trump himself, & started making things up completely. & you're absolutely correct in pointing out that, much like trump's true believers, the msm's targeted audience never even notices...

karlof1 , Apr 16, 2019 1:53:44 PM | link
Thanks for bringing this Skripal segment to light, b, as most of us don't read the NY Times in any form. Haspel likely had a hand in the planning of the overall scheme of which the Skripal saga and Russiagate are interconnected episodes. Clearly, the Money Power sees the challenge raised by Russia/China/Eurasia as existential and is trying to counter hybridly as it knows its wealth won't save it from Nuclear War.
james , Apr 16, 2019 2:03:20 PM | link
after integrity initiative, we know the uk is full of shite on most everything... thus, the msm will not be talking about integrity initiative..

what i didn't know is what @18 lysias pointed out.."Haspel was CIA station chief in London in 2016, when U.S. and Brit intel agencies conspired to stop Trump's candidacy. In her position, Haspel had to know about the plotting, more likely she participated in it. That Brennan supported her argues for the latter." ditto jr's speculation @20 too...

so gaspel shows trump some cheap propaganda that she got from who??

my main problem with b's post - i tend to see it like kiza @23) is maintaining the idea trump isn't in on all of this.. the thought trump is being duped by his underlings.. if he was and it mattered, he would get rid of them.. the fact he doesn't says to me, he is in on it - get russia, being the 24/7 game plan of the west here still..

c1ue , Apr 16, 2019 2:03:56 PM | link
Please stop listening to idiot libertarians and their "US is flat broke" meme. The reality is that: so long as Americans transact in dollars, the United States government can tax anytime it feels like by issuing new dollars via the Fed.

Equally, so long as 60% of the world's trade is conducted in dollars, this is tens to hundreds of billions of dollars of additional taxation surface area. The MMT people - I don't agree 100% with everything they say, but they do understand the actual operation of fiat currency.

The people who want a hard currency are either wealthy (and understand that conversion to hard currency cements their wealth) or are useful idiots who don't understand that currency devaluation is the single easiest way to tax in a democracy.

Michael Droy , Apr 16, 2019 2:12:37 PM | link
Well this could be Syria, not Salisbury!

I doubt Haspel knew the ducks were fake - she was probably just given stuff to pass up the chain. It is a lot like John Kerry who was shown convincing satellite data of the BUK launch that hit MH17 - but no one could be bothered to pass on even the launch site coordinates to the JIT. I'm sure this stuff goes on all the time, and of course, once Teresa May has spoken in Parliament, and Trump committed to expelling embassy staff, there is no way any alternative version of the truth is possible.

Skripal of course was a colleague of Steele, and possibly the only person he asked to get info for the dossier beyond what Nellie Ohr had already given him. His evidence might have been crucial. The CIA and others have a strong motive to kill Skripal and a stronger one to blame the Russians.

bjd , Apr 16, 2019 2:25:23 PM | link
The fact that the 'Dirty Dossier' and the 'Skripal "story"' both originate in one and the same small town in the UK, tells you all you need to know about both.
fastfreddy , Apr 16, 2019 2:48:31 PM | link
Haspel will not be fired.
Russ , Apr 16, 2019 3:02:51 PM | link
@c1ue | Apr 16, 2019 2:03:56 PM | 32

"The people who want a hard currency are either wealthy (and understand that conversion to hard currency cements their wealth) or are useful idiots who don't understand that currency devaluation is the single easiest way to tax in a democracy."

The useful idiocy is most surprising among US farmers. In the 19th century they broadly understood that fiat money was good for chronic low-wealth debtors like themselves, while hard money was bad and a gold standard lethal. This was the basis of the Populist movement. Nothing has changed financially, but today's farmers, and the low-wealth debtor class in general, seem more likely to be goldbuggers than to have any knowledge of economics or of their own political history.

karlof1 36

Once a faction becomes submerged in the Mammon theocracy and becomes nothing but mercenary nihilists, thinking is no longer necessary or desirable, except to come up with attractive, pseudo-plausible lies.

This certainly characterizes "the right" (including liberals), but they have no monopoly on it. By now "the left" is nearly as thoughtless and instrumental on behalf of Mammon, except to the extent that a few people are starting to really grapple with what it means to have an intrinsically ecocidal and therefore suicidal civilization. That's really the only thought frontier left, all else has been engulfed in Mammon, productionism, scientism and technocracy.

snake , Apr 16, 2019 3:29:24 PM | link
@7 ..Trump and the GOP working steadily towards a "democracy" where Congress is castrated (one might say the system castrates Congress anyway), opposing candidates are jailed, opposition votes are suppressed and the media is weakened to the point where no one can tell the difference. https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/04/15/593529/Ecuadoran-president-sold-off-Assangeto-America-Ron-Paul

I remind that Mussolini wasted his legislature.. 1 balmy after noon @ a roadside spot. it made his government stronger.?

It is clear the USA, France, Israel and UK are fasting approaching ungovernable .. no one in government can keep the lies of the other hidden, and none of the governed believes anyone in government, the MSM, the MIC or the AIG (ATT, Intel and Google). ..

The actors in government, their lawyers, playmates and corporations have become the laughing stock of the rest of the world. Everyone in the government is covering for the behaviors of someone else in government, the MSM has raised the price of a pencil to just under a million, stock markets are bags of hot thin air, and everyone in side and outside of the centers of power at all levels of government have lied thru their teeth so much that their teeth are melting from the continuous flow of hot deceitful air.

Corrupt is now the only qualification for political office, trigger happy screwball the only qualification for the police and the military and . making progress is like trying to conduct a panty raid at a female nudist camp.

John Anthony La Pietra , Apr 16, 2019 3:47:03 PM | link
https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0073802/quotes?ref_=m_tt_trv_qu

Higgins: Hey, Turner! How do you know they'll print it? You can take a walk, but how far if they don't print it?

Joe Turner: They'll print it.

Higgins: How do you know?

[Apr 15, 2019] Scottish Labour candidate facing questions over links to 'secretive military propaganda unit'

Notable quotes:
"... According to the Army's website, the Brigade is a combined "Regular and Army Reserve" unit, which aims to challenge the "difficulties of modern warfare" through "non-lethal engagement" and "legitimate non-military levers". ..."
"... In a nod to its social media purpose, the website adds that the 77th Brigade collects, creates and disseminates "digital and wider media content in support of designated tasks". ..."
"... Journalists, social media experts and researchers are listed as potential recruits. ..."
Apr 15, 2019 | www.heraldscotland.com

A SCOTTISH Labour candidate and former Better Together boss has been called on to explain her links to a "military propaganda unit" within the British Army.

Kate Watson is believed to be part of the Berkshire-based 77th Brigade, which was described by one newspaper as a "special force of Facebook warriors".

She declined to comment, but David Miller, a professor of political sociology at Bristol University , said: "The 77th Brigade is involved in manipulation of the media including using fake online profiles.

" Glasgow East is traditional Labour territory.

"A Labour candidate seeking to represent it should be transparent about their affiliations and commitments."

Formed in 2015, the 77th Brigade specialises in non-lethal warfare in the age of 24/7 rolling news and social media platforms.

With Vladimir Putin's Russia being accused of exploiting the openness of Western democracies – pumping out conspiracy theories on state-owned TV stations, and spreading fake stories on Twitter and Facebook – the military has been determined to regain control of the narrative.

In a November article, Wired magazine reported that the Brigade's soldiers do not fight, but instead "edit videos, record podcasts and write viral posts".

Given access to the unit, the magazine said of the office: "There was a suite full of large, electronic sketch pads and multi-screened desktops loaded with digital editing software.

"The men and women of the 77th knew how to set up cameras, record sound, edit videos. Plucked from across the military, they were proficient in graphic design, social media advertising, and data analytics.

"Some may have taken the army's course in Defence Media Operations, and almost half were reservists from civvy street, with full-time jobs in marketing or consumer research."

According to the Army's website, the Brigade is a combined "Regular and Army Reserve" unit, which aims to challenge the "difficulties of modern warfare" through "non-lethal engagement" and "legitimate non-military levers".

Using marketing jargon, the Army says that the 77th conducts "audience, actor and adversary analysis", as well as "supporting counter-adversarial information activity".

In a nod to its social media purpose, the website adds that the 77th Brigade collects, creates and disseminates "digital and wider media content in support of designated tasks".

Journalists, social media experts and researchers are listed as potential recruits.

As director of operations at Better Together, Watson played a key day-to-day role in an organisation set up to keep Scotland in the United Kingdom.

After the referendum, she got a job working for Consequitur, a consultancy owned by former Labour shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander. According to The Courier newspaper, she also graduated with a postgraduate qualification in terrorism studies in 2013.

She also has political ambitions, having stood for Labour in Glasgow East at the last General Election and losing by 75 votes. She has since been selected to contest the same seat.

An online left-wing magazine, in a write-up of the fiercely-contested Labour selection contest, claimed in June last year that she is part of the 77th Brigade, which Miller told this newspaper is a "secretive military propaganda unit".

Another politician linked to the unit is Tory junior defence minister Mark Lancaster. The MP's website states that he has been "selected as Deputy Commander 77 Brigade".

Speaking about the Brigade in Parliament last week, Lancaster said: "We have focused on just one aspect of the role of 77th Brigade, which is web ops, but it also encompasses some of the traditional capabilities we also have, be that what we would know as CIMIC – civil-military co-operation – the outreach group or the media group.

"By bringing all those components together, you are effectively updating what was a 20th-century capability for the 21st century and the introduction of the web and the internet. There is no doubt that information advantage is very much a key component of all the work that we will be doing in the future.

"I will give one example of interest to us as politicians, where recently I went on an exercise. Traditionally, military exercises tend to escalate upwards, but actually the key component there to allow de-escalation, which politicians are always interested in, was the use of information advantage and the web."

Between February 2017 and February 2018, 29 personnel from 77th Brigade were "forward deployed" on operations, according to a written parliamentary answer.

Meanwhile, it was reported in December that a security alert had been issued at UK military bases in Britain after a Russian TV crew was seen outside the 77th Brigade's headquarters. A journalist was spotted filming close to the Brigade's 25ft barbed wire perimeter fence, but he later denied trying to infiltrate the army base.

The MoD said the journalist's "suspicious" behaviour was monitored by the base's security systems.

[Apr 15, 2019] Rogue State – Britain Railing Against International Norms Laws

Notable quotes:
"... Examples such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, Syria and latterly Libya are very clear. Irrespective of the technicalities, they all broke the rules of International laws or norms. But other examples demonstrate how lawless Britain as a state really is. ..."
"... The UK was therefore not outright rejecting the international system. On Chagos it is now simply denying the authority of the International Court of Justice; this is utterly unprecedented. ..."
"... Then there is Britain's relationship with Israel, which is taking a battering due to internal politics and finger-pointing over claims of racism. Fundamentally though, the issue is about war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people. ..."
"... The UK government's record on bulk data handling for intelligence purposes saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that state surveillance practices such as those practised in Britain violated human rights law ..."
"... urveillance operations such as – Muscular, Socialist, Gemalto, Three Smurfs, XKeyScore, Upstream and Tempora are all examples of extreme surveillance systems being used in Britain that would be completely unknown if it had not been for Edward Snowden – another political prisoner. All such operations would be deemed illegal in court and of breaking international laws or norms in normal democratic countries. ..."
"... Breaking international laws and norms has a long-term effect, mainly that of detriment to national security, long-term interests and trust. There is an assumption, of course, that international law cannot be enforced but in today's world, international sanctions can be as damaging as using force. Those sanctions could be economic or diplomatic in nature. ..."
Apr 15, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Via TruePublica.org.uk,

Leaving aside Britain's past, most particularly that of empire, the country is not just continually moving towards authoritarianism it is beginning to demonstrate all the early signs of a rogue state. These are strong words but the actual definition of a rogue state is – "a nation or state regarded as breaking international law and posing a threat to the security of other nations." Examples such as the illegal invasion of Iraq, Syria and latterly Libya are very clear. Irrespective of the technicalities, they all broke the rules of International laws or norms. But other examples demonstrate how lawless Britain as a state really is.

Chagos

Here, an entire population were forcibly removed from their island homeland at British gunpoint to make way for a US Air Force nuclear base, the people were dumped destitute over a thousand miles away, their domestic animals gassed by the British army, their homes fired and then demolished. To achieve this, Britain maliciously threatened the Mauritian government into ceding the Chagos Islands as a condition of its Independence.

Recently, the International Court of Justice found that the British occupation of the Chagos Islands was unlawful by a majority of 13 to 1. Britain rejected this ruling.

Ex British ambassador Craig Murray wrote –

" this represents a serious escalation in the UK's rejection of multilateralism and international law and a move towards joining the US model of exceptionalism, standing outside the rule of international law. As such, it is arguably the most significant foreign policy development for generations. In the Iraq war, while Britain launched war without UN Security Council authority, it did so on a tenuous argument that it had Security Council authority from earlier resolutions. The UK was therefore not outright rejecting the international system. On Chagos it is now simply denying the authority of the International Court of Justice; this is utterly unprecedented. "

Weapons and war crimes

Britain's arms and munitions sales are now regularly in the news. Even The Lords international relations committee said that British weapons were "highly likely to be the cause of significant civilian casualties" in various countries where illegal wars, acts of genocide and war crimes are being committed. A quick online search lists numerous examples.

Israel

Then there is Britain's relationship with Israel, which is taking a battering due to internal politics and finger-pointing over claims of racism. Fundamentally though, the issue is about war crimes being committed against the Palestinian people. British arms sales to Israel is at best questionable, especially the news that British made sniper rifles were used to kill and injure thousands of Palestinians recently. But Britain's support in this genocidal war again goes against all international norms where the conflict is described by Amnesty International as an " abhorrent violation of international laws ." It added that – " This is another horrific example of the Israeli military using excessive force and live ammunition in a totally deplorable way. This is a violation of international standards, in some instances committing what appear to be wilful killings constituting war crimes ."

In addition, UK policy is allowing trade with 'Israeli' goods from illegal settlements in the occupied territories. The British government has stated that it does not even keep a record of imports into the UK from these illegal Israeli settlements. Acquiescing in this illegal trade by an occupying power is a violation of international law. The December 2016 UN Security Council Resolution , to which the UK agreed:

'reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law"

Libya

Mark Curtis , a British foreign policy expert and historian writes about Britain's illegal attack of a soverign state – Libya: " British bombing in Libya, which began in March 2011, was a violation of UN Resolution 1973, which authorised member states to enforce a no-fly zone over Libya and to use 'all necessary measures' to prevent attacks on civilians but did not authorise the use of ground troops or regime change promoted by the Cameron government. That these policies were illegal is confirmed by Cameron himself, who told Parliament on 21 March 2011 that the UN resolution 'explicitly does not provide legal authority for action to bring about Gaddafi's removal from power by military means." Today, Libya is a failed state and overrun by militant factions.

Extrajudicial assassinations and even a kill list

Reprieve's report entitled Britain's Kill List accused the Conservative government of extreme deception of parliament. Officially, Britain has never had a so-called 'kill list' but David Cameron had to admit to an extrajudicial assassinations programme in the Middle East, which we at TruePublica reported. All such killings break the most fundamental of international laws and norms as detailed HERE .

The Reprieve introductory paragraph reads -" On September 7th, 2015, Prime Minister David Cameron came to Parliament and announced a "new departure" for Britain, a policy of killing individuals the Security Services and the military do not like, people placed on a list of individuals who the UK (acting along with the US and others) have identified and systematically plan to kill. The mere admission that there is a Kill List certainly should, indeed, have been a "departure" for a country that prides itself on decency. Unfortunately, it was not a "new departure" at all, as we had been doing it secretly for more than a decade."

Statelessness

Britain has once again broken international norms. The goals of UNHCR's stateless campaign, a Global Action Plan to End Statelessness 2014 – 2024 introduced a guiding framework comprised of 10 Actions to be undertaken by states. In the case of high-profile 'ISIS Bride' runaway from Bethnal Green to Baghuz, Shamima Begum, the UK disregarded Actions 4 and 9:

Action 4: Prevent denial, loss or deprivation of nationality on discriminatory grounds.

Action 9: Accede to the UN Statelessness Conventions.

But Britain's has its own laws. Section 40(2) of the 1981 British Nationality Act states the Home Secretary won't make any individual rendered stateless as a result. Under this, the UK Home Secretary Sajid Javid's decision to revoke Begum's citizenship breaks UK law and international norms.

Political prisoner

Then, there is the persecution of Julian Assange, the founder of Wikileaks, which is now seven years old. Ecuador has protected Assange for the past half decade from being turned over to Washington until his arrest by British police yesterday. By definition, Assange is the only political prisoner in western Europe. A United Nations legal panel ruled that Assange should be allowed to walk free and be compensated for his "deprivation of liberty" and that his detention was illegal.

Assange has been nominated for a Nobel peace prize every year since 2010. His really big crime was releasing film of an American helicopter gunship killing civilians and journalists in Iraq. Britain is more than just complicit of it attack of fundamental and important press freedoms in arresting him.

Assange's lawyer criticised the British government for being poised to arrest and extradite Assange to the United States. "That a government would cooperate with another state to extradite a publisher for publishing truthful information outside its territory sets a dangerous precedent here in the UK and elsewhere," she said. "No one can deny that risk. That is why he sought asylum in the Ecuadorian embassy."

Surveillance

The UK government's record on bulk data handling for intelligence purposes saw the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR) ruling that state surveillance practices such as those practised in Britain violated human rights law. United National Special Rapporteur on Privacy Joe Cannataci said Britain was setting a bad example to the world and that Britain's surveillance techniques on its own citizens was – "worse than Orwell's 1984." The highest courts in Britain have ruled against the government on mass surveillance.

In 2014, British spies were (illegally) granted the authority to secretly eavesdrop on legally privileged attorney-client communications, according to documents. The documents were made public as a result of a legal case brought against the British government by Libyan families who allege that they were subjected to extraordinary rendition and torture, where Britain was proven to be in violation of international laws, in a joint British-American operation that took place in 2004.

A lawyer, in this case, said – "It could mean, amazingly, that the government uses the information they have got from snooping on you, against you, in a case you have brought. This clearly violates an age-old principle of English law set down in the 16th century – that the correspondence between a person and their lawyer is confidential."

In addition, just one of the many operations carried out by the British state was called Optic Nerve . It illegally went about capturing images from webcams of millions of completely innocent citizens accused of nothing. Between 3% and 11% of the images captured by the webcams were sexually explicit in nature and deemed "undesirable nudity." The public has not been reassured that these files still exist or not that were taken to build an illegal facial recognition system the government had not declared.

Surveillance operations such as – Muscular, Socialist, Gemalto, Three Smurfs, XKeyScore, Upstream and Tempora are all examples of extreme surveillance systems being used in Britain that would be completely unknown if it had not been for Edward Snowden – another political prisoner. All such operations would be deemed illegal in court and of breaking international laws or norms in normal democratic countries.

Health and Safety

In 2015, the Government pushed through a law that exempted a large number of self-employed people from the protection of the Health and Safety at Work Act. The Government managed to get away with reducing the level of protection because the self-employed are not covered by the European "Framework Directive", which is the regulation that sets minimum standards that countries have to comply with.

At the time the TUC pointed out to the Government that there were other international laws that the UK had signed up to in many other non European countries that did cover the self-employed including those of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the Council of Europe.

Disability

The UN Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities examined the British government's progress in fulfilling its commitments to the UN convention on disabled people's rights , to which the UK has been a signatory since 2007.

Its report concludes that the UK has not done enough to ensure the convention, which enshrines the rights of disabled people to live independently, to work and to enjoy social protection without discrimination – is reflected in UK law and policy.

Although it praises some initiatives by the Scottish and Welsh governments to promote inclusion, it is scathing of the UK government's inconsistent and patchy approach to protecting disability rights and its failure to audit the impact of its austerity policies on disabled people.

Trust

Breaking international laws and norms has a long-term effect, mainly that of detriment to national security, long-term interests and trust. There is an assumption, of course, that international law cannot be enforced but in today's world, international sanctions can be as damaging as using force. Those sanctions could be economic or diplomatic in nature. And if Britain wants to be an international player, it very strongly needs to appreciate and adhere to international laws and norms.

[Apr 14, 2019] It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, "frequently flew" on Epstein's private jet between 2002 and 2005.

Apr 14, 2019 | www.unz.com

Si1ver1ock says: April 13, 2019 at 12:01 pm GMT

It's interesting the Media has brought back the Sweden rape charge, but they are avoiding this rape story like the pest.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/1jDPzW9COsU?feature=oembed

Read More

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 12:19 pm GMT

"Assange was reduced from one of the few towering figures of our time – a man who will have a central place in history books, if we as a species live long enough to write those books "

-- The presstituting crowd of stenographers (MSM) and the zionized X-tian war profiteers have made everything in their power (inadvertently) to ensure that Assange is and will be a towering figure of our time.

Even in distress, Assange has been fighting for truth and dignity; the ongoing show of lawlessness exposes the rot. The moral and creative midgets constituting the core of MSM and the satanic deciders are upset. Good!

The idiotic Senior District "Judge" Emma Arbuthnot (a wife and beneficiary of a mega-war profiteer Lord Arbuthnot -- Arbuthnot served as Chairman of the Defence Select Committee from 2005 to 2014) and the no less idiotic District "Judge" Michael Snow have entered the history books as well. As scoundrels: http://members5.boardhost.com/xxxxx/msg/1555064882.html

Snow does his best to bring the Judiciary into disrepute by playing to the gallery. He comments on the extradition in the same vein in a totally unprofessional manner. He is of course in a long line of disreputable members of the judiciary Snow's place in history is now secured – he chose to abuse the defendant rather than perform his role which was really quite straightforward. He is the narcissist and guilty of self interest not Julian Assange.

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 12:33 pm GMT
@Si1ver1ock For every pronouncement against Assange by the US/UK government and judiciary, there should be an immediate question about the leniency shown towards the pedophiles and rapists in the UK (see Savile and the sudden "disappearance" of files re the high-placed pedophiles) and the story of Lolita Island and Lolita Express in the US.

Theresa May as the protector of pedophiles and rapists in the UK: https://www.corbettreport.com/pedophiles-in-politics-an-open-source-investigation/

One of the hurdles in investigating the claims is the Official Secrets Act, which prevents the disclosure of state secrets and "sensitive" information. "It is clear there are a lot of people who could provide a lot of information to support ongoing criminal investigations But they are not doing so because of the Official Secrets Act. They are fearful of not only breaking the law but the potential effect on their pension. This is absolutely crucial if we are to get some of these ex-officers coming forward and to get prosecutions of some of the former MPs." He has asked Home Secretary Theresa May to lift the restrictions, allowing former officials to speak up about what they know about the case, but so far there is no indication that this has been done.

The protection of the high-placed pedophiles and rapists in the US:

In the Epstein case, as well, there are numerous questions surrounding the possibility of high-level cover up. In recent weeks it has emerged that Epstein struck a remarkable secret deal with the US Attorney's Office that barred more than 500 pages of documents detailing negotiations of the deal and a staggering 13,000 documents from the investigation into Epstein's activities that were shelved as a result of the bargain.

Let the scoundrels talk about Assange to see how the concocted fraud is backfired.

Mrs. Clinton in particular should have been more circumspect:

It has since been revealed that Epstein had 21 different phone numbers for contacting his friend Bill Clinton, who, court records allege, "frequently flew" on Epstein's private jet between 2002 and 2005.

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 1:28 pm GMT
@Ronald Thomas West And why are you spreading the MSM disinformation on the Unz forum? -- Just to satisfy your desire to litter the forum?

Read and learn: https://www.corbettreport.com/pedophiles-in-politics-an-open-source-investigation/

Also, perhaps you need to ponder why you are not treated the same way as the courageous, talented, principled, and dignified Assange is treated. Perhaps, something is missing in your character.

annamaria , says: April 13, 2019 at 1:44 pm GMT
@Art Theresa May has been the main protector of the high-placed British pedophiles

"Theresa May and the 'missing' child sex abuse files" https://www.reknr.com/uk/theresa-may-and-the-missing-child-sex-abuse-files/

"British PM Blocks Elite Pedophile Enquiry On Grounds Of 'National Security'" https://newspunch.com/british-pm-blocks-pedophile-enquiry/

The documents are thought to shed light on the years of ongoing pedophilia and child abuse within Westminster and contained names of "several" high-level politicians in the UK and US who are connected to an elite pedophile ring.

The followup: "Theresa May accused of cover-up over child abuse inquiry concerns," https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/theresa-may-child-abuse-inquiry-cover-up-concerns-dame-lowell-goddard-stories-a7369976.html

"England: Land of Royals, Tea and Horrific Pedophilia Coverups" http://time.com/2974381/england-land-of-royals-tea-and-horrific-pedophilia-coverups/

In the case of the Westminster "pedophile ring," the mounting sentiment that Britain's establishment serves its own interests and conceals its wrongdoing may be well founded. Until recently only seven police officers were working on Operation Fernbridge; Scotland Yard announced today the figure is now 22.

By fraudulently accusing Assange, Theresa May reminds the world about her role in the protection of the wealthy and influential Westminster pedophiles (the real rapists).

[Apr 12, 2019] Skripal, the Russkies and Bellingcat

The fact that Glenn Greenwald proved to be a despicable pressitute cast a long shadow of Snowden and Assange.
Notable quotes:
"... Not mentioned by any of the major news media is the fact that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (sic), renowned for its interference in foreign elections, funding terrorists and overthrowing governments the US doesn't approve of. ..."
Sep 27, 2018 | investigatingimperialism.wordpress.com
September 27, 2018 September 27, 2018 27 September 2018 -- Investigating Imperialism

I smell a rat!

A quick comment about the two Russian alleged assassins, exposed, we are told by the 'investigative' Website, Bellingcat. Not mentioned by any of the major news media is the fact that Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (sic), renowned for its interference in foreign elections, funding terrorists and overthrowing governments the US doesn't approve of.

Media Lens picked up on this awhile back in reference to another Western financed outfit, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (SOHR), funded by the UK Foreign Office. I've also expanded this by quoting from Media Lens' other article that deals with Western-funded disinfo, ' Douma: Part 1 – Deception In Plain Sight':

Liberal corporate journalists and politicians have been impressed by the fact that SOHR and White Helmets claims have been supported by ostensibly forensic analysis supplied by the Bellingcat website, which publishes 'citizen journalist' investigations. As we noted in a recent alert, Bellingcat is funded by the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), which is funded by the US government and is 'a notorious vehicle for US soft power'. – ' The Syrian Observatory – Funded By The Foreign Office ', Media Lens, June 4 2018

It's worth quoting more of the Media Lens article as it exposes the nature of Western so-called lefties and their attachment to Western (funded) propaganda outfits:

In the New Statesman, Paul Mason offered a typically nonsensical argument, linking to the anti-Assad website, Bellingcat:

'Despite the availability of public sources showing it is likely that a regime Mi-8 helicopter dropped a gas container onto a specific building, there are well-meaning people prepared to share the opinion that this was a "false flag", staged by jihadis, to pull the West into the war. The fact that so many people are prepared to clutch at false flag theories is, for Western democracies, a sign of how effective Vladimir Putin's global strategy has been.'

Thus, echoing Freedland's reference to 'denialists and conspiracists', sceptics can only be idiot victims of Putin's propaganda. US media analyst Adam Johnson of FAIR accurately described Mason's piece as a 'mess', adding :

'I love this thing where nominal leftists run the propaganda ball for bombing a country 99 yards then stop at the one yard and insist they don't support scoring goals, that they in fact oppose war.'

Surprisingly, the Bellingcat website, which publishes the findings of 'citizen journalist' investigations, appears to be taken seriously by some very high-profile progressives.

In the Independent, Green Party leader Caroline Lucas also mentioned the Syrian army 'Mi-8' helicopters. Why? Because she had read the same Bellingcat blog as Mason, to which she linked:

'From the evidence we've seen so far it appears that the latest chemical attack was likely by Mi-8 helicopters, probably from the forces of Syria's murderous President Assad.'

On Democracy Now!, journalist Glenn Greenwald said of Douma:

'I think that it's -- the evidence is quite overwhelming that the perpetrators of this chemical weapons attack, as well as previous ones, is the Assad government '

This was an astonishing comment. After receiving fierce challenges (not from us), Greenwald partially retracted, tweeting :

'It's live TV. Something [sic – sometimes] you say things less than ideally. I think the most likely perpetrator of this attack is Syrian Govt.'

We wrote to Greenwald asking what had persuaded him of Assad's 'likely' responsibility for Douma. (Twitter, April 10, direct message)

The first piece of evidence he sent us (April 12) was the Bellingcat blog mentioning Syrian government helicopters cited by Mason and Lucas. Greenwald also sent us a report from Reuters, as well as a piece from 2017, obviously prior to the alleged Douma event.

This was thin evidence indeed for the claim made. In our discussion with him, Greenwald then completely retracted his claim (Twitter, April 12, direct message) that there was evidence of Syrian government involvement in the alleged attack. [My emph. WB] – ' Douma: Part 1 – Deception In Plain Sight'

[Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

Highly recommended!
Money quote: "The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate."
Notable quotes:
"... Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016 – a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’ ..."
"... Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come. It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk .) ..."
"... Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic, with Dearlove certainly among them. ..."
"... ‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’ ..."
"... The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same. ..."
"... A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation. ..."
"... In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’) ..."
"... The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief. ..."
"... There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from ‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller." ..."
"... I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary, increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language. ..."
"... The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler. ..."
"... There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate. ..."
Apr 08, 2019 | www.wsws.org

Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times

"Dan, Thanks for the reference, which I will follow up. Unfortunately, although Bongino has produced a lot of extremely valuable material, a lot of it is buried in the 'postcasts', searching through which is harder than with printed materials. It would greatly help if there were transcripts, but of course those cost money.

I am still trying to fit the exploding mass of information which has been coming out into a coherent timeline. Part of the problem is that there is so much appearing in so many different places. In addition to trying to think through the implications of the information in this post and the subsequent exchanges of comments, I have been trying to make sense of evidence coming out about the British end of the conspiracy.

An important development here has been rather well covered by Chuck Ross, in a recent ‘Daily Caller’ piece headlined ‘Cambridge Academic Reflects On Interactions With 'Spygate’ Figure’ and one on ‘Fox’ by Catherine Herridge and Cyd Upson, entitled ‘Russian academic linked to Flynn denies being spy, says her past contact was “used” to smear him.’ However, the evidence involved has ramifications which they cannot be expected to understand, as yet at least.

(See https://dailycaller.com/201... ; https://www.foxnews.com/pol... .)

At issue is the attempt to use the – apparently casual – encounter between Lieutenant-General Flynn and Svetlana Lokhova at a dinner in Cambridge (U.K.) in February 2016 to smear him by, among other things, portraying her as some kind of ‘Mata Hari’ figure.

Among interesting dates, it appears that Stefan Halper was already trying to reach out to Lokhova in January-February 2016 – a lot earlier than his approaches to Papadopoulo s and Page. This was done through Professor Christopher Andrew, co-convenor with Halper and the former MI6 had Sir Richard Dearlove of the ‘Cambridge Intelligence Seminar.’

This suggests that this was not simply a case Halper acting on his own. It also I think brings us back to the central importance of Flynn’s visit to Moscow in December 2015.

Meanwhile, Lokhova has set up a blog on which she has posted a some interesting relevant material, with perhaps more to come. It is very well worth a look.(See https://www.russiagate.co.uk .)

Of particular interest, to my mind, is the full text of her – unpublished – May 2017 interview with the ‘New York Times.’ This points us back to is the fact – of which Lokhova shows no signs of awareness – that the idea that the Western powers and the Russians might have a common interest in fighting jihadist terrorism has been absolute anathema to many key figures on both sides of the Atlantic, with Dearlove certainly among them.

Some of Lokhova’s comments on ‘twitter’ are extremely entertaining. An example, with which I have much sympathy:

‘AN APOLOGY: Yesterday, I compared @nytimes journalists, who smeared @GenFlynn and accused me of being a Russian spy, to cockroaches. In good conscience, I must apologize to the cockroaches for the distress caused to them for being compared to @nytimes #Russiagate hoaxers. Sorry!’

(See https://twitter.com/RealSLo... .)

Meanwhile, another interesting recent ‘tweet’ comes from Eliot Higgins, of ‘Bellingcat’ fame. He is known to some skeptics as ‘the couch potato’ – perhaps he should be rechristened ‘king cockroach.’ It reads:

‘Looking forward to gettin g things rolling with the Open Information Partnership, with @bellingcat, @MDI_UK, @DFRLab, and @This_Is_Zinc https://www.openinformation...

(See https://twitter.com/EliotHi... )

There is an interesting ‘backstory’ to this. The announcement of an FCO-supported ‘Open Information Partnership of European Non-Governmental Organisations, charities, academics, think-tanks and journalists’, supposedly to counter ‘disinformation’ from Russia, came in a written answer from the Minister of State, Sir Alan Duncan, on 3 April.

(See https://www.theyworkforyou.... )

In turn this followed the latest in a series of releases of material either leaked or hacked from the organisations calling themselves ‘Institute for Statecraft’ and ‘Integrity Initiative’ by the group calling themselves ‘Anonymous’ on 25 March.

(See https://www.cyberguerrilla .... )

The centerpiece of this is a proposal submitted to the FCO in August last year by what seems to be essentially the same consortium whose existence as a government contractor has now been made public. The ‘Institute for Statecraft’ has vanished, and one consortium member, ‘Aktis Strategy’, has gone into liquidation. But other key members are the same.

A central underlying premise is that if anyone has any doubts as to whether the ‘White Helmets’ are a benevolent humanitarian organisation, or the Russians were responsible for the poisoning of the Skripals or the shooting down of MH17, the only possible explanation is that their minds have been poisoned by disinformation.

An interesting paragraph reads as follows:

‘An expanded research component could generate better understanding of the drivers (psychological, sociopolitical, cultural and environmental) of those who are susceptible to disinformation. This will allow us to map vulnerable audiences, and build scenario planning models to test the efficiency of different activities to build resilience of those populations over time.’

They have not yet got to the point of recommending psychiatic treatment for ‘dissidents’, but these are still early days. The ‘Sovietisation’ of Western life proceeds apace.

In fact, what is at issue an ambitious project to co-ordinate and strengthen a very large number of organisations in different countries which are committed to a relentlessly Russophobic line on everything. (The possibility that it might not be very bright to push Russia into the arms of China, the obviously rising power, does not seem to have occurred to these people – perhaps they need less ons from Sir Halford Mackinder, or indeed Niccolò Machiavelli, on ‘statecraft.’)

Study of the proposal hacked/leaked by ‘Anonymous’ bring out both the ‘boondoggle’ element – there is a lot of state funding available for people happy to play these games – and also the strong transatlantic links.

A particularly significant presence, here, is the ‘DFRLab’. This is the ‘Digital Forensic Research Lab’ at the ‘Atlantic Council’, where Eliot Higgins is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’ The same organisation has a ‘Cyber Statecraft Initiative’ where Dmitri Alperovitch is a ‘nonresident senior fellow.’

It cannot be repeated often enough that it is difficult to see any conceivable excuse for the FBI to fail to secure access to the DNC servers. One would normally moreover expect that, on an issue of this sensitivity, they would have the ‘digital forensics’ done by their own people.

There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that organisation.

To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic ‘Atlantic Council’ is even more preposterous.

The clear close integration of other cyber people from the ‘Atlantic Council’ into Orwellian ‘information operations’ sponsored by the British Government simply puts these facts into sharp relief.

There has to be a strong possible ‘prima facie’ case that anyone in authority prepared to accept the ‘digital forensics’ from ‘CrowdStrike’ is complicit in the conspiracy against the constitution, and/or the conspiracy to cover-up that conspiracy. This certainly goes for Comey, and I think it also goes for Mueller."


chris chuba , a day ago

OT but related, just watched a former naval Intelligence officer, now working for the Hoover Institute interviewed on FOX about the Rooshins in Venezuela. Said, the 100 Russians are there to protect Maduro because he cannot trust his own army. Maduro's days are numbered because he is toxically unpopular.

Got me thinking, our Intelligence services are good at psy-ops and keeping our gullible MSM in line but God help us if we ever actually needed real Intelligence about a country. I remember about a month ago how all of these 'Think Tank Guys' were predicting how the only people loyal to Maduro were a few of his crony Generals, that the rank and file military hated him and there were going to be mass defections.

It didn't happen and we are all just supposed to forget that.
[not a socialist, don't have any love for Maduro, I just know that I will never learn anything of about Venezuela from these think tank dudes, we are just getting groomed]

Karl Kolchak -> chris chuba , a day ago
Venezuela isn't about "socialism," or even Maduro--it's about the oil. They have the largest proven reserves in the world, though much of it is non-conventional and would need a ton of investment to exploit. But it's their oil, not ours, and we have no right to meddle in their internal affairs.
Jack -> Karl Kolchak , 15 hours ago
Venezuela is neither about socialism nor oil in my opinion. It is everything to do with the neocons. And Trump buying into their hegemonic dreams. Notice the resurrection of Elliott Abrams of Iran-Contra fame as the man spearheading this in a triumvirate with Bolton & Pompeo. IMO, a perfect foil for Putin & Xi to embroil the US in another regime change quagmire that further weakens the US.
Mad_Max22 , 17 hours ago
"There can be no conceivable excuse for relying on a contractor selected by the organisation which is claiming that there has been a hack, when an alternative possibility is a leak: and the implications of the alternative possibility could be devastating for that organisation.
To rely on a contractor linked to the notoriously Russophobic 'Atlantic Council' is even more preposterous."

True; and true. It is also true that the Clinton e-mail investigation was faux, a limp caricature of what an investigation would look like when it is designed to uncover the truth. Allowing a subject's law firm to review the subject's e-mails from when she was in government for relevancy is beyond preposterous. An investigation conducted in the normal way by apolitical Agents in a field office would not walk away from a trove of evidence empty handed.
The inter-relatedness and overlapping of DoJ, CIA, and FBI personnel assigned to the Clinton e-mail case, the Russophobic nightmare of a 'case' targeting Carter Page, and by extension, the Trump presidential campaign, and yes, the Mueller political op, all reek of political bias and ineptitude followed by more political bias; and then culmination in a scorched earth investigation more characteristic of something the STASI might have undertaken than American justice.
Early morning raids, gag orders, solitary confinements, show indictments that will never see adjudication in a court room - truly unbelievable.

Jack , 15 hours ago
David

In your opinion was this surveillance, criminal & counter-intelligence investigation as well as information operations against Trump centrally orchestrated or was it more reactive & decentralized?

There are so many facets. Fusion GPS & Nellie Ohr with her previous CIA connection. Her husband Bruce at the DOJ stovepiping the dossier to the FBI. Brennan and his EC. Clapper and his intelligence assessment. Halper, Mifsud, Steele along with Hannigan and the MI6 + GCHQ connection. Downer and the Aussies. FISA warrants on Page & Papadopolous. The whole Strzok & Page texting. Comey, Lynch & the Hillary exoneration. McCabe. Then all the Russians. And the media leaks to generate hysteria.

john fletcher , a day ago

I'd recommend for reading Alexei Yurchak's "Everything Was Forever, Until It was No More: The Last Soviet Generation." Its about a class of apparatchiks and bureaucrats and hangers on who spoke this arcane, abstract dogmatic language that anyone normal had long since given up trying to understand. It had long ceased to have any relevance or attachment to the lives lived by ordinary, increasingly suffering people, who started talking to each other in practical and direct language.

And yet the chatterati continued to chatter and invent ludicrously unreal worlds and analyses of the actual world they lived in until... bang... it was no more.

I'd skip the first few chapters which are full of impenetrable marxist jargon.

VietnamVet , 12 hours ago
The Russian collusion investigation was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier that was discredited here from the get-go. This was a product of British Intelligence Community. The intent was to keep and then to get Donald Trump out of the White House. It failed but they did succeed in turning him into a neo-lib-con fellow traveler.

There are clear parallels between the end stages of the Soviet Union and the American Empire. My take since the Iraq Invasion is that they are insane. The ruling elite is detached from reality, incompetent and arrogant. Sooner or later someone with their facilities still intact will lead a middle-class revolt against the global plutocracy to restore democracy and reverse the rising inequality. We were lucky that the fall of the Soviet Union did not lead to a nuclear war. The next time a nuclear armed Empire crashes we may not be so fortunate.

[Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES

Highly recommended!
Money quote: "Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots that the West is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets should be built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion. But the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union. "
Notable quotes:
"... Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative. The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international organizations. ..."
"... The Magnitsky Act, in my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally. ..."
"... There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent investigator or judge. ..."
Apr 06, 2019 | www.aseees.org

In 2016, Andrei Lvovich Nekrasov, a well-known Russian film-maker, playwright, theater director, and actor, released a docudrama entitled, The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes . Although the film won many artistic accolades, including a special commendation from the Prix Europa Award for a Television Documentary, public screenings were abruptly canceled in both Europe and the United States. Political pressure from various constituents and the threat of lawsuits from William Browder, the American-British billionaire and human-rights activist, ensured the limitation of the film to a single website. To the knowledge of this author, there has been only one public screening of The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes in the United States. In June 2016, Seymour Hersch, a renowned investigative journalist, presided over a showing of the film at the Newseum in Washington, DC, that generated much controversy. The American press has not been kind to either the film or the director, Andrei Nekrasov. The Washington Post, The New York Times, The New Yorker, and The Daily Beast all seem to agree that the film is an overt work of Russian propaganda that aims to introduce confusion about the circumstances leading to the death of tax accountant, Sergei Magnitsky, in the minds of the viewers. The Putin administration, which has been the prime target of both the 2012 Sergei Magnitsky Rule of Accountability Act and the 2016 Global Magnitsky Human Rights Accountability Act, has good reason to promote a film that questions the circumstances surrounding Magnitsky's untimely death in Moscow's Butyrka Prison in 2009.

Despite a flood of persuasive articles and editorials by well-known journalists suggesting that this inconvenient film deserves no more than a quick burial, I was drawn to reconsider both the film and the political controversy that it continues to create for two main reasons. First, as the collapse of the Soviet Union and our own recent presidential campaigns show, we can never entirely prohibit the intrusion of propaganda or politically slanted content into the public sphere. Instead, as a historian and faculty member who serves at a public university, I believe that it is my job to teach our students how to diagnose an issue, and how to consider the many sides that a story necessarily involves. As an intellectual process this has immense value both in and of itself. Source criticism is a time tested and reliable means through which we can make sense of an event or a phenomenon. Our students need to learn both the mechanics and the intellectual value of analyzing a source and should be able to evaluate the nature of political content whether it is embedded in a Facebook post, a scholarly article, or a documentary.

The Magnitsky Act -- Behind the Scenes can serve as an important vehicle to introduce the contested nature of historical truth, and as a prism, it allows us to view the multiple modes through which various versions of the truth are disseminated in the twenty-first century. Taught in tandem with William Browder's book Red Notice , this film can provide students with a real-life experience in the practice of critical thinking. The film also allows us to revive a discussion of Hayden White's penetrating analysis of the ways in which the structure of the form necessarily influences the content of any artistic or historical narrative. The vehicle of the docudrama that Nekrasov uses in his film, and the competing narratives about the circumstances leading to Magnitsky's death, merit literary and intellectual analysis, along with geopolitical commentary.

Second, I am concerned by the fact that both critics and supporters have turned the debate about the film into a referendum on William Browder, his business dealings as well as his global human rights activism, and the Putin administration. In this interview with Andrei Nekrasov, I turn the spotlight back on the film-maker, his motivations for making the film, and on his political experiences since the release of the film. It is important to remember that in the past Nekrasov has made several politically charged films including Disbelief (2004), and Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File (2007) -- films that are extremely critical of the Putin administration. Nekrasov, a student of philosophy and literature, is in the unique position of having experienced censorship in the Soviet Union, Putin's Russia, and in the democratic countries of Western Europe and the United States.

1) Why did you want to make a film about the Magnitsky Act? What drew you to this project?

Andrei Nekrasov : I felt that the story of Magnitsky, in its accepted version, was very powerful and important. I thought that Sergei Magnitsky was a hero, and I wanted to tell the story of the modern hero, my compatriot. His case seemed very special because Magnitsky, a tax lawyer (in reality, an accountant) had come from the world of capitalism, to symbolize all that is good and moral in modern Russia. I believed that Magnitsky did not surrender under torture and sacrificed his life fighting corruption.

2) Who has funded the making of this film and what motivated them to invest in this production?

AN : The film was produced by Piraya Film, a Norwegian company. There is a long list of funders, and none are from Russia. (Please visit www.magnitskyact.com for further information). And they are all very "mainstream." I believe in the United States and Russia it is easier to construe the specific reasons that motivate funders, who are mostly private, to support a project. In Europe, where more public money is available for the arts, the state is more or less obliged to fund the cultural process. So I submit an idea to a producer, and if they like it, they introduce it into a complex system of funding that is supposed to be politically neutral. Only quality matters, in theory. In practice "quality" has political aspects, and its interpretation is open to prejudices.

But it would be a simplification to say the film was funded because I had set out to tell Browder's version of the Magnitsky case. Those funders who were (through their commissioning editors) monitoring the editing process, ZDF/ARTE, for example, became aware of the inconsistencies in Browder's version and supported my investigation into the truth. What they did not realize was who, and what, we were all dealing with. They did not realize that Browder was supported by the entire political system of North America and Western Europe. They realized that only when they were told by politicians to stop the film. And they obeyed, contrary to what I thought was their principles.

3) How has the role of censorship, both in Russia and the West, affected your artistic career?

AN : Censorship has had a very strong and damaging impact on my career. But while censorship in Russia had never been something surprising to me, the way that the film T he Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes was treated by western politicians was totally unanticipated and shocking. Yet, intellectually, the experience was very illuminating. The pro-Western intelligentsia of Russia, a class to which I have belonged, idolizes the West and believes that the freedom of expression is an essential and even intrinsic part of Western culture. The notion that the interests of economically powerful groups can set a geopolitical agenda and that easily overrides democratic freedom of expression is considered to be a remnant of Soviet era thinking. So I had to have a direct and personal experience of Western censorship to realize that that notion is rooted in reality.

The issue of censorship in Russia is, on the other hand, often misunderstood in the West. There is no direct political censorship of the kind that existed in the Soviet Union, and that possibly exists in countries like China today. Many popular Russian news outlets are critical of the government, and of Putin personally as evidenced by the content in media outlets such as Ekho Moskvy, Novaya Gazeta, Dozhd TV, New Times, Vedomosti, Colta. ru, and others. The internet is full of mockery of Putin, his ministers and of his party's representatives. There is neither a system nor the kind of wellresourced deep state structures that control the flow of information. Many Russian media outlets, for example, repeat Browder's story of Magnitsky killed by the corrupt police with the state covering it up. All that is perfectly "allowed" while Putin angrily condemns Browder as a criminal and Browder calls himself Putin's number one enemy. In reality, it is not allowed but simply happens because of the lack of consistent political censorship.

However, you will hardly ever hear a proper analysis and criticism in the Russian media of the big corporations, and of the oligarchs that make up the state. It is also true that such acute crises as military operations, such as Russian-Georgian war of 2008 produce intolerance to the voices of the opposition. My film Russian Lessons (2008) about the suffering of the Georgians during that short war and its aftermath wasbanned in Russia. But nationalism is not only a government policy. It's the prevailing mood. The supposedly democratic leader of the opposition, that the West seems to praise and support, Alexei Navalny, was on the record insulting Georgians in jingo-nationalistic posts during the war. The film industry is, of course, easier to steer in the "right direction" as films, unlike articles and essays, are very expensive to produce. But Russia is a complex society, deeply troubled, but also misunderstood by the West. If my films, such as Poisoned by Polonium: The Litvinenko File , and Russian Lessons (2010) were attacked by pro-government media, then some of my articles were censored by the independent, "opposition" outlets, such as Ekho Moskvy .

4) Did you actually begin filming the movie with an outcome of supporting Browder's story in mind, as you represent in the film, or did you plan from the start of the filming process to end the film as it now stands?

AN : I started filming the story. I totally believed in the story that Browder had told me, and all the mainstream media repeated after him.

5) You know that there are many more "disappeared" journalists and others listed in the formal US Congress Magnitsky Act who have suffered from the effects of corrupt power in Russia. Why did you not address the fates of some of those others as well in your film?

AN : I may be misunderstanding this question, but I do not see how addressing the fates of "disappeared" journalists and others' would be relevant to the topic of my film in its final version. I obviously condemn the "disappearance" of journalists and others. In Russia journalists disappear usually by being "simply" shot (not in "sophisticated" Saudi ways), and as far as I remember only one is referred to in The Magnitsky Act , Paul Khlebnikov. He was the editor of Forbes, Russia , and was shot in 2004 when Bill Browder was a great fan of Vladimir Putin and continued to be for some time. I have not seen any evidence or even claim, that Putin may have been behind that murder. I was a friend of Anna Politkovskaya, perhaps the most famous of all Russian journalists who was assassinated in the recent past. She is featured in my film, Poisoned by Polonium .

The Magnitsky Act – Behind the Scenes is about the ways in which the notion of human rights is sometimes used as a fake alibi for white-collar crimes. Though I explore just one case, I think that I have managed to show that those ways are exceptionally sophisticated and efficient, and enlist all the major media, civil society, NGOs, governments, parliaments, and major international organizations.

6) Does William Browder's role in the formulation of the Magnitsky Act invalidate its value and that of the Global Magnitsky Act, in seeking to provide protection for those suffering from the effects of deadly and corrupt power such as the recently deceased Saudi Arabian journalist, Jamal Khashoggi?

AN : Let me, for the argument's sake, pose myself what would seem like a version of your question: "Would Browder's role in creating a weapon that could protect someone like Khashoggi from deadly and corrupt power invalidate that weapon?" My answer would be, no, it would not invalidate that weapon. However, we are dealing with a fallacy here, in my humble opinion. The Magnitsky Act, in my view, is not a weapon that can protect people. The Magnitsky Act was designed to punish those deemed murderers and torturers of Magnitsky. Well, if my film demonstrates that Magnitsky was not murdered (by the people Browder claims he was murdered by), nor was he tortured, the Magnitsky Act is nonsensical. You cannot punish someone for something that did not happen. Can you then say, never mind, human rights violations happen, and it's good to have a mechanism to punish violators even if there's no evidence that people named as violators are guilty? I don't think one can say "never mind". Neither legally, nor, morally.

There is no evidence whatsoever that the government of the United States conducted independent investigations of the policemen and the judges who were supposedly involved in the death of Magnitsky. And no one seems to be concerned of course about the rights of those on the Magnitsky list, who can't even reply to the accusations, let alone have the accusations verified by an independent investigator or judge.

Instead of protecting people, the Magnitsky case helps the "bad guys" to demonstrate to their Russian compatriots that the West is rotten to the core, its policies are created by compliant stooges (lying thieves and useful idiots), and more rockets should be built to confront America's injustice towards Russia and others. A lie can never really protect anyone, in my humble opinion. But the problem is worse. It turns human rights into a hypocritical ideology to protect the interests of the powers that be, a bit like the slogans about brotherhood and justice in the Soviet Union.

Choi Chatterjee is a Professor of History at California State University, Los Angeles. Chatterjee, along with Steven Marks, Mary Neuberger, and Steve Sabol, edited The Wider Arc of Revolution in three volumes (Slavica Publishers).

[Apr 05, 2019] Looking at the Integrity Initiative it's clear that information warfare at all levels - academia, the media, on down to the little subsidized web sites and right on down to the individuals who are paid to insert comments on social media - is now regarded in England as an integral part of Intelligence work

Apr 05, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

English Outsider -> Fred , 7 days ago

Fred - I don't think it's going to go away that easily. This is the BBC web site today, again keeping alive much the same theme as your man of courage. We're moving on from whether Trump was a Russian agent to whether Trump deliberately attempted to stop us finding out whether he was a Russian agent -

"But Mr Mueller declined to draw a conclusion on whether Mr Trump had obstructed justice, saying only that the president could not be exonerated.

Attorney General Barr, who was appointed by the president, concluded in his summary of the report that there was not enough evidence to determine if the president had committed the offence."

So it's too useful a theme to be let go entirely, and fits with the general suspicion of Russian interference.

It's a difficult one, that. Looking at the Integrity Initiative and 77 Brigade it's clear that information warfare at all levels - academia, the media, on down to the little subsidized web sites and right on down to the individuals who are paid to insert comments on social media - is now regarded in England as an integral part of Intelligence work. Presumably everyone else is doing it too so why not the Russians? But to trace the huge political movements of our time back to Moscow, as if they were due to sinister Russians cleverly playing us via social media and other propaganda outlets, seems to me to be grossly overdone. After all, if it were that easy it would have worked for the West too. Iran would now be another Syria and Syria long since gone.

No, even the most ardent Russophobes on our side of the Atlantic might have to admit sometimes that the reason we're screwed up in Europe at present is that we've screwed ourselves up. We are not uniformly happy prosperous peoples who would continue to be uniformly happy and prosperous were it not for Moscow. So it must be in the States.

Even so, the Russians are still the get-out for many. On English web sites "Putin done it" surfaces regularly as the reason for us voting Brexit. There were suggestions that he had stirred up the Yellow Vests in France. The Italians are sometimes viewed with suspicion for the same reason.

And I got caught up in an unusual traffic hold-up just this morning. I can't prove to you it was the Russians. But can you prove to me it wasn't?

[Apr 02, 2019] The latest Integrity Initiative dump by Anonymous

Apr 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Symen Danziger , Mar 31, 2019 4:13:36 PM | link

The latest Integrity Initiative dump by Anonymous

https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-part-7/?fbclid=IwAR0wCU71fMwwcKhT9jhPUFQWt0UudPsWRxFlQQlCbAosSPkPkSnfPsdcEJ4

[Mar 31, 2019] Issue Brief Distinguishing Disinformation from Propaganda, Misinformation, and "Fake News" NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR DEMOCRACY

Mar 31, 2019 | www.ned.org

This is from culture revolution experts in NED ;-)

Issue Brief: Distinguishing Disinformation from Propaganda, Misinformation, and "Fake News" Published on October 17, 2017

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In This Brief: What is Disinformation? Is it Different from Propaganda?

Disinformation is a relatively new word. Most observers trace it back to the Russian word dezinformatsiya , which Soviet planners in the 1950s defined as "dissemination (in the press, on the radio, etc.) of false reports intended to mislead public opinion." Others suggest that the earliest use of the term originated in 1930s Nazi Germany. In either case, it is much younger (and less commonly used) than ' propaganda, ' which originated in the 1600s and generally connotes the selective use of information for political effect.

Whether and to what degree these terms overlap is subject to debate. Some define propaganda as the use of non-rational arguments to either advance or undermine a political ideal, and use disinformation as an alternative name for undermining propaganda. Others consider them to be separate concepts altogether. One popular distinction holds that disinformation also describes politically motivated messaging designed explicitly to engender public cynicism, uncertainty, apathy, distrust, and paranoia, all of which disincentivize citizen engagement and mobilization for social or political change. "Misinformation," meanwhile, generally refers to the inadvertent sharing of false information.

Analysts generally agree that disinformation is always purposeful and not necessarily composed of outright lies or fabrications. It can be composed of mostly true facts, stripped of context or blended with falsehoods to support the intended message, and is always part of a larger plan or agenda. In the Russian context, observers have described its use to pursue Moscow's foreign policy goals through a "4D" offensive: dismiss an opponent's claims or allegations, distort events to serve political purposes, distract from one's own activities, and dismay those who might otherwise oppose one's goals.

Analysts generally agree that disinformation is always purposeful and not necessarily composed of outright lies or fabrications. It can be composed of mostly true facts, stripped of context or blended with falsehoods to support the intended message, and is always part of a larger plan or agenda."

Disinformation in the Digital Age

The reemerging interest in disinformation is not because such techniques are novel. There are similarities between the contemporary 4D model and, for example, Soviet active measures . Rather, a growing consensus asserts that while the use of disinformation is not new, the digital revolution has greatly enhanced public vulnerability to manipulation by information -- a trend which is predicted to continue .

In part, these changes have been wrought by the advent of new social media platforms and their growing dominance over advertising revenues. This shift in the media funding environment has weakened traditional media gatekeepers, changed incentives for content providers, and promoted the rise of unprofessional and/or unscrupulous outlets capable of drawing large audiences at a low cost. As digital advertising assumes an ever-larger role in shaping news consumption, targeted advertising allows for more sophisticated forms of propaganda: for example, in September of 2017, Facebook disclosed that roughly 3,000 ads related to divisive US political issues were purchased by a network of 470 accounts and pages suspected to be run out of Russia. The company says that at least a quarter of those ads were geographically targeted. Twitter later deleted two hundred accounts linked to those same Facebook accounts and pages and revealed that in 2016, the Russian state-funded broadcaster RT spent $274,100 on advertising targeting users in the United States.

Research suggests the total scale of "low quality political information" on those platforms during the 2016 US elections was much larger, particularly in swing states. The degree of Russian influence on this market for digital disinformation is unknown; post-election, researchers are launching new efforts to track and analyze it.

Although there is no universal definition, fake news generally refers to misleading content found on the internet, especially on social media."

The Rise of 'Fake News'

The role of disinformation in recent elections has given rise to another distinct, but related, term: ' fake news .'

Although there is no universal definition, fake news generally refers to misleading content found on the internet, especially on social media. One analysis lays out five types of fake news, including intentionally deceptive content, jokes taken at face value, large-scale hoaxes, slanted reporting of real facts, and coverage where the truth may be uncertain or contentious. These are not new: an example of fake news from 2011 involves websites masquerading as real news organizations to spread false information about the health benefits of acai berries.

Much of this content is produced by for-profit websites and Facebook pages gaming the platform for advertising revenue. By producing tailored false content targeted at the views, concerns, and preferences of social media users, these pages can generate tens of thousands of interactions and thousands of dollars a month. In 2015, Facebook began taking steps to curtail this content, which it called a form of "news feed spam." By 2016, it became clear the problem was growing out of control. Fabricated and fiercely partisan political content -- much of it produced abroad for profit -- in some instances outpaced engagement with credible mainstream news outlets.

Facebook initially downplayed the potential influence of fake news, although it also pledged to pursue a response involving expanded partnerships with fact-checkers, increased emphasis on detection and reporting, warning labels for untrustworthy stories, and a crackdown on for-profit fake news pages. Twitter also reacted , developing an experimental prototype feature to allow users to report "fake news" and exploring the use of machine learning to detect automated accounts spreading political content.

Is Fake News Disinformation?

More often than not, fake news does not meet the definition of disinformation or propaganda. Its motives are usually financial, not political, and it is usually not tied to a larger agenda. One attempt to classify various types of misleading and manipulative news content separates misinformation (inadvertent sharing of false information) from disinformation, which is deliberate, and arranges examples by motivation and degree of deception. Most of the fake news described above falls somewhere in the middle: not inadvertent, but motivated by profit rather than influence. To the degree that its purpose can be described as political, fake news begins to resemble more insidious content.

Fake news' political prominence does have lessons for analysts of disinformation. Fake news draws audiences because it validates their political preconceptions and worldviews, capitalizing on media consumers' confirmation bias . Many argue that because social media curates content according to user preferences, it has a polarizing effect that leaves consumers more vulnerable to manipulation in this way. Political actors have been able to use this to their advantage by producing incendiary content that spreads rapidly through grassroots online networks (some call this " political astroturfing ").

More often than not, fake news does not meet the definition of disinformation or propaganda. Its motives are usually financial, not political, and it is usually not tied to a larger agenda."

Marketing, Public Affairs, Public Diplomacy, and other "Information Campaigns"

Some analysts also differentiate between various types of "information campaigns" -- organized attempts to communicate with large groups of individuals -- which may include marketing, public affairs, and public diplomacy. All of these terms are worth disentangling from each other and from propaganda and disinformation writ large.

Marketing and public relations rely on a mix of facts, opinions, and emotional cues to persuade audiences and build affinity between individuals and brands or organizations. As promotional activities meant to augment or protect the reputation of the messenger, their goals may be commercial or political, or they may simply aim to generate publicity. Similarly promotional is public diplomacy, which states utilize to represent their viewpoints to foreign audiences and promote positive associations with that country among foreign publics. Done well, public diplomacy distinguishes itself from propaganda by never intentionally spreading false information or relying on non-rational means of persuasion (though marketing and public relations, of course, may rely on such non-rational devices).

Marketing, public relations, public diplomacy, and similar information campaigns are all related to the field of " strategic communication ," broadly defined as the purposeful use of information and messaging to advance the mission of a given organization, be it a corporate, government, non-profit, or military actor. In the military context, a 2007 paper from the U.S. Army War College emphasizes that strategic communication in a military context aims to influence adversaries, reassure allies, and persuade publics. Because it may be impossible to deceive one of these audiences without deceiving others, some advocate that "deception should be rigorously forbidden in strategic communication" and that the use of disinformation should never fall under the rubric of strategic communication.

Done well, public diplomacy distinguishes itself from propaganda by never intentionally spreading false information or relying on non-rational means of persuasion."

Intent as a Distinguishing Feature

Some argue the intent of the messenger is crucial to distinguishing between different types of messages. This makes it difficult to draw a bright, clear line between marketing, public relations, and public diplomacy, on one side, and propaganda and disinformation on the other. This is especially true when the content in question includes both objective fact and subjective interpretation but no clear falsehood, because it may be unclear whether the message reflects a genuine perspective or an intent to mislead. When content does include falsehoods, it may be unclear whether they are accidental or purposeful.

If an information campaign uses falsehoods and emotional appeals not to persuade or attract but to disrupt, divide, confuse, or otherwise damage target audiences' understanding or political cohesion, it more closely aligns with disinformation and its undermining function. This is not solely the realm of the state: many activities undertaken by non-state actors may also fit this description.

If an information campaign uses falsehoods and emotional appeals not to persuade or attract but to disrupt, divide, confuse, or otherwise damage target audiences' understanding or political cohesion, it more closely aligns with disinformation and its undermining function."

Information Operations as a Tool of Political Influence

Information campaigns with these goals in mind are now sometimes referred to as "information operations," a term until recently used primarily by defense officials in referring broadly to the use of communications in military operations. In April 2017, Facebook described "information (or influence) operations" on the platform, which aim "to achieve a strategic and/or geopolitical outcome" using "a combination of methods, such as false news, disinformation, or networks of fake accounts (false amplifiers) aimed at manipulating public opinion." In the run-up to the 2017 French presidential election, Facebook deleted 30,000 fake French accounts from the platform, providing a sense of the scale these operations can reach.

In that election, an information operation ( likely of Russian origin ) released hacked documents just before the beginning of a legally mandated election news blackout in order to damage the campaign of Emmanuel Macron, the eventual winner. The manipulation of information has been a feature of Syria's civil war since the conflict's beginning. Research from a diverse set of country case studies suggests that a wide array of political, military, and private actors now routinely use social media to manipulate public opinion. Italy's populist Five Star Movement, for instance, is tied to a large constellation of online disinformation outlets. Taiwanese democracy must grapple with both domestic and cross-strait sources of disinformation. Information operations, including those involving the use of disinformation during elections, are likely to remain a tool of political influence well into the foreseeable future.

Brief prepared by Dean Jackson, International Forum for Democratic Studies.

Image Credit: kaboompics/Pixabay (Creative Commons)

[Mar 31, 2019] Disinfo Maginot Line Protecting EU From Russian Influence By Manufacturing History

Mar 31, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Disinfo Maginot Line: Protecting EU From "Russian Influence" By Manufacturing History

by Tyler Durden Sun, 03/31/2019 - 07:00 68 SHARES Authored by Nina Cross via 21stCenturyWire.com,

It is now apparent with the release of the Mueller investigation findings , that the great storm that has embattled the US government and establishment since 2016 over supposed Russia-Trump collusion during the US elections, originates not from a genuine tangible source, but a constant stream of rhetoric driven by partisan corporate media. One certainty though is the Western narrative of Russia as a 'malign influence' will not go away.

While America's liberal establishment continues to rage at Trump, Europe allies, under the influence of Washington, maintain their aggressive stance towards Russia following the catastrophic US meddling in Ukraine in 2014 and the subsequent reunification of Crimea with Russia .

The question is how can the narrative of 'malign Russian influence' be kept going? Mainstream media will continue its role in this, but Western governments are also pouring resources into promulgating certain narratives while containing others.

This week, hackers released more documents from the UK government-funded project known as the Integrity Initiative , revealing British government plans to build an umbrella network of organisations across Europe to counter 'Russian disinformation'.

The following is a look at one of the EU projects already operating to ensure European populations do not stray from this constructed narrative that at times crosses over into real xenophobic racism, or Russophobia. While researching this phenomenon, it was impossible not to find some of the EU's counter-propaganda material quite funny.

If we want to know the meaning of disinformation, the American think tank known as the National Endowment for Democracy which funds regime change in the service of US corporate interests, has its own definition , but it's not important – so long as we believe Russia or the Nazis invented the problem. In fact, if we search the word 'disinformation,' a good number of the results tell us it originated in Russia and is the baby of Stalin or the KGB. If we are not careful, we could end up thinking that dishonesty is an inherent characteristic of Russians, a view actually promoted by the former US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper , who, coincidentally was caught ' wilfully ' lying to Congress.

The view of Russians being hard-wired for corruption was also promoted by the New York Times in an article published in February, The Putin I knew; the Putin I know , written by Franz J Sedelmeyer, exposing deep prejudice behind the corporate media's shallow identity politics.

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But this narrative fails to credit the CIA, which has spent decades crafting skills carrying out the most grotesque deceptions in history targeted abroad and at home. To leave out the role of the CIA in disinformation must be the equivalent of writing an omelette recipe and leaving out the eggs. In fact, the CIA doesn't just carry out disinformation campaigns, as Victor Marchetti, former special assistant to the Deputy Director of the CIA described it: the CIA manufactures history . Not to recognise American intelligence services or government in the history of disinformation while painting Russia as its mother is to deprive America of the recognition it deserves for one of its most notable institutions. Somewhat ironically, you can learn all about the history of disinformation from both Google and the National Endowment for Democracy which are two entities which have received financial support from the CIA.

What about the EU? Does Brussels think that Russia is an inherently dishonest nation? Are they aware that the CIA could be manufacturing Europe's history this very moment? Members of the European Parliament (MEPs) so concerned about disinformation might want to study the documented atrocities of the CIA, some of which were carried out in Europe. Perhaps they are not aware of the US intelligence services' role in the history of subterfuge in Europe:

memorandum, dated July 26, 1950, gives instructions for a campaign to promote a fully fledged European parliament. It is signed by Gen William J Donovan, head of the American wartime Office of Strategic Services, precursor of the CIA.

Paradoxically, given the probability rate of the CIA meddling in the EU, MEPs should consider putting out a public warning:

The CIA is the most likely source of disinformation in Europe today. It manufactures crises – and we've plenty of those.

But none of it. Instead, the European Parliament is fixated on ensuring its populations fear Russia and are accepting of the narratives pushed on them. The EU released a new report this month repeating the narratives it has been accumulating to justify increasing actions against Russia, particularly since 2014 following the reunification of Crimea. It has passed a resolution stating that Russia could no longer be considered a strategic partner of the EU:

While condemning the illegal occupation and annexation of Crimea, as well as Russia's continued violation of the territorial integrity of Georgia and Moldova, Members stressed that the EU cannot envisage a gradual return to business as usual until Russia fully implements the Minsk Agreement and restores the territorial integrity of Ukraine

Members condemned Russia's involvement in the Skripal case, and in disinformation campaigns and cyberattacks carried out by the Russian intelligence services aimed at destabilising public and private communications infrastructure and at increasing tensions within the EU and its Member States

They are concerned about the relations between the Russian government and the extreme right-wing and populist nationalist parties and governments in the EU, such as in Hungary. They also recalled that the interference of Russian state actors in the referendum campaign on Brexit is currently under investigation by the UK authorities

As Russia can no longer be considered a strategic partner in the current circumstances, Members believe that the Partnership and Cooperation Agreement should be reconsidered

Ministry of Truth?

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As well as the coordinated strategic isolation of Russia by the EU, members of the G7 have signed up to a Rapid Response Mechanism (RRM) designed to:

see hostile states publicly 'called out' for their egregious behaviour – with coordinated international attribution of cyber and other attacks.

The agreement involves sharing intelligence , attribution of hostile activity and forming a common narrative and response, effectively a military-like propaganda coordination between the countries that can be applied for a chosen agenda.

To protect its version of history the EU has created mechanisms to fight off alternative realities, narratives, or truths – which ever word fits – claiming any fact or opinion contrary to those of the stated EU decree must be condemned as pro-Kremlin, pro-Russian, or 'Putinist', a derogatory depiction presently supported by the corporate media. The EU claims these 'alternative narratives' are the product of a Russian disinformation campaign and has developed resources to 'disprove' that disinformation. These are the EU vanguards of truth set up and funded by the European Council in 2015: the European External Action Service East Stratcom Task Force or unaffectionately known here as Team East Stratcom . A brief study of their work only leads to further concerns about who is manufacturing history, but also to the likely conclusion that Team East Stratcom is made up of media studies students who drink beer and watch RT all day.

Here's how Team East Stratcom describes itself in a Q&A:

Does the team engage in counter-propaganda?

No. It identifies and corrects disinformation

Counter-propaganda vs correct disinformation (you say tomatto, I say tomayto).

Julian King, the EU's security commissioner, has described it as a counter-propaganda cell . Come on Brussels, make up your mind.

What does Team East StratCom do, and what is the role of its website EUVDisinfo ?

The Task Force reports on and analyses disinformation trends, explains and exposes disinformation narratives, and raises awareness of disinformation coming from Russian State, Russian sources and spread in the Eastern neighbourhood media space

RUSSIAN MEMES: Official EU conspiracy theory diagram explains how 'Russian disinfo' permeates mainstream western discourse ( EU External Action 2017)

Firstly, who defines what is disinformation? Is it just assumed that any information emanating from a Russian media outlet is automatically disinformation?

Narratives and sources. Does this mean that any narrative which matches a Russian one is then classed as Russian in origin? If a Western alternative media outlet publishes a narrative which happens to match that of a Russian media outlet, does this then mean that the said alternative media outlet is 'under Russian influence', or 'in league with the Kremlin'? Could such a politicized method of labelling lead to potential McCarthyite targeting of independent journalists?

The Task Force does not target opinions and does not seek to "blacklist" anyone. It checks facts and identifies disinformation coming from Russian State, Russian language and Eastern Neighbourhood media. It focuses on the disinformation message, not the messenger.

Yet, individual journalists are identified in many of these so-called 'disinformation cases' and described as supporters of one leader or other on the EU's list of bogeymen. Team East StratCom – there is no need to be shy about McCarthyism. Certain mainstream media stalwarts of establishment narratives are more upfront about whom they do and do not want in the club, as Oliver Kamm of The Times has demonstrated:

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For an agency already struggling with the concept of truth, Team East StratCom is not off to a great start.

So how does Team East StratCom protect EU narratives? The European Council made it clear in 2015 they wanted to counter narratives about regime change in Ukraine and its consequences. In fact, about half of its 'disinformation cases' are about Ukraine:

Ukraine tops the EUvsDisinfo database as the most frequent target with 461 references among a total of 1,000 disinformation cases reported in the course of 2018.

So how does Team East StratCom counter propaganda sorry correct disinformation? The following are a few case samples that help to illuminate their methodologies (although with a budget increase from €1.1 million in 2018 to €3 million in 2019, it may find new and diverse ones):

Disinformation Example 1: Ukraine is the most corrupt country in Europe

Team East StratCom argues that undermining the credibility of Ukraine benefits Russia. It reports that RT Deutsch described Ukraine as the most corrupt country in Europe. It then tries to debunk this using Transparency International 's corruption perception index, a chart which is created and paid for by Western neoliberal governments – the same ones that help to keep corrupt governments in power so long as they provide opportunities to serve Western corporate interests.

Team East StratCom tries to disprove this case by drawing our attention away from corruption in Europe to corruption worldwide. This puts 60 countries ahead of Ukraine. That is sneaky Team East StratCom because, aside from Russia, which we must believe is the most corrupt country in Europe, Ukraine actually tops the list. So why does the EU want to hide the extent of corruption in Ukraine and is it the only thing being hidden about the country? According to Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman Maria Zakharova the West wants to stop the world from recognising Crimea as part of Russia's territory. In order to do this it must maintain a manufactured reality; the narrative of Ukraine being a victim of Russian aggression and in no way a liability due, at least in part, to the West's meddling. This approach also entails downplaying any suggestion that the West planned and orchestrated a coup d'etat in Kiev in February 2014.

Disinformation Example 2: Far-right groups in Ukraine

This extract by Team East StratCom criticises the reporting of far-right groups in Ukraine:

Dehumanise, demoralise, make Ukraine the guilty party

Pro-Kremlin disinformation about Ukraine targets audiences in Russia, in Ukraine and in third countries, including the West. Domestic audiences in Russia are e.g. faced with narratives which dehumanise Ukrainians and show the authorities in Kyiv as a cynical modern heir to 20th century Nazism. Such a strategy can turn Ukraine into an acceptable target of the Kremlin's military aggression.

The involvement of far right groups in the run-up to and during 2014 Maidan events and since , has already been widely reported across much of the global mainstream media, for example, here , here , here , here and here , as well as in alternate media. To suggest that this narrative is Russian disinformation is ludicrous. What's more, the European Parliament have already recognised in 2012 the threat of the far-right parties like Svoboda and Pravi Sektor in Ukrainian politics:

Parliament goes on to express concern about the rising nationalistic sentiment in Ukraine, expressed in support for the Svoboda Party, which, as a result, is one of the two new parties to enter the Verkhovna Rada. It recalls that racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic views go against the EU's fundamental values and principles and therefore appeals to pro-democratic parties in the Verkhovna Rada not to associate with, endorse or form coalitions with this party.

Team East StratCom, you are implying the EU dehumanised Ukraine! But then the EU did later drop its objection as members of the same racist, anti-Semitic and xenophobic party gained positions in Ukraine's government , so perhaps you will be forgiven. Perhaps sowing a little confusion of its own, is Brussels.

Disinformation Example 3: Russia is depicted as a 'defender' and a 'peacekeeper' and the West – as the villain .

Team East Stratcom likes using Twitter graphics as evidence when 'disproving pro-Kremlin disinformation.' Never mind history, reason and common sense – just bring out a nice Twitter graphic! According to disinfo mavens, any spike in Twitter activity with the words 'Russia' 'Moscow' or 'Putin' in reference to Venezuela is proof of a 'pro-Kremlin' disinformation campaign, says Team East StratCom. Here is their graphical chart of Twitter traffic:

But Russia is an ally of Venezuela so why would this not be reflected on Twitter when there is a blatant attempt by a Western aggressor to impose its military and economic will on Venezuela? Such was the situation in February when the US tried to pressure the Venezuelan government into allowing in trucks, supposedly carrying humanitarian aid, into the country. Aid as a Trojan Horse for weapons has historical context, especially with regards to the US and its new special envoy to Venezuela, Elliot Abrams , a convicted war criminal who illicitly supplied weapons to death squads in Nicaragua, El Salvador and Guatemala on behalf of the Reagan presidency in the 1980s. Now that he is special envoy to Venezuela, it is common sense to suspect foul play. Can such people really be seen as peacekeepers, Team East Stratcom? And using a Twitter graphic to divert attention from a flagrant coup attempt by an aggressive power is more than a little contemptible. What's more, a few days afterwards, one of those trucks carrying supplies was found to contain nails and other materials useful for making barricades:

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And so to sum up the tactics used by Team East StratCom for 'disproving pro-Kremlin disinformation', based on the above cases alone, a list could include for starters:

me title=

But Team East StratCom can't erase history or delete context or bore us half to death with those Twitter graphics and still expect to retain their credibility.

What's more, given the Russia-Trump collusion narrative has been exposed as a hoax, Team East StratCom really ought to let that one go .

Anyone for a pint?

[Mar 31, 2019] What is the purpose of Russiagate hysteria?

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years. ..."
"... It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people. Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land. ..."
"... Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because Russians are subhumans. ..."
"... The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored, as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring with each other. ..."
"... The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course, endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language with the same Cyrillic writing system. ..."
Mar 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

S , Mar 30, 2019 8:51:37 PM | link

@b:
What is the purpose of making that claim?

The purpose is very simple: to create the perception that the government of Russia still somehow controls or manipulates the US government and thus gains some undeserved improvements in relations with the U.S. Once such perception is created, people will demand that relations with Russia are worsened to return them to a "fair" level. While in reality these relations have been systematically destroyed by the Western establishment (CFR) for many years.

It's a typical inversion to hide the hybrid war of the Western establishment against Russian people. Yes, Russian people. Not Putin, not Russian Army, not Russian intelligence services, but Russian people. Russians are not to be allowed to have any kind of industries, nor should they be allowed to know their true history, nor should they possess so much land.

Russians should work in coal mines for a dollar a day, while their wives work as prostitutes in Europe. That's the maximum level of development that the Western establishment would allow Russians to have (see Ukraine for a demo version). Why? Because Russians are subhumans.

Whatever they do, it's always wrong, bad, oppressive, etc. Russians are bad because they're bad. They must be "taught a lesson", "put into their place". It would, of course, be beneficial and highly profitable for Europeans to break with Anglo-Saxons and to live in peace and harmony with Russia, but Europeans simply can not overcome their racism towards Russians. The young Europeans are just as racist, with their incessant memes about "squatting Russians in tracksuits", "drunken Russians", etc., as if there's nothing else that is notable about a country of 147 million people.

The end goal of the Western establishment is a complete military, economic, psychological, and spiritual destruction of Russia, secession of national republics (even though in some of them up to 50% of population are Russians, but this will be ignored, as it has been in former Soviet republics), then, finally, dismemberment of what remains of Russia into separate states warring with each other.

The very concept of Russian nation should disappear. Siberians will call their language "Siberian", Muscovites will call their language "Moscovian", Pomorians will call their language "Pomorian", etc. The U.S. Department of State will, of course, endorse such terminology, just like they endorse the term "Montenegrian language", even though it's the same Serbo-Croatian language with the same Cyrillic writing system.

[Mar 24, 2019] One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.

Highly recommended!
Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

"The Special Counsel's investigation did not find that the Trump campaign or anyone associated with it conspired or coordinated with Russia in its efforts to influence the 2016 U.S. presidential election. As the report states: `[T]he investigation did not establish that members of the Trump Campaign conspired or coordinated with the Russian government in its election interference activities.' |"

From page one of the Barr letter to the Democratic and Republican leaders of the House and Senate Judiciary Committees. https://www.scribd.com/document/402973432/AG-March-24-2019-Letter-to-House-and-Senate-Judiciary-Committees#from_embed Some call this merely the "end of the beginning." Further revelations will be emerging, including from Department of Justice Inspector General Michael Horowitz. " J ustice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed Thursday his office is still investigating possible abuse of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act by the DOJ and FBI in their investigation into President Trump and associates of his 2016 campaign," reported the Washington Examiner this week.

Decameron , 32 minutes ago

However, AG Barr's letter retells the tale of Russian Interference in our elections, according to Mr. Mueller and his team's investigation and indictments. So, the anti-Trump camp will undoubtedly continue to question the 2016 election results, and blame the defeat of HRC on the "Reds." One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle.

[Mar 20, 2019] John McCain Associate Provided Dossier to Obama National Security Council Breitbart

Mar 20, 2019 | www.breitbart.com

David Kramer, a long-time advisor to late Senator John McCain, revealed that he met with two Obama administration officials to inquire about whether the anti-Trump dossier authored by former British spy Christopher Steele was being taken seriously.

In one case, Kramer said that he personally provided a copy of the dossier to Obama National Security Council official Celeste Wallander.

In a deposition on Dec. 13, 2017 that was recently posted online, Kramer said that McCain specifically asked him in early December 2016 to meet about the dossier with Wallander and Victoria Nuland, a senior official in John Kerry's State Department. Senator McCain asked me to meet with both of them to see if this was being taken seriously in the government," Kramer said.

"And Senator McCain asked you to meet with them?" Kramer was asked to clarify.

"Yes, just to see if this was being taken seriously. I think he wanted to do -- this was his kind of due diligence before he went to Director Comey."

Kramer testified that in his conversations with Nuland and Wallander he was told by both of them that each were aware of the dossier and that Nuland "thought Steele was a serious person."

Kramer revealed that he gave a copy of the dossier to Wallander, who was familiar with the contents but did not have a copy.

"I had a subsequent conversation with Ms. Wallander in which I gave her a copy of the document. That was probably around New Year's," he said.

"She had not seen it herself until I had shown it to her," Kramer added. "She had heard about it. And she didn't know the status of it."

In the same testimony, the McCain associate revealed that he held a meeting about the dossier with a reporter from BuzzFeed News who he says snapped photos of the controversial document without Kramer's permission when he left the room to go to the bathroom. That meeting was held at the McCain Institute office in Washington, Kramer stated.

BuzzFeed infamously published Steele's full dossier on January 10, 2017 setting off a firestorm of news media coverage about the document.

Prior to his death, McCain admitted to personally handing the dossier to then-FBI Director James Comey but he refused repeated requests for comment about whether he had a role in providing the dossier to BuzzFeed, including numerous inquiries sent to his office by this reporter.

In his book published last year, McCain maintained he had an "obligation" to pass the dossier charges against Trump to Comey and he would even do it again. "Anyone who doesn't like it can go to hell," McCain exclaimed.

Kramer, meanwhile, also said that he briefed others reporters on the dossier contents, including CNN's Carl Bernstein, in an effort to have the anti-Trump charges verified.

The same day BuzzFeed released the full dossier, CNN first reported the leaked information that the controversial contents of the dossier were presented during classified briefings inside classified documents presented one week earlier to then-President Obama and President-elect Trump.

Kramer said that he believed McCain was sought out in order to provide credibility to the dossier claims.

"I think they felt a senior Republican was better to be the recipient of this rather than a Democrat because if it were a Democrat, I think that the view was that it would have been dismissed as a political attack," Kramer stated.

The controversial Fusion GPS firm hired Steele to do the anti-Trump work that resulted in the compilation of the dossier. Fusion GPS was paid for its anti-Trump work by Hillary Clinton's 2016 campaign and the Democratic National Committee via the Perkins Coie law firm.

Kramer's testimony sheds a new light on the role of the Obama administration in disseminating the largely-discredited dossier that was reportedly involved in the FBI's initial investigation into the Trump campaign and unsubstantiated claims of Russian collusion. Also Comey cited the dossier as evidence in a successful FISA application to obtain a warrant to conduct surveillance on Carter Page, a former adviser to President Trump's 2016 campaign. The testimony also revealed how McCain was utilized to give the wild dossier charges a credibility boost.

Nuland and dossier

Nuland's specific role in the dossier episode has been the subject of some controversy for her.

In their book , "Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump," authors and reporters by Michael Isikoff and David Corn write that Nuland gave the green light for the FBI to first meet with Steele regarding his dossier's claims. It was at that meeting that Steele initially reported his dossier charges to the FBI, the book relates.

Steele sought out Rome-based FBI Special Agent Michael Gaeta, with whom he had worked on a previous case. Before Gaeta met with Steele on July 5, 2016, the book relates that the FBI first secured the support of Nuland, who at the time was assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs specializing in Russia.

Regarding the arrangements for Steele's initial meeting with the FBI about the dossier claims, Isikoff and Corn report:

There were a few hoops Gaeta had to jump through. He was assigned to the U.S. embassy in Rome. The FBI checked with Victoria Nuland's office at the State Department : Do you support this meeting ? Nuland, having found Steele's reports on Ukraine to have been generally credible, gave the green light.

Within a few days, on July 5, Gaeta arrived and headed to Steele's office near Victoria station . Steele handed him a copy of the report. Gaeta, a seasoned FBI agent, started to read . He turned white. For a while, Gaeta said nothing . Then he remarked, "I have to report this to headquarters."

The book documents that Nuland previously received Steele's reports on the Ukrainian crisis and had been familiar with Steele's general work.

Nuland faced confirmation questions prior to her appointment as assistant secretary of state over her reported role in revising controversial Obama administration talking points about the 2012 Benghazi terrorist attacks. Her reported changes sought to protect Clinton's State Department from accusations that it failed to adequately secure the woefully unprotected U.S. Special Mission in Benghazi.

Nuland's name surfaced in a flurry of news media reports last year about the dossier and Kerry's State Department.

Sidney Blumenthal

An extensive New Yorker profile of Steele named another former official from Kerry's State Department for alleged involvement in circulating the dossier. The magazine reported that Kerry's chief of staff at the State Department, John Finer, obtained the contents of a two-page summary of the dossier and eventually decided to share the questionable document with Kerry.

Finer received the dossier summary from Jonathan M. Winer, the Obama State Department official who acknowledged regularly interfacing and exchanging information with Steele, according to the report. Winer previously conceded that he shared the dossier summary with Nuland.

After his name surfaced in news media reports related to probes by House Republicans into the dossier, Winer authored a Washington Post oped in which he conceded that while he was working at the State Department he exchanged documents and information with Steele.

Winer further acknowledged that while at the State Department, he shared anti-Trump material with Steele passed to him by longtime Clinton confidant Sidney Blumenthal, whom Winer described as an "old friend." Winer wrote that the material from Blumenthal – which Winer in turn gave to Steele – originated with Cody Shearer, who is a controversial figure long tied to various Clinton scandals.

Nuland, Winer Give Conflicting Accounts

There are seeming discrepancies between Winer and Nuland about actions taken involving the dossier.

Nuland described in a Politico podcast interview what she claimed was her reaction when she was presented with Steele's dossier information at the State Department.

She said that she offered advice to "those who were interfacing with" Steele, immediately telling the intermediary or intermediaries that Steele "should get this information to the FBI." She further explained that a career employee at the State Department could not get involved with the dossier charges since such actions could violate the Hatch Act, which prevents employees in the executive branch of the federal government from engaging in certain kinds of political activities.

In a second interview, this one with CBS's Face The Nation, Nuland also stated that her "immediate" reaction was to refer Steele to the FBI.

Here is a transcript of the relevant section of her February 5 interview with Susan B. Glasser, who described Nuland as "my friend" and referred to her by her nickname "Toria":

Glasser: When did you first hear about his dossier?

Nuland: I first heard -- and I didn't know who his client was until much later, until 2017, I think, when it came out. I first heard that he had done work for a client asserting these linkages -- I think it was late July, something like that.

Glasser: That's very interesting. And you would have taken him seriously just because you knew that he knew what he was talking about on Russia?

Nuland: What I did was say that this is about U.S. politics, and not the work of -- not the business of the State Department, and certainly not the business of a career employee who is subject to the Hatch Act, which requires that you stay out of politics. So, my advice to those who were interfacing with him was that he should get this information to the FBI, and that they could evaluate whether they thought it was credible.

Glasser: Did you ever talk about it with anyone else higher up at the department? With Secretary Kerry or anybody else?

Nuland: Secretary Kerry was also aware. I think he's on the record and he had the same advice.

Nuland stated that Kerry "was also aware" of the dossier, but she did not describe how he was made aware. She made clear that she told "those who were interfacing" with Steele to go to the FBI since any State Department involvement could violate the Hatch Act.

Her Politico podcast interview was not the only time she claimed that her reaction was to refer Steele to the FBI.

On Face The Nation on February 4, Nuland engaged in the following exchange in which she stated her "immediate" reaction was to refer Steele to the FBI (emphasis added):

MARGARET BRENNAN: The dossier.

VICTORIA NULAND: The dossier, he passed two to four pages of short points of what he was finding, and our immediate reaction to that was, "This is not in our purview. This needs to go to the FBI, if there is any concern here that one candidate or the election as a whole might be influenced by the Russian federation. That's something for the FBI to investigate."

And that was our reaction when we saw this. It's not our -- we can't evaluate this. And frankly, if every member of the campaign who the Russians tried to approach and tried to influence had gone to the FBI as well in real time, we might not be in the mess we're in today.

Nuland gave the two interviews after her name started surfacing in news media reports involving Kerry's State Department and the dossier. Her name also came up in relation to a criminal referral of Steele to the Justice Department in the form of a letter authored last year by Sen. Chuck Grassley, who at the time chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee, and Lindsey Graham (R-SC).

The Grassley-Graham criminal referral contains redacted information that Steele received information from someone in the State Department, who in turn had been in contact with a "foreign sub-source" who was in touch with a redacted name described as a "friend of the Clintons."

Numerous media reports have since stated that the source of information provided to the State Department that was in turn passed on to Steele was Cody Shearer, a controversial figure tied to the Clintons who is also an associate of longtime Clinton friend Sidney Blumenthal. According to sources who spoke to CNN, Shearer's information was passed from Blumenthal to Winer, who at the time was a special State Department envoy for Libya working under Kerry. Winer says that Kerry personally recruited him to work at the State Department.

It is Winer's version of events that seems to conflict with Nuland's.

In an oped published in the Washington Post, Winer identified Nuland as the State Department official with whom he shared Steele's information. Winer writes that Nuland's reaction was that "she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material." He does not relate any further reaction from Nuland.

Winer wrote in the Washington Post (emphasis added):

In the summer of 2016, Steele told me that he had learned of disturbing information regarding possible ties between Donald Trump, his campaign and senior Russian officials. He did not provide details but made clear the information involved "active measures," a Soviet intelligence term for propaganda and related activities to influence events in other countries.

In September 2016, Steele and I met in Washington and discussed the information now known as the "dossier." Steele's sources suggested that the Kremlin not only had been behind the hacking of the Democratic National Committee and the Hillary Clinton campaign but also had compromised Trump and developed ties with his associates and campaign.

I was allowed to review, but not to keep, a copy of these reports to enable me to alert the State Department. I prepared a two-page summary and shared it with Nuland, who indicated that, like me, she felt that the secretary of state needed to be made aware of this material.

That was the extent of Winer's description of Nuland's reaction upon being presented with Steele's dossier claims. Nuland's public claim that her "immediate" response was to refer Steele to the FBI since State involvement could violate the Hatch Act seems to conflict with the only reaction that Winer relates from Nuland – that she felt Kerry should be made aware of the dossier information.

In Winer's Washington Post oped, he writes that Steele had a larger relationship with the State Department, passing over 100 reports relating to Russia to the U.S. government agency through Winer. Winer wrote that Nuland found Steele's reports to be "useful" and asked Winer to "continue to send them."

He wrote:

In 2013, I returned to the State Department at the request of Secretary of State John F. Kerry, whom I had previously served as Senate counsel. Over the years, Steele and I had discussed many matters relating to Russia. He asked me whether the State Department would like copies of new information as he developed it. I contacted Victoria Nuland, a career diplomat who was then assistant secretary of state for European and Eurasian affairs, and shared with her several of Steele's reports. She told me they were useful and asked me to continue to send them. Over the next two years, I shared more than 100 of Steele's reports with the Russia experts at the State Department, who continued to find them useful. None of the reports related to U.S. politics or domestic U.S. matters, and the reports constituted a very small portion of the data set reviewed by State Department experts trying to make sense of events in Russia.

Kramer and the dossier

In his book, "The Restless Wave," McCain provided an inside account of how he says he came across the dossier.

He wrote that he was told about the claims in the document at a security conference in Canada in November 2016, where he was approached by Sir Andrew Wood, a former British ambassador to Moscow and friend of ex-British spy Christopher Steele, the author of the dossier.

McCain wrote that Wood told him Steele "had been commissioned to investigate connections between the Trump campaign and Russian agents as well as potentially compromising information about the President-elect that Putin allegedly possessed."

McCain, however, did not address the obvious question of whether he was told exactly who "commissioned" Steele to "investigate" the alleged Russian ties. The dossier was paid for by Clinton's campaign and the DNC.

McCain goes on to describe Wood as telling him Steele's work "was mostly raw, unverified intelligence, but that the author strongly believed merited a thorough examination by counterintelligence experts."

The politician says the dossier claims described to him were "too strange a scenario to believe, something out of a le Carré novel, not the kind of thing anyone has ever actually had to worry about with a new President, no matter what other concerns."

Still, McCain says he reasoned that "even a remote risk that the President of the United States might be vulnerable to Russian extortion had to be investigated."

McCain concedes Wood told him he had not actually read the dossier himself, and writes that he wasn't sure if he ever met Wood before and couldn't recall previously having a conversation with Wood. Still, McCain took Wood's word for it when Wood vouched for Steele's credibility. "Steele was a respected professional, Wood assured us, who had good Russian contacts and long experience collecting and analyzing intelligence on the Kremlin," McCain wrote.

Present at the meeting with Wood and McCain was Kramer, who McCain writes agreed to "go to London to meet Steele, confirm his credibility and report back to me."

McCain doesn't detail Kramer's visit to London beyond simply writing, "When David returned, and shared his impression that the former spy was, as Sir Andrew had vouched, a respected professional, and not to outward appearances given to hyperbole or hysteria, I agreed to receive a copy of what is now referred to as 'the dossier.'''

McCain leaves out exactly where Kramer obtained his dossier copy.

The Washington Post reported last February that Kramer received the dossier directly from Fusion GPS after McCain expressed interest in it. Those details marked the clearest indication that McCain may have known that the dossier originated with Fusion GPS, meaning that he may have knowingly passed on political material to the FBI.

Also, in a New York Times oped in January, GPS co-founders Glenn Simpson and Peter Fritch wrote that they helped McCain share their anti-Trump dossier with the Obama-era intelligence community via an unnamed "emissary."

In his own testimony, Kramer relates conversations with Simpson about the dossier.

Aaron Klein is Breitbart's Jerusalem bureau chief and senior investigative reporter. He is a New York Times bestselling author and hosts the popular weekend talk radio program, " Aaron Klein Investigative Radio ." Follow him on Twitter @AaronKleinShow. Follow him on Facebook.

[Mar 20, 2019] Bruce Ohr, Liar or Moron by Larry C Johnson

Credibility of the US government and Justice system was greatly undermined, if not destroyed by the Russiagate. Inability to investigate more plausible election interference by British an, Saudi and Israeli actors by Mueller paints him as a despicable political operative working for Clintons, not an independent Prosecutor, who diligently investigate the foreign interference in elections.
The role of Rosenstein is the role of co-conspirator in a plot to deprive Trump of the Presidency or, at least, for force him to pursue the Deep State foreign policy, which is totally bankrupt policy. And they succeeded in this. Trump wet kiss with neocons was probably the part of the deal.
Notable quotes:
"... When even Trump who was the victim of the machinations cares only to tweet witch hunt, why would anyone expect that any of those involved in the attempted "coup" would be held to account? ..."
"... I wondered about that myself. When I was doing clan work in Europe, recruiting UK citizens was absolutely forbidden. I needed special dispensation from Bonn Station to not declare my Russian assets to the Brits when they merely traveled to the UK. I think Steele's relationship with the FBI was not as a standard recruited asset or informer. It was a business contract. An article from a year ago sheds some light on that relationship. The first instance concerns his assistance in the FIFA investigation. ..."
Mar 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

blue peacock , a day ago

When even Trump who was the victim of the machinations cares only to tweet witch hunt, why would anyone expect that any of those involved in the attempted "coup" would be held to account?
MP98 , 2 days ago
No one is going to face any consequences - legal or other. Hell, most of them will make money from writing books about their "dedicated service." When was the last time the swamp applied the laws to one of it's own. Answer: never.

The laws are enforced on us - the "deplorables out there," not the swamp creature "elite." We are not governed, we are ruled.

And sadly that situation is as much the result of an indifferent and ignorant populace as the behavior of the ruling class.

Nobby Stiles , 2 days ago
In case you had not seen. I think it does connect well with the piece above.

https://www.americanthinker...

English Outsider -> Nobby Stiles , 2 days ago
"One other important sidetone--there has been a longstanding agreement among the 5 Eyes (i.e., US, UK, Canada, Australia and New Zealand) to NOT recruit as assets each other's spies. Christopher Steele's employ with the FBI violates this policy."

I see Steele's surfacing again. Might I put in a minor query. Does this longstanding agreement cover retired personnel?

Bill Gaydon -> English Outsider , 8 hours ago
Same question....^
TTG -> English Outsider , a day ago
I wondered about that myself. When I was doing clan work in Europe, recruiting UK citizens was absolutely forbidden. I needed special dispensation from Bonn Station to not declare my Russian assets to the Brits when they merely traveled to the UK. I think Steele's relationship with the FBI was not as a standard recruited asset or informer. It was a business contract. An article from a year ago sheds some light on that relationship. The first instance concerns his assistance in the FIFA investigation.

"Steele might have been expected to move on once his investigation of the bidding was concluded. But he had discovered that the corruption at FIFA was global, and he felt that it should be addressed. The only organization that could handle an investigation of such scope, he felt, was the F.B.I. In 2011, Steele contacted an American agent he'd met who headed the Bureau's division for serious crimes in Eurasia. Steele introduced him to his sources, who proved essential to the ensuing investigation. In 2015, the Justice Department indicted fourteen people in connection with a hundred and fifty million dollars in bribes and kickbacks."

The second instance of Steele's cooperation with the FBI even had a peripheral relationship with Trump. "Several years ago, the FBI hired Steele to help crack an international gambling and money-laundering ring purportedly run by a suspected Russian organized-crime figure named Alimzhan Tokhtakhounov. The syndicate was based in an apartment in Trump Tower. Eventually, federal officials indicted more than thirty co-conspirators for financial crimes. Tokhtakhounov, though, eluded arrest, becoming a fugitive. Interpol issued a "red notice" calling for his arrest. But, in the fall of 2013, he showed up at the Miss Universe contest in Moscow -- and sat near the pageant's owner, Donald Trump."

According to the New Yorker magazine article, it was standard Orbis procedure to warn authorities about national security threats. Steele warned German authorities about IS militants using the refugee flow to infiltrate Europe. "When Steele took his suspicions about Trump to the FBI in the summer of 2016, it was in keeping with Orbis protocol, rather than a politically driven aberration."

Within the FBI, I'm sure Steele was coded as a source in some way as a standard procedure to use his information. We did the same with our non-asset sources in DOD. Hell, I was even coded as an intelligence asset when I was a SMU operative/case officer. This was different from the reporter number all case officers are given.

https://www.newyorker.com/m...

Tidewater -> TTG , 11 hours ago
Philip Giraldi, on March 13, 2018, has an essay about this New Yorker article: 'Christopher Steele as seen by the New Yorker. Liberal fantasies beatify the messenger.' This is in the Unz Review. www.unz.com/pgiraldi/christ... .

Mayer doesn't mention that Steele was almost certainly identified as MI6 during the years (possibly 1990-1993) that he was stationed in Moscow under diplomatic cover. Russian counterintelligence agents broke into his apartment, used the toilet, left it unflushed; they stole his wife's best shoes. He was definitely identified by 1999 when he was in Paris. There was a DSMA notice. Too late. Then, in 2006, when Steele is said to have had the Russia desk, there was the highly embarrassing electronic spy rock in a Moscow park. Surely he held some responsibility for that? And if Steele was a Russian expert why were his talents being wasted in Afghanistan?

John Helmer quotes some old intelligence hands who deny that he was a particularly impressive agent or was deeply knowledgeable about Russia. Steele never went back to Russia after 1992 or 1993. Mayer, in the New Yorker article, makes no mention of what surely were setbacks for British intelligence regarding Russia in which Steele likely was playing a large part.

We've been here before in this discussion. The question remains-- was Steele an unwitting puppet of a Russian master counterstrike, an aikido throw which has badly shaken and distracted America? DH, we await your comments. Has TTG gone wobbly?

TTG -> Tidewater , an hour ago
I'm also fairly certain RIS was aware of Steele's status as an MI6 officer when he was stationed in Moscow. I would think anyone working out of a diplomatic embassy is first assumed to be an intelligence officer by the host nation. I stayed away from embassies and other government facilities just to avoid that taint. The one time I was summoned to an embassy, I conducted extensive surveillance detection measures both before and after the visit and I wore a disguise.

It was a normal matter for intelligence officers to be cycled through Afghanistan and Iraq post 9-11, no matter what their former expertise. I did my turn. CIA's "Russia House" was bitter about their fall from the pinnacle to be replaced by all things CT during that time.

Was some of the raw information in Steele's dossier planted by RIS? That's very possible. Several experienced former US intelligence officers have voiced that possibility, especially about the more salacious bits of the dossier.

Fred -> TTG , 15 hours ago
That's a nice piece in the New Yorker. They mention the golden shower episode in Moscow, however, left out Loretta Lynch. "In was in her role as district attorney that her involvement in the Fifa investigation began. Over the course of five years in Brooklyn..." See the BBC article on FIFA from 2015: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-32912118

So did Loretta Lynch talk to Christopher Steele during this case or did Steele just talk to the FBI agent who was years later in London? When did then US attorney for New York's Eastern District Lorretta Lynch get informed and by which FBI agent? Who did that agent tell about the Steele dossier, when did it get to the AG's ears, and when did she tell Obama?

"On January 5, 2017, it became clear that at least two Washingtonians remained in the dark about the dossier: the President and the Vice-President. " Oh, apparently AG Lynch never told Obama, because????????

Another New Yorker Enigma: "Robert Hannigan, then the head of the U.K.'s intelligence service the G.C.H.Q., had recently flown to Washington and briefed the C.I.A.'s director, John Brennan, on a stream of illicit communications between Trump's team and Moscow that had been intercepted. (The content of these intercepts has not become public.) "

So the UK has been spying on US Presidential candidates? Oh, they said they were "illicit" communications. What does that mean? Who was communicating with Whom? And how did G.C.H.Q. decide these communications were "illicit" but others, well they'd have to have them all to make a comparison, wouldn't they? Put a ribbon on top of that one. DId they also intercept any of Hilary's communications?

TTG -> Fred , 13 hours ago
Given that Steele played an important role in at least two major FBI investigations leading to multiple indictments, I would assume Lynch knew about Steele. Whether they ever conversed, I don't know.

Comey was not at all sure about Lynch's impartiality. It would not surprise me if he kept details of the Russian investigation, including the dossier, from her. She probably learned about it shortly before Obama and Trump were briefed on the dossier. Obama knew enough about the Russian investigation, without the dossier, to warn Putin to knock it off in September 2016.

I don't know if the Brits spied on our Presidential candidates. I wouldn't doubt it. We bugged Merkel's phone. What I am sure of is that the Brits spy on every Russian of importance within their capabilities. If Trump's campaign was in contact with those Russians, the Brits would know about it. They obviously thought those conversations were illicit enough to inform their US counterparts and reveal that they did monitor members of the Trump campaign. They wouldn't have done that just for shits and giggles.

Fred -> TTG , 2 hours ago
"They obviously thought those conversations were illicit enough to inform their US counterparts and reveal that they did monitor members of the Trump campaign."

They thought it illicit? Listening is one thing, giving information to aid your country's government's preferred candidate is interference in an election process - ours. How many times has our ally the UK interfered with US elections? They had plenty of help from the FBI and DOJ here in the US in 2016. Who elected GCHQ to be arbiters of US elections? I can't find them in the US Constitution. Using the FBI and DOJ to sabatouge your party's political opponents, that's third world government standards.

TTG -> Fred , 34 minutes ago
If the Brits wanted to directly influence the election, they would have publicly released their information about "illicit' contacts. Keeping it within intelligence channels does nothing to influence an election. I would hope the Brits would never hold back on information concerning a possible CI threat.
English Outsider -> TTG , 4 hours ago
TTG - thank you for your reply above. The picture one gets of Steele is no longer that of a loose canon who somehow got himself involved in a presidential election campaign. It is that of an experienced and respected professional working in tandem, if perhaps unconventionally, with other professionals.

And perhaps thinking that he or his contacts back home had stumbled over important information showing that a presidential candidate was compromised. That information possibly being the tip of the iceberg and urgently demanding further investigation.

But that makes what happened all the more unusual -

1. Why didn't the further investigation happen? Surely the fact that such an important matter wasn't thoroughly investigated, and that using all possible resources in the States and abroad, shows that it was no serious investigation in the first place?

And more to the point here -

2. If those involved were professionals working away soberly at a necessary investigation, what were they doing suddenly branching out into a smear campaign?

For none, even the originators of the dossier, are claiming that the more discreditable part of the Steele dossier is true. That is not Intelligence material. It is sensationalised smear material.

This objection has been met in part with the claim that the dossier was all raw unsifted Intelligence and therefore was released as is.

But surely experienced Intelligence professionals don't suddenly pitch raw unsifted Intelligence into the middle of the political arena while they are supposed to be still assessing that intelligence?

Irrespective of the question of whether Trump was compromised the question therefore arises - what were American officials doing running a smear campaign against a presidential candidate?

Which leads back to the original question. What officials this side of the Atlantic were also involved, and how high did the authorisation for their involvement go in England.

.

On a matter I'm better informed about, I don't see the Colonel quietly farming away in Kent. I see him striding across the limitless expanse of a Scottish grouse moor. If our lot had known their business they'd have worked that into their offer.

But if that farm in Kent is still going spare ...

.

Pat Lang Mod -> English Outsider , 3 hours ago
I could have been Glubb's neighbor. I could have been a contender ... I thought the whole thing showed a surprising lack of judgment on their part.
TTG -> English Outsider , an hour ago
The counterintelligence investigation was in progress through the lead up to the 2016 election and is still in progress. Through 2016, it was done in a remarkably quiet fashion. That's how these investigations are supposed to work. No one hears about them until there is an arrest or indictment. That's how Mueller is running his investigation. We hear nothing from him except for the indictments already issued. And they are characteristically slow and methodical, usually spanning years before an arrest is made.

None of this investigation, including Steele's reporting was used in a pre-election smear campaign. In my opinion, the reason the Obama administration did not publicize the idea of Russian interference with the election and possible involvement of Trump campaign officials is that it would surely have been seen as a partisan smear campaign. The public did not hear of the Steele dossier until well after the election was over.

It was not just British intelligence involved in collecting on Russian interference in the election. The Estonians, the Dutch, the Australians and probably others contributed to the intelligence picture. We may not learn the full extent of that cooperation for many years. Given the changing nature of information warfare and social media manipulation, I sincerely wish the full extent of that intelligence is made public quickly. Sure that would probably also cramp Western media manipulation capabilities, of which we are far from innocent, but the sunlight would help inoculate all of us against this malignant phenomenon.

Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , a day ago
MI-6 tried to recruit me. I reported it to the COS at my post. Please don't tell me we and our liaison services love each other.
TTG -> Pat Lang , a day ago
Not surprised. What a duplicitous business we rolled around in.
Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , a day ago
They offered me a retirement farm in Kent, lifetime membership in one of the best clubs, a big stipend and"career assistance". It was funny.
TTG -> Pat Lang , a day ago
The retirement farm and the big stipend sounds pretty good. I could do without the best club and the career assistance. Sounds like they appreciated you a lot more than DIA.
Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , 18 hours ago
DIA made me an SES-4 with presidential rank (Distinguished). Looks like the Brits expected me to have a lot of access. They claimed these guys were off the reservation. and that they were not authorized to pitch me.
TTG -> Pat Lang , 13 hours ago
Off the reservation my ass. I would say those Brits were a bunch of cheeky blokes who did not do a thorough enough job of assessing your susceptibility to recruitment.
Pat Lang Mod -> TTG , 3 hours ago
You seem more upset over this than I was. We accepted their false statements of innocence betrayed by their own and went right on working with them. Why would they try this? Simple. As we do they wanted to know what we were not telling them. everyone does it. A basic principle. Recruit your liaison.
TTG -> Pat Lang , 29 minutes ago
You're right. I never worked out of an embassy or in any long term liaison function. If I was the target of such a pitch, it would have meant that I was blown along with any operations I was involved with. For me, it would have been life altering.
Boris -> English Outsider , a day ago
Been wondering about that too.
MarcotheLombard , 2 days ago
Thanks for this. I am wondering what Larry Johnson and the other members of this Committee of Correspondence make of the possible connection between Christopher Steele, Pablo Miller, and Sergei Skripal?

Some of Craig Murray's speculations in his latest post on the Skripal incident regarding the coordinated role of Orbis Intelligence, the BBC, and the British state (which issued a DSMA notice prohibiting press mention of Pablo Miller) are quite plausible. Murray is, like the members of this committee, a veteran of the game....

Was Skripal coerced/encouraged by Miller to serve as one of Steele's unattributed Russian "sources"? Did he later get cold feet? Or did he later attempt to buy his way back into Russia with the claim that he could provide proof that the Dossier was a fraud? Or was he working as a triple agent the whole time? Were the two sightseeing Russians "Borishov" and "Petrov" sent to retrieve something from Skripal?

https://www.craigmurray.org...

Patrick Armstrong -> MarcotheLombard , a day ago
Try this. This theory ties together all the incoherencies of the official explanation better than anything I have seen. And, I'm pleased to see it is getting reprinted here and there.
https://michaelantonyblog.w...
Nobby Stiles -> Patrick Armstrong , 20 hours ago
Yes, it made a lot of sense to me. The only thing it doesn't explain is the roof. Was somebody keeping some WMD in the attic?
Barbara Ann -> Patrick Armstrong , a day ago
I concur. This is the most plausible explanation of what really happened in Salisbury that I have read so far.

Colonel - might this theory be worth a dedicated SST post? It is 5,000 words, so perhaps Patrick, David Habakkuk, or another interested member of the committee would be happy to summarize the salient details (e.g. that Borisov & Petrov intended to return to Russia with Sergei Skripal). The author's contact details are in the comments section re reprint rights.

[Mar 20, 2019] Britain s witchfinders are ready to burn Jeremy Corbyn by Jonathan Cook

We should not idealize nether Israelis not Palestinians. the latter were pushed by Israeli policies to more fundamentalist Islam.
Changes of anti-Semitism is nor the favorite tool of Israeli lobby to smear critics of Israeli polices.
Notable quotes:
"... The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to. ..."
"... Right now, the establishment -- represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 -- is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset. ..."
"... Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin, Zionism is about economics and unabashed wealth: the two concepts are polar opposites. Very few non wealthy Jews are zionist. ..."
"... The gods of finance don't really care about a few dead self-identifying Jews. Once it happens there will be no more pretence of niceness or democratic nonsense and the Orwellian police-state crackdown can proceed in earnest but now with almost everyone's blessing. Expect the very same thing everywhere across Europe and the Anglosphere. ..."
"... Anti-Semitism has re-established itself on the left partly by way of an ideology of anti-colonialism. Believing Western colonial power to be the worst evil in history – a progressive orthodoxy that has been inculcated in Western education systems for decades – sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity. At the same time, they see Israel as the worst embodiment of colonialism – hence the demand that, alone among the world's states, it must demonstrate its "right to exist". ..."
"... Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners of successful Jews like Philip Green, but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice. ..."
"... Antisemitism here is a middle and upper class thing. There are so few Jews in some parts of the UK that many people have never met a Jew. I was over 30 before I ever knew anyone who was Jewish. ..."
"... Where is the sanctimonious Catholic Church to anathemize the major war criminal Tony Blair the Pious? ..."
"... British Labor MP Tam Dalyell has charged that Prime Minister Tony Blair was "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers" ..."
"... The comment echoed remarks by U.S. Republican Patrick Buchanan, who was accused of anti-Semitism when in an article last March, he described a predominantely Jewish group of advisers to President Bush as "a cabal of polemicists and public officials [who] seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests." ..."
"... You're confusing the issue. The issue is this: it's not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. All the rest is squid ink. ..."
"... McCarthyism is the extension of the European dark age inquisition. Nowadays the American glosses over McCarthyism with the terms democracy, neo-liberal order, and human rights. Any idealism other than the American's must be denied, even in the accused own defence. The American presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance. ..."
"... Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice. ..."
"... On Twitter, Corbyn wrote: "The UN says Israel's killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and journalists – may constitute 'war crimes or crimes against humanity'". ..."
"... The UN report, published earlier this week, said: "The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating in hostilities," adding that the protests had been "civilian in nature". ..."
"... "A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down" parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs)." ..."
Mar 01, 2019 | www.unz.com
Jonathan Cook March 1, 2019 2,400 Words 107 Comments Reply Email This Page to Someone

"McCarthyism" is a word thrown around a lot nowadays, and in the process its true meaning -- and horror -- has been increasingly obscured.

McCarthyism is not just the hounding of someone because their views are unpopular. It is the creation by the powerful of a perfect, self-rationalising system of incrimination -- denying the victim a voice, even in their own defence. It presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.

McCarthyism, in other words, is the modern political parallel of the witch hunt.

In an earlier era, the guilt of women accused of witchcraft was tested through the ducking stool. If a woman drowned, she was innocent; if she survived, she was guilty and burnt at the stake. A foolproof system that created an endless supply of the wicked, justifying the status and salaries of the men charged with hunting down ever more of these diabolical women.

And that is the Medieval equivalent of where the British Labour party has arrived, with the suspension of MP Chris Williamson for anti-semitism.

Revenge of the Blairites

Williamson, it should be noted, is widely seen as a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn, a democratic socialist who was propelled unexpectedly into the Labour leadership nearly four years ago by its members. His elevation infuriated most of the party's MPs, who hanker for the return of the New Labour era under Tony Blair, when the party firmly occupied the political centre.

Corbyn's success has also outraged vocal supporters of Israel both in the Labour party -- some 80 MPs are stalwart members of Labour Friends of Israel -- and in the UK media. Corbyn is the first British party leader in sight of power to prefer the Palestinians' right to justice over Israel's continuing oppression of the Palestinians.

For these reasons, the Blairite MPs have been trying to oust Corbyn any way they can. First through a failed re-run of the leadership contest and then by assisting the corporate media -- which is equally opposed to Corbyn -- in smearing him variously as a shambles, a misogynist, a sympathiser with terrorists, a Russian asset, and finally as an "enabler" of anti-semitism.

This last accusation has proved the most fruitful after the Israel lobby began to expand the definition of anti-semitism to include not just hatred of Jews but also criticism of Israel. Labour was eventually forced to accept a redefinition, formulated by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, that conflates anti-Zionism -- opposition to Israel's violent creation on the Palestinians' homeland -- with anti-semitism.

Guilt by association

Once the mud stuck through repetition, a vocal group of Labour MPs began denouncing the party for being "institutionally anti-semitic", "endemically anti-semitic" and a "cesspit of anti-semitism". The slurs continued relentlessly, even as statistics proved the accusation to be groundless. The figures show that anti-semitism exists only in the margins of the party, as racism does in all walks of life.

Meanwhile, the smears overshadowed the very provable fact that anti-semitism and other forms of racism are rearing their head dangerously on the political right.

But the witchfinders were never interested in the political reality. They wanted a never-ending war -- a policy of "zero tolerance" -- to root out an evil in their midst, a supposed "hard left" given succour by Corbyn and his acolytes.

This is the context for understanding Williamson's "crime".

Despite the best efforts of our modern witchfinder generals to prove otherwise, Williamson has not been shown to have expressed hatred towards Jews, or even to have made a comment that could be interpreted as anti-semitic.

One of the most experienced of the witchfinders, Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland, indulged familiar McCarthyite tactics this week in trying to prove Williamson's anti-semitism by association. The MP was what Freedland termed a "Jew baiter" because he has associated with people whom the witchfinders decree to be anti-semites.

'Too apologetic'

Shortly before he found himself formally shunned by media commentators and his own parliamentary party, Williamson twice confirmed his guilt to the inquisitors.

First, he dared to challenge the authority of the witchfinders. He suggested that some of those being hounded out of Labour may not in fact be witches. Or more specifically, in the context of constant claims of a Labour "anti-semitism crisis", he argued that the party had been "too apologetic" in dealing with the bad-faith efforts of those seeking to damage a Corbyn-led party.

In other words, Williamson suggested that Labour ought to be more proactively promoting the abundant evidence that it was indeed dealing with what he called the "scourge of anti-semitism", and thereby demonstrate to the British public that Labour wasn't "institutionally anti-semitic". Labour members, he was pointing out, ought not to have to keep quiet as they were being endlessly slandered as anti-semites.

As Jewish Voice for Labour, a Jewish group supportive of Corbyn, noted :

The flood of exaggerated claims of antisemitism make it harder to deal with any real instances of antisemitism. The credibility of well-founded allegations is undermined by the less credible ones and real perpetrators are more likely not to be held to account. Crying wolf is dangerous when there are real wolves around the corner. This was the reality that Chris Williamson was drawing attention to.

As with all inquisitions, however, the witchfinders were not interested in what Williamson actually said, but in the threat he posed to the narrative they have created to destroy their enemy, Corbynism, and reassert their own power.

So his words were ripped from their context and presented as proof that he did indeed support witches.

He was denounced for saying what he had not: that Labour should not apologise for its anti-semitism. In this dishonest reformulation of Williamson's statement, the witchfinders claimed to show that he had supported anti-semitism, that he consorted with witches.

No screening for documentary

Second, Williamson compounded his crime by publicly helping just such a readymade witch: a black Jewish woman named Jackie Walker.

He had booked a room in the British parliament building -- the seat of our supposed democracy -- so that audiences could see a new documentary on an earlier Labour witch hunt. More than two years ago the party suspended Walker over anti-semitism claims.

The screening was to inform Labour party members of the facts of her case in the run-up to a hearing in which, given the current atmosphere, it is likely she will be expelled. The screening was sponsored by Jewish Voice for Labour, which has also warned repeatedly that anti-semitism is being used malevolently to silence criticism of Israel and weaken Corbyn.

Walker was seen as a pivotal figure by those opposed to Corbyn. She was a co-founder of Momentum, the grassroots organisation established to support Corbyn after his election to the leadership and deal with the inevitable fallout from the Blairite wing of MPs.

Momentum expected a rough ride from this dominant faction, and they were not disappointed. The Blairites still held on to the party machinery and they had an ally in Tom Watson, who became Corbyn's deputy.

Walker was one of the early victims of the confected claims of an Labour "anti-semitism crisis". But she was not ready to roll over and accept her status as witch. She fought back.

From lynching to witch hunt

First, she produced a one-woman show about her treatment at the hands of the Labour party bureaucracy -- framed in the context of decades of racist treatment of black people in the west -- called The Lynching .

And then her story was turned into a documentary film, fittingly called Witch Hunt . It sets out very clearly the machinations of the Blairite wing of MPs, and Labour's closely allied Israel lobby, in defaming Walker as part of their efforts to regain power over the party.

For people so ostensibly concerned about racism towards Jews, these witchfinders show little self-awareness about how obvious their own racism is in relation to some of the "witches" they have hunted down.

But that racism can only be understood if people have the chance to hear from Walker and other victims of the anti-semitism smears. Which is precisely why Williamson, who was trying to organise the screening of Witch Hunt, had to be dealt with too.

Party in disrepute

Walker is not the only prominent black anti-racism activist targeted. Marc Wadsworth, another longtime ally of Corbyn's, and founder of the Anti-Racist Alliance, was "outed" last year in another confected anti-semitism scandal. The allegations of anti-semitism were impossible to stand up publicly, so finally he was booted out on a catch-all claim that he had brought the party "into disrepute".

Jews who criticise Israel and support Corbyn's solidarity with Palestinians have been picked off by the witchfinders too, cheered on by media commentators who claim this is being done in the service of a "zero tolerance" policy towards racism. As well as Walker, the targets have included Tony Greenstein, Moshe Machover, Martin Odoni, Glyn Secker and Cyril Chilson.

But as the battle in Labour has intensified to redefine anti-Zionism as anti-semitism, the deeper issues at stake have come to the fore. Jon Lansman, another founder of Momentum, recently stated : "I don't want any Jewish member in the party to be leaving. We are absolutely committed to making Labour a safe space."

But there are a set of very obvious problems with that position, and they have gone entirely unexamined by those promoting the "institutional anti-semitism" and "zero tolerance" narratives.

Lobby's covert actions exposed

First, it is impossible to be a home to all Jews in Labour, when the party's Jewish members are themselves deeply split over key issues like whether Corbyn is a force for good and whether meaningful criticism of Israel should be allowed.

A fanatically pro-Israel organisation like the Jewish Labour Movement will never tolerate a Corbyn-led Labour party reaching power and supporting the Palestinian cause. To pretend otherwise is simple naivety or deception.

That fact was demonstrably proven two years ago in the Al Jazeera undercover documentary The Lobby into covert efforts by Israel and its UK lobbyists to undermine Corbyn from within his own party through groups like the JLM and MPs in Labour Friends of Israel. It was telling that the party machine, along with the corporate media, did its best to keep the documentary out of public view.

The MPs loudest about "institutional anti-semitism" in Labour were among those abandoning the party to join the Independent Group this month, preferring to ally with renegade Conservative MPs in an apparent attempt to frustrate a Corbyn-led party winning power.

Institutional racism on Palestinians

Further, if a proportion of Jewish Labour party members have such a heavy personal investment in Israel that they refuse to countenance any meaningful curbs on Israel's abuses of Palestinians -- and that has been underscored repeatedly by public comments from the JLM and Labour Friends of Israel -- then keeping them inside the party will require cracking down on all but the flimsiest criticism of Israel. It will tie the party's hands on supporting Palestinian rights.

In the name of protecting the "Israel right or wrong" crowd from what they consider to be anti-semitic abuse, Labour will have to provide institutional support for Israel's racism towards Palestinians.

In doing so, it will in fact simply be returning to the status quo in the party before Corbyn, when Labour turned a blind eye over many decades to the Palestinians' dispossession by European Zionists who created an ugly anachronistic state where rights accrue based on one's ethnicity and religion rather than citizenship.

Those in Labour who reject Britain's continuing complicity in such crimes -- ones the UK set in motion with the Balfour Declaration -- will find, as a result, that it is they who have no home in Labour. That includes significant numbers of anti-Zionist Jews, Palestinians, Muslims and Palestinian solidarity activists.

Safe space for whom?

If the creation of a "safe space" for Jews in the Labour party is code, as it appears to be, for a safe space for hardline Zionist Jews, it will inevitably require that the party become a hostile environment for those engaged in other anti-racism battles.

Stripped bare, what Lansman and the witchfinders are saying is that Zionist Jewish sensitivities in the party are the only ones that count, that anything and everything must be done to indulge them, even if it means abusing non-Zionist Jewish members, black members, Palestinian and Muslim members, and those expressing solidarity with Palestinians.

This is precisely the political black hole into which simplistic, kneejerk identity politics inevitably gets sucked.

Right now, the establishment -- represented by Richard Dearlove, a former head of the MI6 -- is maliciously trying to frame Corbyn's main adviser, Seumas Milne, as a Kremlin asset.

While the witchfinders claim to have unearthed a "pattern of behaviour" in Williamson's efforts to expose their smears, in fact the real pattern of behaviour is there for all to see: a concerted McCarthyite campaign to destroy Corbyn before he can reach No 10.

Corbyn's allies are being picked off one by one, from grassroots activists like Walker and Wadsworth to higher-placed supporters like Williamson and Milne. Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.

Then Labour can be restored to the Blairites, the members silenced until they leave and any hope of offering a political alternative to the establishment safely shelved. Ordinary people will again be made passive spectators as the rich carry on playing with their lives and their futures as though Britain was simply a rigged game of Monopoly.

If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .


Sean , says: March 1, 2019 at 5:08 pm GMT

https://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3413292,00.html

LONDON – Many of the key players in the escalating British campaign to boycott Israel are Jewish or Israeli, the Jewish Chronicle revealed in an investigation published Thursday.

According to the investigation, the Jewish academics justify their stance as part of the struggle for Palestinian rights and ending Israel's occupation of Palestinian territories.

The report stated that a high proportion of the academics were deeply involved in UCU, the University and College Union, which last month sparked an international outcry by voting to facilitate a boycott of Israeli academic institutions.

Anti-boycott figures suggest that the campaign has been fuelled by a well-organized mix of far-left activists and Islamic organizations, the JC reported. In reality, the main proponents are a loosely knit collection of academics and trade unionists linked to groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, Jews for the Boycotting of Israeli Goods, and Bricup, the British Committee for Universities of Palestine

Working class British do not have their own intellectuals. The Jewish intelligentsia's humanist and realist wings are at war. Gilad Atzmon is being described without qualification as an Anti Semite in popular British newspapers, which never mention that he is Jewish.

It used to be that Atzmon being a Jew would protect him from accusations of antisemitism, and he would have be described as "self hating". Unfortunately the main intellectuals of the pro Palestinian movement are are humanist Jewish intellectuals, often of Israeli origin and the simple minded white gentiles of the Labour Party foolishly think that they are protected. The brilliant public relations and political experts working for the realist Israel-supporting Jews always lead with their Sunday punch and go nuclear with a moralising onslaught on white gentiles to get them to altruistically punish anyone Israel does not like. And it always works. Yet humanist Jews bleating about the Palestinians can always convince the more intellectual humanitarian white gentiles into supporting the Palestinians. So it will be never ending.

niteranger , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:42 am GMT
Britain is done. The laws passed show any idea or statement that criticizes Jews and Israel is antisemitic. Atzmon was foolish to believe that he had some protection from attacks because he was Jewish. They made an example out of him for the rest of those who do not fall in line with the belief that all true knowledge comes from the Jews and Israel.

The only chance that Britain has is the fact that the crazy Muslim hoards may actually turn on the Magic Jews and start to murder them. The Jews may have overplayed their hand with immigration just like in France. The Brits have been pummel into cuckolds as their world is being destroyed by both the Jews and the Muslims.

Tsigantes , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:02 am GMT
It works because the majority Israeli-bought politicians let it work. It works because we the public let the politicians get away with it.

I'm beginning to think that the only way to expose and end this false equivalency [criticism of Israel = anti-semitism) is for the 80% [yes!] of Europeans who support Palestine against Israel to show up in droves to their respective parliaments and insist on being imprisoned according to the law.

Anonymous [341] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:11 am GMT
It's curious that the Labour Party – in both its Blair and Corbyn manifestations – actively encourages the ethnic displacement of white Britons from their ancient motherland, with their policy of massive uncontrolled immigration, but weeps great big sobs and tears about the ethnic displacement of one group of foreigners by another group of foreigners.
Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:00 am GMT
Corbyn promised, in the party's manifesto, to back the Brexit referendum result. Now, at the worst possible time, he has reneged on that promise. He had one thing going for him – his reputation as "principled". There is no move more fatal to that reputation than what he has just done.

Thankfully, Theresa May has a sense of duty and, I think, will outmanoeuvre him in the end. But as innumerable denizens of this board will ask themselves: so what if Corbyn stands against British democracy, national sovereignty, any form of border control? So what if he promotes avowed anti-British racists to his shadow cabinet? At least he probably dislikes Jews

Ah, yes but it is "unfair to conclude the last bit" – even while the rest is straightforward matter of record "he has Jewish supporters". Great, but those Jews, who remain Jeremy Corbyn supporters, after his great stab in the back over Brexit, are his collaborators in his attempt to fatally wound Britain as a nation. That tells me all I need to know about their politics. May they reflect on their grim dishonesty.

Miro23 , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:18 am GMT

If parliamentary politics returns to business as usual for the wealthy, taking to the streets looks increasingly like the only option. Maybe it's time to dust off a Yellow Vest.

I've been thinking the same. The political systems in the UK and the US are so putrid that street demonstrations seem the only way forward.

Issue by issue they can be Brexit or Anti-War, and the minority elites are obliged to use their security forces (with all the risks that that involves).

smokey , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:10 am GMT
One should not merge or confuse, by any means rationally imaginable, -- "Economic Zionism (EZ)", a system of economics that claims it enjoys exclusive right to establish and enforce its monopoly rule over all persons and things, -- -with --

-- "racial bias", a system that claims it enjoys exclusive right to establish and enforce its Jews-Only rule over all persons and things.

Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin, Zionism is about economics and unabashed wealth: the two concepts are polar opposites. Very few non wealthy Jews are zionist.

Zionism has long exploited the myth that wealth established by EZ only comes to a Jewish tribal member who is faithful to the needs and wants of Zionism. This propaganda has a long history being the key that has opened the door to make many Zionist projects successful.

EZ explains why the wealth of 26 Zionist equates to the wealth of the rest of the world. See also the picture at http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:52 am GMT
@Sean Paul Embery is a smart younger bloke. https://unherd.com/2019/02/the-trade-union-club-for-liberal-cosmopolitans/

As is Jonathan Rutherford and Maurice Glasman. Meanwhile, working class Englishman John Gray is one of the finest thinkers of the last few decades.

NoseytheDuke , says: March 2, 2019 at 12:38 pm GMT
@niteranger

the fact that the crazy Muslim hoards may actually turn on the Magic Jews and start to murder them

Of course, it is what is desired and very likely the real reason that they are there in the first place. The gods of finance don't really care about a few dead self-identifying Jews. Once it happens there will be no more pretence of niceness or democratic nonsense and the Orwellian police-state crackdown can proceed in earnest but now with almost everyone's blessing. Expect the very same thing everywhere across Europe and the Anglosphere.

Jake , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:05 pm GMT
When you fail, or refuse, to understand the root source of the growth of a poisonous thing, you aint ever got no hope better than a soothing fart in Hell to make a correction.

Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was a Judaizing heresy rising from the specifics of Anglophone rebellion against Christendom, which 'reformation' itself began from Saxon Martin Luther's theorizing how to feel as 'saved' just by being who he was as Jews felt by being Jews – salvation by faith ONLY became Luther's Christian version of salvation by Jewish blood ONLY. Then Luther cemented even more the Judaizing of the movement by declaring that the Pharisaic definition of Scripture was the defintion of the Old Testament.

A Judaizing heresy will always produce culture that is pro-Jewish and anti-Christendom and anti-peoples most closely seen as still reflecting Christendom.

Anglo-Saxon Puritanism was the Protestant precursor of the French Revolution. It swept away all that had been in place before, so thoroughly that it was the final piece of remaking, at points inverting, the national character that had existed before the 16th century.

The best moniker for that new English culture is WASP, though that initial letter seems to make no sense until the US was on the scene. However, UK WASP Elites were quite busy during the 18th century explaining how the Irish were subhuman, and by the dawn of the 19th century political cartoons of the Irish as simian were common – before such images were ever used for blacks in the USA. That WASP culture then began a rather systematic war to exterminate all cultures native to the British Isles that were not in step with WASP culture.

All cultures produced by, shaped by, finalized by Judiaizing heresy will not merely evolve so that they become staunchly pro-Jewish, but that necessarily occurs as they also wage at least culture war to exterminate non-Judaizing white Christian cultures . WASP culture is defined by WASPs using whatever force required (including forcing huge populations into indentured servitude and rather large segments into chattel slavery) to batter all non-WASP whites into accepting the overlordship of all thins WASP.

WASP culture immediately signaled that it favored Jews over all non-WASP peoples native to the British Isles – Oliver Cromwell, a truly quintessential WASP invited Jews back into England legally and granted special rights and privileges that the vast majority of British Isles natives did not have.

The above pattern was far from a one time thing. It is a major factor even throughout the 19th century: the world's all time largest and richest empire saw Jewish wealth explode and Jews able to flex their political and cultural power openly, while perhaps a slim majority of the white natives of the British Isles languished barely on or below the poverty line. It was a world in which even Charles Dickens had to bow to Jewish demands to rewrite Oliver Twist so that Fagin not only was not identified as a Jews, open preying on the poorest whites, but that he remove all markers that Fagin was indeed almost certainly a Jew.

The Jewish problem cannot be separated from the WASP problem. You cannot have WASP culture that is not philoSemitic. And WASP Elites always act to ally with Jews (and by the Victorian era, the
other' Semites: Arabs and Mohammedans) while acting to harm the best interests of the vast majority of white Gentiles.

Anglo-Zionist Empore.

Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:19 pm GMT
John Gray on Corbyn's anti-Semitism as a strange subset of his anti-Britishness:

Anti-Semitism has re-established itself on the left partly by way of an ideology of anti-colonialism. Believing Western colonial power to be the worst evil in history – a progressive orthodoxy that has been inculcated in Western education systems for decades – sections of the left relativise the Holocaust, treating it as only one among many crimes against humanity. At the same time, they see Israel as the worst embodiment of colonialism – hence the demand that, alone among the world's states, it must demonstrate its "right to exist".

Claims that anti-Semitism is being "weaponised" in an attempt to undermine Corbyn are the opposite of the truth. More than a personal failure, Corbyn's complicity in anti-Semitism is a symptom of the morbid politics he embodies.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/05/how-we-entered-age-strongman

Ned Ludlam , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:20 pm GMT
Corbyn needs to unleash the huge Labour Party membership on the Blairite traitors in its ranks, especially the MPs. Driven out into the wilderness they will die off and Labour can consolidate itself against its non-external critics.
A British Reader , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:38 pm GMT
Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners of successful Jews like Philip Green, but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice.

Antisemitism here is a middle and upper class thing. There are so few Jews in some parts of the UK that many people have never met a Jew. I was over 30 before I ever knew anyone who was Jewish.

The middle class and upper class British antisemites see Jews as unpleasant and underhand rivals, but for a working class man like Chris Williamson, who would probably not have known any Jews when he was growing up in Derby, Jews would have been just another religious group. I've known many people who have met him. He has no interest in religion. His main concerns are veganism and animal welfare. His holidays are cycling tours around the nearby national park. He is really just a 1970s hippy in a suit. To tar someone like that with the old antisemitism canard will backfire. The intelligent British person knows Williamson is not the antisemite type.

annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:43 pm GMT
The Blair's bloody legacy: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-03-01/uks-unreported-bombing-iraq-syria

Interestingly, Sir John Chilcot believed as late as 2016 that about 150,000 Iraqis were killed during the invasion and subsequent instability. The figure was in fact well over one million. This much was known years earlier. Chilcott, covering for his friend Tony Blair did not read the mounting evidence – or more likely, just ignored it.

The 2006 Lancet survey calculated fatalities at well over 650,000 just three years into the conflict and the 2007 ORB survey that actually surveyed fifteen of the eighteen governorates within Iraq found that number was somewhere between 1,033,000 and a staggering 1,220,588 . Since then, the violence created by the vacuum has continued and many more civilians have died. The numbers above do not include deaths after 13 years of sanctions imposed by the UN.

Many members of the general public in Britain might mistakenly think that the bombing has stopped in Iraq and Syria – but they would be wrong. In fact, in the last four years, Britain has spent over £300 million on weapons fired from its air forces, including drones. The cost does not include personnel, wages, equipment, maintenance, fuel, air bases, etc.

Analysis of data conducted by human rights group Reprieve in 2014 concluded that of 41 men targeted by coalition drone strikes a further 1,147 innocent civilians were killed simply for being in the way.

Where is the sanctimonious Catholic Church to anathemize the major war criminal Tony Blair the Pious?

A portrait of the Devil's pupil: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/tony-blair/11670425/Revealed-Tony-Blair-worth-a-staggering-60m.html

Tony Blair's fortune now stands at three times the amount he has previously claimed, at some £60 million – which includes 10 homes

annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 1:52 pm GMT
@annamaria "Tony Blair receives $1,000,000 reward from a Jewish/Zionist organisation in Israel" http://theinsider.org/news/article.asp?id=2736

Mr Blair made a career out of attacking the enemies of Israel, sending his country into more wars than any prime minister ever before in history as the UK joined the US in fighting the perceived enemies of Israel both militarily and politically, advantaging the Zionist cause.

The award is presented by the Dan David Foundation, based at Tel Aviv University

https://www.haaretz.com/1.4804388

British Labor MP Tam Dalyell has charged that Prime Minister Tony Blair was "being unduly influenced by a cabal of Jewish advisers"

The comment echoed remarks by U.S. Republican Patrick Buchanan, who was accused of anti-Semitism when in an article last March, he described a predominantely Jewish group of advisers to President Bush as "a cabal of polemicists and public officials [who] seek to ensnare our country in a series of wars that are not in America's interests."

UrbaneFrancoOntarian , says: March 2, 2019 at 2:30 pm GMT
Who cares about Israel in this case? He supports another Brexit referendum, supports open borders with the 3rd world, and is probably a full fledged communist (a Jewish, anti white ideology).

The Jews and the muslims can squabble over petty details, I'm more worried about what will benefit European nations.

His election would be disastrous for the white, European race. Of course, I do fully expect for a hard shift against Israel as Muslims grow their populations in Europe.

Anon [424] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 2:37 pm GMT
Go Brexit , brits , go ,
Antiwar7 , says: March 2, 2019 at 3:05 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 You're confusing the issue. The issue is this: it's not anti-Semitic to be anti-Zionist. All the rest is squid ink.
smokey , says: March 2, 2019 at 3:18 pm GMT
@anon declare immigration <=fraudulent unwind/ deportation
declare <feminism<= unworkable restore/ patriarchy
Why should the Jews be permitted to declare anything; no one appointed them king?

Instead, what is needed is for the people to hold a referendum that declares race homogenizing immigration to be a technique capable of use by proponents of Economic Zionism(EZ) to impose divide and conquer strategies on race resolved populations in order to generate racial unrest and conflict . When divided; the people cannot organize, to throw the rascals out!

EZ monitors and destroys cooperative working together because sooner or later such groups organize with common objects which involve finding ways to resist nasty outcomes fostered by economic zionism).

I believe the civil rights movement in America was fostered in great measure by privately instituted racial unrest and conflict objectives.

Z-man , says: March 2, 2019 at 3:49 pm GMT
I've been 'watching' Britain the last few years thru the BBC and other outlets and am slightly amazed at how much they are controlled by the Jooz and American NEOCONS. Their foreign policy is almost completely Neo coon . They've kept to the Iran deal, but under the slightest pressure from big Joo they will fold. The charade of the poising last year of two Russian expats, just as Russia was hosting the World Cup was disgustingly transparent. MI6 is a joo run intelligence service. It's amazing how Britain has turned into a multi cult whore and slut of the KIKE! It started with Disraeli! They should have been 'pogromed' out back then!
Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:03 pm GMT
@Antiwar7

Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues, so people assume Corbyn's obsession with it has something to do with it being lived in by Jews.

They're only sort of right. In fact, it is because it is a well-organised country of more Western people than those they're in conflict with. In other words, Corbyn dislikes Israel, and Jews to some degree, as an extension of his oikophobia.

His oikophobia is best show in his grim betrayal over Brexit. This last part is unforgivable.

Joe Wong , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:10 pm GMT
McCarthyism is the extension of the European dark age inquisition. Nowadays the American glosses over McCarthyism with the terms democracy, neo-liberal order, and human rights. Any idealism other than the American's must be denied, even in the accused own defence. The American presents the accused as an enemy so dangerous, their ideas so corrupting, that they must be silenced from the outset. Their only chance of rehabilitation is prostration before their accusers and utter repentance.
Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:11 pm GMT
@Ned Ludlam Huge membership of aging Trots LARPing as the youth and only being less than half of what the Green party got in votes at the last election

The Conservatives ran their last campaign with a clear Brexit position and honesty over no tax cuts and no big government spending increases because we're bankrupt. I don't think there's ever been such a truthful but unexciting campaign by a political party. I don't think any party will make that mistake again. Corbyn instead ran on a lie over Brexit and infinite gibs for everyone. It is sad that the latter softened his loss considerably.

Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:17 pm GMT Anonymous [219] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:32 pm GMT
@UrbaneFrancoOntarian

Couldn't agree more. The "Left's" core value in the US and UK is white genocide. It really doesn't matter what Corbyn thinks about the Jew-occupied territories in Palestine as long as he's assisting the Jewish occupation in the UK.

WorkingClass , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:35 pm GMT
Yeah, Too bad about Corbin. He's a good bloke. Trump should give him a green card and make him Secretary Of Labor. Do we still have a Secretary Of Labor?
Colin Wright , says: March 2, 2019 at 4:57 pm GMT
Here's some data on the last Labour MP -- an Ian Austin -- who quit because of 'anti-semitism.' His recorded foreign trips over the last three years make fascinating reading.

https://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11553

'Kurdistan', AIPAC conference in Washington DC, Jerusalem, Israel, Israel, 'Kurdistan', AIPAC conference in Washington DC, Israel, Israel

Sponsors: Nokan Group, Labour Friends of Israel, Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Australia Israel Cultural Exchange Ltd -- all multiple times.

anonymous [204] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 5:05 pm GMT
SHAME ON AMERICA, A JEWISH STATE

Will the Supreme Court Finally Protect the Right Not to Work on the Sabbath?

The Supreme Court may be on the verge of correcting a constitutional injustice that has affected the lives and careers of thousands of religiously observant employees for almost half a century. It can do so in a case that the justices have obviously been taking very seriously during their recent private conferences.

The case involves an Orlando, Florida, training instructor, Darrell Patterson, who sued his former employer, Walgreen Co., for religious discrimination. Patterson is a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, which prohibits work on the Sabbath. Walgreen scheduled Patterson for a Saturday shift, and fired him when he refused the assignment. The case made it to the Eleventh Circuit federal appeals court, which ruled for Walgreen. The court held that forcing Walgreen to guarantee that Patterson would never have to work on Saturdays posed an undue hardship on the corporation. Patterson and his church, backed by several other religious groups, have asked the Supreme Court to hear his case, and the court will soon decide whether to do so.

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-news-and-politics/281122/the-right-not-to-work-on-the-sabbath

will the sabbath of other minorities who build america, be recognized???

Miro23 , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:03 pm GMT
@Stephen Paul Foster

The second sentences is completely perverse. "McCarthyism" was created by "the powerful," but it was the communists and their fellow travelers in high places seeking to avoid detection and accountability by incriminating McCarthy, a self-rationalizing smear that worked out very well for them.

True enough, it was the communists (or rather Jewish activists) and their fellow travelers in high places who created the "McCarthyism" meme.

It was constructed as a psychological shield against future interference in their subversion – the same as the "Anti-Semitism" and "Conspiracy Theory" memes.

For example, the MSM have trained the US public to regard anyone who questions the government account of 9/11 as a sort of far out nutcase looking for UFOs. If you don't believe it, read the factual impossibilities of the government 9/11 account in the literature of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth https://www.ae911truth.org/ and try presenting some of the evidence in a friendly way (e.g. that the towers didn't collapse due to fire) in a middle class social setting – and see what happens.

james charles , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:14 pm GMT
@Hawker

Who was 'really' supporting the Soviet Union?

"Taken together, these four volumes constitute an extraordinary commentary on a basic weakness in the Soviet system. The Soviets are heavily dependent on Western technology and innovation not only in their civilian industries, but also in their military programs.

An inevitable conclusion from the evidence in this book is that we have totally ignored a policy that would enable us to neutralize Soviet global ambitions while simultaneously reducing the defense budget and the tax load on American citizens." . . .

" His book tells at least part of the story of the Soviet Union's reliance on Western technology, including the infamous Kama River truck plant, which was built by the Pullman-Swindell company of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of M. W. Kellogg Co. Prof. Pipes remarks that the bulk of the Soviet merchant marine, the largest in the world, was built in foreign shipyards.

He even tells the story (related in greater detail in this book) of the Bryant Chucking Grinder Company of Springfield, Vermont, which sold the Soviet Union the ball-bearing machines that alone made possible the targeting mechanism of Soviet MIRV'ed ballistic missiles. "

http://www.crowhealingnetwork.net/pdf/Antony%20Sutton%20-%20The%20Best%20Enemy%20Money%20Can%20Buy.pdf

james charles , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:40 pm GMT
@Stephen Paul Foster

"The communists (high-ups in the FDR and Truman administrations who were, secretly working for Stalin, e.g. Alger Hiss, Harry Dexter White, Lauchlin Bernard Currie) . . . "

It wasn't just the US government 'supporting' the S.U.?

See comment 45.

Benjy , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:41 pm GMT
@anarchyst But McCarthy's lawyer was Ray Cohen, the queer jew. Ray Cohen was also Trump's mentor. And Ray Cohen was also a close friend of Roger Stone, who is also a fairy of some flavor or another. Stone was recently crudely raided by the FBI, for lying about Trump's non-connections to jewish mafia in Russia, which Trump clearly has.

I have no idea what this all means, except that satanists like Crowley were also into weird forms of bisexuality.

annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 6:43 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 Please ponder on the following before accusing others in the lack of humanness.

Antisemitism in the UK used to mean hostility to the pushiness, greed and mad manners but it has now been redefined to mean someone who thinks the Palestinians should not be used as target practice.

Sean , says: March 2, 2019 at 7:38 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 John Gray is a genuine intellectual and, as far as I know, of solid working class origins. However he was associated with the Conservative party rather than Labour and very greatly influenced by his friendship with Isaiah Berlin. Gray is good example of how white gentile intellectuals not of the left attack the hapless Labour white gentiles by drawing a bien pensant parallel between racial anti Semitism, the Holocaust and antiZionism.

https://www.newstatesman.com/world/2018/05/how-we-entered-age-strongman

Racist attitudes have existed in sections of the British left throughout much of its history. What is unprecedented is that anti-Semitism is now an integral part of a new style of politics promoted by the leader of the Labour Party. [ ]

Claims that anti-Semitism is being "weaponised" in an attempt to undermine Corbyn are the opposite of the truth. More than a personal failure, Corbyn's complicity in anti-Semitism is a symptom of the morbid politics he embodies. But is the British conscience now so lax and coarse that voters are ready to propel into power a party led, and in its current form largely created, by a shifty figure whose most genuine quality is a deep-seated affinity with the politics of conspiracy and hate?

A few years ago the contest for the Labour party came down to a choice e between the Milibrands: two sons of a Trotskyite theoretician and his wife that had hastened to Britain during WW2, because they were Jewish people.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/13/miliband-days-over-brothers-david-ed

The Miliband days are over. So was the brothers' epic battle worth it? Despite their flaws, David and Ed Miliband are two of the most talented Labour politicians of their generation. Theirs is both a political and a personal tragedy

'The relationship between these two siblings irrevocably changed the day Ed decided he wanted to be leader of the Labour party, too.' Photograph: Christopher Furlong/Getty Images

The leaders of disinvestment and antiZionism are the humanist wing of the Jewish intelligentsia. The Israel Lobby essay of Mearshiemer and Walt that latter became best selling screed was was commissioned by London Review of Books's Mary-Kay Wilmers. "I'm unambiguously hostile to Israel because it's a mendacious state". Wilmers is Jewish, and has used 25 million of family trust money for the LRB. The intellectual, financial and organisational resources behind antZionism are are almost completely supplied by humanistic Jewish intellectuals.

Not convinced? How about brilliant biologist Steven Rose (once Britain's youngest full professor and chair of department. )

a founder member of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science in the 1960s, and more recently they have been instrumental in calling for a boycott of Israeli academic institutions for as long as Israel continues its occupation of the Palestinian Territories, on the grounds of Israeli academics' close relationship with the IDF. An open letter[6] initiated by Steven and Hilary Rose, and also signed by 123 other academics was published in The Guardian on 6 April 2002.[7] In 2004 Hilary Rose and he were the founding members of the British Committee for Universities of Palestine.[5][8]

Gray is not alone in failing to mention anything about the identity of the most formidable antiZionists.

Che Guava , says: March 2, 2019 at 7:49 pm GMT
Jonathon Cook, just another example of his people trying to monopolize all political positions (hint: he has been a dual citizen, Israeli and Brit for some years, so that means ).

I found this site, according to the search engine's blurb, it was his. Not now.

I do not think that he is now connected to it, but the contents are very strange. Worth looking, esp. if interested in the pathologies of 'the religion of peace'.

http://www.jkcook.net

He is surely the least worth reading of commentators here, I can see that Mr. Unz prints 'Cook' articles for the commenary on Brit politics, but surely there must be an actual British person who is actually living there writing good commentary, instead of a former crypto-Jew now living in Israel (but still making big efforts to stay as crypto as possible)?

jim jones , says: March 2, 2019 at 8:14 pm GMT
Lord Ahmed of Rotherham charged with sexual abuse of children:

https://www.breitbart.com/europe/2019/03/01/rotherham-peer-lord-ahmed-charged-historic-child-sex-offences/

annamaria , says: March 2, 2019 at 8:53 pm GMT
@Sean "The leaders of disinvestment and antiZionism are the humanist wing of the Jewish intelligentsia."
-- Thank you for the summary.
Art , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:02 pm GMT
Corbyn shaming and humiliating the Brit sellout elite that genuflects to the Jews.

Corbyn calls for UK to condemn Israel's targeting of Palestinians

March 2, 2019 at 1:37 pm | Published in: Europe & Russia, Israel, Middle East, News, Palestine, UK

Head of the British Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn has called for the UK government to condemn Israel's killing of Palestinians as well as to freeze arms sales to the occupation state.

His remarks came in the wake of a UN report which found that Israel might have committed war crimes against Palestinians.

On Twitter, Corbyn wrote: "The UN says Israel's killings of demonstrators in Gaza – including children, paramedics and journalists – may constitute 'war crimes or crimes against humanity'".

"The UK government must unequivocally condemn the killings and freeze arms sales to Israel."

The UN report, published earlier this week, said: "The Israeli security forces killed and maimed Palestinian demonstrators who did not pose an imminent threat of death or serious injury to others when they were shot, nor were they directly participating in hostilities," adding that the protests had been "civilian in nature".

https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190302-corbyn-calls-for-uk-to-condemn-israels-targeting-of-palestinians/

Think Peace -- Art

nmb , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:16 pm GMT
Neoliberal fascists attempt to regain control over the European continent to prevent a Leftist revival
Anon [257] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 9:59 pm GMT
@Jake Fagin was based on Ikey Solomon, a notorious organized crime figure.
Iris , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:06 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 " Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues "

This has to be the joke of the month: I never suspected you had such great hidden comic talents, Tyrion.

Anonymous [219] Disclaimer , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:33 pm GMT
@Anon Jonathan Cook is a Jew living in Israel. Shocking, I know.
Tyrion 2 , says: March 2, 2019 at 10:42 pm GMT
@Sean "Humanist" is a funny name for people who worship the primitive.
Curmudgeon , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:14 pm GMT
@Anon It's more than that. Claiming Blair

firmly occupied the political centre.

is pure fantasy. His crowd attacked the public service and privatized things Margaret Thatcher wouldn't go near.

Nonny , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:22 pm GMT
@Monotonous Languor Disgusting genocidal comment.

Every dual citizen should be kicked out of every legislature.

Everyone genitally mutilating a baby should be imprisoned for 10 years.

Every illegal settler should be ordered to go back where he came from.

Sean , says: March 2, 2019 at 11:54 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 The member of the House of Lords (Baron) Glasman is the 100% Jewish son of a businessman who had his own manufacturing company. Though he talks a lot of sense, I really don't see Maurice Glasman being the mastermind of the the Labour Party's "Blue" school of strategic thought (see here ) is an indication that the indigenous British working class are producing their own thinkers. Did it really need a Jewish academic to say that Labour were in a 'weird space where we thought that a real assault on the wage levels of English workers was a positive good'?

Even if they thought it, white gentiles in the Labour Party did not dare articulate the obvious truth that mass immigration under Labour was 'an unofficial wages policy'. There is a lack of confidence in their own thought processes among everyone but Jews, and not just in the Labour Party.

John Gray's book Black Mass had the thesis of a link between the Bible's 1,000-year reign of the saints, Christian millenarianism , Nazism's a 1000-year Reich Auschwitz and the Enlightenment which Gray sees as explaining the invasion of Iraq but when he actual identified the people responsible for influencing Bush, he was, as Damian Thompson noted in a review, too nervous to mention that they, and others (pre 9/11 Wolfowitz had been like 'a parrot' about toppling Saddam ), wanting an invasion of Iraq were mostly Jewish. Some people say Rumsfeld (a gentile with what Jews think is a very Jewish sounding name) was the prime mover in that perhaps forgetting his support of Saddam's Iraq complete with its open nuclear construction project during the Reagan Presidency. Rumsfeld was greatly influenced by the Albert Wohlsetter , who became the guru of Richard Perle who dated Wohlsetter's daughter when they met at Hollywood High School (Ron Unz was born in Hollywood).

Holliwood is exceptionally Jewish, because it is basically Jews who make films that people will pay to see,. They understand human nature and how to work with it, and thus Jews have a greater power to influence or force of moral suasion than other people. As a result the great debates in the West come down to arguments between Jews as with the vendetta between Bernard Brodie and Wohlsetter (who without any official position, invented the Missile Gap for JFK and the Window Of Opportunity for Reagan).

Art , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:10 am GMT
@Tyrion 2 Israel is not a global outlier for humanitarian issues.

You lie so effortlessly, so carefree, with such nonchalance, such blithe. How do you do it?

The Jew "humanitarian" obsession with getting Iran has let to this.

Over 80,000 kids under the age of five have died of starvation in Yemen, UN chief says

"Children did not start the war in Yemen, but they are paying the highest price. Some 360,000 children are suffering from severe acute malnutrition, fighting for their lives every day. And one credible report put the number of children under 5 who have died of starvation at more than 80,000," Guterres told a donor conference in the Swiss city of Geneva on Tuesday.

https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/26/589651/Over-80000-kids-under-the-age-of-five-have-died-of-starvation-in-Yemen-UN-chief-says

Think Peace -- Do No harm -- Art

annamaria , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:48 am GMT
Ziocons' Ukrainian baby: https://www.voltairenet.org/article205172.html

Ukraine: NATO in the Constitution.

The merit for having introduced into the Ukrainian Constitution the engagement to enter officially into NATO goes to Parliamentary President Andriy Parubiy. Co-founder in 1991 of the Ukrainian National-Socialist Party, on the model of Adolf Hitler's National-Socialist Party; head of the neo-Nazi paramilitary formations which were used in 2014 during the putsch of Place Maïdan under US/NATO command, and in the massacre of Odessa ; head of the Ukraine National Security and Defense Council, which, with the Azov Battalion and other neo-Nazi units, attacked Ukrainian civilians of Russian nationality in the Eastern part of the country and used his squadrons for acts of ferocious abuse, the plunder of political headquarters and other auto-da-fés in a truly Nazi style.

Ukraine is already linked to NATO, of which it is a partner: for example, the Azov Battalion, whose Nazi character is represented by the emblem copied from that of the SS unit Das Reich, has been transformed into a special operations regiment, equipped with armoured vehicles and trained by US instructors from the 173rd Airborne Division, transferred to Ukraine from Vicence, and seconded by other NATO members.

Not a peep from Britsh purists of holo-biz persuasion. LFI chair Joan Ryan, in particular, is not "disturbed' at all by the NATO cooperation with Ukrainian neo-Nazi. The Friends of Israel in the UK accept cordially the "good" neo-Nazis that have been accepted by the Jewish State itself:

Altai , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:11 am GMT
@Sean On the other hand, why do the pro-Palestinian intellectuals in the diaspora always lose out? Why are they incapable of ever showing influence in any serious way in the Jewish community? Why is it not a widely known reality that most diaspora have views on Israel similar to the broad opinion in their host countries or even more radical inline with their socio-political stance elsewhere? Perhaps they don't get much support from the others because they don't want to give it. If even the likes of Rachel Riley and Stephen Fry are on the anti-Corbyn witchhunt, what is the attitude of the average Jew?

For god's sake, Riley is barely Jewish, (to the point that practically nobody knew she considered herself Jewish until now) never lived a second in Israel and yet is so emotionally attached to it that she waged a full spectrum media campaign (complete with the typical selfie of her looking sad after online 'assault') in service of silencing any dissent on Israel.

As Atzmon himself has noted, the entry of large numbers of Jews in the pro-Palestinian movement shifted it's agenda to one less and less accommodating to Palestinian interests and less demanding of Israel. See MondoWeiss.

Miggle , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:17 am GMT
@Byrresheim

Please explain, brainwashed American. Childhood brainwashing is remarkably effective.

These people are right and they know it. If you can't afford to got to hospital and get deeper in debt because you can't afford the interest payments, just borrow for a flight to Cuba and stay there. You will get the hospital care and not sink deeper into debt.

Or are you about to start screaming about the most vicious, evil Communist of all time, Jesus of Nazareth, who said, "Sell all you have and give to the poor"?

Or do you know some objective specifics that the rest of us should know about?

annamaria , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:18 am GMT
"Why Is The British Government Banning Hizbullah?" https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/03/why-is-britains-government-banning-hizbullah.html#comments
Comment section:

Sometimes soon the FUK, the Former United Kingdom, will have to get used to the fact, that they are not an Empire anymore.

The Lobby has helped the Tories in Britain a lot recently in painting Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Making sure that Corbyn never becomes prime minister is a big issue for them.

The payback for the Israeli help given is, of course, banning Hizbullah.

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the UK has really gone insane! did they ban bds and anyone opposed to zionism too? only a matter of time

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The UK's been in gross violation of International Law for decades on end, the latest determination by the WCJ on the Chomoro Islanders is its latest defeat and proof of its terrorizing policies. Then we have the subject of support for terrorists in Syria and terrorism in Venezuela. Some brave, enterprising folk ought to plant a passel of Hezbollah flags on the grounds of the minister's house, then report him for his crime of being in possession of banned material. And yet another reason for Scots to vote for independence and the end of Union, as I'm certain Scots don't want to be associated with a terror state like Britain.

The UK government has been supporting the terrorists of all stripes including White Helmets and Al Qaeda -- as was ordered by their masters in Tel Aviv and the Friends of Israel in the UK. The traitorous fools still believe in the chosenites' omnipotence.

Anon [253] Disclaimer , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:35 am GMT
But what happens when this anti-Semitic nonsense creates the White Christian Radicals who want to avenge the murder of the Christ that was done by the Hebrews. Are they ready for that?
Miggle , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:15 am GMT
@smokey

Jewish is about race, religion and place of origin,

Modern Jews are not a religion, not a race, and have no place of origin. They are a gang forever imprisoned in an inherited totalitarian culture by childhood brainwashing to hate all non-Jews. The first thing they are taught is that the non-Jews have always hated the Jews and wanted to kill them, when the reverse is true.

Most Jews are atheists. It is on record that David Ben-Gurion was an atheist, but still he was a Jew. So Judaism is not a religion.

As for place of origin, it is about how far the proselytizing rabbis reached in the cosmopolitan world of the Macedonian and Roman empires, where travel was safe and the whole world shared Greek as its lingua franca.

Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites! for ye compass land and sea to make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him twofold more the child of hell than yourselves. [Matt. 23:15, original in Greek!]

The mark of modern Jews is that hypocrisy, pretending they are the victims, that everyone wants to kill them. It goes back at least as far as the Book of Esther, a fictitious story about how the Persians wanted to kill all the Jews for a trivial reason.

Jew-hating is an incurable disease. Under certain democratic conditions it may not flourish well. Under certain conditions the germ may even appear to die, but it never does die even in most ideal climate. [Leon Uris, Exodus ]

Culloden , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:27 am GMT
The Anglo-American Establishment, from Rhodes to Cliveden: {Balfour, Palestine, Ireland, Zionism, and Anti-Semitism}

http://www.carrollquigley.net/pdf/the_anglo-american_establishment.pdf

renfro , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:51 am GMT
Is it worse in the US ..I would say so

GOP's anti-Muslim display likening Rep. Omar to a terrorist rocks W. Virginia capitol

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/gop-s-anti-muslim-display-likening-rep-omar-terrorist-rocks-n978371

"Angry arguments broke out in the West Virginia statehouse on Friday after the state Republican Party allegedly set up an anti-Muslim display in the rotunda linking the 9/11 terror attacks to a freshman congresswoman from Minnesota.

The display featured a picture of the World Trade Center in New York City as a fireball exploded from the one of the Twin Towers, set above a picture of Democratic Rep. Ilhan Omar, who is Muslim. "'Never forget' – you said. . ." read a caption on the first picture. "I am the proof – you have forgotten," read the caption under the picture of Omar, who is wearing a hijab.

One staff member was physically injured during the morning's confrontations, and another official resigned after being accused of making anti-Muslim comments. Several Democrats objected to the display, and reportedly got into an argument with the House's sergeant at arms, Anne Lieberman, after she allegedly made an anti-Muslim remark.

Del. Mike Angelucci, D-Marion, charged Lieberman had said "all Muslims are terrorists." "I am furious, and I don't want to see her representing the people of this great state in the House again," Angelucci said of Lieberman, who became the state's first female sergeant at arms last year. Speaking to West Virginia Public Broadcasting, Lieberman denied she'd made the comment. By the end of the day she had submitted her resignation "effective immediately," officials said

Miggle , says: March 3, 2019 at 2:57 am GMT
@Z-man

It's amazing how Britain has turned into a multi cult whore and slut of the KIKE! It started with Disraeli!

I haven't read his books. I might be a little pedantic here. But I have read his biography by a French Jew, André Maurois, a famous author. Disraeli was a Christian. Jewish childhood. But never knew that till he went to school and found that he and another pupil were treated differently when the time came for the class on religion. Great puzzle for him and Sarah to work out. And instead of bar-mitzvah, which he had probably never heard of, he went to baptism.

Beefcake the Mighty , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:03 am GMT
@Tyrion 2 LOL. Israel lives parasitically off of stolen land and it's fifth column in the West preventing even remotely balanced policy towards it. It really is amazing how you fail to see how transparent your bullshit is.
Culloden , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:03 am GMT

Soon Corbyn will stand alone, exposed before the inquisition that has been prepared for him.

No. He will have support from Ireland and Scotland. The Brits, artificial famines, and exporting cheap labour and slaves abroad:

An artificial famine

"A Celtic cross stands high above the waters at the western end of Canada's Grosse Isle. The Cross bears inscription in Gaelic, French and English, carved on ebony panels."

" Children of the Gael died in their thousands on this island having fled from the laws of the foreign tyrants and an artificial famine in the years 1847-48.

God's loyal blessing upon them. Let this monument be a token to their name and honour from the Gaels of America. God save Ireland."

"That is the translation from the Gaelic inscription. The bitterness of the accusatory Gaelic inscription is absent from the English dedication. [ ] The French dedication is similarly lacking in bitterness."

Edward Laxton, The Famine Ships, The Irish Exodus to America . An Owl Book, Henry Holt and Company, New York.

Beefcake the Mighty , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:08 am GMT
@Anonymous These are very valid points, but the fact is, the powers that be are terrified of his election for a reason. The sad fact is, political hope these days lies with the Left, since the cuck right is beyond useless, and there is currently little hope for a legitimate opposition Right movement. It would be thoroughly demonized in the US and subject to arrest in toilets like Britain or France. AOC is a very stupid girl, but people like her and Corbyn deserve some consideration, unfortunately.
Saoirse , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:12 am GMT
"Taking Down" British Officials

Israel conspires against the Mother of Parliaments

"A quite incredible story out of England has not received much media coverage in the United States. It concerns how the Israeli Embassy in London connived with government officials to "take down" parliamentarians and government ministers who were considered to be critical of the Jewish State. It was also learned that the Israeli Embassy was secretly subsidizing and advising private groups promoting Israeli interests, including associations of Members of Parliament (MPs)."

Philip Giraldi • January 31, 2017

http://www.unz.com/pgiraldi/taking-down-british-officials/

Beefcake the Mighty , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:15 am GMT
@niteranger Britain deserves it fate for instigating two world wars that destroyed European civilization.
Monotonous Languor , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:32 am GMT
It's absolutely amazing how even the very concept of Jewry (let alone their actual existence) can sow such enormous discord all up and down the political spectrum, with such myriad permutations and combinations thereof.

At the end of the day, there has to be a kind of benign neglect towards the Jews, BUT ONLY after each and every last single one of them has moved to Israel, by force if necessary. None of them should be allowed to live ever again in any other nation-state, nor have any controlling interests in anything outside of Israel. Otherwise the rest of us will be back at each other's throats again in no time.

If they're all in one spot, attending to their own interests, then fine, so be it. They can do whatever they want to and with their immediate moslem neighbors, as long as the rest of the world doesn't feel obliged to assist, resist, or even care very much. At that point it should all be left up to them. Truly, a pox on all their houses.

Sean , says: March 3, 2019 at 3:41 am GMT
@Altai

https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Editorials/So-farewell-then-Tony-Judt

In a much-cited October 2003 essay in The New York Review of Books, Judt called to dismantle the state and to replace it with "a single, integrated, bi-national state" between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea – a recipe for national suicide for the sovereign Jewish entity. This categorical rejection of Zionism put him in a class with other contemporary Jewish intellectuals of the Diaspora such as Jacqueline Rose, Michael Neumann and Joel Kovel,

I suppose they are not taken seriously by people with their hands on the levers of power and governments, because they are asking too much. Diaspora intellectuals represent the intelligentsia's view, which is that ethnic domination of a nations-state as with the Jewish state of Israel is incompatible with humanist principles.

Lots of politicians get elected by sounding as if they are humanists, but then they are responsible for a state and they start to obey the dictates of realism. Withdrawing from the occupied territories is now quite clearly something Israel has no intention of ever doing, although it would not require the evacuation of more than 48,000 people (9000 families) according to this

https://www.haaretz.com/israel-news/.premium.MAGAZINE-how-many-settlers-need-to-be-evacuated-to-make-way-for-a-palestinian-state-1.6386939

The information in the above link was quite surprising to me, and it seems that expulsion of the West Bank Arabs is, for the foreseeable future, a long way from of being the best solution for Israel.

Nevertheless as Ehud Barak said "Every attempt [by the State of Israel] to keep hold of this area [the West Bank and Gaza] as one political entity leads, necessarily, to either a nondemocratic or a non-Jewish state. Because if the Palestinians vote, then it is a binational state, and if they don't vote it is an apartheid state." I think the Palestinians position is stronger than Israel and its Lobby want anyone to know, so they are making maximum efforts to stifle debate. But the Palestinians are holding out for much more that just a state, partly because of Western internationalists.

Asagirian , says: Website March 3, 2019 at 4:53 am GMT
McCarthyism is ancient history. We now have Soros-Bezos Complex.
Tyrion 2 , says: March 3, 2019 at 8:34 am GMT
@Sean Your post reminds me of my Great Aunt, who was prone to saying things like "your birthday is the 2nd of July and mine is in September, that's amazing, because 2 + 7 (July) = 9 (September)" as if this was meaningful.

The reductio ad adsurdum of this where you try to include Rumsfeld in a special peri-Jew category on account of the sound of his name

james charles , says: March 3, 2019 at 10:09 am GMT
@Saoirse "Sir Alan Duncan, the senior Foreign Office minister revealed as the target of an Israeli embassy official's desire to "take down" British MPs, is responsible on paper for Europe and the Americas, worrying primarily about the Falklands and Cyprus."
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2017/jan/08/why-might-an-israeli-diplomat-believe-alan-duncan-needs-taking-down
james charles , says: March 3, 2019 at 10:42 am GMT
@Beefcake the Mighty You may like this?

Conjuring Hitler: How Britain and America Made the Third Reich
By Guido Giacomo Preparata

https://www.solargeneral.org/wp-content/uploads/library/conjuring-hitler.pdf

annamaria , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:28 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 The Jewish State is indeed an outlier considering its hypocrisy, including holo-biz profiteering schema based on the alleged "superior morality" and "eternal victimhood" and other Anne Frank specialties:
Tyrion 2 , says: March 3, 2019 at 12:28 pm GMT
@Sean The progressives are Janus-faced. In that on one they believe in the perfect, but on the other hand they let it be the enemy of the good, thus they end up rejecting realistic achievement and instead exult in bringing it low. They, and their allies, seem to be mostly riffs on Year Zero cults. No wonder they get all loved up for Islamist fanaticism.

Idolators, perfectionists and slavish decandents, all at once. Naturally, they're strongest among the coddled and well-to-do.

Let's all sit around and worship the golden calf to absolute excess, while we fade away or starve. There can be no middle ground between perfection or complete embrace of the other.

Wizard of Oz , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:12 pm GMT
@Che Guava Why do you call Cook a crypto-Jew? His claim to Israeli citizenship is based only on his marriage to an Israeli citizen and she is a Christian Palestinian.
Tyrion 2 , says: March 3, 2019 at 1:45 pm GMT
@james charles Another individual whom, like Corbyn, claimed to be for British sovereignty all of his political career in order to signal his patriotism but then, when push came to shove, he campaigned for Remain.

Worse, when given a second chance and the backing of a public vote to go for Brexit, again like Corbyn, Duncan doubled down and ended up dismissing the vote as a mere "working class tantrum".

With his "soak the poor", "open borders", "let them eat cultural enrichment" attitude, he is the Marie Antoinette of British politics.

[Mar 20, 2019] Bankrupt British Empire Keeps Pushing To Overthrow Putin

This is anold, 2015 article that is still rrrelenet today. Well written overview of British policies toward Russia
Notable quotes:
"... Lyndon LaRouche has observed that anybody acting according to this British agenda with the intention of coming out on top is a fool, since the British financial-political empire is bankrupt and its entire system is coming down. ..."
"... EU: British imperial interests are intent on destroying Prime Minister Putin's bid for the Presidency, and throwing Russia into deadly political turmoil. ..."
"... In her testimony, Diuk came off like a reincarnation of a 1950s Cold Warrior, raving against the Russian government as "authoritarian," "dictators," and so forth. She said, "The trend lines for freedom and democracy in Russia have been unremittingly negative since Vladimir Putin took power and set about the systematic construction of a representation of their interests within the state." She announced at that point that the elections would be illegitimate: "[T]he current regime will likely use the upcoming parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential election in March 2012 with the inevitable falsifications and manipulations, to claim the continued legitimacy of its rule." ..."
"... The British-educated Nadia Diuk is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, from which perch she has spread "Cold War" venom against Putin and the Russian government. ..."
"... Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert, two top profilers of the Russian Internet, noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08. ..."
"... NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny (inset), the online "anti-corruption" activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations. Addressing crowds on the street, Navalny sounds more like Mussolini than a proponent of democracy. A Russian columnist found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic. Shown: the Dec. 24 demonstration in Moscow. ..."
Jan 09, 2012 | http://schillerinstitute.org/russia/2012/0122_overthrow_putin.html
This article appears in the January 20, 2012 issue of Executive Intelligence Review and is reprinted with permission.

[PDF version of this article]

January 9, 2012 -Organizers of the December 2011 "anti-vote-fraud" demonstrations in Moscow have announced Feb. 4 as the date of their next street action, planned as a march around the city's Garden Ring Road on the 22nd anniversary of a mass demonstration which paved the way to the end of the Soviet Union. While there is a fluid situation within both the Russian extraparliamentary opposition layers, and the ruling circles and other Duma parties, including a process of "dialogue" between them, in which ex-Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin is playing a role, it is clear that British imperial interests are intent on-if not actually destroying Prime Minister Vladimir Putin's bid for reelection as Russia's President in the March 4 elections-casting Russia into ongoing, destructive political turmoil.

Lyndon LaRouche has observed that anybody acting according to this British agenda with the intention of coming out on top is a fool, since the British financial-political empire is bankrupt and its entire system is coming down.

Review of the events leading up to the Dec. 4, 2011 Duma elections, which the street demonstrators demanded be cancelled for fraud, shows that not only agent-of-British-influence Mikhail Gorbachov, the ex-Soviet President, but also the vast Project Democracy apparatus inside the United States, exposed by EIR in the 1980s as part of an unconstitutional "secret government,"[1] have been on full mobilization to block the current Russian leadership from continuing in power.

Project Democracy

Typical is the testimony of Nadia Diuk, vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), before the Subcommittee on Europe and Eurasia of the U.S. House Committee on Foreign Affairs last July 26. The NED is the umbrella of Project Democracy; it functions, inclusively, through the International Republican Institute (IRI, linked with the Republican Party) and the National Democratic Institute (NDI, linked with the Democratic Party, and currently headed by Madeleine Albright).

Diuk was educated at the U.K.'s Unversity of Sussex Russian studies program, and then taught at Oxford University, before coming to the U.S.A. to head up the NED's programs in Eastern Europe and Russia beginning 1990. She is married to her frequent co-author, Adrian Karatnycky of the Atlantic Institute, who headed up the private intelligence outfit Freedom House[2] for 12 years. Her role is typical of British outsourcing of key strategic operations to U.S. institutions.

EU: British imperial interests are intent on destroying Prime Minister Putin's bid for the Presidency, and throwing Russia into deadly political turmoil.

In her testimony, Diuk came off like a reincarnation of a 1950s Cold Warrior, raving against the Russian government as "authoritarian," "dictators," and so forth. She said, "The trend lines for freedom and democracy in Russia have been unremittingly negative since Vladimir Putin took power and set about the systematic construction of a representation of their interests within the state." She announced at that point that the elections would be illegitimate: "[T]he current regime will likely use the upcoming parliamentary elections in December 2011 and presidential election in March 2012 with the inevitable falsifications and manipulations, to claim the continued legitimacy of its rule."

Diuk expressed renewed hope that the disastrous 2004 Orange Revolution experiment in Ukraine could be replicated in Russia, claiming that "when the protests against authoritarian rule during Ukraine's Orange Revolution brought down the government in 2004, Russian citizens saw a vision across the border of an alternative future for themselves as a Slavic nation." She then detailed what she claimed were the Kremlin's reactions to the events in Ukraine, charging that "the leaders in the Kremlin-always the most creative innovators in the club of authoritarians-have also taken active measures to promote support of the government and undermine the democratic opposition...."

Holos Ameryky

The British-educated Nadia Diuk is vice president of the National Endowment for Democracy, from which perch she has spread "Cold War" venom against Putin and the Russian government.

While lauding "the democratic breakthroughs in the Middle East" in 2011, Diuk called on the Congress to "look to [Eastern Europe] as the source of a great wealth of experience on how the enemies of freedom are ever on the alert to assert their dominance, but also how the forces for freedom and democracy will always find a way to push back in a struggle that demands our support."

In September, Diuk chaired an NED event featuring a representative of the NED-funded Levada Center Russian polling organization, who gave an overview of the then-upcoming December 4 Duma election. Also speaking there was Russian liberal politician Vladimir Kara-Murza, who predicted in the nastiest tones that Putin will suffer the fate of President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. In this same September period, Mikhail Gorbachov, too, was already forecasting voting irregularities and a challenge to Putin's dominance.

The NED, which has an annual budget of $100 million, sponsors dozens of "civil society" groups in Russia. Golos, the supposedly independent vote-monitoring group that declared there would be vote fraud even before the elections took place, has received NED money through the NDI since 2000. Golos had a piecework program, paying its observers a set amount of money for each reported voting irregularity. NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny-the online anti-corruption activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations-since 2006, when he and Maria Gaidar (daughter of the late London-trained shock therapy Prime Minister Yegor Gaidar) launched a youth debating project called "DA!" (meaning "Yes!" or standing for "Democratic Alternative"). Gorbachov's close ally Vladimir Ryzhkov, currently negotiating with Kudrin on terms of a "dialogue between the authorities and the opposition," also received NED grants to his World Movement for Democracy.

Besides George Soros's Open Society Foundations (formerly, Open Society Institute, OSI), the biggest source of funds for this meddling, including funding which was channeled through the NDI and the IRI, is the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Officially, USAID has spent $2.6 billion on programs in Russia since 1992. The current acknowledged level is around $70 million annually, of which nearly half is for "Governing Justly & Democratically" programs, another 30% for "Information" programs, and only a small fraction for things like combatting HIV and TB. On Dec. 15, Assistant Secretary of State, Bureau of European and Eurasian Affairs Philip Gordon announced that the Obama Administration would seek Congressional approval to step up this funding, with "an initiative to create a new fund to support Russian non-governmental organizations that are committed to a more pluralistic and open society."

Awaiting McFaul

White House/Pete Souza

The impending arrival in Moscow of Michael McFaul (shown here with his boss in the Oval Office), as U.S. Ambassador to Russia, is seen by many there as an escalation of Project Democracy efforts to destabilize the country.

People from various parts of the political spectrum in Russia see the impending arrival of Michael McFaul as U.S. Ambassador to Russia as an escalation in Project Democracy efforts to destabilize Russia. McFaul, who has been Barack Obama's National Security Council official for Russia, has been working this beat since the early 1990s, when he represented the NDI in Russia at the end of the Soviet period, and headed its office there.

As a Russia specialist at Stanford's Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies and Hoover Institution, as well as the Carnegie Endowment, and an array of other Russian studies think tanks, McFaul has stuck closely to the Project Democracy agenda. Financing for his research has come from the NED, the OSI, and the Smith-Richardson Foundation (another notorious agency of financier interests within the U.S. establishment). He was an editor of the 2006 book Revolution in Orange: The Origins of Ukraine's Democratic Breakthrough, containing chapters by Diuk and Karatnycky.

In his own contribution to a 2010 book titled After Putin's Russia,[3] McFaul hailed the 2004 Orange Revolution in Ukraine-which was notoriously funded and manipulated from abroad-as a triumph of "people's political power from below to resist and eventually overturn a fraudulent election."

Before coming to the NSC, one of McFaul's many positions at Stanford was co-director of the Iran Democracy Project. He has also been active in such projects as the British Henry Jackson Society which is active in the drive to overthrow the government of Syria.

The Internet Dimension

The December 2011 street demonstrations in Moscow were organized largely online. Participation rose from a few hundred on Dec. 5, the day after the election, to an estimated 20,000 people on Bolotnaya Square Dec. 10, and somewhere in the wide range of 30,000 to 120,000 on Academician Sakharov Prospect Dec. 24.

Headlong expansion of Internet access and online social networking over the past three to five years has opened up a new dimension of political-cultural warfare in Russia. An EIR investigation finds that British intelligence agencies involved in the current attempts to destabilize Russia and, in their maximum version, overthrow Putin, have been working intensively to profile online activity in Russia and find ways to expand and exploit it. Some of these projects are outsourced to think tanks in the U.S.A. and Canada, but their center is Cambridge University in the U.K.-the heart of the British Empire, home of Bertrand Russell's systems analysis and related ventures of the Cambridge Apostles.[4]

The scope of the projects goes beyond profiling, as can be seen in the Cambridge-centered network's interaction with Russian anti-corruption crusader Alexei Navalny, a central figure in the December protest rallies.

While George Soros and his OSI prioritized building Internet access in the former Soviet Union starting two decades ago, as recently as in 2008 British cyberspace specialists were complaining that the Internet was not yet efficient for political purposes in Russia. Oxford University's Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism produced a Soros-funded report in 2008, titled "The Web that Failed: How opposition politics and independent initiatives are failing on the Internet in Russia." The Oxford-Reuters authors regretted that processes like the Orange Revolution, in which online connections were crucial, had not gotten a toehold in Russia. But they quoted a 2007 report by Andrew Kuchins of the Moscow Carnegie Center, who found reason for optimism in the seven-fold increase in Russian Internet (Runet) use from 2000 to 2007. They also cited Robert Orttung of American University and the Resource Security Institute, on how Russian blogs were reaching "the most dynamic members of the youth generation" and could be used by "members of civil society" to mobilize "liberal opposition groups and nationalists."

Scarcely a year later, a report by the digital marketing firm comScore crowed that booming Internet access had led to Russia's having "the world's most engaged social networking audience." Russian Facebook use rose by 277% from 2008 to 2009. The Russia-based social networking outfit Vkontakte.ru (like Facebook) had 14.3 million visitors in 2009; Odnoklassniki.ru (like Classmates.com) had 7.8 million; and Mail.ru-My World had 6.3 million. All three of these social networking sites are part of the Mail.ru/Digital Sky Technologies empire of Yuri Milner,[5] with the individual companies registered in the British Virgin Islands and other offshore locations.

The Cambridge Security Programme

Rafal Rohozinski and Ronald Deibert, two top profilers of the Russian Internet, noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08.

Two top profilers of the Runet are Ronald Deibert and Rafal Rohozinski, who assessed its status in their essay "Control and Subversion in Russian Cyberspace."[6] At the University of Toronto, Deibert is a colleague of Barry Wellman, co-founder of the International Network of Social Network Analysis (INSNA).[7] Rohozinski is a cyber-warfare specialist who ran the Advanced Network Research Group of the Cambridge Security Programme (CSP) at Cambridge University in 2002-07. Nominally ending its work, the CSP handed off its projects to an array of organizations in the OpenNet Initiative (ONI), including Rohozinski's SecDev Group consulting firm, which issues the Information Warfare Monitor.

The ONI, formally dedicated to mapping and circumventing Internet surveillance and filtering by governments, is a joint project of Cambridge (Rohozinski), the Oxford Internet Institute, the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, and the University of Toronto.

Deibert and Rohozinski noted that the Runet grew five times faster than the next fastest growing Internet region, the Middle East, in 2000-08. They cited official estimates that 38 million Russians were going online as of 2010, of whom 60 had broadband access from home; the forecast number of Russia-based Runet users by 2012 was 80 million, out of a population of 140 million. Qualitatively, the ONI authors welcomed what they called "the rise of the Internet to the center of Russian culture and politics." On the political side, they asserted that "the Internet has eclipsed all the mass media in terms of its reach, readership, and especially in the degree of free speech and opportunity to mobilize that it provides."

This notion of an Internet-savvy core of the population becoming the focal point of Russian society is now being hyped by those who want to push the December demonstrations into a full-scale political crisis. Such writers call this segment of the population "the creative class," or "the active creative minority," which can override an inert majority of the population. The Dec. 30 issue of Vedomosti, a financial daily co-owned by the Financial Times of London, featured an article by sociologist Natalya Zubarevich, which was then publicized in "Window on Eurasia" by Paul Goble, a State Department veteran who has concentrated for decades on the potential for Russia to split along ethnic or other lines.

Zubarevich proposed that the 31% of the Russian population living in the 14 largest cities, of which 9 have undergone "post-industrial transformation," constitute a special, influential class, as against the inhabitants of rural areas (38%) and mid-sized industrial cities with an uncertain future (25%). Goble defined the big-city population as a target: "It is in this Russia that the 35 million domestic users of the Internet and those who want a more open society are concentrated."

The Case of Alexei Navalny

In the "The Web that Failed" study, Oxford-Reuters authors Floriana Fossato, John Lloyd, and Alexander Verkhovsky delved into the missing elements, in their view, of the Russian Internet. What would it take, they asked, for Runet participants to be able to "orchestrate motivation and meaningful commitments"? They quoted Julia Minder of the Russian portal Rambler, who said about the potential for "mobilization": "Blogs are at the moment the answer, but the issue is how to find a leading blogger who wants to meet people on the Internet several hours per day. Leading bloggers need to be entertaining.... The potential is there, but more often than not it is not used."

NED grant money has gone to Alexei Navalny (inset), the online "anti-corruption" activist and cult figure of the December demonstrations. Addressing crowds on the street, Navalny sounds more like Mussolini than a proponent of democracy. A Russian columnist found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic. Shown: the Dec. 24 demonstration in Moscow.

It is difficult not to wonder if Alexei Navalny is a test-tube creation intended to fill the missing niche. This would not be the first time in recent Russian history that such a thing happened. In 1990, future neoliberal "young reformers" Anatoli Chubais and Sergei Vasilyev wrote a paper under International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) auspices, on the priorities for reform in the Soviet Union. They stated that a certain personality was missing on the Soviet scene at that time: the wealthy businessman. In their IIASA paper, Chubais and Vasilyev wrote: "We now see a figure, arising from historical non-existence: the figure of a businessman-entrepreneur, who has enough capital to bear the investment responsibility, and enough technological knowledge and willingness to support innovation."[8]

This type of person was subsequently brought into existence through the corrupt post-Soviet privatization process in Russia, becoming known as "the oligarchs." Was Navalny, similarly, synthesized as a charismatic blogger to fill the British subversive need for "mobilization"?

Online celebrity Navalny's arrest in Moscow on Dec. 5, and his speech at the Academician Sakharov Prospect rally on Dec. 24 were highlights of last month's turmoil in the Russian capital. Now 35 years old, Navalny grew up in a Soviet/Russian military family and was educated as a lawyer. In 2006, he began to be financed by NED for the DA! project (see above). Along the way-maybe through doing online day-trading, as some biographies suggest, or maybe from unknown benefactors-Navalny acquired enough money to be able to spend $40,000 (his figure) on a few shares in each of several major Russian companies with a high percentage of state ownership. This gave him minority-shareholder status, as a platform for his anti-corruption probes.

It must be understood that the web of "corruption" in Russia is the system of managing cash flows through payoffs, string-pulling, and criminal extortion, which arose out of the boost that Gorbachov's perestroika policy gave to pre-existing Soviet criminal networks in the 1980s. It then experienced a boom under darlings of London like Gaidar, who oversaw the privatization process known as the Great Criminal Revolution in the 1990s. As Russia has been integrated into an international financial order, which itself relies on criminal money flows from the dope trade and strategically motivated scams like Britain's BAE operations in the Persian Gulf, the preponderance of shady activity in the Russian economy has only increased.

Putin's governments inherited this system, and it can be ended when the commitment to monetarism, which LaRouche has identified as a fatal flaw even among genuinely pro-development Russians, is broken in Russia and worldwide. The current bankruptcy of the Trans-Atlantic City of London-Eurozone-Wall Street system means that now is the time for this to happen!

Yale Fellows

In 2010, Navalny was accepted to the Yale World Fellows Program, as one of fewer than 20 approved candidates out of over a thousand applicants. As EIR has reported, the Yale Fellows are instructed by the likes of British Foreign Office veteran Lord Mark Malloch-Brown and representatives of Soros's Open Society Foundations.[9] What's more, the World Fellows Program is funded by The Starr Foundation of Maurice R. "Hank" Greenberg, former chairman and CEO of insurance giant American International Group (AIG), the recipient of enormous Bush Jr.-Obama bailout largesse in 2008-09; Greenberg and his C.V. Starr company have a long record of facilitating "regime change" (aka coups), going back to the 1986 overthrow of President Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines. Navalny reports that Maria Gaidar told him to try for the program, and he enjoyed recommendations from top professors at the New Economic School in Moscow, a hotbed of neoliberalism and mathematical economics. It was from New Haven that Navalny launched his anti-corruption campaign against Transneft, the Russian national oil pipeline company, specifically in relation to money movements around the new East Siberia-Pacific Ocean pipeline. The ESPO has just finished the first year of operation of its spur supplying Russian oil to China.

Navalny presents a split personality to the public. Online he is "Mr. Openness." He posts the full legal documentation of his corruption exposés. When his e-mail account was hacked, and his correspondence with U.S. Embassy and NED officials about funding him was made public, Navalny acknowledged that the e-mails were genuine. He tries to disarm interviewers with questions like, "Do you think I'm an American project, or a Kremlin one?"

During the early-January 2012 holiday lull in Russia, Navalny engaged in a lengthy, oh-so-civilized dialogue in Live Journal with Boris Akunin (real name, Grigori Chkhartishvili), a famous detective-story author and liberal activist who was another leader of the December demonstrations, about whether Navalny's commitment to the slogan "Russia for the Russians" marks him as a bigot who is unfit to lead. Addressing crowds on the street, however, Navalny sounds like Mussolini. Prominent Russian columnist Maxim Sokolov, writing in Izvestia, found him reminiscent of either Hitler, or Catalina, who conspired against the Roman Republic.

Navalny may well end up being expendable in the view of his sponsors. In the meantime, it is clear that he is working from the playbook of Gene Sharp, whose neurolinguistic programming and advertising techniques were employed in Ukraine's Orange Revolution in 2004.[10] Sharp, a veteran of "advanced studies" at Oxford and 30 years at Harvard's Center for International Affairs, is the author of The Politics of Nonviolent Action: Power and Struggle, which advises the use of symbolic colors, short slogans, and so forth.

While at Yale, Navalny also served as an informant and advisor for a two-year study conducted at Harvard's Berkman Center for Internet and Society, one of the institutions participating in the OpenNet Initiative, launched out of Cambridge University in the U.K. The study produced a profile titled "Mapping the Russian Blogosphere," which detailed the different sections of the Runet: liberal, nationalist, cultural, foreign-based, etc., looking at their potential social impact.

Allen Douglas, Gabrielle Peut, David Christie, and Dorothea Bunnell did research for this article.


Related pages:

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[Mar 18, 2019] Christopher Steele s Former MI6 Boss Calls Dossier Overrated

Mar 18, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

In yet another stunning blow to the so-called "Steele Dossier" assembled by former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, the former chief of the (MI6) said the hastily cobbled-together report by his former employee is "overrated" and its salacious claims against Donald Trump unlikely to be verified, as the Daily Wire 's Ashe Schow reports.

Following an appearance at the Jamestown Foundation's 12th annual terrorism conference in Washington D.C., Sir John Scarlett - who headed the British Secret Intelligence Service from 2004 to 2009, fielded a question from journalist Nicholas Ballasy, who asked Scarlett what he thought of the dossier and if he believed what was written in it.

"Well, no," said Scarlett, adding "I looked at it and I thought these are commercial intelligence reports; I don't know about the sources -- they might be right, they might be wrong and they'll probably be overrated and they've been overrated. "

When asked if the dossier could ever be verified, Steele's former boss said "No."

Ballasy then asked Scarlett if he was surprised that Steele would produce the dossier using unverified information, to which the former MI6 head replied:

"Well, they were commercial intelligence reports and they were visibly that so there's a question of why they were there and where they came from and who commissioned them and so on," adding" So, I've tended to see them in that context and never quite of political significance for obvious reasons and actually if you think about it, people have talked about them in a really big way a year or so ago and they haven't really made that much of a difference. "

"As I said, I suspect, all I can say, is they are overrated. "

When asked about what Steele was like to work with, Scarlett replied: " I'm not going to comment ," before walking away. We're guessing he's probably tired of MI6 having been mentioned in the same breath as Steele for the last several years.

Listen:

https://www.youtube.com/embed/hSxBL86YuVY

[Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies

Highly recommended!
Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services?
Notable quotes:
"... Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? ..."
"... "Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5." ..."
"... Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll. ..."
"... The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants. ..."
"... As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career". ..."
"... Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance. ..."
Mar 03, 2006 | www.nytimes.com

Can you trust the BBC news? How many journalists are working for the security services? The following extracts are from an article at the excellent Medialens

http://www.medialens.org/alerts/06/060303_hacks_and_spooks.php

HACKS AND SPOOKS

By Professor Richard Keeble

And so to Nottingham University (on Sunday 26 February) for a well-attended conference...

I focus in my talk on the links between journalists and the intelligence services: While it might be difficult to identify precisely the impact of the spooks (variously represented in the press as "intelligence", "security", "Whitehall" or "Home Office" sources) on mainstream politics and media, from the limited evidence it looks to be enormous.

As Roy Greenslade, media specialist at the Telegraph (formerly the Guardian), commented:

"Most tabloid newspapers - or even newspapers in general - are playthings of MI5."

Bloch and Fitzgerald, in their examination of covert UK warfare, report the editor of "one of Britain's most distinguished journals" as believing that more than half its foreign correspondents were on the MI6 payroll.

And in 1991, Richard Norton-Taylor revealed in the Guardian that 500 prominent Britons paid by the CIA and the now defunct Bank of Commerce and Credit International, included 90 journalists.

In their analysis of the contemporary secret state, Dorril and Ramsay gave the media a crucial role. The heart of the secret state they identified as the security services, the cabinet office and upper echelons of the Home and Commonwealth Offices, the armed forces and Ministry of Defence, the nuclear power industry and its satellite ministries together a network of senior civil servants.

As "satellites" of the secret state, their list included "agents of influence in the media, ranging from actual agents of the security services, conduits of official leaks, to senior journalists merely lusting after official praise and, perhaps, a knighthood at the end of their career".

Phillip Knightley, author of a seminal history of the intelligence services, has even claimed that at least one intelligence agent is working on every Fleet Street newspaper.

A brief history

Going as far back as 1945, George Orwell no less became a war correspondent for the Observer - probably as a cover for intelligence work. Significantly most of the men he met in Paris on his assignment, Freddie Ayer, Malcolm Muggeridge, Ernest Hemingway were either working for the intelligence services or had close links to them.

Stephen Dorril, in his seminal history of MI6, reports that Orwell attended a meeting in Paris of resistance fighters on behalf of David Astor, his editor at the Observer and leader of the intelligence service's unit liasing with the French resistance.

The release of Public Record Office documents in 1995 about some of the operations of the MI6-financed propaganda unit, the Information Research Department of the Foreign Office, threw light on this secret body - which even Orwell aided by sending them a list of "crypto-communists". Set up by the Labour government in 1948, it "ran" dozens of Fleet Street journalists and a vast array of news agencies across the globe until it was closed down by Foreign Secretary David Owen in 1977.

According to John Pilger in the anti-colonial struggles in Kenya, Malaya and Cyprus, IRD was so successful that the journalism served up as a record of those episodes was a cocktail of the distorted and false in which the real aims and often atrocious behaviour of the British intelligence agencies was hidden.

And spy novelist John le Carré, who worked for MI6 between 1960 and 1964, has made the amazing statement that the British secret service then controlled large parts of the press – just as they may do today.

In 1975, following Senate hearings on the CIA, the reports of the Senate's Church Committee and the House of Representatives' Pike Committee highlighted the extent of agency recruitment of both British and US journalists.

And sources revealed that half the foreign staff of a British daily were on the MI6 payroll.

David Leigh, in The Wilson Plot, his seminal study of the way in which the secret service smeared through the mainstream media and destabilised the Government of Harold Wilson before his sudden resignation in 1976, quotes an MI5 officer: "We have somebody in every office in Fleet Street"

Leaker King

And the most famous whistleblower of all, Peter (Spycatcher) Wright, revealed that MI5 had agents in newspapers and publishing companies whose main role was to warn them of any forthcoming "embarrassing publications".

Wright also disclosed that the Daily Mirror tycoon, Cecil King, "was a longstanding agent of ours" who "made it clear he would publish anything MI5 might care to leak in his direction".

Selective details about Wilson and his secretary, Marcia Falkender, were leaked by the intelligence services to sympathetic Fleet Street journalists. Wright comments: "No wonder Wilson was later to claim that he was the victim of a plot". King was also closely involved in a scheme in 1968 to oust Prime Minister Harold Wilson and replace him with a coalition headed by Lord Mountbatten.

Hugh Cudlipp, editorial director of the Mirror from 1952 to 1974, was also closely linked to intelligence, according to Chris Horrie, in his recently published history of the newspaper.

David Walker, the Mirror's foreign correspondent in the 1950s, was named as an MI6 agent following a security scandal while another Mirror journalist, Stanley Bonnet, admitted working for MI5 in the 1980s investigating the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament.

Maxwell and Mossad

According to Stephen Dorril, intelligence gathering during the miners' strike of 1984-85 was helped by the fact that during the 1970s MI5's F Branch had made a special effort to recruit industrial correspondents – with great success.

In 1991, just before his mysterious death, Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell was accused by the US investigative journalist Seymour Hersh of acting for Mossad, the Israeli secret service, though Dorril suggests his links with MI6 were equally as strong.

Following the resignation from the Guardian of Richard Gott, its literary editor in December 1994 in the wake of allegations that he was a paid agent of the KGB, the role of journalists as spies suddenly came under the media spotlight – and many of the leaks were fascinating.

For instance, according to The Times editorial of 16 December 1994: "Many British journalists benefited from CIA or MI6 largesse during the Cold War."

The intimate links between journalists and the secret services were highlighted in the autobiography of the eminent newscaster Sandy Gall. He reports without any qualms how, after returning from one of his reporting assignments to Afghanistan, he was asked to lunch by the head of MI6. "It was very informal, the cook was off so we had cold meat and salad with plenty of wine. He wanted to hear what I had to say about the war in Afghanistan. I was flattered, of course, and anxious to pass on what I could in terms of first-hand knowledge."

And in January 2001, the renegade MI6 officer, Richard Tomlinson, claimed Dominic Lawson, the editor of the Sunday Telegraph and son of the former Tory chancellor, Nigel Lawson, provided journalistic cover for an MI6 officer on a mission to the Baltic to handle and debrief a young Russian diplomat who was spying for Britain.

Lawson strongly denied the allegations.

Similarly in the reporting of Northern Ireland, there have been longstanding concerns over security service disinformation. Susan McKay, Northern editor of the Dublin-based Sunday Tribune, has criticised the reckless reporting of material from "dodgy security services". She told a conference in Belfast in January 2003 organised by the National Union of Journalists and the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission: "We need to be suspicious when people are so ready to provide information and that we are, in fact, not being used." (www.nuj.org.uk/inner.php?docid=635)

Growing power of secret state

Thus from this evidence alone it is clear there has been a long history of links between hacks and spooks in both the UK and US.

But as the secret state grows in power, through massive resourcing, through a whole raft of legislation – such as the Official Secrets Act, the anti-terrorism legislation, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act and so on – and as intelligence moves into the heart of Blair's ruling clique so these links are even more significant.

Since September 11 all of Fleet Street has been awash in warnings by anonymous intelligence sources of terrorist threats.

According to former Labour minister Michael Meacher, much of this disinformation was spread via sympathetic journalists by the Rockingham cell within the MoD.

A parallel exercise, through the office of Special Plans, was set up by Donald Rumsfeld in the US. Thus there have been constant attempts to scare people – and justify still greater powers for the national security apparatus.

Similarly the disinformation about Iraq's WMD was spread by dodgy intelligence sources via gullible journalists.

Thus, to take just one example, Michael Evans, The Times defence correspondent, reported on 29 November 2002: "Saddam Hussein has ordered hundred of his officials to conceal weapons of mass destruction components in their homes to evade the prying eyes of the United Nations inspectors." The source of these "revelations" was said to be "intelligence picked up from within Iraq". Early in 2004, as the battle for control of Iraq continued with mounting casualties on both sides, it was revealed that many of the lies about Saddam Hussein's supposed WMD had been fed to sympathetic journalists in the US, Britain and Australia by the exile group, the Iraqi National Congress.

Sexed up – and missed out

During the controversy that erupted following the end of the "war" and the death of the arms inspector Dr David Kelly (and the ensuing Hutton inquiry) the spotlight fell on BBC reporter Andrew Gilligan and the claim by one of his sources that the government (in collusion with the intelligence services) had "sexed up" a dossier justifying an attack on Iraq.

The Hutton inquiry, its every twist and turn massively covered in the mainstream media, was the archetypal media spectacle that drew attention from the real issue: why did the Bush and Blair governments invade Iraq in the face of massive global opposition? But those facts will be forever secret.

Significantly, too, the broader and more significant issue of mainstream journalists' links with the intelligence services was ignored by the inquiry.

Significantly, on 26 May 2004, the New York Times carried a 1,200-word editorial admitting it had been duped in its coverage of WMD in the lead-up to the invasion by dubious Iraqi defectors, informants and exiles (though it failed to lay any blame on the US President: see Greenslade 2004). Chief among The Times' dodgy informants was Ahmad Chalabi, leader of the Iraqi National Congress and Pentagon favourite before his Baghdad house was raided by US forces on 20 May.

Then, in the Observer of 30 May 2004, David Rose admitted he had been the victim of a "calculated set-up" devised to foster the propaganda case for war. "In the 18 months before the invasion of March 2003, I dealt regularly with Chalabi and the INC and published stories based on interviews with men they said were defectors from Saddam's regime." And he concluded: "The information fog is thicker than in any previous war, as I know now from bitter personal experience. To any journalist being offered apparently sensational disclosures, especially from an anonymous intelligence source, I offer two words of advice: caveat emptor."

Let's not forget no British newspaper has followed the example of the NYT and apologised for being so easily duped by the intelligence services in the run up to the illegal invasion of Iraq.

~

Richard Keeble's publications include Secret State, Silent Press: New Militarism, the Gulf and the Modern Image of Warfare (John Libbey 1997) and The Newspapers Handbook (Routledge, fourth edition, 2005). He is also the editor of Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. Richard is also a member of the War and Media Network.

[Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq?

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children. ..."
"... Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War". ..."
"... The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war. ..."
"... the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces. ..."
"... The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening ..."
"... In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing. ..."
"... The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. ..."
"... Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet. ..."
"... But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day. ..."
Oct 10, 2014 | The Guardian
BradBenson, 10 October 2014 6:14pm
The American Public has gotten exactly what it deserved. They have been dumbed-down in our poor-by-intention school systems. The moronic nonsense that passes for news in this country gets more sensational with each passing day. Over on Fox, they are making the claim that ISIS fighters are bringing Ebola over the Mexican Border, which prompted a reply by the Mexican Embassy that won't be reported on Fox.

We continue to hear and it was even reported in this very fine article by Ms. Benjamin that the American People now support this new war. Really? I'm sorry, but I haven't seen that support anywhere but on the news and I just don't believe it any more.

There is also the little problem of infiltration into key media slots by paid CIA Assets (Scarborough and brainless Mika are two of these double dippers). Others are intermarried. Right-wing Neocon War Criminal Dan Senor is married to "respected" newsperson Campbell Brown who is now involved in privatizing our school system. Victoria Nuland, the slimey State Department Official who was overheard appointing the members of the future Ukrainian Government prior to the Maidan Coup is married to another Neo-Con--Larry Kagan. Even sweet little Andrea Mitchell is actually Mrs. Alan Greenspan.

General Electric, the world's largest military contractor, still controls the message over at the so-called "liberal" MSNBC. MSNBC's other owner is Comcast, the right wing media conglomerate that controls the radio waves in every major American Market. Over at CNN, Mossad Asset Wolf Blitzer, who rose from being an obscure little correspondent for an Israeli Newspaper to being CNN's Chief "Pentagon Correspondent" and then was elevated to supreme anchorman nearly as quickly, ensures that the pro-Israeli Message is always in the forefront, even as the Israeli's commit one murderous act after another upon helpless Palestinian Women and Children.

Every single "terrorism expert", General or former Government Official that is brought out to discuss the next great war is connected to a military contractor that stands to benefit from that war. Not surprisingly, the military option is the only option discussed and we are assured that, if only we do this or bomb that, then it will all be over and we can bring our kids home to a big victory parade. I'm 63 and it has never happened in my lifetime--with the exception of the phony parade that Bush Senior put on after his murderous little "First Gulf War".

Yesterday there was a coordinated action by all of the networks, which was clearly designed to support the idea that the generals want Obama to act and he just won't. The not-so-subtle message was that the generals were right and that the President's "inaction" was somehow out of line-since, after all, the generals have recommended more war. It was as if these people don't remember that the President, sleazy War Criminal that he is, is still the Commander in Chief.

The Generals in the Pentagon always want war. It is how they make rank. All of those young kids that just graduated from our various academies know that war experience is the only thing that will get them the advancement that they seek in the career that they have chosen. They are champing at the bit for more war.

Finally, this Sunday every NFL Game will begin with some Patriotic "Honor America" Display, which will include a missing man flyover, flags and fireworks, plenty of uniforms, wounded Vets and soon-to-be-wounded Vets. A giant American Flag will, once again, cover the fields and hundreds of stupid young kids will rush down to their "Military Career Center" right after the game. These are the ones that I pity most.

BaronVonAmericano , 10 October 2014 6:26pm
Let's be frank: powerful interests want war and subsequent puppet regimes in the half dozen nations that the neo-cons have been eyeing (Iraq, Iran, Libya, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan). These interests surely include industries like banking, arms and oil-all of whom make a killing on any war, and would stand to do well with friendly governments who could finance more arms purchases and will never nationalize the oil.

So, the same PR campaign that started with Bush and Cheney continues-the exact same campaign. Obviously, they have to come back at the apple with variations, but any notion that the "media will get it someday" is willfully ignorant of the obvious fact that there is an agenda, and that agenda just won't stop until it's achieved-or revolution supplants the influence of these dark forces.

IanB52, 10 October 2014 6:57pm

The US media are indeed working overtime to get this war happening. When I'm down at the gym they always have CNN on (I can only imagine what FOX is like) which is a pretty much dyed in the wool yellow jingoist station at this point. With all the segments they dedicate to ISIS, a new war, the "imminent" terrorist threat, they seem to favor talking heads who support a full ground war and I have never, not once, heard anyone even speak about the mere possibility of peace. Not ever.

In media universe there is no alternative to endless war and an endless stream of hyped reasons for new killing.

I'd imagine that these media companies have a lot stock in and a cozy relationship with the defense contractors.

Damiano Iocovozzi, 10 October 2014 7:04pm

The media machine is a wholly owned subsidiary of the United States of Corporations. The media doesn't report on anything but relies on repeating manufactured crises, creating manufactured consent & discussing manufactured solutions. Follow the oil, the pipelines & the money. Both R's & D's are left & right cheeks of the same buttock. Thanks to Citizens United & even Hobby Lobby, a compliant Supreme Court, also owned by United States of Corporations, it's a done deal.

ID5868758 , 10 October 2014 10:20pm
Oh, the greatest propaganda arm the US government has right now, bar none, is the American media. It's disgraceful. we no longer have journalists speaking truth to power in my country, we have people practicing stenography, straight from the State Department to your favorite media outlet.

Let me give you one clear example. A year ago Barack Obama came very close to bombing Syria to kingdom come, the justification used was "Assad gassed his own people", referring to a sarin gas attack near Damascus. Well, it turns out that Assad did not initiate that attack, discovered by research from many sources including the prestigious MIT, it was a false flag attack planned by Turkey and carried out by some of Obama's own "moderate rebels".

But all that research from MIT, from the UN, and others, has been buried by the American media, and every single story on Syria and Assad that is written still refers to "Assad gassing his own people". It's true, it's despicable, and it's just one example of how our media lies and distorts and misrepresents the news every day.

[Mar 16, 2019] The UK and US are tightly connected

Today's Craig Murray commentary proves beyond doubt that elites of the USA and UK are very tightly connected
Mar 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
the Attorney General , no less.

The Westminster Government's contempt for international law was fully demonstrated just two weeks ago when it repudiated the International Court of Justice – an act which is the ultimate disavowal of the rule of international law – over the decolonisation of the Chagos Islands. So in one sense it is no shock that they are prepared to sign a treaty with no intention of honoring it.

But what is quite astonishing is that the discussions with the DUP and ERG on how to sign up to the backstop and then dishonour it, have been carried out fully in public, and with the potential other party to the treaty looking on.

I simply do not see how the EU can now sign the Withdrawal Agreement which was negotiated with May, when they have been given firm evidence that the UK intends to cheat on that Agreement.

I especially cannot understand the pusillanimous attitude of the government of Ireland to this development. The UK has published in advance that it is taking Ireland and the Irish people for fools and has no intention of keeping to the Irish backstop. The reaction of the Government of Ireland is to pretend not to notice. That is an astonishing dereliction of its duty to the people of Ireland, North and South.

The more so as Geoffrey Cox's "advice" is an unsubtle hint to the DUP, should the backstop become effective, to restart the Loyalist violence with which they were for decades so closely associated, in order to provide the pretext for cancelling the backstop. In reading this, it is essential to remember that this legal advice was written, as a matter of definite fact, directly for the DUP audience to try and influence the DUP in the next "meaningful" vote. To signal to an organisation as steeped in blood as the DUP that the way out of the "Backstop" arrangement which they so hate, would be to demonstrate it is having a "socially destabilising effect in Northern Ireland", clearly gives a very direct incentive to Loyalists to restart violence.

Anybody who knows anything about the history and politics of Northern Ireland must be aware that what I have just written is true. At the very best reading, Cox's "advice" is grossly irresponsible and reckless.

It is also very poor legal advice. Unlike Geoffrey Cox, I have actually negotiated a number of international treaties, including most of the UK's continental shelf boundary agreements, the Protocol on Deep Seabed Mining to UNCLOS and the Sierra Leone Peace Agreement. Cox's interpretation of Article 62 of the Vienna Convention on Treaties is complete nonsense. To start with, Article 62 is designed not to facilitate but to prevent treaties being dishonoured under the excuse of "unforseen circumstances". It reads:

Article 62
Fundamental change of circumstances
1. A fundamental change of circumstances which has occurred with regard to those existing at the
time of the conclusion of a treaty, and which was not foreseen by the parties, may not be invoked as a
ground for terminating or withdrawing from the treaty unless:
(a) the existence of those circumstances constituted an essential basis of the consent of the parties to
be bound by the treaty; and
21
(b) the effect of the change is radically to transform the extent of obligations still to be performed
under the treaty.
2. A fundamental change of circumstances may not be invoked as a ground for terminating or
withdrawing from a treaty:
(a) if the treaty establishes a boundary; or
(b) if the fundamental change is the result of a breach by the party invoking it either of an obligation
under the treaty or of any other international obligation owed to any other party to the treaty.
3. If, under the foregoing paragraphs, a party may invoke a fundamental change of circumstances
as a ground for terminating or withdrawing from a treaty it may also invoke the change as a ground for
suspending the operation of the treaty.

Very plainly indeed, neither 1 a) nor 1 b) apply to the situation Cox outlines. Just not working out the way you intended is not grounds to dishonor a treaty. Social discontent in Northern Ireland would not radically transform the obligations under the treaty nor is social content the essential basis of consent to the treaty.

The second, and frankly hilarious, point is that Cox's advice is demonstrably nonsense. To permit the dishonoring of the treaty, a change in circumstance must not only be "fundamental" it must also be "unforeseen". Yet in his legal advice Cox foresees and specifies the "unforeseen" event that might lead to cancellation!

I rest my case.

It is worth reminding you – as the MSM refuse to do – that the Tory Brexiteers oppose the Good Friday Agreement, and destroying it is to them a potential gain from Brexit rather than a disaster to be averted. Remember this by Michael Gove, asserting that the British military option would be better than the Good Friday Agreement?

Ulster's future lies, ultimately, either as a Province of the United
Kingdom or a united Ireland. Attempts to fudge or finesse that
truth only create an ambiguity which those who profit by violence
will seek to exploit. Therefore, the best guarantee for stability is the
assertion by the Westminster Government that it will defend, with
all vigour, the right of the democratic majority in Northern Ireland
to remain in the United Kingdom. Ulster could then be governed
with an Assembly elected on the same basis as Wales, and an
administration constituted in the same way. Minority rights should
be protected by the same legal apparatus which exists across the
UK. The legislative framework which has guaranteed the rights and
freedoms of Roman Catholics and ethnic minorities in Liverpool
and London should apply equally in Belfast and Belleek

In such circumstances, resolute security action, the use of
existing antiterrorist legislation and the careful application of
intelligence could reduce the IRA to operating as it did in the fifties
and sixties. Combining such security measures with a political
determination not to allow Ulster's constitutional status to be altered
by force of arms would rob the republicans of hope.
It can be done. But does any Government have the will?

Interestingly enough, after I published an article on Gove's 58 page pamphlet attacking the Good Friday Agreement, the Tory think tank which published it, the Centre for Policy Studies, immediately took it down from the web. I have, however, copied it to my own website.

By chance, my next couple of speaking engagements are in Northern Ireland. This is not the subject I was intending to discuss, but I never know what I am going to say when I stand up anyway. Happy to answer questions on anything.

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

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[Mar 15, 2019] Omidyar's Democracy Fund has also helped to finance the "News Integrity Initiative," a name that evokes the U.K.'s notorious Integrity Initiative.

Mar 15, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Blooming Barricade , Mar 14, 2019 5:36:22 PM | link

Pierre Omidyar opens up new Integrity Initiative

Omidyar's Democracy Fund has also helped to finance the "News Integrity Initiative," a name that evokes the U.K.'s notorious Integrity Initiative. The latter group claimed to be an independent charity battling foreign disinformation until it was exposed by hackers as a propaganda mill run by military officers and covertly funded by the British Foreign Office to cultivate public opinion in support of heightened conflict with Russia. Leaked communications revealed how the Integrity Initiative mobilized clusters of journalists, self-styled disinformation experts, academics and political figures throughout the West to advocate for a long-term war footing against the Russian menace.

For its part, the News Integrity Initiative is a murky $14 million operation intended to "combat media manipulation" through a network of "journalists, technologists, academic institutions, non-profits, and other organizations." The set-up is eerily evocative of the influence clusters developed by the British Integrity Initiative. Few specifics are provided, however, on what the group actually does.

A hint about the agenda of the News Integrity Initiative lies in a grant of $1 million it made to an outlet called Internews in 2017. The bulk of Internews' money -- some 80 percent of it -- comes from the U.S. government. It has also received backing from liberal financier George Soros and USAID, which provided the group with seed money for a Russian-language television network, helped drive the pro-NATO color revolution in the Republic of Georgia, and published footage of Russian casualties in Chechnya to erode Russian public support for the war.

In countries that are considered official and semi-official enemies of the United States, Internews has organized de facto boot camps for opposition journalists. "In the Middle East," says Internews founder David Hoffman, "training sessions often begin with discussion of whether Internews is really U.S. propaganda or the CIA." However Hoffman answers the question, it is abundantly clear that his outlet has advanced Washington's priorities abroad behind the guise of independent journalism.

In November 2017, the News Integrity Initiative hosted a workshop alongside Internews and the Omidyar-backed First Draft News in Kiev, Ukraine, according to the initiative's managing director, Molly de Aguiar. Kiev is today a nexus for intelligence-connected media crusaders and a launch pad for projects ostensibly aimed at countering Russia's "information warfare." But, what exactly the News Integrity Initiative was doing there was left unsaid.

While Omidyar ploughs his fortune into organizations that claim to be countering "disinformation," especially of the Russian variety, he has established a culture factory to publicize the supposed feats of the journalists often hyped up by the cartel of media transparency groups and fact-checking sites he funds.

http://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2019/03/how-one-of-americas-premier-data_5.html

[Mar 14, 2019] Manafort's Ukrainians were actually pro-West? - Habakkuk

Highly recommended!
Mar 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Habakkuk

Unfortunately, I have been taken up with the doings of another Christopher – surnamed Donnelly – whose antics with the 'Institute for Statecraft' and 'Integrity Initiative' seem just as ludicrous as those of Steele, and equally destructive.

I hope to come back to the implications of what has been coming out on your side about the dossier attributed to Steele in more depth in the none-too-distant future, particular if in fact the depositions made by him and David Kramer are unsealed reasonably promptly, but some background remarks may be worth throwing into the discussion.

It cannot be repeated often enough that an enormous amount of damage has been done as a result of people forming their impressions of MI6 from David Cornwell, aka John Le Carré, rather than Graham Greene.

A critical point is that, while if 'humint' is pursued by competent people, it can be invaluable, if pursued by incompetents, like so many of those Greene had known in his time in the wartime MI6, and portrayed so marvellously in 'Our Man in Havana', it is common for an 'echo chamber' to be set up, where people are told what they want to hear.

Those providing the 'echo' may genuinely share the delusions involved – or they may cynically exploit these, as part of a deliberate strategy of making the incompetents instruments of their own agendas (as MI5 and the Naval Intelligence Division did with the Abwehr during the war. MI6, largely incompetent apart from the section Philby ran, was marginal.)

That precisely this kind of 'echo chamber' had been set up by the Berezovsky group with people like Steele was the thrust of a pointed remark made by Andrei Lugovoi in the press conference on 31 May 2007 where he responded to the Crown Prosecution Service request for his extradition.

[Mar 07, 2019] Wooing the Russians: how Spain and Italy are trying to lure back lost tourists by Stephen Burgen & Stephanie Kirchgaessner & Alec Luhn

This is from 2015. Not much changes since the introduction of sanctions.
Sep 04, 2015 | The Guardian

MaoChengJi -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 22:10

"Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment. " Oh rather you're brainwashed daily that Russia is an awful place where Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment.

I'm pretty sure not a single Russian believes that the west is going to invade. For reasons that are obvious, or should be obvious.

runner911 -> notoriousANDinfamous 5 Sep 2015 04:23

You must be joking ! 70 per cent of Americans do not know what the Constitution is, and six per cent don't even know when Independence Day falls. In a recent survey just over a half of Americans didn't know what the Taliban are , despite the fact they led the charge in Afghanistan.

When looking at a map of the world, young Americans had a difficult time correctly identifying Iraq (1 in 7) and Afghanistan (17%). This isn't that surprising, but only a slim majority (51%) knew where New York was. According to Forbes and National Geographic, an alarming 29% couldn't point to the Pacific Ocean.

Many didn't know where Europe is let alone Spain.

Americans cultural ? What a hoot !

runner911 -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 04:09

Be assured Russia is more than capable of defending itself against Western ( USA ) aggression, plus they hold the biggest nuclear arsenal on the planet , so lets be clear no-one is going to attack Russia and risk nuclear annihilation in return. As regards being surrounded by NATO, how do you think the yanks would react if the same were to apply to the USA and that sad corrupt country was surrounded by Russian Forces ? The last time it happened in 1962, as I recall the yanks were whining like whipped dogs, but eventually agreed to dismantle their missiles in Turkey provided the Russians did the same in Cuba.

Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 5 Sep 2015 11:59

You lost the argument, so you are trying to change the subject. Now we can see why Western media doesn't allow an open discussion - you don't have much to say.

East-central Europe was invaded by Germans, Russians, Ottomans, French, even the Swedes. Germans murdered about 15 million people here. Ottomans (Turks) about 10 million. Russians liberated us from a murderous German occupation after WWII and stayed way too long...

Russian victims are in tens of thousands. Given that Russians lost about 1.5 million soldiers liberating us from Germans and saved us from planned extermination by Nazis over time, we keep some perspective about it. But I am not sure your ideological and slogan-driven thinking would understand any of it...

EugeneGur -> zenithmaster 5 Sep 2015 11:43

This has zero to do with Russia's poor relations with the EU and everything to do the Russians' smaller spending power.

This is not quite true. You underestimate the power of the sentiment. One example: Russian tourism to Estonia dropped 60% after the scandal with the Bronze soldier in 2007, long before any decrease in the buying power, and it never recovered.

You are right, of course, that the decreased value of the ruble affected mass tourism, but the effect was multiplied by the anger towards Europe, believe me, it was. Going through the visa process was always annoying and humiliating but under the present circumstances it became unbearable. This one thing that affects all European countries whether its Bulgaria or Italy.

MaoChengJi -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 09:56

Yeah, something like what thecorporateclass said above.

I'll add this: deep down even people like you don't believe in any Russian 'invasion' in Ukraine. They know: if Russia did invade, it would've been over long time ago. The question, rather, is about Kiev regime's control of the border, which would amount to a blockade of Donetsk-Lugansk republics; blocking all the supplies, attacking from all directions, and exterminating people who feel ethnically Russian.

This can not happen: it would've brought the Russian government down, and therefore no Russian government could participate in it; be it led by Putin, Dugin, or Navalny, or anyone at all. It's just a physical impossibility. IMO.

TheCorporateClass -> jezzam 5 Sep 2015 06:37

The West agrees to drop this missile shield, Putin agrees to stop his military interference in Ukraine.

This needs correcting IF it is to work as a solution.

The West agrees to drop this missile shield, agrees to stop it's interventions into Ukrainian government and it's politics, agrees to stop FUNDING and GUIDING far right neo-nazi militias and their political wings, agrees to stop making intentionally false/unproven/fictional accusations against Russia & Putin's Government, stops providing military intelligence to Ukraine (a non-Nato country), and admits to the direct connection between the externally caused "political and social" instability in Ukraine begun by EU/NATA and the externally caused "political and social" instability and then Civil War in Syria with oil/gas supplies from Russia and Qatar ... then that would be a great first step towards the truth of matters bullshit.

Then all of Russia and Putin at their ELECTED President would no doubt agree to stop his humane military interference in Ukraine on behalf of those people having their human rights and lives taken by ideologically driven psychopaths and their corrupt crazies from Washington, Berlin, Riyadh, Doha, and Tel Aiv.

Simple really.

HollyOldDog -> raffine 5 Sep 2015 04:59

Whereas there are convoys of Russian trucks that are stopping the East Ukrainians of starving to death. The only 'gifts' that West Ukraine gives to their East compatriates is constant shelling, grad missile fire, mine fields and snipers that shoot any East Ukrainians on sight whether they are men ,women or children.

MaoChengJi -> jezzam 4 Sep 2015 23:48

I believe the western anti-missile installations along the Russian borders give the impression that the US is trying to break the MAD balance and create, at some point in the future, a defense against retaliatory nuclear strike. That seems like the only rational explanation for those installations. For do you think they are for?

MaoChengJi -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 22:10

"Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment. "

Oh rather you're brainwashed daily that Russia is an awful pleace where Russians are brainwashed daily that the West is an awful place and we are going to invade them at any moment.

I'm pretty sure not a signle Russian believes that the west is going to invade. For reasons that are obvious, or should be obvious.

crackling -> MaoChengJi 4 Sep 2015 22:03

fingerprints is copying GWBush's data collection on citizens and visitors to the US - last night I just had my photo and fingerprints taken on customs entry to Taiwan - I expect it's becoming the norm these days.

Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 21:22

Address Obama's admission that "US assisted in the transition of power", why do you skip over it? $15 billion was a loan and it was used for the Ukrainian budget. If someone stole some of it, prove it and charge them.

I never said that Russians didn't try to influence Kiev, but so did US - listen to the recording, it assigns roles for different protest leaders. Ashton was an EU official and she was standing with the protestors - so were many others, incl. Nuland, ambassador, etc... - that goes way beyond "trade agreement".

I am a Slovak and I comment on anything I feel like. If you have a problem with that, maybe you don't understand democracy and freedom of speech. By the way, most people in my part of Europe (from Budapest to Vienna to Prague) roughly share my view of the situation. We know Russians, we know Ukrainians, and we can judge for ourselves.

Popeyes -> andy4248 4 Sep 2015 19:45

It's very sad but Russians are for more aware of what's going on politically than their Western counterparts. The fact that they have a low opinion of Westerners is hardly surprising and they certainly don't have to be " brainwashed ' by the Kremlin to know what's going on. They only have to look at Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Ukraine the list is endless to figure it out. You could blame GM food for the fact that Americans seem to be pretty dim and clueless on Europeans affairs, but as for the rest of Europeans I guess they are the ones that are really "brainwashed".

Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 19:32

Thou protest too much.

The "baroness" was an EU foreign secretary, that's pretty high up. In addition: US ambassador, assistant sec for Europe (Nuland), and a number of other officials were at the Maidan protests - videos and all.

The recording was very specific about who (Yats) should be Prime Minister and how it should be done. If US also does that in Spain, that's even a bigger problem.

$5bn is a lot of "civil organizations" - most of it in the last 5-10 years. Russia gave a loan - that is very different.

Finally, Obama literally said "we assisted with the transition of power in Ukraine"
what other proof can one possible have than an admission by the chief?

By the way I used the term "assist in an overthrow". To "orchestrate" is more pro-active. Given what has been made public there definitely was "assistance" (see Obama's statement above), whether that amounts to "orchestrate" like in 1953 Iran, I would leave to the historians.

Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 18:52

There are videos of dozens of Western leaders standing on the podium with the demonstrators on Maidan (just imagine Lavrov joinig an Occupy protest in New York or London).

There are recordings of Nuland deciding on who will run Ukraine ("f...k Europe").

US spent 5 billion in 20 years on "civil groups" in Ukraine.

If you prefer an infantile denial, I can't help you. Just don't be surprised if you become irrelevant.

Beckow -> dmitryfrommoscow 4 Sep 2015 18:34

Yes it was always mostly about the visa-free access to EU. Ukrainians want to move to Europe for jobs, benefits, school, etc... That was what drove Maidan energy (and US took advantage of it).

But your numbers are off. There are about 1 million Ukrainians now in EU, mostly in UK, Czech, Hungary and Poland. E.g. Poland has about 400,000 new Ukrainian migrants. The real large numbers are yet to come. I think they will - they are watching the Syrians and getting jealous, worried that all the empathy will be used up. Slovakia (my country) has camps ready on the border. We also suddenly have a lot of Ukrainians who have discovered the Slovak (or Czech) heritage. The same thing is going on in Poland, Romania and Hungary.

Millions are coming. And they won't be tourists or have money for Italian hotels. But I am sure the Western media will find a way to blame it on Russia. Such are the pleasures of dead-end ideologies, everything is very simple: "Putin did it!."

Beckow -> notoriousANDinfamous 4 Sep 2015 18:26

"US didn't orchestrate a coup in Ukraine and hasn't offered Kiev a military alliance"

I suppose that would depend on your definition of "orchestrate" and a "coup". Most rational observers would agree that US at a minimum assisted with the Maidan revolution (or a coup). There are videos, recordings, financial transfers. Until the whole Maidan thing went bad, the US State Department was very open about the assistance that they had provided on Maidan, Obama said "we assisted with the transition of power in Ukraine" (actual quote).

US has said since 2008 that Ukraine will join Nato. They reiterated it last year and Ukraine has an official policy of joining Nato. There are joint exercises and training with Nato. It is rather conclusive that US and Ukraine are having a "military alliance".

Given those two facts how can you deny it? Or do you also deny the nose between your eyes?

magicmirror1 4 Sep 2015 18:11

Fingerprints to get a visa.

Welcome to democratic EU. This is the future European leaders are building and I cannot understand why.

dmitryfrommoscow -> Ola Smith 4 Sep 2015 16:46

Ola, the problem is there are no 45 million people in Ukraine these days. As many as 2.8 million people with Ukrainian passports work and live in Russia alone. And I think twice as many live and work in the EU. And about five to seven million are in a crouch start position to rush elsewhere at the first opportunity that avails itself. After all the Maidan hullabaloo was about getting free access to European -- and probably North American -- job markets and disappearing there for good. Let's throw aside all that talk about 'democracy and values' and be honest about it.

[Mar 03, 2019] Why Is The British Government Banning Hizbullah

Notable quotes:
"... If a non government militia threatens a British citizen by its definition is a terrorist. The only British citizens that Hezbollah threatens are its Jihadists. So, now, England legally protects its Jihadis from Hezbollah. ..."
"... As Israel has long demanded, UK govt now follows US and designates political wing of #Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. This despite that Hezbollah is a part of the democratically elected govt of Lebanon, and has taken a lead in the fight against IS ..."
"... Israel has been "destabilising" the Near East for 70 years, simply by existing on land that belongs to Palestinian people. ..."
Mar 03, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Blooming Barricade , Mar 2, 2019 2:48:14 PM | link

Hmmm....maybe because the Establishment hates Arabs, loves Israel, and wants to place Jeremy Corbyn in an awkward position?

lysias , Mar 2, 2019 2:49:26 PM | link

Isn't Israel much more guilty of destabilizing the Middle East?
psychohistorian , Mar 2, 2019 2:59:47 PM | link
Thanks for the posting b

This move by the UK is more BS to keep the brainwashed in line as the lines of our new multi-polar world are drawn.

Will this get discussed at the UN or are there too many more pressing issues?

Is there a maximum chaos theory that posits that the more crazyness that is going on when the music stops provides the most opportunity for retaining control at the core?

goldhoarder , Mar 2, 2019 2:59:48 PM | link
The PLO's attacks on Israel's northern border prompted a full-scale invasion by Israeli troops in 1982, a conflict which angered south Lebanon's largely Shi'ia Muslim community -- which directly suffered the consequences of Israel's military intervention -- and fueling the rise of the next generation of militant groups, Hizballah among them. "When we entered Lebanon, there was no Hizballah. We were accepted by perfumed rice and flowers by the Shi'a in the south," Israeli defense minister Ehud Barak once noted. "It was our presence there that created Hizballah."
http://content.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1903301,00.html
Truth , Mar 2, 2019 3:11:21 PM | link
General Wesley Clark explains ISIS was created by U.S. Allies to destroy Hezbollah
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LFwGvk3k6WM

Hezbollah is Not a Threat to America
https://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/hezbollah-is-not-a-threat-to-america/

goldhoarder , Mar 2, 2019 3:11:36 PM | link
The Shia in Southern Lebanon were not an enemy of Israel until the 1982 invasion. In fact Hizbullah didn't even exist as an organization. It was founded in 1985 to resist the Israeli occupation and control of Southern Lebanon. The Shia of Southern Lebanon at first cheered Israeli army removing the Palestinians because they were poor, stealing, a drain on their resources, and had made a nuisance of themselves. Who wants to live next to a refugee camp? They were happy they Israelis kicked them out.

The IDF didn't just kick them out though. They began building military defenses, setting up roadblocks, establishing curfews, and treating the local population exactly like the Palestinians. The Shia community say the righting on the wall. They were to become the next Palestinians. Israel wanted their land too.

Hizbullah is the farthest thing from a terrorist organization there is. They are fighting for their homes, their families, and their right to exist and run their own lives in the lands they were born. No amount of Israeli and American propaganda or bullying other nations to call them terrorists actually makes them terrorists. If ever there was a group of humans fighting a justifiable war it is them.

Their fight is literally a fight for survival. They have no choice. The Israelis and Americans gave them no choice but to surrender their lands and homes or be brave enough to risk their lives and fight them with all they have and with whatever allies they can muster. That is why they are aligned with Syria, Iran, and to some extent Russia. They really have no choice after witnessing what has become of the Palestinians and realizing they are next.

les7 , Mar 2, 2019 3:15:02 PM | link
It is impossible to accuse Iran of supporting terrorism (and provide the basis for non-nuclear sanctions, or outright war) unless they first define Hizbollah as a terrorist organization
Villainesse , Mar 2, 2019 3:25:59 PM | link
In its deathrows, one of the British Empire's final, killing stabs was the completion of its newest colonial state, Israel, needed to keep the Middle East in bloody turmoil till the End of Time itself. The only force willing to take their toddler on? Hizbullah. Like a doting mother, any potential attack on their offspring brings out an insane level of visciousness.
Truth , Mar 2, 2019 3:28:55 PM | link
Sky News interview with George Galloway
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hbyF1Mp-fHk
John Doe , Mar 2, 2019 3:36:31 PM | link
What you will not do for the sake of Zionist Israel!!! In turn, Israel is ready to fight to the last American and British soldier.

Top US General Says American Troops Should Be Ready To Die For Israel
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-03-19/top-us-general-says-american-troops-should-be-ready-die-israel

Rania Khalek , Mar 2, 2019 3:39:15 PM | link
Hezbollah poses no threat to the UK or any western country. It's a Lebanese military group with a political wing that was critical to protecting Lebanon, Syria & Iraq against ISIS & has helped stabalize the Middle East. Nothing terrorist about it. It's a counter terror group.

https://twitter.com/RaniaKhalek/status/1100045429608251392

هادي نصرالله , Mar 2, 2019 3:44:53 PM | link
No matter what the whole world thinks of Hezbollah, they will always remain a legitimate Lebanese resistance in the eyes of their people.
No more words needed. Shame on the United Kingdom!
El Cid , Mar 2, 2019 3:49:03 PM | link
If a non government militia threatens a British citizen by its definition is a terrorist. The only British citizens that Hezbollah threatens are its Jihadists. So, now, England legally protects its Jihadis from Hezbollah.
Craig Murray , Mar 2, 2019 3:49:25 PM | link
Has the Elite's Slavish pro-Israel Agenda Finally Gone Too Far? - Hezbollah's defeat of the Israeli invasion of Lebanon in the July war of 2006 was heroic and an essential redress to the Middle East power balance. I supported Hezbollah's entirely

https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1100049149423173632

vk , Mar 2, 2019 3:52:12 PM | link
Probably they are going to arrest Corbyn and demoralize the entire British socialist movement in the process (making a bridge with the antisemitism thing).
bj , Mar 2, 2019 3:52:17 PM | link
Some money changed hands. That's why. Al-Jazeera has the video's. It's as banal as that.
هادي نصرالله , Mar 2, 2019 3:52:38 PM | link
Al-Qaeda affiliated so called "Syrian opposition" is welcoming a British absurd decision to list the Lebanese resistance Hezbollah as a "terrorist" organisation. Not surprised. After all, Hezbollah did crush their precious "moderate" jihadists and their Al Qaeda allies in Syria
Partisangirl , Mar 2, 2019 3:58:13 PM | link
So Hezbollah has been fighting AlQaeda in Syria for 8 years while the UK has been supporting AlQaeda. The UK has now put Hezbollah on a terror list. So why did they decide to do this now?
Jackrabbit , Mar 2, 2019 4:04:13 PM | link
Abrahamic religions have been scamming foolhardy people for over 2,000 years.

Continuing to present day with pedophile priests, tafiri nutjobs, and Zionist dickheads.

If governments had any sense, they would ban or regulate those who prey on the weak-minded because these fundamentalist asshat conmen have been responsible for more pain and suffering than any other organized human effort in the history of organized human efforts.

<> <> <> <> <> <> <>

Why is the British government doing this ban?

My cynical guesses would be that this is:

1) another anti-Corbin measure ahead of elections
May's Brexit plans were (deliberately ) a failure and who knows what else May has up her sleeve. The way things are going, Corbin may have a good chance at being PM. But the establishment will NEVER accept that (as per May's own words). So dirty tricks are in order. Banning Hezb follows from the previous effort to paint Corbin as anti-Semitic.

2) and could set-up a future false flag
Any "terrorist act" by any Shia could be interpreted as a response to this measure and provide a reason for FUKUS/NATO to bomb/invade Lebanon.

Sunny Runny Burger , Mar 2, 2019 4:09:11 PM | link
The Muppet Show has run out of applicable sex scandals since nearly everything including dead pigs is now normal and whatever is left involves serious jail time and worse. They've been unable to provoke enough nativist violence and see no choice but to try to annoy some of their imported voter-slaves instead. That will fail as well but from the Muppet Show's point of view it carries their narrative along for future false flags by people brainwashed and goaded into it.

Next: Britain when Brexit doesn't happen

Ali , Mar 2, 2019 4:10:53 PM | link
It's an open secret that several European countries are exchanging intelligence with Hezbollah to combat terrorist activity. If the UK is serious about its security, it should follow Germany and France in this cooperation, not childishly proscribe Hezbollah's political wing.

https://twitter.com/Ali_Kourani/status/1100075269384228864

Youtube , Mar 2, 2019 4:13:29 PM | link
Christian Singer Julia Boutros Honors Hezbollah in Stunning 2013 Concert Performance

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pdZgkGI5h0A

South Front , Mar 2, 2019 4:20:24 PM | link
Hezbollah is a social and political movement with a strong armed wing. It was formed in 1980s. Hezbollah's creation was conditioned by the aspiration of the Shia population of Lebanon to meet the challenges of Israeli expansion and Western "new-style" colonialism.

https://southfront.org/hezbollah-capabilities-role-middle-east-full-documentary/

Hezbollah – Capabilities And Role In The Middle East (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzBZpNxkui8

Pft , Mar 2, 2019 4:20:32 PM | link
I guess Bibi and his puppets want another go at Lebanon.
هادي نصرالله , Mar 2, 2019 4:29:50 PM | link
Hezbollah is banned in the UK according to Home Secretary Sajid Javid who is also a member and regular speaker for Conservative Friends of Israel Lobby group. Support for Hezbollah in any form will be a crime carrying up to 10 years jail. Israel has its fangs deep in UK politics
Charles Shoebridge , Mar 2, 2019 4:31:10 PM | link
As Israel has long demanded, UK govt now follows US and designates political wing of #Hezbollah as a terrorist organisation. This despite that Hezbollah is a part of the democratically elected govt of Lebanon, and has taken a lead in the fight against IS
Symen Danziger , Mar 2, 2019 4:34:50 PM | link
Hassan Nasrallah is one of the few people involved in politics who demands respect. Hezbollah whipped Israel's ass in 2006. With another Israeli military adventure in Lebanon on the horizon, the Anglo-American political prostitutes must provide some ROI on the shekels in their pockets.

It's all about the Benjamins!

Tom Welsh , Mar 2, 2019 4:39:50 PM | link
Israel has been "destabilising" the Near East for 70 years, simply by existing on land that belongs to Palestinian people. Even if the Jews killed the original owners, the land should still revert to their legitimate heirs.

It is rich for any member of a British government to complain about terrorism and destabilisation when the UK government is one of the world's worst offenders in those regards - and quite deliberately, too.

RT , Mar 2, 2019 4:47:03 PM | link
Speeches that still matter: Gen Wesley Clark on US going to war in 7 countries in 5 yrs: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gTbg11pCwOc

Speeches that matter: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLPszygYHA9K3soXXDIYn9d_LopJ_pcVj_

Truth , Mar 2, 2019 4:56:12 PM | link
UN Commission of Inquiry on the 2018 protests in Palestine finds that "Israeli snipers shot at journalists, health workers, children and persons with disabilities, knowing they were clearly recognizable as such."

Report of the independent international commission of inquiry on the protests in the Occupied Palestinian Territory
https://www.ohchr.org/EN/HRBodies/HRC/CoIOPT/Pages/Report2018OPT.aspx

Truth , Mar 2, 2019 4:58:34 PM | link
A war criminal has got new appointment... Tony Blair appointed as head of European body fighting antisemitism

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2015/jun/04/tony-blair-appointed-head-of-european-body-antisemitism

Laguerre , Mar 2, 2019 5:23:03 PM | link
The answer to the question "Why Is The British Government Banning Hizbullah?" is very easy.

The Lobby has helped the Tories in Britain a lot recently in painting Corbyn as an anti-Semite. Making sure that Corbyn never becomes prime minister is a big issue for them.

The payback for the Israeli help given is of course banning Hizbullah.

bevin , Mar 2, 2019 5:37:34 PM | link
It would be a fitting response, to this provocation from the Home Secretary, for as many British people as possible to follow @15 Craig Murray's courageous lead and indicate their admiration of, and unwavering support for, the Lebanese Resistance movement which has recently distinguished itself by its fight to save Syria from genocidal jihadists, funded and supported by the British government.
Why it is acceptable for Javid, the Tory PM May and the government to be contributing public funds to the White Helmets and Al Qaeda militias while banning support for their opponents is a question that the Labour Party should be demanding be answered.
boot error , Mar 2, 2019 6:18:07 PM | link
"Britain" stoped pretending and really started preping for a WWIII. Else called "Brexit" for the unsuspecting masses.
It doesn't mean they could pull this off though.
Hoarsewhisperer , Mar 2, 2019 6:34:09 PM | link
Has the Elite's Slavish pro-Israel Agenda Finally Gone Too Far?
...
Posted by: Craig Murray | Mar 2, 2019 3:49:25 PM | 15

Not yet, but it's another step in the right direction.
I want to see a few more gullible hi-profile pro-"Israel" ideologues scramble into rat trap Trump set for them with his utterly meaningless Jerusalem gambit.

boot error , Mar 2, 2019 6:58:16 PM | link
Another thing I wish to add is IMO "Britain" might have felt the need to ban Hizbullah before giving a Go to programes for distabilizing the Balkan peninsulae and its assorting archipelago at the south including both big islandic masses of Cyprus and last but not least Crete.

They want the locals completely desperate pivoting towards extreme right groups that are secretly being proped by cia/mossad/mi6,french,fukus in short.

Pnyx , Mar 2, 2019 6:59:02 PM | link
Sometimes soon the FUK, the Former United Kingdom, will have to get used to the fact, that they are not an Empire anymore.
Hoarsewhisperer , Mar 2, 2019 7:21:28 PM | link
This morning, Al Jazeera ran a snippet on "Israel's" bullying on the conditional reopening of al Aqsa Mosque which the "Israelis" closed 16 years ago, for HAMAS reasons. I lost count of the number of times they used the expression "occupied East Jerusalem" during the story...
ben , Mar 2, 2019 7:30:27 PM | link
Truth @ 9; Thanks for the Galloway video, everyone here should listen to it.

Galloway, as always, simply nails it.

duplicitousdemocracy , Mar 2, 2019 7:34:31 PM | link
The burnt out remains of Merkava tanks and outclassed ground forces were a devastating blow to the Israeli superiority complex. Not even wanting to upset Hezbollah in Syria, their behaviour towards them speaks volumes about who won the 2006 conflict. Looking at the number of military killed on both sides, the Lebanese lost only a handful more than Israel.

Rather than risk a backlash from Hezbollah, Israel will attempt to use other methods to try to hinder them. The UK move is a sign of desperation by Netanyahu. No one takes any notice of of the British anymore, 'we' are quite rightly a joke. No doubt Hassan Nasrallah will be chuckling at these latest desperate attempts to keep him in check.

karlof1 , Mar 2, 2019 7:56:09 PM | link
The UK's been in gross violation of International Law for decades on end, the latest determination by the WCJ on the Chomoro Islanders is its latest defeat and proof of its terrorizing policies. Then we have the subject of support for terrorists in Syria and terrorism in Venezuela. Some brave, enterprising folk ought to plant a passel of Hezbollah flags on the grounds of the minister's house, then report him for his crime of being in possession of banned material. And yet another reason for Scots to vote for independence and the end of Union, as I'm certain Scots don't want to be associated with a terror state like Britain.
aspnaz , Mar 2, 2019 7:58:15 PM | link
My understanding is that in the UK, wearing a T-shirt saying "Fuck the UK" is fine but wearing a shirt saying "Fuck Israel" is a hate crime. If this is correct, what has gone wrong in the UK? Why do the UK people believe all this anti-semitism nonsense and why do they give a flying f**k about anti-semitism anyway?
Jen , Mar 2, 2019 8:16:00 PM | link
I am guessing that Sontaran Sajid is positioning himself as a challenger for Theresa May's job as Tory leader after Brexit comes and goes and all Hell breaks loose once people realize how very poorly she managed the transition.
m , Mar 2, 2019 8:30:12 PM | link
This insidious and obtuse move by the british government is a typical example of setting the stage and future narrative for the forthcoming announcement by the zionist cabal (US/UK etc) of recognition of the Golan Heights as being official Israeli territory. It's pre-planning as they know everyone in the region goes onto an imminent war footing when the announcement comes
Yeah, Right , Mar 2, 2019 8:34:09 PM | link
"Hizballah is continuing in its attempts to destabilase the fragile situation in the Middle East"

By his logic there is far more urgent requirement for him to proscribe the current Republican Party as a terrorist organization and, before that, the Democrats when they controlled the Oval Office.

Both constitute the political wing of a warmongering deep-state, and both are quite indistinguishable from the military wing of that same deep-state.

And, indisputably, both the political wing and the military wing of that deep-state are hell-bent on destabilizing the Middle East.

In any just and logical world it is well past time for Sajid Javid to put a pox on them all.

Jackrabbit , Mar 2, 2019 8:36:50 PM | link
This Daily Mirror article from 2015 indicates the smearing to come:
Jeremy Corbyn nicknamed 'Jezbollah' by Labor enemies who say he has so many extremist friends

And here's the Telegraph in 2015 with more of the same:

Jeremy Corbyn, friend to Hamas, Iran and extremists
Yeah, Right , Mar 2, 2019 8:50:35 PM | link
@54 Jackrabbit I tend to agree with Craig Murray on this, in the sense that this could represent an attempt by the lobby to Jump The Shark.

After all, where does this stop?

If Corbyn voices support for the Red Cross does Sajid Javid then rush to proscribe the ICRC as a terrorist organization, all the better to sneer "Gotch'a a good one there, terrorist!!"

And to answer b's question of why: the answer is obvious.

The Israel Lobby is utterly terrified of Corbyn becoming Prime Minister, hence the ludicrous "anti-Semite" smear campaign against him.

Clearly the poll number are showing that isn't going to be enough, hence this new angle of attack.

But it sniffs of desperation. It suggests nothing more than that Israel and its lackeys/sycophants know that Corbyn is certain to win the next election, so they are willing to attempt anything - no matter how illogical - to prevent him from contesting that election.

It really is as simple as that.

evilempire , Mar 2, 2019 8:53:35 PM | link
It looks like the Inquisition is becoming Totalitarian. Dissent is being criminalized in devious ways. In antiquity, Aristotle defined the progression as democracy-oligarchy-tyranny.

I think we have enough empirical data for the modern era to revise it as: democracy-capitalism-totalitarianism. The quintessential feature of this totalitarianism is mass psychosis. The driving force behind it is divorce from reality. The imperators behind the scenes:
the Infernal Inquisitors. Prognosis-Incurable, Terminal.

Yeah, Right , Mar 2, 2019 8:57:40 PM | link
@49 aspnaz "Why do the UK people believe all this anti-semitism nonsense and why do they give a flying f**k about anti-semitism anyway?"

Who says they do?

The political chattering class and their lackeys in the MSM have been pusing this nonsense - and it is nonsense - as hard as they can, and despite that they must have polling data that shows it isn't going to be enough to stop Corbyn from becoming Prime Minister at the next election.

We can be certain of that because this latest move is an attempt to widen the line of attack e.g. to paint Corbyn as a "terrorist sympathizer".

They wouldn't even need to do that if their smear campaign to paint Corbyn as an "anti-Semite" had any gained any traction with the actual voters.

After all, that smear campaign has been so vicious that if it had worked then Corbyn would already be history.

Peter AU 1 , Mar 2, 2019 8:57:53 PM | link
Israel, like the Wahhabism nation, is the offspring of Britain. Other than the US taking over the lead role, nothing has changed.
Jackrabbit , Mar 2, 2019 9:49:48 PM | link
Yeah, Right @57>
... that smear campaign has been so vicious that if it had worked then Corbyn would already be history.
Yeah, it failed so they have instituted this law as an attempt to catch Corbyn in a legal trap. But the law may be used in other devious ways also.
james , Mar 2, 2019 10:20:07 PM | link
caitlins comments on this topic. https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/03/03/how-and-how-not-to-beat-a-smear-campaign
Ike , Mar 2, 2019 10:40:50 PM | link
Hezbollah are not targeting children, cripples, medics and journalists with sniper fire as outlined in the UN report. If the UK government had any morality it would be Israel that would be designated a terrorist organization.
Den Lille Abe , Mar 2, 2019 10:41:56 PM | link
Can we ban Britain ?
John Doe , Mar 2, 2019 11:00:29 PM | link
Posted by: Den Lille Abe | Mar 2, 2019 10:41:56 PM | 64

Can we ban Britain ?
-----------------------

If we all are able to ban Israel then many, if not all, reasons to ban the USA, Britain and other western countries just disappear. Israel is a real asshole of the Earth.

Yeah, Right , Mar 2, 2019 11:04:45 PM | link
@61 Jackrabbit "But the law may be used in other devious ways also."

True enough, but *this* law is so stupid that it will have other consequences as well.

Here is one: British Home Secretary Sajid Javid must now live in abject terror (an apt word indeed) of walking into a BBC studio to debate this issue only to find George Galloway sitting across the table.

Because it is an absolute certainty that Galloway will tear him a new one over the "logic" of this pronouncement.

Let's be honest here: Javed's order has now made "attempts to destabilase the fragile situation in the Middle East" a criteria for designating a political party as a terrorist organization.

So how does Javid answer this question: Your own govt is on record as stating that the decision of President Trump to scrap the JCPOA will have a destabilizing effect on peace and security in the Middle East. Doesn't that oblige your govt to declare his Administration a terrorist organization?

Or how does he answer this question: Your own govt has openly declared its support for the "moderate rebels" in Syria, whose avowed aim is to replace Bashir Assad by destabilizing his govt. By your own guidelines wouldn't that make the Tory party a terrorist organization?

Because there is real danger here for this utterly lamentable govt. If they do attempt to defend this new criteria then they are going to be revealed to be blathering idiots. If they don't attempt to defend it then their critics are simply going to shred them anyway.

John Doe , Mar 2, 2019 11:37:07 PM | link
Middle East Eye: "Anti-Zionism is not the same as Anti-Semitism" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oZkr6JjFpX4

Former Israeli Minister Shulamit Aloni: "Anti-semitic", "its a trick we always use it" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nex-oSKPX2w

james , Mar 2, 2019 11:43:50 PM | link
@66 yeah, right... the part of uk support for 'moderate rebels' in syria question would be easy for this bozo to answer.. he will say syria gov't under assad is not a legit gov't... just like this bozo and the uk refer to maduros gov't in venezuala as not legit.. they say so and that makes it right, lol..

furthermore, a pdf (see link at bottom) found in the 2nd link in b's post from the top says
"The US, Canada, Netherlands, Israel, Gulf Co-operation Council and Bahrain also designate the group in its entirety as a terrorist organisation."

with legitimacy like that, who is to argue, LOLOL! i think they need to get freeland to run that by the lima group so they can get more members to join in the party..

https://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2019/406/pdfs/uksiem_20190406_en.pdf

John Doe , Mar 3, 2019 12:24:55 AM | link
Watch the film the Israel lobby didn't want you to see

Watch final episodes of Al Jazeera film on US Israel lobby

How Israel tried to hide its "malign campaign" against US citizens

How Israel lobby fakes campus anti-Semitism

John Doe , Mar 3, 2019 12:39:50 AM | link

To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize. - Voltaire

Kevin Alfred Strom: Voltaire Didn't Say It

John Doe , Mar 3, 2019 12:44:37 AM | link
Kevin Alfred Strom:

"To determine the true rulers of any society, all you must do is ask yourself this question: Who is it that I am not permitted to criticize?"

Roy G , Mar 3, 2019 12:53:05 AM | link
I am reminded of the ginned up charge that Hezbollah attacked the Jewish embassy in Argentina,just another attempt to put some 'facts' in the media to influence popular perception. Remember Pompeus Minimus also tried this scare tactic when he floated the egregiously dubious propaganda balloon that Hezbollah was in Venezuela! The Zionists are too clever by half in all of their ratf$@%ing schemes.
South Front , Mar 3, 2019 12:59:22 AM | link
Hezbollah is a social and political movement with a strong armed wing. It was formed in 1980s. Hezbollah's creation was conditioned by the aspiration of the Shia population of Lebanon to meet the challenges of Israeli expansion and Western "new-style" colonialism.

https://southfront.org/hezbollah-capabilities-role-middle-east-full-documentary/

Hezbollah – Capabilities And Role In The Middle East (Full Documentary)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tzBZpNxkui8

Posted by: South Front | Mar 2, 2019 4:20:24 PM | 25

------------------

Hezbollah – Capabilities And Role In The Middle East
https://southfront.org/hezbollah-capabilities-and-role-in-the-middle-east/

psychohistorian , Mar 3, 2019 1:34:06 AM | link
Are we ever going to get beyond group identity politics and deal with the social structure issue that fuels the group identity politics?

Do others not see the dead end that fighting group identity politics gets the 99%? There is always going to be friction but that friction is being managed to insure that none question the structure that causes most of the friction (Global Private Finance/God of Mammon)

I believe that making the tools of finance public will eliminate the fuel behind much of the group identity politics we see happening......if they don't have guns and money they are a lot less likely to kill each other.

And to the posting here, if the UK didn't have empire money and empire corrupt government it wouldn't go around trying to impose itself globally.

IMO, challenging the social structure is going to prove more fruitful than ongoing group identity politics.

[Feb 26, 2019] The British wars in the middle east in the 1920's, after ending "all war" at Versailles, mercilessly waged against less technologically developed countries, were all highly aggressive

Feb 26, 2019 | www.unz.com

Benjy , says: February 26, 2019 at 8:28 pm GMT

@Chris Mallory

"Poor lil Hitler was a good boy. He dindu nuttin."

Already after the turn of the last century Southern Iran became a British "sphere of influence". Through the 1920's, after making the world free for democracy, and fighting the war to end all wars, England was gassing and murdering the kurds and Iraqi's with in their "mandate".

The British wars in the middle east in the 1920's, after ending "all war" at Versailles, mercilessly waged against less technologically developed countries, were all highly aggressive.

... ... ...

[Feb 26, 2019] Syria is awash with illegality UK hid SAS involvement in Syria to avoid being allied to US

Feb 26, 2019 | www.rt.com

'Syria is awash with illegality': UK hid SAS involvement in Syria to avoid being 'allied to US' Published time: 25 Feb, 2019 14:56 Edited time: 26 Feb, 2019 08:00 Get short URL 'Syria is awash with illegality': UK hid SAS involvement in Syria to avoid being 'allied to US' A British soldier demonstrates anti-terrorist tactics © AFP / Leila Gorchev The UK doesn't want to be seen deploying special forces with the likes of the US, an ex-UN chief told RT, suggesting Syria is awash with "illegality," after the British MoD admitted its personnel are active in the war-torn nation. Despite British MPs voting in December 2015 for 'approved airstrikes only' in Syria, the Ministry of Defence's admission came after a freedom of information request relating to the death of SAS soldier, Sergeant Matt Tonroe, who was killed in March last year.

Also on rt.com BBC producer says hospital scenes after 2018 Douma 'chemical attack' were staged

Former UN chief & humanitarian coordinator for Iraq, Hans-Christof von Sponeck, suggested that the UK does not want to give the impression it is "allied to the US" in Syria because of past ventures into Iraq and Afghanistan, which do not play well with the British public.

Asked whether the US is essentially driving these decisions to deploy special forces on the ground, and not the UK, von Sponeck replied: "Of course," but added that the Turks were also highly influential when it came to ground-force deployment.

//www.youtube.com/embed/cwyZUZDStXs

Special forces serviceman Tonroe was killed along with two US soldiers fighting Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) in Syria, the Times reported. In a statement, the Ministry of Defence has ostensibly argued that any British ground forces operating in Syria act as if they were a soldier of the nation they're embedded with.

"British forces embedded in the armed forces of other nations operate as if they were the host nation's personnel, under that nation's chain of command," the ministry said.

Historian and journalist Mark Curtis has taken to social media to highlight the fact that British military personnel are embedded with US military commands around the world. He argues that not enough is being made public on the matter.

UK military personnel are embedded in various US military commands. Hardly anything is public on this. https://t.co/zUJadJMUPu https://t.co/14T5cjoCpC https://t.co/BDcVhkS9nl pic.twitter.com/26GIVqpSI4

-- Mark Curtis (@markcurtis30) February 25, 2019

Former head of the British Joint Forces Command, Sir Richard Barrons, has suggested that numerous countries have been conducting "proxy assistance" in Syria without explicitly declaring direct involvement in military operations.

Subscribe to RT newsletter to get stories the mainstream media won't tell you.

[Feb 23, 2019] Britain's top law enforcement official knew there was a VIP pedophile network in Westminster, at the heart of the British government

Feb 23, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

William Dorritt , 3 hours ago link

Murdered Presenter Jill Dando 'Claimed Female Colleagues Were Sexually Assaulted at BBC
IBTimes, July 20, 2014 10:44 BST
The report states that Dando, who was murdered on her doorstep in south-west London in 1999, was told that paedophiles were operating within the BBCs in the 1990s. Several female colleagues also alleged that they were sexually harassed or assaulted by male BBC colleagues.
http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/murdered-presenter-jill-dando-claimed-female-colleagues-were-sexually-assaulted-bbc-1457421
Monsters
How Thatcher's Government Covered Up a VIP Pedophile Ring. Now that most of the major figures are dead, the truth is emerging about the systematic sexual abuse of children by members of the British government.
Nico Hines, 03.05.15 11:00 PM ET, Daily Beast
LONDON -- A newspaper editor was handed startling evidence that Britain's top law enforcement official knew there was a VIP pedophile network in Westminster, at the heart of the British government. What happened next in the summer of 1984 helps to explain how shocking allegations of rape and murder against some of the country's most powerful men went unchecked for decades.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/06/britain-s-horrific-vip-pedophile-cover-up.html

[Feb 18, 2019] See the real connection between the fake Steele Dossier and the Skipal hoax

Feb 18, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

war is coming , February 17, 2019 at 9:37 pm

See the real connection between the fake Steele Dossier and the Skipal hoax.

The UK MI6 is behind everything with Australia and Nato. War with Russia is coming to avoid the Brexit. It has been planned 5 years ago. The Brexit is just a good excuse.

The continued NATO harassment, sanctions and campaigns of lies and false accusations against Russia, including the blatant war rhetoric of the British Defence Secretary, do not bode well for the future. For the US to tear up nuclear arms treaties and then blame Russia is beyond shameful: it is destroying all possibility of negotiations to avert war. The Kerch Strait incident staged by the puppet regime in Kiev, sending gunboats into the Kerch Strait without observing the 2003 Protocol requiring them to notify in advance the Port of Kerch (a protocol observed by the dozens of ships that go through the Strait peacefully every day) was clearly part of a NATO plan to set up a major naval clash in the Black Sea.

That clash (followed by an attempt to recapture Crimea or at least blow up its magnificent bridge, a reproach to a man who cannot even build a wall) may be expected in coming months, perhaps as a distraction from Brexit or a way of derailing it. NATO, in short, is on a clear trajectory towards war with Russia, which their deluded worldview convinces them they can win.

Their initial use of Russia as a scapegoat and bogeyman to unite the NATO vassals against a common threat, keeping Europe in subjection to America, has got out of hand, and is heading, under the impetus of hysterical rhetoric, towards actual war. Unless decent people unite to stop this escalation then the nuclear catastrophe will occur.

Exposing the barefaced lie of the Skripal false flag attack may be a step towards averting that global cataclysm.

http://thesaker.is/the-alternative-skripal-narrative/

[Feb 16, 2019] When a Foreign Government Interfered in a US Election -- to Reelect FDR

Notable quotes:
"... In 1940, as war raged in Europe, British intel officers in New York and Washington worked to elect candidates who favored U.S. intervention, defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security. Scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of Americans who believed that fighting fascism justified unethical and, at times, illegal behavior, worked for British intelligence or cooperated with London's efforts. ..."
"... Churchill, the U.K.'s savvy wartime prime minister, knew that Britain could survive and repel an anticipated German invasion only if it received massive amounts of aid from the U.S., and that ultimate victory over the Nazis would require American military involvement. ..."
"... To pull the U.S. into Britain's efforts would require first winning public opinion -- making newspapers and radio programs the front lines in the battle to persuade Americans to elect politicians willing to back Britain over those who promoted an "America First" agenda. SIS, the British intelligence agency, flooded American newspapers with fake stories, leaked the results of illegal electronic surveillance and deployed October surprises against political candidates. ..."
"... Over the 18 months between Britain's humiliation at Dunkirk and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the scale and intensity of the SIS's efforts in the United States were without parallel in the history of relations between allied democracies. ..."
Feb 16, 2019 | www.politico.com

Overt intelligence operations, propaganda, fake news stories, dirty tricks -- all were used in a foreign government's audacious attempt to influence U.S. elections. It wasn't 2016; it was 1940, and the operations were employed not by a hostile adversary, but by America's closest ally, the United Kingdom.

Though technology has advanced, and the two nations' motives could not have been more different, critical aspects of Russia's alleged covert efforts to bolster the campaign of Donald Trump echo the tactics that Britain's Secret Intelligence Service pioneered seven decades ago. In 1940, as war raged in Europe, British intel officers in New York and Washington worked to elect candidates who favored U.S. intervention, defeat those who advocated neutrality, and silence or destroy the reputations of American isolationists they deemed a menace to British security. Scores -- perhaps hundreds -- of Americans who believed that fighting fascism justified unethical and, at times, illegal behavior, worked for British intelligence or cooperated with London's efforts.

Winston Churchill's goals were as clear Vladimir Putin's motives are murky. Churchill, the U.K.'s savvy wartime prime minister, knew that Britain could survive and repel an anticipated German invasion only if it received massive amounts of aid from the U.S., and that ultimate victory over the Nazis would require American military involvement. He also knew that decisions to send food, fuel and weapons across the Atlantic, and to dispatch troop ships to follow in their wake, lay in the hands of the president and a hostile Congress. To pull the U.S. into Britain's efforts would require first winning public opinion -- making newspapers and radio programs the front lines in the battle to persuade Americans to elect politicians willing to back Britain over those who promoted an "America First" agenda. SIS, the British intelligence agency, flooded American newspapers with fake stories, leaked the results of illegal electronic surveillance and deployed October surprises against political candidates.

Over the 18 months between Britain's humiliation at Dunkirk and the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the scale and intensity of the SIS's efforts in the United States were without parallel in the history of relations between allied democracies.

The SIS and its American collaborators went to great lengths to obscure the ties between their activities and the British government. These links have since come to light largely because William Stephenson, the Canadian businessman who headed British Security Coordination (BSC), the official front for SIS operations in North and South America from 1941–1945, commissioned a history of the organization's operation. Declassified in 1999, that history provides a remarkably candid picture of London's espionage and propaganda activities. Alongside other documents available in the U.K. National Archives, this history shows that, as it sought to shift America out of neutrality, British intelligence was restrained only by the certainty that the blowback from public exposure would have been disastrous.

The story of British government efforts to influence American elections and public opinion is a cautionary tale, providing a lesson that is all too relevant today about the power of propaganda and covert operations to alter history. It also demonstrates how difficult it can be to differentiate in real time between legitimate concerns and imaginary conspiracy theories -- and, perhaps, provides a glimmer of hope about the resilience of American democracy.

***

American communists, fascists and isolationists complained bitterly and loudly in 1940 and 1941 that Britain was secretly manipulating the U.S. media as part of a campaign to pull America into the war. These accusations, confidently dismissed by liberal politicians and newspapers as paranoid ravings, were inaccurate only in that they were understated. Even the most alarmist commentators and conspiracy-mongers underestimated the depth and effectiveness of British covert activity.

British intelligence employed the full range of cloak-and-dagger techniques in America in 1940 and 1941: forgeries, seductions, burglaries, electoral dirty tricks, physical surveillance, intercepting and reading letters sent under diplomatic seal, illegally bugging offices and tapping phones. British intelligence even listened in on a telephone call in June 1940 between President Franklin D. Roosevelt in the White House and his ambassador to Britain, Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. A report on the call was quickly relayed to Churchill, alerting him that the U.S. was making contingency plans in case the U.K. fell to the Nazis.

While the British government strongly backed Roosevelt, it hedged its bets by working behind the scenes to increase the chances that Republicans would pick a presidential candidate in 1940 who would join the fight against fascism.

The Republican Party, lacking a consensus about a standard-bearer or platform, was in disarray in June 1940 as its national convention approached. BSC worked behind the scenes to smooth the path for a nominee who favored intervention. One element of the BSC's operations surfaced on June 25, when the New York Herald reported on a poll of convention delegates. Surprisingly, given the isolationist positions espoused by GOP stalwarts like Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft and Herbert Hoover, the poll -- which the Herald wrote was "conducted by Market Analysts, Inc., an independent research organization" -- found that three-fifths of GOP delegates supported helping the allies "with everything short of war." In fact, Market Analysts, Inc., was anything but independent. Its head, Sanford Griffith, was an American who had secretly been working for British intelligence since the 1930s, and regardless of the population surveyed, its polls consistently advocated U.S. interventionism in Europe.

Among Market Analysts' clients was the Committee to Defend America by Aiding the Allies, a group led by William Allen White, a nationally syndicated columnist influential among liberal Republicans. In his column, White wrote that the GOP delegate poll demonstrated that leading Republican isolationists were out of touch with the party's members, and that Wendell Willkie -- who had not run in the presidential primaries and had switched his party affiliation from Democratic to Republican only a few months ahead of the national convention -- best represented Republicans' views. While all of the other Republican contenders advocated steering clear of the war in Europe, Willkie argued that "America's first line of defense is Great Britain." It is impossible to determine exactly how influential BSC's assistance was, but Willkie went into the convention an underdog and -- to London's delight, and the astonishment of the Republican establishment -- emerged as the GOP candidate.

In addition to Griffith's operation, BSC funded and coordinated the activities and messaging of a number of American anti-fascist organizations. One of these, an informal group of wealthy businessmen and journalists called the Century Group, operated during the campaign as a liaison between the British government, the White House and the Willkie campaign. It brokered an agreement from Willkie to refrain from criticizing a proposal that allowed Roosevelt to unilaterally authorize the transfer of scores of mothballed destroyers to Britain. As the first president to snub George Washington's precedent of voluntarily stepping down after two terms, FDR was acutely aware of the threat posed by accusations that he was behaving like a dictator, so even the hint of such an accusation from the Republican candidate may have scuttled the deal. On August 30, 1940, BSC's agents secured Willkie's commitment to acquiesce to the transfer. Assured that he wouldn't pay a devastating political price, Roosevelt announced the deal at a press conference four days later.

The BSC's work on Willkie's behalf was an exception. For the most part, it focused not on promoting candidates, but rather on defeating elected officials who opposed American intervention in the war.

Among those opponents was Rep. Hamilton Stuyvesant Fish III, a Republican and leading isolationist who had represented New York's Hudson Valley in Congress since 1920. By picking a high-profile target, the campaign against Fish was intended to "put the fear of God into every isolationist senator and congressman in the country," according to a letter a BSC agent sent in fall 1940.

To do this, the BSC created, funded and operated the Non-Partisan Committee to Defeat Hamilton Fish, which among other activities, circulated a pamphlet juxtaposing Fish, Adolf Hitler and Nazis. Another photo appeared to show Fish meeting with Fritz Kuhn, the "American Hitler" who led the German-American Bund and was, at the time, serving a prison sentence for embezzlement. Contrary to the caption -- "Hamilton Fish inspecting documents with Fritz Kuhn" -- the Republican congressman had never met privately with Bund leader. The photo had been taken at a 1938 public hearing that Congressman Fish had organized to discuss a proposed ban on paramilitary groups like the Bund.

Another bit of British-engineered fake news had an ironic twist, accusing Fish of being a pawn of a foreign power. They alleged that Nazis funneled money to Fish by renting his properties at inflated high rates as a means of subsidizing pro-German propaganda efforts. On October 21, Drew Pearson and Robert Allen reported the story in their hugely influential Washington Merry-go-Round column -- a true October surprise.

Though Fish won reelection, his margin of victory was just 9,000 votes, half the size of his win in 1938. In an after-action report to BSC and since archived at FDR's presidential library, Griffith stated that the local Democratic Party had put practically no effort into defeating Fish, and that an additional "$2,000 or $3,000 a week or two ahead would have been sufficient to put it over." Even after the U.S. entered the war, the BSC stayed on Fish's case, planting scurrilous stories in 1942 that helped cut his margin of victory to 4,000 votes. In 1944, they finally beat him. Fish claimed it had taken "most of the New Deal Administration, half of Moscow, $400,000, and Governor Dewey to defeat me." As the BSC history later crowed: "He might -- with more accuracy -- have blamed BSC."

***

In addition to secretly intervening in campaigns , BSC funded and coordinated the efforts of pro-intervention American political organizations and of associations of emigres from Nazi-occupied countries that lobbied Congress and the public for a muscular U.S. response to Hitler.

BSC also tried to shape public opinion by feeding a stream of true, partially true and completely fabricated stories to sympathetic reporters and columnists. Some -- like Edgar Ansel Mowrer of the Chicago Daily News and Ulric Bell of the Louisville Courier-Journal -- worked directly with British intelligence officers, but most of the journalists who cooperated with BSC did so through American intermediaries. Among them was Walter Winchell, one of the most widely read columnists of the time, who routinely ran BSC items supplied by an intermediary.

Although few of the American reporters and editors who disseminated BSC propaganda were on the British payroll, it is not an exaggeration to characterize them as British agents or "subagents," the latter being operatives directed by individuals who communicated with professional intelligence officers. In fact, this is precisely how the BSC thought about them. "The conduct of political warfare was entirely dependent on secrecy," notes the BSC history. "For that reason, the press and radio men with whom BSC maintained contact were comparable with subagents and the intermediaries with agents. They were thus regarded." In 1991, Edmond Taylor, an American journalist and active collaborator with the Brits during World War II, told a historian that British intelligence agents "connived" with "Americans like myself who were willing to go out of regular (or even legal) channels to try to bend U.S. policy towards objectives that the British, as well as the Americans in question, considered desirable."

One of the journalists in charge of BSC's propaganda efforts described his unit's activities in a 1942 memo to the British Foreign Office without mincing words. He wrote that his remit included "subversive propaganda in the United States for the exposure and destruction of enemy propaganda [and] countering isolationist and appeasement propaganda which is rapidly taking on the shape of a Fascist movement, conscious or unconscious." Weekly reports to London from British agents in New York tallied the number of stories that had been planted in American newspapers.

The BSC history draws a straight line from planting pro-British stories in American newspapers to Roosevelt's decision to send destroyers to England. The transfer happened, according to BSC, because Stephenson had "means at his disposal for influencing American public opinion in favour of aid to Britain. In fact, covert propaganda, one of the most potent weapons which BSC employed against the enemy, was harnessed directly to this task."

***

The British government had a well-oiled, coordinated, worldwide strategy during World War II for generating and disseminating rumors, which it called "sibs," short for sibilare , the Latin word for whisper or hiss . Many of the sibs were silly or outlandish -- for example, rumors that man-eating sharks from Australia had been deposited in the English Channel to consume downed German aviators -- but British intelligence took them extraordinarily seriously. "The object of propaganda rumours is in no sense to convey the official or semi-official views of H.M.G. [His Majesty's Government] by covert means to officials in the countries concerned," read one classified wartime report. "It is rather to induce alarm, despondency and bewilderment among the enemies, and hope and confidence among the friends, to whose ears it comes."

New sibs were approved by an organization called the Underground Propaganda Committee (UPC), which met weekly in London during the war. While rumors spread in Europe by word of mouth, in the U.S., they were disseminated through a network of friendly reporters and, starting in the spring of 1941, by the Overseas News Agency, a news service that received subsidies from, and was controlled by, the BSC. ONA articles appeared in newspapers around the country. Especially prior to Pearl Harbor, these stories were picked up by newspapers in Germany, Japan and occupied countries.

To cite a typical example, at a meeting of the UPC on August 8, 1941, a decision was made to release a series of sibs that, according to the meeting minutes, were "intended to suggest that the Fuehrer, who is alone responsible in the face of a good deal of opposition for the Russian campaign, is becoming more and more unbalanced as he realises that the vast gamble is miscarrying." Eight days later, the New York Post ran an article supplied by ONA citing "circumstantial evidence for a belief that Hitler is not at the Russian front, but at Berchtesgaden suffering from a severe nervous breakdown." The article went on to assert that the Fuehrer's personal physician had recently traveled to Switzerland to consult with the famed psychiatrist Carl Jung to discuss "the rapid deterioration of Hitler's mental condition," which ONA asserted was characterized by delusional rages in which he confused the contemporary battle for Smolensk with a World War I battle in France.

On July 11, 1941, the UPC approved a sib for distribution in the U.S. newspapers, where Japanese diplomats would read it, indicating that if Tokyo attacked Indochina, the Soviet Union would attack Japan by air. The next day, the New York Times and other American newspapers ran an AP story that cited "reliable persons" reporting that Japan was poised to "make a move against French Indo-China soon." The story noted that "Russia has a large air force within easy range of Japan's vulnerable centers of population."

In August 1941, the New York Times published ONA's report that the death of a 130-year-old Bedouin soothsayer was seen in the Middle East as "a sign of a coming defeat for Hitler." Also in the soothsaying business, the BSC sponsored a U.S. tour for Louis de Wohl, a Hungarian "astro-philosopher." In press conferences and an appearance at the annual convention of the American Federation of Scientific Astrologers, de Wohl announced that the stars predicted doom for Hitler and success for Roosevelt. Newspapers credulously reported his statement that a "yogi once told me a man born on the date Hitler came into power would cause his downfall. Hitler rose to power on Jan. 30, and that is Roosevelt's birth date."

***

The BSC operations in the U.S. weren't all frivolity and fake news; many were much more serious.

Using undercover agents, the BSC conducted a yearlong investigation of a scheme by congressional staff to insert pro-Nazi propaganda into the Congressional Record and to use congressional franking privileges to distribute it. The BSC then coordinated media exposés of the franking scandal and supplied federal prosecutors with information on the pro-Nazi plot, resulting in several convictions.

Elsewhere in Washington, the BSC targeted the embassy used by the Vichy French, illegally tapping its phones, burglarizing embassy property and deploying a female operative to seduce Vichy officials. That intel was then used as the basis for a series of newspaper articles revealing Vichy diplomats' efforts to help Nazi Germany -- stories that the BSC then arranged to be printed under the byline of an American journalist. The resulting public furor severely curtailed the Vichy government's American activities.

With the clarity of hindsight, some may write off as a historical curiosity the extraordinary efforts by Britain to influence American public opinion and the results of elections, arguing that Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor and Hitler's impetuous declaration of war vaporized notions of neutrality, rendering efforts to propel America into the war superfluous. But in fact, given the depth and strength of the opposition to FDR's efforts to support Britain in 1940 and 1941 -- and the importance of that lifeline, which pro-British propaganda made possible -- it is clear that the efforts of British intelligence officers and their American recruits helped change history.

In the summer of 1941, the Roosevelt administration strained its political muscles in an all-out push to persuade Congress to amend an emergency military conscription law and extend mandatory service from one year to 2½ years. After the White House exerted all its strength, on August 12, the House passed the extension by a one-vote margin. It is easy to imagine, though impossible to prove, that the efforts of the BSC's operatives to bend the public and bully politicians away from isolationism, tipped the balance in favor of the law. If it had not squeaked through Congress, the U.S. military would have had to send tens of thousands of men home, substantially weakening the position of American forces on the verge of war.

America's first experience of large-scale foreign interference in its elections holds lessons that are relevant today, including the fact that SIS continued to target its American political foes until at least 1944 -- long after the United States committed itself to the war. If history is any guide, Donald Trump's inauguration may not mark the end of Russia's attempts to sway American politicians and public opinion.

[Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network

Highly recommended!
Looks like all of them were Brennan men. CIA used FBI counterintelligence and counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal.
Notable quotes:
"... We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn's insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller's investigation. ..."
"... If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice ..."
"... A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal." ..."
"... Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: "It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos' activities look like they were something else. ..."
"... It's more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency." ..."
"... Zainab Ahmad , a member of Mueller's legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn , Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017 ..."
"... "Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia ..."
"... I don't think it's a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller's team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling ..."
"... Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons ..."
"... Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei , writing: "LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud's London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too." ..."
"... Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share 'director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that " The Guardian reported Hannigan's announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017. ..."
"... Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner." ..."
"... There are more and more articles saying that the FBI, CIA, M14 15,16 yada yada, were overly concerned about Trump. Their sin...caring too much for the USA. They attempted a coup de'etat for "our" own good...we... being "we the people". To quote Abe Lincoln "You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, -- not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." Lincoln did not mince words ..."
Jan 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

Via Disobedient Media

In April last year, Disobedient Media broke coverage of the British involvement in the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, asking why All Russiagate Roads Lead To London , via the quasi-scholar Joseph Mifsud and others.

The issue was also raised by WikiLeaks's Julian Assange , just days before the Ecuadorian government silenced him last March. Assange's Twitter thread cited research by Chris Blackburn , who spoke with Disobedient Media on multiple occasions covering Joseph Mifsud's ties to British intelligence figures and organizations, as well as his links to Hillary Clinton's Presidential campaign, the FBI, CIA and the private cyber-security firm Crowdstrike.

We return, now, to this issue and specifically the research of Chris Blackburn, to place the final nail in the coffin of the Trump-Russia collusion charade. Blackburn's insights are incredible not only because they return us to the earliest reporting on the role of British intelligence figures in manufacturing the Trump-Russia collusion narrative, but because they also implicate members of Mueller's investigation. What we are left with is an indication of collusion between factions of the US and UK intelligence community in fabricating evidence of Trump-Russia collusion: a scandal that would have rocked the legacy press to its core, if Western establishment-backed media had a spine.

In Disobedient Media's previous coverage of Blackburn's work, he described his experience in intelligence:

"I've been involved in numerous investigations that involve counter-intelligence techniques in the past. I used to work for the 9/11 Families United to Bankrupt Terrorism , one of the biggest tort actions in American history. I helped build a profile of Osama bin Laden's financial and political network, which was slightly different to the one that had been built by the CIA's Alec Station , a dedicated task force which was focused on Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda. Alec Station designed its profile to hunt Osama bin Laden and disrupt his network. I thought it was flawed. It had failed to take into account Osama's historical links to Pakistan's main political parties or that he was the figurehead for a couple of organizations, not just Al-Qaeda."

"I also ran a few conferences for US intelligence leaders during the Bush administration. After the 9/11 Commission published its report into the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon it created a public outreach program. The US National Intelligence Conference and Exposition ( Intelcon ) was one of the avenues it used. I was responsible for creating the 'View from Abroad' track. We had guidance from former Senator Slade Gorton and Jamie Gorelick, who both sat on the 9/11 Commission. We got leaders such as Sir John Chilcot and Baroness Pauline Neville Jones to come and help share their experiences on how the US would be able to heal the rifts after 9/11."

"The US intelligence community was suffering from severe turf wars and firewalls, which were hampering counter-terrorism efforts. They were concentrating on undermining each other rather than tackling terrorism. I had mainly concentrated on the Middle East, but in 2003 I switched my focus to terrorism in South Asia."

Counter Terrorism, Not Counter Intelligence, Sparked Probe

In an article published by The Telegraph last November, the paper acknowledged the following:

"It forces the spotlight on whether the UK played a role in the FBI's investigation launched before the 2016 presidential election into Trump campaign ties to the Kremlin... Mr. Trump's allies and former advisers are raising questions about the UK's role in the start of the probe, given many of the key figures and meetings were located in Britain... One former top White House adviser to Mr. Trump made similar insinuations, telling this newspaper: "You know the Brits are up to their neck." The source added on the Page wiretap application: "I think that stuff is going to implicate MI5 and MI6 in a bunch of activities they don't want to be implicated in, along with FBI, counter-terrorism and the CIA. " [Emphasis Added]

The article cites George Papadopoulos, who asked why the "British intelligence apparatus was weaponized against Trump and his advisers." Papadopoulos has also addressed the issue at length via Twitter. In response to the Telegraph's coverage of the issue, Chris Blackburn wrote via Twitter :

"The Telegraph story on Trump Russia acknowledges that activities involving counter-terrorism are at the heart of the scandal...not counter-intelligence. If the [London Centre for International Law Practice] was British state, not private, some Commonwealth countries are going to be seriously pissed off."

Blackburn spoke with Disobedient Media, saying:

" If you factor in the dreadful reporting to discredit Joseph Mifsud and leaks, it is pretty clear something rather strange happened to George Papadopoulos during the campaign while he was shuttling around Europe and the Middle East. He was working with people who have intelligence links at the London Centre of International Law Practice.

A recent article in The Telegraph also alludes to MI5, MI6, and CIA using counter-terrorism assets which would tie into the London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP), and its sister organizations, doing counter-terrorism work for the Australian, UK and US governments. They quote anonymous officials who believe that their intelligence agencies used counter-terrorism personnel to kick start the investigation/scandal." [Emphasis Added]

Blackburn discussed this differentiation with Disobedient Media:

"Counter-terrorism is obviously involved in more kinetic, violent political actions-concerning mass casualty events, bombings, assassinations, poisonings, and hacking. But, the lines are blurring between them. Counter-intelligence cases have been known to stretch for decades- often relying on nothing more than paranoia and suspicion to fuel investigations. Counter-terrorism is also a broader discipline as it involves tactical elements like hostage rescue, crime scene investigations, and explosive specialists. Counter-Terrorism is a collaborative effort with counter-terrorism officers working closely with local and regional police forces and civic organizations. There is also a wider academic field around countering violent, and radical ideology which promotes terrorism and insurgencies. Cybersecurity has become the third major discipline in intelligence. The London Center of International Law Practice, the mysterious intelligence company that employed both Papadopoulos and Mifsud , had also been working in that area."

Continuing, Blackburn pinpointed the significance of defining counter-terrorism as the starting point of the investigation, saying: "It shows that there is a high probability that intelligence was deliberately abused to make Papadopoulos' activities look like they were something else.

As counter-terrorism and counterintelligence are close in tactics and methods, it would seem that they were used because they share the same skill sets - covert evidence gathering and deception. It's basically sleight of hand. A piece of theatre would be more precise. However, we don't know if the FBI knew it was real or make-believe. It's more likely that the CIA played the FBI with the help of close allies who were suspicious and frightened of a Trump presidency."

Mueller's Team And Joseph Mifsud

Zainab Ahmad , a member of Mueller's legal team, is the former Assistant United States Attorney in the Eastern District of New York. As pointed out by Blackburn , Ahmad attended a Global Center on Cooperative Security event in 2017. In recent days, Blackburn wrote via Twitter :

"Zainab Ahmad is a major player in the Russiagate scandal at the DOJ. Does she work for SC Mueller? She was at a GCCS event in May 2017. Arvinder Sambei, a co-director of the [London Centre of International Law Practice], worked with Joseph Mifsud, [George Papadopoulos] and [Simona Mangiante]. She's a GCCS consultant."

Blackburn told this author:

"Zainab Ahmad was one of the first DOJ prosecutors to have seen the Steele dossier. In May 2017, she attended a counter-terrorism conference in New York with the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), an organization which Joseph Mifsud, the alleged Russian spy, had been working within London and Riyadh, Saudi Arabia."

Zainab Ahmad (AHMAD). Image via the Combatting Terrorism Center, West Point

"Richard Barrett, the Former Chief of Counter-Terrorism at MI6, Britain's foreign intelligence department traveled with Mifsud to Saudi Arabia to give a talk on terrorism in 2017. Ex-CIA officers, US Defense, and US Treasury officials were also there. The London Centre of International Law Practice's relationship to the Global Center had been established in 2014. The Global Center on Cooperative Security made Martin Polaine and Arvinder Sambei consultants, they then became directors at the London Centre of International Law Practice."

"The Global Center on Cooperative Security's first major UK conference was at Joseph Mifsud's London Academy of Diplomacy (LAD). Mifsud then followed Arvinder Sambei and Nagi Idris over to the London Centre of International Law Practice. Sources have told me that Mifsud was moonlighting as a specialist on counter-terrorism and Islamism while working at LAD which explains why he went to work in counter-terrorism after LAD folded."

"I don't think it's a coincidence that Global Center on Cooperative Security is connected to various elements that popped up in the Papadopoulos case. The fact that a prosecutor on Mueller's team was at Global Center before Mueller was appointed as special counsel is also troubling."

Days ago, The Hill reported on Congressional testimony by Bruce Ohr, revealing that when served as a DOJ official, he warned FBI and DOJ figures that the Steele dossier was problematic and linked to the Clintons. Critically, The Hill writes:

"Those he briefed included Andrew Weissmann, then the head of DOJ's fraud section; Bruce Swartz, longtime head of DOJ's international operations, and Zainab Ahmad , an accomplished terrorism prosecutor who, at the time, was assigned to work with Lynch as a senior counselor. Ahmad and Weissmann would go on to work for Mueller, the special prosecutor overseeing the Russia probe." [Emphasis Added]

This point is essential, as it not only describes Ahmad's role in Mueller's team but places her at a crucial pre-investigation meeting.

Last year, Blackburn noted the connection between Mifsud and Arvinder Sambei , writing: "LCILP director and FBI counsel, works with Mike Smith at the Global Center. They ran joint counter-terrorism conferences and training with Mifsud's London Academy. Sambei then brought Mifsud over to the [London Centre of International Law Practice]. [Global Center works with Aussies, UK and US State too."

Sambei has been described elsewhere as a "Former practising barrister, Senior Crown Prosecutor with the Crown Prosecution Service of England & Wales, and Legal Adviser at the Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ), Ministry of Defence." [British spelling has been retained]

Arvinder Sambei. Image via the Public International Law Advisory Group

That Sambei has been so thoroughly linked to organizations where Mifsud was a central figure is yet another cause of suspicion regarding allegations that Joseph Mifsud was a shadowy, unknown Russian agent until the summer of 2016 . She is also a direct link between Robert Mueller and Mifsud.

Blackburn wrote via Twitter : "Arvinder Sambei helped to organize LCILP's counter-terrorism and corruption events. She used her contacts in the US to bring in Middle Eastern government officials that were seen to be vulnerable to graft. Lisa Osofsky, former FBI Deputy General Counsel, was working with her." Below, Arvinder is pictured at a London Centre of International Law Practice (LCILP) event.

Arvinder Sambei, pictured at an LCILP event. Image via Chris Blackburn, Twitter

As Chris Blackburn told this author:

" Mifsud and Papadopoulos's co-director Arvinder Sambei was also the former FBI British counsel working 9/11 cases for Robert Mueller. She also runs a consultancy which deals with Special Investigative Measure (SIMs) which is just a posh description for covert espionage and evidence gathering. She has worked for major intelligence and national law agencies in the past. She wore two hats as a director of London Centre and a consultant for the Global Center on Cooperative Security (GCCS), a counter-terrorism think tank which is sponsored by the Australia, Canada, UK and US governments. Alexander Downer's former Chief of Staff while at the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade now works for the Global Center. Mifsud was also due to meet with Australian private intelligence figures in Adelaide in March 2016. So. Australia is certainly a major focus for the investigation." [Emphasis Added]

Below, former FBI Deputy General Counsel Lisa Osofsky is pictured at a London Centre for International Law Practice event . Osofsky also served as the Money Laundering Reporting Officer with Goldman Sachs International. Since 2018, she has served as the Director of the UK's Serious Fraud Office (SFO).

Lisa Osofsky, pictured at an LCILP event. Image via Chris Blackburn, Twitter

An Embarrassment For John Brennan?

Disobedient Media previously reported that Robert Hannigan, then head of British spy agency GCHQ, flew to Washington DC to share 'director-to-director' level intelligence with then-CIA Chief John Brennan in the summer of 2016. This writer noted that " The Guardian reported Hannigan's announcement that he would step down from his leadership position with the agency just three days after the inauguration of President Trump, on 23 January 2017.

Jane Mayer, in her profile of Christopher Steele published in the New Yorker, also noted that Hannigan had flown to Washington D.C. to personally brief the then-CIA Director John Brennan on alleged communications between the Trump campaign and Moscow. What is so curious about this briefing "deemed so sensitive it was handled at director-level" is why Hannigan was talking director-to-director to the CIA and not Mike Rogers at the NSA, GCHQ's Five Eyes intelligence-sharing partner."

Blackburn told Disobedient Media:

"Former Congressman Trey Gowdy, who has seen most of the information gathered by Congress from the intelligence community concerning the Russia investigation, said that if President Trump were to declassify files and present the truth to the American public, it would " embarrass John Brennan ." I think that is pretty concrete for me, but it's not definitive. I know the polarization and spin in Washington has become perverse, but that statement is pretty specific for me. If Brennan is involved, it is most probably through Papadopoulos who sparked off the 'official' investigation at the FBI. He also made sure the Steele dossier was spread through the US government."

Blackburn added: "Chris Steele was also working on FIFA projects, and a source has told me that he was working to investigate the Russian and Qatari World Cup bids. The London Centre of International Law Practice has been working with Majed Garoub, the former Saudi legal representative of FIFA, the world governing body for soccer. He's also been working against the Qatari bid. Steele likes to get paid twice for his investigations."

"Mifsud has also been associated with Prince Turki the former Saudi intelligence chief, Mifsud and the London Academy of Diplomacy used to train Saudi diplomats and intelligence figures while Turki was the Saudi Ambassador to London. Turki is a close friend of Bill Clinton and John Brennan. Nawaf Obaid was also courting Mifsud and tried to get him a cushy job working with CNN's Freedom Project at Link Campus in Rome. He also knows John Brennan. Intelligence agencies like to give out professional gifts like this plum academic position for completing missions. In the US, it is widely known that intelligence agencies gift the children of assets to get them into prestigious Ivy League schools."

At minimum, we can surmise that Mifsud was not a Russian agent, but was an asset of Western intelligence agencies. We are left with the impression that the Mifsud saga served as a ploy, whether he participated knowingly or not. It seems reasonable to conclude that the gambit was initially developed with participation of John Brennan and UK intelligence. Following this, Mueller inherited and developed the Mifsud narrative thread into the collusion soap opera we know today.

Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power.


snodgrass , 2 hours ago link

What ********. Britain was part of the group pulling of 911 along with the American and Jewish establishment. Blackburn was the inside guy, posing as an outsider, to deflect attention from the real perpetrators. These people always have agents on both sides of every issue in the same way they fund two "opposing" political parties and fund two "opposing" sides in the media.

freedommusic , 3 hours ago link

Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency , and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power .

It's called TREASON .

Whoever, owing allegiance to the United States, levies war against them or adheres to their enemies , giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere , is guilty of treason and shall suffer death, or shall be imprisoned not less than five years

Jung , 3 hours ago link

SteeleGate---his mate Skripal, boss Pablo Miller----novichok---Porton Down---anything to blame Russia in the end. After 30 dys of shutdown personnel of CIA, FBI and DOJ can be changed legally: draining of the swamp and DECLAS can begin with proper Military Tribunals in place. This according to Q who shared all of this, so it was not a conspiracy theory that the Q team exposed, but just MSM and Deep State in their last panic mode. Justice will now be able to follow: maybe rel end of endless wars too!

boooyaaaah , 3 hours ago link

There are more and more articles saying that the FBI, CIA, M14 15,16 yada yada, were overly concerned about Trump. Their sin...caring too much for the USA. They attempted a coup de'etat for "our" own good...we... being "we the people". To quote Abe Lincoln "You will find that all the arguments in favour of kingcraft were of this class; they always bestrode the necks of the people, -- not that they wanted to do it, but because the people were better off for being ridden." Lincoln did not mince words

So now we have an international conspiracy of care. Not one power grubber in the group. A syndicate of misunderstood do gooders.

But not having the consent of the people, but rather trying to undo, and foil the consent of the people.

This part of the Declaration applies

That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Last of the Middle Class , 4 hours ago link

Ultimately, we are faced with the reality that British and US interests worked together to fabricate a collusion scandal to subvert a US Presidency, and in doing so, intentionally raised tensions between the West and a nuclear-armed power..."

Why do you not call it a coup d'etat? That is what it is, nothing less. If it were about something Trump did you would use the harshest possible language. Why not tell the truth here. Let the American people know what happened.

[Feb 10, 2019] Can Elizabeth Warren reclaim her role as Democrats' top foil to Trump? by Sabrina Siddiqui in

Notable quotes:
"... The job paid minimum wage and exposed Warren firsthand to the topics that would later define her career: the power of corporations and the effects of bankruptcy on the American consumer. ..."
"... Warren, who had been sharply critical of Clinton in part over her ties to Wall Street, ultimately chose not to challenge her for the Democratic party's nomination and endorsed the former secretary of state's campaign. It was also during this time that Warren proved among the few capable of getting under then candidate Donald Trump's skin. ..."
"... At the same time, Warren became a top target of conservatives and Trump himself. The president has repeatedly mocked Warren with the derisive nickname "Pocahontas" – including at an event intended to honor Native Americans. ..."
"... Republicans first tried to push the notion that Warren used her Native American ancestry to further her career in the 2012 Senate race, homing in on a single questionnaire in which she claimed mixed ancestry. ..."
"... But the matter did not end there. The Washington Post published a story revealing Warren listed her race as "American Indian" while seeking a Texas bar registration card in 1986. ..."
"... Warren's platform includes the single-payer healthcare system Medicare for All, debt-free college tuition and anti-corruption legislation designed to restore accountability in government. She is also poised to unveil a proposal that would impose a wealth tax on Americans worth over $50m. ..."
Feb 10, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

Warren's official entry into the race has differed sharply from when she captured widespread liberal enthusiasm in her unlikely bid for the Senate seven years ago.

The two-term senator will join a crowded Democratic primary field with no clear frontrunner – and several contenders jockeying to claim the progressive mantle that she aspires to grasp. She has also found herself contending with a lingering controversy for previously identifying as Native American over the course of nearly two decades.

The question now is whether Warren, who moved early to build an expansive field operation in anticipation of her presidential run, can overcome early setbacks and reclaim her role as the Democratic party's top foil to Donald Trump.

divider

Born to middle-class parents in Norman, Oklahoma , Warren has spoken candidly about how her family's livelihood was upended when her father's heart attack forced him out of work. Addressing crowds across the country, Warren often recalls how her late mother – determined not to lose the family's home – "pulled on her best dress" and got her first paying job at the department store Sears.

The job paid minimum wage and exposed Warren firsthand to the topics that would later define her career: the power of corporations and the effects of bankruptcy on the American consumer.

Her research in bankruptcy law – and the impact on the average person's medical bills, mortgage payments and other installments – led Warren to become a leading expert on the subject and rise in the academia world.

"These are the issues she still cares about," said Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School who helped recruit Warren to its faculty.

"I think she is extraordinary for this reason, that she got into politics because she cared about some issues. She didn't get into politics because she wanted to be in office and then tried to figure out what issues she cared about."

Warren cultivated a profile as a populist firebrand against the backdrop of the Great Recession, earning the ire of Wall Street by spearheading the creation of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau – an agency established under the Obama administration as part of the Dodd-Frank financial reform bill of 2010.

Upon being passed over to head the agency she helped create, Warren decided to continue the fight from within the government, embarking on a campaign to win back the late senator and liberal icon Ted Kennedy's seat from the Republican incumbent, Scott Brown, in the high-profile 2012 Massachusetts Senate race.

Roughly $70m was spent on the bitterly waged contest, which catapulted Warren to the national stage.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elizabeth Warren speaks during day two of the Democratic national convention in Charlotte, North Carolina, on 5 September 2012. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images

The race also saw Warren cement herself as a leader of the burgeoning progressive movement within the Democratic party; branding the choice before voters as "Wall Street versus you", Warren viewed the election as an opportunity to hand a major defeat to what she once dubbed as "the largest lobbying force ever assembled on the face of the earth".

Following her victory, Warren's profile grew so rapidly that speculation swiftly emerged over a potential White House run in 2016, despite the inevitability of Hillary Clinton's candidacy. A group of progressives even mounted a #DraftWarren campaign.

Warren, who had been sharply critical of Clinton in part over her ties to Wall Street, ultimately chose not to challenge her for the Democratic party's nomination and endorsed the former secretary of state's campaign. It was also during this time that Warren proved among the few capable of getting under then candidate Donald Trump's skin.

After Trump derided Clinton as a "nasty woman", Warren famously riffed: "Get this, Donald. Nasty women are tough, nasty women are smart and nasty women vote, and on November 8, we nasty women are going to march our nasty feet to cast our nasty votes to get you out of our lives forever."

The 2016 presidential election did not, however, produce the groundswell of unified opposition to Trump that Democrats had hoped for. Instead, it left the party in search of a clear leader to fill the void left by Obama's departure from the White House.

For Warren, it looked as though her moment had arrived.

In the early days of the Trump administration, Warren quickly emerged as the face of the Democratic opposition, matching the president's tweets with sharp ripostes of her own and holding his cabinet nominees to account when they appeared for consideration before congressional committees.

During the confirmation process for the former attorney general Jeff Sessions, Warren famously read a letter written 30 years prior by Coretta Scott King, in which the widow of Dr Martin Luther King Jr warned of Sessions' civil rights record from the time of his nomination for a federal judgeship.

Silenced by Republicans mid-speech on the Senate floor, Warren read the letter on Facebook Live. The hashtag #LetLizSpeak trended on Twitter and the phrase "Nevertheless, she persisted" was coined.

At the same time, Warren became a top target of conservatives and Trump himself. The president has repeatedly mocked Warren with the derisive nickname "Pocahontas" – including at an event intended to honor Native Americans.

Although Warren long ignored the president's taunts, she took the unusual step of addressing the issue head on in October by making public the results of a DNA test revealing that she did, in fact, have some Native American ancestry.

Rather than putting the topic to rest, Warren's move was rebuked by some tribal leaders, who felt it politicized their identity, and reignited the story.

Republicans first tried to push the notion that Warren used her Native American ancestry to further her career in the 2012 Senate race, homing in on a single questionnaire in which she claimed mixed ancestry.

An exhaustive investigation by the Boston Globe found no evidence that Warren benefited from doing so, and nearly every living Harvard law professor involved in her hiring has said it was not a factor in their votes to offer her a tenured position.

"When we brought her to Harvard, no one had a clue that she thought of herself as Native American," said Laurence Tribe, the school's professor of constitutional law.

"I think she's had an unfair rap," he added. "I don't think it's the case that she ever exploited her family's background or ancestry in a way that some people seem to think she did."

The Cherokee nation, one of the groups that was critical of Warren, said she privately apologized to to tribal leaders.

But the matter did not end there. The Washington Post published a story revealing Warren listed her race as "American Indian" while seeking a Texas bar registration card in 1986. Warren apologized once more, telling reporters: "I'm not a tribal citizen.

"My apology is an apology for not having been more sensitive about tribal citizenship and tribal sovereignty. I really want to underline the point, tribes and only tribes determine tribal citizenship."

Warren remains a popular figure in the Democratic party and was easily re-elected to a second Senate term in the 2018 midterm elections.

Even so, she received fewer votes in her home state than Charlie Baker, the Republican governor of Massachusetts, prompting Warren's hometown paper to urge the senator to reconsider a presidential bid.

"While Warren won re-election, her margin of victory in November suggests there's a ceiling on her popularity," the Boston Globe editorial board wrote. "Baker garnered more votes than she did in a state that is supposed to be a Democratic haven."

She's hard-edged, not personally, but ideologically. She takes very sharp and controversial positions

Barney Frank

"While Warren is an effective and impactful senator with an important voice nationally, she has become a divisive figure," the board added. "A unifying voice is what the country needs now after the polarizing politics of Donald Trump." Those close to Warren dismissed the editorial as having more to do with the personal biographies and inclinations of those who sit on the board. "She's hard-edged, not personally, but ideologically," said Frank. "She takes very sharp and controversial positions."

"So, yeah, they're going to be people who are unhappy with her."

More challenging for Warren, friends and former colleagues said, would be the task of distinguishing herself within a diverse field of Democratic candidates that includes at least three of her Senate colleagues and a record number of women seeking the party's nomination.

Warren's platform includes the single-payer healthcare system Medicare for All, debt-free college tuition and anti-corruption legislation designed to restore accountability in government. She is also poised to unveil a proposal that would impose a wealth tax on Americans worth over $50m.

Fried, who served as solicitor general under Ronald Reagan, said he disagreed with some of the more expansive economic policies touted by Warren. But her greatest asset as a candidate, he acknowledged, would be to approach the campaign with the same steely resolve to elevate the middle class that endeared her to voters seven years ago.

Although he is only occasionally in touch with Warren as she embarks on what will undoubtedly be a grueling campaign for America's highest office, Fried recalled recently sending Warren a lengthy article about capitalism and income inequality.

To his surprise, he received a response from Warren 10 days later. She had not only taken the time to read the article, but highlighted a portion that stood out to her. "How many presidential candidates would do that?" Fried asked. In her email, Warren also recounted to her old colleague how not very long ago they sat together on a flight discussing the prospects of a Clinton presidency. That day never came to fruition, Warren noted. "I don't know what lies ahead," she added. "But I know what I'm fighting for."

[Feb 10, 2019] 'Rigged system': will Warren's rage against the rich win over 2020 voters? by Josh Wood

Feb 09, 2019 | -> www.theguardian.com

While controversy around her heritage lingers, voters call the Democrat's fight against economic injustice 'inspiring' On a cold, blustery January day in 1912, immigrant women walked out of the Everett Mill in the -> Massachusetts factory town of Lawrence demanding higher wages and better working conditions. Mill owners and city government responded in a swift and heavy-handed manner; local militias and police forces were called to the streets. Protesters died. Many more were arrested.

On a cold, blustery February day 117 years later, the Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren stood in front of Everett Mill -> to announce her candidacy for president of the United States , channeling the spirit of those women as she told her supporters that they were in a fight for their lives against a rigged system that favors the rich and powerful.

ss="rich-link"> Why women 2020 candidates face 'likability' question even as they make history Read more

"These workers – led by women – didn't have much. Not even a common language. Nevertheless, they persisted," she said. "The story of Lawrence is about how real change happens in America. It's a story about power – our power – when we fight together."

For Warren, who grew up in an economically struggling Oklahoma household and who first rose to mainstream prominence by handing out practical financial advice to American families, the word "fight" is central to her platform and political ethos – it was a word peppered throughout her speech.

But on Saturday, she made clear that hers was not just a fight against president Donald Trump, but against a system she described as one where the rich, privileged and powerful oppress the rest of the country.

-> Facebook Twitter Pinterest Supporters in Lawrence, Massachusetts. Photograph: Brian Snyder/Reuters

"The man in the White House is not the cause of what is broken, he is just the latest – and most extreme – symptom of what's gone wrong in America, a product of a rigged system that props up the rich and the powerful and kicks dirt on everyone else," she said. "So once he's gone, we can't pretend that all of this never happened."

The backdrop of the mill, where the so-called Bread and Roses strikes originated, was symbolic. But so too was the choice of the modern day city of Lawrence, which is one of those places in America that has felt left behind in recent times. To many in New England, Lawrence is synonymous with crime, drugs and poverty. The Republican governors of Maine and New Hampshire have invoked the city's name when laying blame for the opioid crises in their states. As was the case at the time of the strikes, Lawrence is a working class city of immigrants, with a population that is about 80% Latino. It is a city where wealth is nearby, but out of reach for many.

Sebastian Brown, 31, moved to Lawrence five years ago. While he had yet to choose a candidate to support, he was excited by Warren's message and was happy Warren chose the town as the site of her announcement.

ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">

I think we need a woman president and I think it will be the fight of our lives

Vicki Ward, rally attendee

"This is a working class city. And I think her – and Bernie [Sanders] – are running on platforms that speak to the working class and how they're being screwed over by the rich and powerful," he said. "And I think she's a great messenger for it."

While there was optimism about Warren's candidacy at her rally, she enters an already crowded Democratic field amid -> r enewed controversy over her past identification as Native American.

For years now – since even before he was president – -> Trump has needled Warren on the issue , calling her "Pocahontas". He and others accuse Warren of falsely presenting herself as Native American to gain unfair advantages in life.

The controversy was re-ignited last week when the Washington Post -> published Warren's 1986 registration card for the Texas State Bar. In it, she listed "American Indian" as her race.

Warren has now apologised repeatedly for identifying as Native American, saying in recent days that she "should have been more mindful of the distinction with tribal citizenship and tribal sovereignty". She still maintains that Native American ancestry was part of her family's story passed down to her.

-> Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elizabeth Warren called Donald Trump the 'most extreme' symptom of a broken system. Photograph: Cj Gunther/EPA

How damaging the controversy will be remains to be see. Warren enters a diverse Democratic field where other candidates belong to minority groups: New Jersey senator -> Cory Booker is African American ; -> California senator Kamala Harris was born to an Indian mother and a Jamaican father. -> Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard is both the first Hindu and first Samoan-American member of Congress, and the former San Antonio mayor -> Julián Castro is Latino . When the Democratic race gets heated, Warren's portrayal of race could prove to be a point of attack.

Peter Devlin, a 56-year-old dentist from the nearby town of North Andover, said he was at the rally to hear what Warren had to say but said that the Native American controversy "is going to be a problem" for her campaign.

"I voted for her as senator, but I'm concerned about her electability," he said. "It's going to be a tough run. She's got a bit of baggage and she's so sort of cliche progressive liberal that I think there's a lot of America that's not up for that. But I want to hear what she's up to."

ss="rich-link"> Stacey Abrams on the ticket? Democrat's star turn fuels talk for 2020 Read more

However, other attendees, like 64-year-old Vicki Ward, who drove two hours to the event from Vermont, were ready to throw their support behind Warren on the first day of the senator's presidential campaign.

"I think she's got the qualities that we need," she said. "I think we need a woman president and I think it will be the fight of our lives."

Maryann Johnson, who came to Warren's announcement from New Hampshire, also said she was already sold on Warren.

"I basically agreed with everything she said. We need to have more equality, there needs to be less corruption in government," she said. "She's inspiring."

Topics -> Elizabeth Warren -> US elections 2020 -> Massachusetts -> Democrats -> US politics analysis Share on Facebook Share on Twitter

[Feb 10, 2019] And does he really think the Brits have "class?"

Feb 10, 2019 | www.unz.com

Bragadocious , says: February 8, 2019 at 5:33 am GMT

Both Haley and Mattis are no longer serving with the Administration; apparently news of this has not reached Fred's watering hole in Ajijic, where I hear the Internet is slow and dodgy. And does he really think the Brits have "class?"

Harry showed up for a photo op in Helmand province and promptly got two American GIs killed, a result that Reed probably found thrilling.

The classy Brits promptly created tall tales of this dimwitted ginger dodging bullets and blasting insurgents to bits, like a modern day Flashman. All this in the run-up to the big wedding. Classy, and not propaganda at all!

[Feb 09, 2019] There are only two ways to remove Maduro

Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org

vexarb says Feb, 4, 2019

Analyst Canthama agrees with Pepe (BTL SyrPer #286513):

The Saker has a nice article on Venezuela, few days old, but quite balanced on his analysis, people could disagree with one or two things but in general quite to the point on all fronts.

http://www.unz.com/tsaker/the-us-aggression-against-venezuela-as-a-diagnostic-tool/

Though Colombia and Brazil border Venezuela on its West and South, any sort of military invasion from those directions will first have to conquer nature.

So there are only two ways to remove Maduro:

1) US cruise missiles hitting hundreds of spots in Venezuela would be completely unacceptable for any Latina America population, a violence that would cause the US to lose support even its most vassal States.
In parallel, such violence would spark the return of the Colombian guerrilla, blowback will be very bad and wide spread. Thus military intervention is not likely.

2) The second option is assassination of Maduro , and this is where some of Venezuela's allies are trying to help, either with security guards, intel and direct protection.

As in Syria, time is an ally for Venezuela, the Venezuela Government will become stronger and diplomacy will take shape, There is a real danger though for a false flag, and this is in fact what Bolton and Pompeo are preparing with Guaidó's supporters knowledge [as in Syria].

Time is also important since the US regime and its dying fiat economy, 2019 will be a tough year for the G7, meaning theses regimes will either have to create another massive QE that will bring them down or start a big war, which the vast majority of their country citizens will never support, see France with yellow vest, many more countries would see the same -- even the US.

So, time is good friend to the Venezuela, they must push it as long as they can, and things will be all right.

vexarb says Feb, 4, 2019
Pepe Escobar gives the global view; with Venezuela, Iran, Russia and China abandoning the mythical petrodollar, Uncle $cam's fiat currency is heading for the dustbin of history: https://thesaker.is/venezuela-lets-cut-to-the-chase/
vexarb says Feb, 4, 2019
Latest from MOA. Uncle $cam is couped in all alone: https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/02/us-coup-attempt-in-venezuela-lacks-international-support.html
Frank Russell says Feb, 3, 2019

https://www.youtube.com/embed/R_2sf6qnuNU?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Frank Russell says Feb, 3, 2019
https://youtu.be/R_2sf6qnuNU
vexarb says Feb, 2, 2019
UN rejects Venezuela's Guaido, will only cooperate with recognized government of Maduro: https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/01/587387/UN-reject-Guaido-cooperate-Maduro
vexarb says Feb, 1, 2019
Refusal to hand over Venezuelan gold means end of Britain as a financial center -- Prof. Wolff

https://www.rt.com/business/450144-venezuela-gold-boe-wolff/

"That is a signal to every country that has or may have difficulties with the US, [that they had] better get their money out of England and out of London because it's not the safe place as it once was," he said.

"One of the few things left for Britain is to be the financial center that London has been for so long. And one of the ways you stay a financial center is if you don't play games with other people's money," he said.

Lochearn says Feb, 1, 2019
Jimmy Dore, Abby Martin and others on Venezuela: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98pBLXe7Bmk

crank says Feb, 1, 2019

Listening to David Graeber in this interview there is no mention of declining energy surpluses in the discussion of the economic paradigm of the coming future. No consideration of the role of the labour of fossil fuels in the economy of the past two centuries. It's amazing, the argument seems not to have reached them, such that it is doesn't even get a look in. (Listen from 40 min mark, and you will hear a completely opposite view of what is to come -- " We are not going to have the problem of how to deploy scarce resources, given an only moderate level of productivity ").
https://novaramedia.com/2019/02/01/david-graeber-bullshit-jobs-direct-democracy-the-end-of-capitalism/

Fittingly, there is a fascinating section (52.min 30 sec onwards) exploring Graeber's new book project about how much of the enlightenment thinking of pre-revolutionary France was either a pilfering of, or a reaction to, the ideas of social organisation coming from pre-European Americans.

DunGroanin says Feb, 1, 2019

The Graun seems to have been anti-Chavez from the get go. With a set of 'journalists' who seem to jave made it their lifes work to reverse that democratic revolution. It is not easy to find their biogs.
Johan Meyer says Jan, 31, 2019
This whole business of "recognizing a president" not yet in power has a precedent: Rwanda.

When the bUgandan army invaded Rwanda (with US, Canadian, British and Belgian backing) in 1990 (1 October), or in propaganda terms, the RPA started its "liberation," the US moved its embassy to Mulindi, and sent the bUgandan chief of intelligence from his IMET junket at Fort Leavenworth, to take over in northern Rwanda. I refer to Paul Kagame.

International institutions also started to deal with Mulindi, rather than Kigali. Accusations of genocide within a year

Glasshopper says Jan, 31, 2019
Loathsome though he is, Bolton is probably the only honest neocon around. In Iraq, while the likes of Blair were banging on about 45 minutes, human rights and democracy etc, Bolton always made it clear that is was simply a matter of US interests. AKA Oil. He has never pretended to represent anything but rapacious US self interest.

Fair play. At least you know what you're getting with that tash.

Stonky says Jan, 31, 2019
Prior to being assigned to Latin America, Phillips was the Guardian's China correspondent for five years or so. His task, which he diligently accomplished, was to produce a couple of articles a week on "Why China Is No Good" . I don't think he ever once found anything positive to say about the place.

As an individual he's a complete Jodrell, but there are few to compare with him in his ability to relentlessly toe the Washington neocon line. You couldn't get a fag paper in between him and Luke Harding. I wonder if he's paid for it, or whether it's just that seductive sense of 'belonging' that comes from rubbing shoulders with really powerful people .

Tim Jenkins says Jan, 31, 2019
Principally, the principles , better said the absence of statute & principle in Law, behind mass surveillance, was what Snowden was desperate to highlight and that the public's principal concern of the Guardian's hard drives, were the least of our problems, legally speaking , coz' other copies existed already elsewhere, anyway

OFFG could always ask Glen Greenwald to explain why he ceased to 'copulate' with the Guardian and maybe even 'intercept' an opinion or two from Snowden, whilst he's at it intercepting. Indeed , a few extra nails in the Guardian's coffin , could be delivered quite speedily & succinctly , with some professional journalistic exchange of Question & Answer, with nail-gun loaded & mutual benefit would seem to be an all round obvious win-win debate on matters of principle, legal permissions & submissions.

Andy says Jan, 31, 2019
In some ways it is refreshing to have these power hungry narcissists in charge of the US as they cannot seem to not blurt out their naked ambitions, which in this example ftom the ft basically shows kidnap is an agreeable part of trade negotiation.

'Five days after a top executive of Huawei, the Chinese telecoms group, was arrested on a US request in Canada, President Donald Trump said he was willing to intervene -- if it helped secure "the largest trade deal ever made". The detention of Meng Wanzhou, one of China's best known executives, was undoubtedly an incendiary step, escalating trade tensions with Beijing. But presidential interference in the case would send entirely the wrong message about the US justice system -- and about how the administration conducts international affairs.

The US and western allies have legitimate concerns about China's reputation for digital espionage and theft of intellectual property. They agree a more robust stance is needed towards Beijing. But arresting a star of Chinese business -- Ms Meng has been called China's Sheryl Sandberg -- on a Canadian stopover en route to Mexico from Hong Kong is not the way to persuade Beijing to change its behaviour.

Even if the Huawei chief financial officer was held on unrelated charges of violating US sanctions on Iran, the move smacks of using individuals as pawns in negotiations. It is seen in Beijing as Washington rewriting the rules of engagement. Such waywardness and unpredictability from a country that used to portray itself as a pillar of the international rules-based order will tempt China to respond in kind, leading to a downward spiral of tit-for-tat behaviour. Indeed, the detention of a former Canadian diplomat, Michael Kovrig, in Beijing looks worryingly like retaliation.

It may be necessary to take at face value Mr Trump's claims that he was unaware of the US extradition application, and of the detention itself -- which occurred on the day he was holding talks on a trade truce with his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping in Buenos Aires. Had he known, even Mr Trump seems unlikely to have been cynical enough not to mention the arrest to Mr Xi. Presidential ignorance, however, offers little reassurance.

That Mr Trump would not be notified of such a sensitive case by his justice department strengthens the impression of a dysfunctional administration, whose different arms pursue their agendas with little co-ordination, if not in open competition. It strains credibility that his recent presidential predecessors would have been left in the dark in similar situations. The Huawei incident comes in the same week that John Kelly's departure as chief of staff seemed to confirm the extent to which the Trump White House defies conventional management.

The president's offer to do "whatever's good for this country" regarding Ms Meng's case reflects a dealmaker's desire to put his talks with Mr Xi back on track, while extracting whatever advantage he can. But it amounts, in effect, to saying he is holding the Huawei CFO hostage as a trade negotiating chip. The situation carries echoes of the White House's reversal in July of a seven-year executive ban on ZTE, the Chinese telecoms equipment maker, on purchasing critical equipment from the US, in what appeared a tactical concession to Beijing.

Presidential interference in Ms Meng's case would send a worse signal: that rule of law in the US is a function of the whim of the chief executive, or that illegal behaviour can be up for negotiation. It risks creating an impression that there is little difference between America's judicial system and that of, say, Turkey -- or indeed China. The Huawei executive's detention was damaging. It is, however, not for the White House, but for independent courts in Canada and -- if Ms Meng is extradited -- the US to determine what happens next.'

lundiel says Jan, 31, 2019
It all depends on your acceptance of "legality" of American sanctions on Iran. I don't, therefore American action against Ms Meng imo is political and nothing to do with the rule of law. Mr Trump's opinions are irrelevant.
Jen says Jan, 31, 2019
President Trump's comments and opinions as expressed on Twitter will become relevant in Sabrina Meng's court case. Her legal defence could use Trump's opinions as evidence that her arrest was politically motivated and therefore she should not be extradited.

Canadian PM Justin Bieber Trudeau sacked the Ambassador to China for saying this and expressing other opinions, among them Canada's view as to whether the current (and new) US sanctions on Iran are binding on Canada.

harry stotle says Jan, 31, 2019
Just to add I see the US are sending their finest war criminals to 'help' Venezuela.

Elliot Abrams really is a piece of work -- perhaps not everybody realises quite how bad this guy is.

Absolutely shocking allegations here.

https://www.youtube.com/embed/IrcT3GJuh0A?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Kathy says Jan, 31, 2019
The hypocrisy of the MSM in all this is yet again. So blatant it is sickening. At the same time as Yemen is being battered by bombs with the Wests names on them. Deliberately starved to death. With Western MSM indifference. Not to even mention. All the other countries Western powers have illegally devastated. The hand ringing over the plight of the Venezuelan people under Maduro is suddenly more then they can all bare. Western sanctioning and deliberate sabotage by the West against the country. Undermining any chance of peace. Don't get a peep of a mention by the MSM.
Here we go again. Roll up roll up. This is the latest hypocritical propaganda media show. Maduro is evil we must save his country from this evil. Saintly peace bringing Western alliance must save Venezuela. All that's needed is a more pliant Western puppet or chaos and civil war. Oil Opps sorry shh don't mention the oil. Does any one really buy into this deranged demented narrative any more. For gods sake how many more times do we have to say. NO NOT IN MY NAME.
Yarkob says Jan, 31, 2019
This is good: https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/29/the-making-of-juan-guaido-how-the-us-regime-change-laboratory-created-venezuelas-coup-leader/

same old characters..OTPOR in particular has a rosy past. Mixed up with DynCorp and the Serbian "police" abuse fiasco

wardropper says Jan, 31, 2019
The likes of Bolton haven't seen any reason to conceal their wicked agenda for some time. They are so sure that their god has made them untouchable.
mark says Jan, 31, 2019
$13 billion in Venezuelan assets have been stolen by Uncle Sam and his satraps over the past few days. Why oh why oh why do countries and foreign individuals persist in keeping their assets in the US/ UK??????. Billions were stolen from Libya in a few days in 2011. Where it all went is one of life's big mysteries. Cameron even stole a boat load of Libyan currency that had been printed in the UK.
Francis Lee says Jan, 31, 2019
Yes, guilt by omission, the preferred mendacity of the MSM. 'When truth is met by silence, silence is a lie.' Yevgeny Yevtushenko.
mark says Feb, 3, 2019
A Parliamentary Committee has been set up to agitate for sanctions against China on behalf of the "poor oppressed Uighurs" in China. Shedding buckets of tears over the lack of "yuman rights." While supplying British sniper rifles to the Zionists to gun down Palestinian kids with dum dum bullets and planes, cluster bombs and RAF advisors to slaughter kids in Yemen.
harry stotle says Jan, 31, 2019
Trump imposed broader economic sanctions on Venezuela because;
*serious human rights abuses (by Maduro),
*antidemocratic actions, and,
*responsibility for the deepening humanitarian crisis.
https://fas.org/sgp/crs/row/IF10715.pdf

So definitely nothing to do with the oil, or international relations between Venezuela and other powers that neocons are at war with (wars being conducted in the media, financial markets and on the ground) while the phony who preceeded Trump (Obama) claimed Venezeula posed an "unusual and extraordinary threat" to US national security (which is a bit like Tyson Fury saying he is frightened by a 90 year old woman who is blind and only has one leg).
https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/12885

Isn't there just one soul at the Guardian who will stand up for what is really happening here (as in all other parts of the world where the US has harmed so many people because of its insatiable pursuit of oil and power) -- just one?

I must admit I am not getting my hopes up -- while the Guardian excels at drawing attention to Maduros failings they seem to be deaf, dumb and blind to the geopolitical context in which Venezuela is doing its utmost to escape the tentacles of US-backed neocons in their endless quest for violent regime change.

Maggie says Jan, 31, 2019
Here is a most excellent expose by Jimmy Dore:
?v=whgOvbw53WY

Article 7 of the Rome Statute says US sanctions are illegal because they were not sanctioned by the UN.

So WHY THE FCK DON;'T THEY TURN THE UN TROOPS ON THEM.:
Oh, I know why.. because they are toothless windbags.

Time to sanction the US,,,, NOW!!!

harry stotle says Jan, 31, 2019
Jimmy is an exception.

In general those in the know loath the MSM because of the role they play in backing the gangsters.

"Our own fate as Latin American writers is linked to the need for profound social transformations. To narrate is to give oneself: it seems obvious that literature, as an effort to communicate fully, will continue to be blocked so long as misery and illiteracy exist, and so long as the possessors of power continue to carry on with impunity their policy of collective imbecilization through the mass media. (Open veins of Latin America -- Eduardo Galeano)

http://library.uniteddiversity.coop/More_Books_and_Reports/Open_Veins_of_Latin_America.pdf

Ingwe says Jan, 31, 2019
A good article on the Graun's pro-USA stance on Venezuela. But the analysis in the linked article provides a more nuanced analysis of what's really going on there and it's not just about oil.
https://www.counterpunch.org/2019/01/30/trumps-coup-in-venezuela-the-full-story/
vexarb says Jan, 31, 2019
Ingwe, I started reading the Counter Punch, agreed it was not _only_ the oil so what were the other motives for U$ Grand Theft Larceny Fraud with Violence? Got as far as this:

"It should be remembered that the Obama Administration had imposed sanctions against Moscow in March 2014 over the Russian annexation of Crimea, and later involvement in the civil war in Eastern Ukraine."

Could not read follow that, because I remember no such things as Russian annexation of Crimea (at least, not since Catherine the Great), nor do I remember a civil war in Eastern Ukraine (though quite aware that the U$-imposed Jewish Junta with their neo-Nazi stormtroops are continually shelling Russian-speaking Eastern Ukraine).

Ingwe says Jan, 31, 2019
vexarb, pity you didn't bother to read further for, if you did, you'd get a rather more serious analysis than "USA bad and after the oil; Russia good and bringing enlightenment to the world" .
Francis Lee says Jan, 31, 2019
Excuse me but where did Vexarb say or intimated that 'Russia was good and bringing enlightenment to the world.' I can't seem to find this.
Antonym says Jan, 31, 2019
Why is anyone sane still reading (or referring to) the Guardian?
RealPeter says Jan, 31, 2019
I think the reason some of us still look at the Graun is that we can't quite believe how appalling it's got, especially when, like me, you're old enough to remember the old newspaper from the time when it had some principles and a lot of good writing. It has the sickly fascination of something you know is really bad for you, like Nutella or reality TV shows. You end up wallowing in its sheer awfulness, unlike, say, the Mail and the Sun, which you always know from the start are going to be barking mad and have no element of surprise.
bc says Jan, 31, 2019
It's pretty obvious Anthony. Because the Guardian, like the BBC and C4 News, presents itself as and is widely regarded to be an authorititative, non-biased news source. Hence it is hugely influential in forming opinion in the corridors of power and in educated society. Opinion that allow bad things to happen and ends up impacting lives. That is reality regardless of comments dismissing these news sources on the internet. And it is why it is appropriate for offguardian and others to try and highlight and expose the dangerous lies and omissions of these wide-reaching propagandists.
bevin says Jan, 31, 2019
It's good for cricket: the best paper in Canada for cricket news. Also for cycling. Since I first began to read the Manchester Guardian for Neville Cardus's famous writing on cricket, I stick with it.
As for foreign affairs, once it has been told by the Foreign Office, who the current enemies are it goes for them. Those who recall the 'good old days' when Latin America and the Middle East, including Palestine got reasonable coverage which sometimes was very good indeed, ought to bear in mind that, in those Cold War days, the main enemy was the Soviet Union and it was necessary to be equivocal about liberation struggles. After all, 'we' were pretending to be desperately sorry about the sufferings of the Russian people, and those of eastern Europe, so it was necessary to tone down the imperialist message.
Now the Establishment is dead set on recovering Latin America in toto, banishing alien (Chinese Russian) influences and consolidating its base in the western hemisphere.
Here comes the Atlantic Treaty Organisation ATO.
Jen says Jan, 31, 2019
Why is anyone sane still reading (or referring to) the Guardian?

This is like the old Soviet joke: Why are the capitalist nations on the edge of a precipice?

Answer: To get a better view of us down here.

The reason sane people still occasionally read or refer to The Guardian is to see how far gone down the abyss the newspaper has descended.

George Cornell says Feb, 1, 2019
Because the people they represent are the biggest threats to world peace.
George Cornell says Feb, 1, 2019
Because they represent and front the interests of the greatest threats to world peace.
George Cornell says Feb, 1, 2019
Sorry about the echolalia
Richard Audet says Jan, 31, 2019
Can't resist.

The oft-used cliche of the kid (not brain washed yet) saying out loud that the emperor has no clothes amongst a crowd propagandized, hypnotized and incentivized not to see and not to know truth from falsehood.

The role of the MSM it seems is to perpetrate this mass denial. Thanks to kids like Kit and those that support sites such as this other kids are catching on. But, alas we are just kids after all and the grown ups have the power to spank us for such blasphemy. It is a risk we kids take to speak the truth we see. When you see and when you know remaining silent can make you sick (despair, anhedonia, addiction etc.). I'll take my chances with the spanking and say as loud as I can that the emperor is a fucking war-mongering liar and thief.

rogerglewis says Jan, 31, 2019
https://d.tube/#!/v/tonefreqhz/2zkhc50m This Russel Brand film did get a limited general release but was quickly dispatched to the memory hole,

This David Malone FIlm Icon Earth got him into a ton of trouble at the Beeb back in 1995 it presages stage 2 of the Liberalisation process

https://d.tube/#!/v/tonefreqhz/siz03mvr

I have uploaded various things to DTube and Steemit This film from the Guardian is very good and relevant to Venezuela its on Bit CHute and survives on Youtube for now.

https://www.bitchute.com/video/uvnkjQDcIxCD/

https://steemit.com/deathsquds/@tonefreqhz/from-el-salvador-to-iraq-washington-s-man-behind-brutal-police-squads

https://www.youtube.com/embed/0iEhXHITAsQ?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&start=2&wmode=transparent

Gezzah Potts says Jan, 31, 2019
Thank you Kit (and others) for starting up OffGuardian. Its a very precious place to vent, and to read the very enlightened, highly informative, and at times profound comments of all the other commenters here. Have made numerous comments about the situation in Venezuela on other recent stories here, so not going to keep repeating myself. Regards the state of the World: surreal and orwellian and just plain bonkers much of the time seems to be the case. At least Bolton was honest in stating the bleedin obvious, which anyone with even one eye open already knew. Thanks for your work.
Loverat says Jan, 31, 2019
Indeed. I came across Off Guardian not long ago and I'm highly impressed by the quality. A site to vent -- yes but that's just a small part of it. What is it now -- 3,000 articles published in just nearly 4 years?. A level of committment by its founders not matched in many places elsewhere that I can see.

What I like about this is the quality and depth of the articles -- and the fact each attracts a large number of readers commenting.

I've been looking around various sites lately. It seems to be a mixture of those which produce good articles but don't seem to have the following -- or at least there's a lack of reader participation. Or sites where the analysis is not so good but attract a large volume of comments not necessarily of great quality.

Off G seems to have struck a really good balance which I think means it has more potential to grow further and build on its success.

I wonder (maybe this has been done before) if Off G thought about organising an event to celebrate its next birthday. Might be a good way to raise funds and further interest.

David William Pear says Jan, 31, 2019
I am surprised that the Guardian even mentioned oil and Venezuela in the same story. Did they also say it has lots of gold, coltron, and many other natural resources. Neoliberals just can't stand seeing all those profits going to "waste on the serfs".
notheonly1 says Jan, 31, 2019
Very likely McCain. Fortunately though, he already croaked. There was never a regime change or war he did not support, or demand. The sooner his warmongering Fascist buddies follow him, the better for mankind. I can imagine what "Bomb. bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran" would have said about Venezuela. As I said before, Venezuela is venomous to those who want to destroy it. For all American sheeple to understand: The Bucket stops here. Exactly here.
Jerry Alatalo says Jan, 31, 2019
Bolton's casual mention of U.S. oil corporations going into Venezuela and controlling operation of the nation's oil sector, as if it's already a "done deal", goes right along with Pompeo's focused use of the term "former president Maduro" in the psychological operation aspect of the fully-mapped out coup's full court press. Someone famously described the U.S.-led coup in Ukraine of February 2014 as the most blatant, obvious coup ever, but amazingly this one involving Venezuela has even surpassed Ukraine in insane illegal boldness.

USA Inc.'s use of criminal aggressive war as a business tactic since false flag 9/11 resulted in the self-destruction of American reputation in the Middle East and North Africa region. For that reason the attack on the Venezuelan people for their oil was not surprising. Who will stand for peace? People might think creatively and act to prevent any repeat of senseless violence and horror as experienced by people in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, Ukraine and Yemen.

Peace.

Tim Jenkins says Jan, 31, 2019
For the record, the "USA Inc.'s use of criminal aggressive war as a business tactic since false flag 9/11 resulted in the self-destruction of American reputation " Globally.

Sorry to correct you, but no matter where I go, my first test of any persons intellect is "What do you think happened to WTC 7 ?" and until you get that sorted , the USA is the laughing stock of the 'brave new world' outside Government & MSM >>> Fact , clearly "you cannot be serious", nor the Guardian nor the BBC nor Die Zeit nor Swiss national Television, nor Le Monde &&& and the whole damn network of partners in deep state crimes against innocent people , to further corporate goals.

to even contemplate something in Venezuela is so absurd , when US Governance is so infiltrated with Deep State Dictators & actors, bolstered by Hollywood >>> get own house in order , before becoming guests elsewhere. This clearly applies to Britain & France , as well, indeed all NATO partners.

Trump is gonna' have a real tough time with Xi, coz' you don't get to insult the Chinese in public & arrest CFO's for extradition , without some form of comeback & consequence and Chinese & Russian Military towards region Panama seems almost assured and the USS Fitzgerald warning ? how quickly people forget the 7 dead ! from just a container ship, lol connect the 9 Dot line -- -- --

The world does not want and never needed policing by the U$A, nor their methods of financial control & strangulation with credit on a scale far greater than Ponzi himself. And as for WTC 7 , this made not only the USA a laughing stock in the minds of all intelligent people, it dragged down & outed the very IN-credibility of every single politician in the western world , who accepted the award winning WTC 7 TonyAndyPandy story for CHILDREN !

it's time we got adults back into politics , coz' at present all we have, without exception, is precisely what George Carlin described in 'a few cultural issues' "Garbage in Garbage out" !

and we can be 100% sure that they are all GARBAGE, because they cannot even recognise a controlled explosion, let alone cooking the history books >>> not even one !

The USA has YANKed all their strings, on behalf of Zion and corporate control >>> fact, not one politician permitted to call a spade a spade or WTC 7 a controlled demolition let alone MSM.

Long live the revolution & evolution of political conscience !

[Feb 09, 2019] Post Coup Agenda Items

Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org

mark says Jan, 31, 2019

Post Coup Agenda Items:-

1. Switch payment for Venezuelan oil from yuan back to dollars.
2. Confiscate Chinese and Russian oil investments in Venezuela.
3. Privatise Venezuelan oil to Wall Street at knock down prices.

Or, as the Orange Baboon himself croaked like a two bit Mafia hood, "Grab the oil! Grab the oil! Grab the oil!!"

[Feb 09, 2019] The reality of neoliberal dominatin is not pretty: What we are experiencing today is the worst and most extreme form of predatory and parasitic financialised monopoly crony capitalism (crapitalism), allied with blatant aggressive jingoistic militarism and the crudest form of imperialist exploitation

Feb 09, 2019 | off-guardian.org

mark says Feb, 7, 2019

What we are experiencing today is the worst and most extreme form of predatory and parasitic financialised monopoly crony capitalism (crapitalism), allied with blatant aggressive jingoistic militarism and the crudest form of imperialist exploitation.

I'm not sure even Marx envisaged anything this corrupt and degraded. This must be the terminal stage of crapitalism's death throes. It can only end in war and complete collapse.

It comes as no surprise to see the Faux Left Blairite Backstabbers and the Oh-So-Right-On-Politically-Correct Trudeau Regime leading the charge for a bog standard Pinochet style US coup behind the likes of Trump, Bolton, Pompeo and recycled neocon war criminal and death squad queen Abrams.

They have taken off the mask and showed their true colours. The final outcome is uncertain but the fall out will extend way beyond Venezuela. It may well sound the death knell of our current system.

Archie1954 says Feb, 7, 2019
Isn't it amazing how the scum of the Earth arrange to get into high places? I am totally outraged that Canada had anything to do with fostering a coup in Venezuela! It disturbs my sense of national sovereignty and I rue the day that Trudeau made this apostosy a member of his cabinet. What a poor choice for a Minister of Foreign Affairs! Just consider Canada's recent problems with Saudi Arabia, the Meng problem with /China, the chastising of Russia because it protected its sole military base on the Black Sea and now this foolish interference in Venezuela's internal affairs brought on by US sanctions. Canada's stupidity in all these matters makes me bilious.
Michael says Feb, 7, 2019
Trudeau made Soros' protege Chrystia Freeland part of his cabinet because it was on that condition that Soros generously funded and otherwise caused Trudeau's election bid to be well supported. Billionaires make "democratic" politics so very easy. Canadians, naive, unquestioning, insouciant, swayed by very well rewarded PR & media and with the transacted aquiesence of the other two warmongering neoliberal parties (Conservative & NDP) voted their hopes and Justin Trudeau to PM. But positioning Chrystia Freeland on the global stage and creating a neoliberal path to imperious fascist globalization is the assigned purpose of the swish disposable Canadian Dauphin. Harper played his Soros assigned role, Trudeau will play his and Chrystia hers and they, as quislings all, will exit rewarded as pet functionaries of Soros and his overly entitled ilk. We authorize Soros by wishing & believing this coup is at worst simply a flawed democracy. Ukraine was a Soros coup, Canada is a Soros coup and Venezuela is a Soros coup. All very, very profitable. Don't look, this is how omelettes are made. Our political parties are always for rent by billionaires –that is the main function of political parties. Being corrupt is a design characteristic not a flaw. Buying political parties in supposed democracies is easier, less risky and much more profitable than stealing candy from babies. Canada is undefended against billionaires, invest here, concentrated public assets and resources are available and the quaint people are professionally deactivated. m\\

[Feb 08, 2019] To understand Steele and the five eyes involvement in the Russia hoax you need to go to the library

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Soon you will begin to see that MI6 was there at the OSS and later CIA inceptions. ..."
"... At the hidden deep levels, both these agencies serve the GLOBALIST' enterprise, and have since the start. ..."
Feb 08, 2019 | www.unz.com

RJJCDA , says: February 9, 2019 at 12:26 am GMT

Go to a large library and cross-reference James Jesus Angleton, Kim Philby, Miles Copeland and Nicholas Elliott in the "spy" books. Soon you will begin to see that MI6 was there at the OSS and later CIA inceptions.

At the hidden deep levels, both these agencies serve the GLOBALIST' enterprise, and have since the start.

Then you will understand Steele and the "five eyes" involvement in the Russia hoax.

[Feb 08, 2019] The US dollar is used for the international oil and gas trade and a wide part of global trade. This gives the US an exorbitant privilege to sanction countries it opposes and impose its conditions for oil trading

Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Narrative says Feb, 1, 2019

Nations should explore better system to break US hegemony

"The US dollar is used for the international oil and gas trade and a wide part of global trade. This gives the US an exorbitant privilege to sanction countries it opposes.
..
The latest sanctions on Venezuela's state-owned oil company aim to cut off source of foreign currency of Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro's government and eventually force him to step down.
..
A new mechanism should be devised to thwart such a vicious circle"

http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1137847.shtml

crank says Feb, 1, 2019
Francis Lee; Big B,

OK I phrased that badly.

My question is really about those at the top of the power pyramid (those few hundred families who own the controling share of the wealth of the world) -- those who position idiots like Bolton to do their work, do they comprehend 'exergy' decline ?

If we can, then can they not? I agree with Parenti that they are not 'somnambulists'. They are strategists looking out for their own interests, and that means scrutinising trends in political movements, culture, technology and, well, just about everything. I find it hard, the idea that all these people -- people who have seen their businesses shaped by resource discovery, exploitation and then depletion, have no firm grasp on the realities of dwindling returns on energy.

The models were drawn up 47 years ago. I think that some of them at least, do understand that economic growth is coming to a halt, and have understood for decades. If true then they are planning that transition in their favour.

These hard to swallow facts about oil are still on the far fringes of any political conversation. The neoliberal cultists are deaf to them for obvious reasons; the socialist idealists believe that a 'New Deal' can lead us off the death train, but mostly ignore the intractable relationship between energy decline and financial problems; even the anarchists want their work free utopia run by robots and AI but stop short of asking whether solar panels and wind turbines can actually provide the power for all that tech. It's the news that nobody wants to think about, but which they will be forced to thinking about in the very near future.

The Twitter feed 'Limits to Growth' has less than 800 followers (excellent though it is).

BigB says Feb, 1, 2019
Crank

I do not want to get into the mind of the Walrus of Death Bolton! I do not want to know what he does, as he does. But at lower levels of government, and corporatism, there is an awareness of surplus energy economics. And as Nafeez has also pointed out, the military (the Pentagon) are taking an interest. And though it could rapidly change, who really appreciates the nuances of EROEI? I'm guessing at less than a single percent of all populations? And how many include its effects in a integrated political sense?

Its appreciation is sporadic: ranging from tech-utopia hopium to a defeated fatalism of the inevitability of collapse. Unless and until people want to face the harshness of the reality that capitalism has created: we are going to be involved in a marginal analysis. There are very few people who have realised that capitalism is long dead.

Dr Tim Morgan estimates that world capitalism has conservatively had $140tn in stimulus since 2008 -- without stimulating anything or reviving it at all. In fact, that amounts to the greatest robbery in history -- the theft of the future. Inasmuch as they can, those unrepayable debts -- transferred to inflate the parasitic assets of capitalists -- will be socialised. Except they cannot be. Not without surplus energy.

https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/2019/01/20/145-fire-and-ice-part-two/

Brexit, gilets jaunes, Venezuela, unending crises in MENA, China's economic slowdown, etc -- all linked by EROEI.

It is a common socio-politico-economic energy nexus -- but linked together by whom? And the emergent surplus energy-mind-environmental ecology nexus? All the information is available. The formation of a new political manifesto started in the 1960s with the New Left but it seems to have been in stasis since. Perhaps this might stimulate the conversation.

According to Nate Hagens: there is 4.5 years of human muscle power leveraged by each barrel of oil. We are all going to be working for a very long time to pay back the debts the possessing classes have built up for us -- with absolutely no marginal utility for ourselves.

We are subsidising our own voluntary slavery unless we develop an emergent ecosocialist and ecosophical alternative to carbon capitalism. We cannot expect paleoconservative carbon relics like Bolton -- or anyone else -- to do it for us. The current political landscape is dominated by a hierarchical, vested interest, carbon aristocracy. We can't expect that to change for our benefit any time ever. Expect the opposite.

BigB says Feb, 2, 2019
Graeber has a point, though. We could already have a post-scarcity, post-production society but for the egregious maldistribution of resources and employment. Andre Gorz said as much 50 years ago (Critique of Economic Reason). Why do we organise around production: it makes no sense but for the relations of production are, and remain, the relations of hierarchical rule. So long as we assign value to a human life on the basis of meritocratic productivity -- we will have dehumanisation, marginalisation, and subjugation (haves and have nots). So why not organisation around care, freedom and play?

Such a solution would require the transversalistion of society and not-full-employment: so that no part of the system is subordinate, and no part is privileged. All systems and sub-ordinate (care) systems would be co-equal, of corresponding value and worth. So, without invoking EROEI, that would go a long way to solve our exergy, waste, pollution, and inequality problems. It is the profligate, unproductive superstructure: supporting rentier, surplus energy accumulating, profit-seeking suprasocieties -- that squanders our excess energy and puts expansive spatio-temporal pressures on already stretched biophysical ecological systems that engenders potential collapse. It is their -- the possessing classes -- assets that are being inflated, at our environmental expense. When it comes to survivability, we cannot afford a parasitic globalised superstructure draining the host -- the ecologically productive base. Without the over-accumulation, overconsumption, and wastage (the accursed share) associated with the superstructure of the advanced economies -- and their cultural, credit, military imperialisms I expect we could live quite well. Without the pressures of globalised transportation networks, and unnecessary military budgets -- the pressure on oil is minimised. It could be used for the 1001 other uses it has, rather than fuelling Saudi Eurofighters bombing Yemeni schoolchildren, for instance. The surplus energy could be used to educate, clothe and feed them instead. That would be a better use of resources, for sure.

If we took stock of what we really have, and what we really are -- a form of spiritual neo-self-sufficiency, augmented and extended into co-mutual care and freedom valorising ecologies we wouldn't need to chase the perceived loss all over the globe, killing everything that moves. The solutions are not hard, they are normative, once we are shocked out of this awful near-life trance state of separationism. Thanks for the link.

crank says Feb, 2, 2019
It seems to me that there are two parallel arguments going on.
One is about social organisation, attitudes towards and policies determining work, money, paid employment, technological development and the distribution of weath.
The other is fundamentally based on the laws of thermodynamics and concerns resource limits, energy surpluses, the role of 'stored sunlight' in producing things and doing work for each other, pollution and projections about these into the future.

I am surprised that Graeber (just as an example) seems to basically ignore the second of these even though he clearly is an incisive thinker and makes good points about the first. It is taken as a given that, theoretically at least, human civilisation could re-organise around a new ethic, transform the economy into a 'caring economy', re-structure money, government and do away with militarism. In terms of what to do now, as an individual, what choices to make, it is disconcerting to me when talk of these ideals seems to ignore those latter questions about overshoot.

I wonder if the egalitarian nature of much of indiginous North American society was inescapably bound with the realities of a low population density, low technology, intimate relationship with the natural world and a culture completely steeped in reverence for Mother Earth.
The talk I hear from Bastani or Graeber along the lines of 'we could be flying around in jet packs on the moon, if only society was organised sensibly' rings hollow to me.

BigB says Feb, 2, 2019
Crank

Welcome to my world! Apart from as a managerial tool, systems thinking has yet to catch on in the wider population. According to reductive materialism: there are two unlinked arguments. According to Dynamic Systems Theory (DST) there is only one integrated argument -- with two inter-connected correlative aspects. We can only organise around what we can energetically afford. Consequently, we cannot organise around what we cannot afford -- that is, global industrialised production with a supervenient elitist superstructure.

Let's face it : ethical arguments carry little weight against organisation around hierarchical rule. The current talk of an ethical capitalism -- in mixed economies with 'commons' elements -- is an appeasement. and distractional to the gathering and ineluctable reality.

The current (2012) EROI for the UK is 6.2:1 -- barely above the 'energy cliff' of 5:1. The GDP 'growth' and bullshit jobs are funded by monetised debt (we borrow around £5 to make every £1 -- from Tim Morgan's SEEDS). From the Earth Overshoot Day website: the UK is in economic overshoot from May 8th onward.

These are indicators that we will not be "flying jetpacks on the moon": even if we reorganise. Everyone, and I mean everyone, will have to make do with less. A lot less. Everything would have to be localised and sustainable. Production would be minimised, and not at all full. Two major systems of production -- food (agroecology) and energy -- would have to be sustainable and self-sovereign. And financialisation and the rentier, service economy? Now you can see why no one, not even Dave the crypto-anarchist, is talking about reality. Elitism, establishment and entitlement do not figure in an equitable future. We can't afford it, energetically or ethically.

So when will the debate move on? Not any time the populace is bought into ideational deferred prosperity. All the time that EROEI is ignored as the fundamental concept governing dwindling prosperity -- no one, and I mean no one, will be talking about a minimal surplus energy future. The magic realism is that the economic affordances of cheap oil (unsustainably mimicked by debt-funding) will return sometime, somehow (the technocratic superfix). The aporia is that the longer the delay, the less surplus energy we will have available to utilise. Something like the Green New Deal -- that has been proposed for around two decades now -- may give us some quality of life to sustain. Pseudo-talk of a Customs Union, 'clean' coal, and nuclear power, will not.

An integrated reality -- along the model of Guattari's 'Three Ecologies' -- of mind, economy, and environment is well, we are not alone, but we are ahead of the curve. The other cultural aporia is that we need to implement such vision now. Actually, about thirty years ago but let's not get depressive!

We are going to need that cooperative organisation around care and freedom just to get through the coming century.

crank says Jan, 31, 2019
As mentioned elsewhere here, Venezualan oil deposits are not all that the hype cracks them up to be. They are mostly oil sands that produce little in the way of net energy gain after the lengthy process of extraction.The Venezuala drama is about the empire crushing democracy (i.e. socialism), not oil. [not that this detracts from Kit's essential point in the article].
The Left (as well as the Right), by and large have not come to terms with the realities of the decline in net surplus energy that is unfolding around the world and driving the political changes that we see. So they still view geopolitics in terms of the oil economy of pre-2008.
The productive economies of Europe are falling apart (check Steve Keen's latest on Max and Stacy -- although even i he doesn't delve into the energy decline aspect).
The carbon density of the global economy has not changed in the 27 years since the founding of the UNFCCC.

The Peak Oil phenomenon was oversimplified, misrepresented and misunderstood as a simple turning point in overall oil production. In truth it was a turning point in energy surplus.
I predict that by the end of this or next year, everyone will be talking about ERoEI. Everyone will realise that there is no way out of this predicament. Maybe there are ways to lessen the catastrophe, but no way to avert it. This will change the conversation, and even change what 'politics' means (i.e. you cannot campaign on a 'new start' or a 'better, brighter future' if everyone knows that that physically cannot happen).
Everyone will understand that their civilisation is collapsing.
Does Bolton understand this?

I dunno.
https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/brexit-stage-one-in-europes-slow-burn-energy-collapse-1f520d7e2d89

Francis Lee says Jan, 31, 2019
"Does Bolton Understand this/? I think this might qualify as a rhetorical question.
BigB says Feb, 1, 2019
Crank

If you were referring to my earlier comments about Venezuelan extra heavy crude: it's still massively about the oil. The current carbon capitalist world system does not understand surplus energy or EROEI, as it is so fixated on maximal short term returns for shareholders. It can't comprehend that their entire business model is unsustainable and self cannibalising. Which is bad for us: because carbon net-energy (exergy) economics it is foundational to all civilisation. The ignorance of it and subsequent environmental and social convergence crises threatens the systemic failure of our entire civilisation. The Venezuelan crisis affects us all: and is symptomatic of a decline in cheap oil due to rapidly falling EROEI.

I can't find the EROEI specifically for Venezuelan heavy oil: but it is only slightly more viscous than bitumen -- which has an EROEI of 3:1. Let's call it 4:1: the same as other tight oils and shale. Anything less than 5:1 is more or less an energy sink: with virtually no net energy left for society. The minimum EROEI for societal needs is 11:1. Does Bolton understand this? Francis hit the nail on the head there.

Do any of our leaders? No. If they did, a transition to decentralisation would be well under way. Globalised supply chains are systemically threatened and fragile. A globalised economy is spectacularly vulnerable. Especially a debt-ridden one. Which way are our leaders trying to take us? At what point will humanity realise we are following clueless Pied Pipers off the Seneca Cliff -- into globalised energy oblivion?

The rapid investment -- not in a post-carbon transition -- but in increased militarisation, and resource and market driven aggressive foreign intervention policies reveal the mindset of insanity. As people come to understand the energy basis of the world crisis: the fact of permanent austerity and increased pauperisation looms large. What will the outcome be when an armed nuclear madhouse becomes increasingly protectionsist of their dwindling share? Too alarmist, perhaps? Let's play pretend that we can plant a few trees and captive breed a few rhinos and it will all be fine. BAU?

The world runs on cheap oil: our socio-politico-economic expectations of progress depend on it. Which means that the modern human mind is, in effect, a thought-process predicated on cheap oil. Oleum ergo sum? Apart from the Middle East: we are already past the point where oil is a liability, not a viability. Debt funding its extraction, selling below the cost of production -- both assume the continual expansion of global GDP. Oil is a highly subsidised -- with our surplus socialisation capital -- negative asset. We foot the bill. A bill that EROEI predicts will keep on rising. At what point do we realise this? Or do we live in hopium of a return to historical prosperity? Or hang on the every word of the populist magic realism demagogue who promises a future social utopia?

If it's based on cheap oil, it ain't happenin'.

BigB says Feb, 1, 2019
Erratum: less viscous than bitumen.
wildtalents says Feb, 1, 2019
Is it no longer considered a courtesy to the reader to spell out, and who knows maybe even explain, the abbreviations one uses?
Jen says Feb, 1, 2019
EROEI = Energy Returned on Energy Invested (also known as EROI = Energy Return on Investment)

EROEI refers to the amount of usable energy that can be extracted from a resource compared to the amount of energy (usually considered to come from the same resource) used to extract it. It's calculated by dividing the amount of energy obtained from a source by the amount of energy needed to get it out.

An EROEI of 1:1 means that the amount of usable energy that a resource generates is the same as the amount of energy that went into getting it out. A resource with an EROEI of 1:1 or anything less isn't considered a viable resource if it delivers the same or less energy than what was invested in it. A viable resource is one with an EROEI of at least 3:1.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_returned_on_energy_invested

The concept of EROEI assumes that the energy needed to get more energy out of a resource is the same as the extracted energy ie you need oil to extract oil or you need electricity to extract electricity. In real life, you often need another source of energy to extract energy eg in some countries, to extract electricity, you need to burn coal, and in other countries, to extract electricity you need to build dams on rivers. So comparing the EROEI of electricity extraction across different countries will be difficult because you have to consider how and where they're generating electricity and factor in the opportunity costs involved (that is, what the coal or the water or other energy source -- like solar or wind energy -- could have been used for instead of electricity generation).

That is probably why EROEI is used mainly in the context of oil or natural gas extraction.

BigB says Feb, 1, 2019
wildtalents: Yes, I normally do. But the thread started from, and includes Crank's link that explains it.
Thomas Peterson says Feb, 1, 2019
That's true, Venezuela's 'oil' is mostly not oil.

[Feb 08, 2019] So don't miss James Corbett's "FAKE NEWS AWARD"

Feb 08, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Joerg says Feb, 7, 2019

"Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda"
Yes, they will never stop. Just think of this brand-new propaganda lie of Maduro allegedly preventing aid shipment to come into Venezuela. See BBC: https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-47143492 : " Venezuelan soldiers have blocked the crossing ahead of a delivery arranged by opposition leader Juan Guaidó, who has declared himself interim president ".

Notice the word " ahead " in this sentence. This word appears because there was never a " delivery " (truck) with aid shipment at the bridge!
The Venezuelan government ("Maduro") blocked the bridge only because of war-threatening Columbia and USA.

If you want to send aid shipment to Venezuela you can send as much as you want anytime. Of course you have to respect the regulations of the custom (like in every other country!). But that's all!

Whets foul with this story?

Well, this aid " delivery " cannot have been collected in Colombia – and thus being taken away from the people of Colombia, who are much poorer than the people of Venezuela. So it would have to come from other country (USA, Europe, China, Japan). And then you would not land this aid shipment in Columbia (a harbour, an airport), drive it, in hot-humid air, through half of Colombia to the border crossing bridge of Cúcuta. Then cross the bridge and then drive it through half of Venezuela!

Instead aid shipments for Venezuela would be landed directly in Venezuela – in an Venezuelan harbour or airport.

"Everything (to the contrary) is propaganda". Or "Fake News"! So don't miss James Corbett's "FAKE NEWS AWARD" – https://www.corbettreport.com/episode-351-the-2nd-annual-real-fake-news-awards/

[Feb 05, 2019] Refusal to hand over Venezuelan gold means end of Britain as a financial center Prof. Wolff -- RT Business News

Feb 05, 2019 | www.rt.com

The freezing of Venezuelan gold by the Bank of England is a signal to all countries out of step with US interests to withdraw their money, according to economist and co-founder of Democracy at Work, Professor Richard Wolff. He told RT America that Britain and its central bank have shown themselves to be "under the thumb of the United States."

"That is a signal to every country that has or may have difficulties with the US, [that they had] better get their money out of England and out of London because it's not the safe place as it once was," he said.

[Jan 29, 2019] These 2020 hopefuls are courting Wall Street. Don t be fooled by their progressive veneer by Bhaskar Sunkara

Highly recommended!
Taming of financial oligarchy and restoration of the job market at the expense of outsourcing and offshoring is required in the USA and gradually getting support. At least a return to key elements of the New Deal should be in the cards. But Clinton wing of Dems is beong redemption. They are Wall Street puddles. all of the them.
Issues like Medicare for All, Free College, Restoring Glass Steagall, Ending Citizen's United/Campaign finance reform, federal jobs guarantee, criminal justice reform, all poll extremely well among the american populace
If even such a neoliberal pro globalization, corporations controlled media source as Guardian views centrist neoliberal Democrats like Booker unelectable, the situation in the next elections might be interesting.
Notable quotes:
"... Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin ..."
"... 2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy. ..."
Jan 15, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

In their rhetoric and policy advocacy, this trio has been steadily moving to the left to keep pace with a leftward-moving Democratic party. Booker , Harris and Gillibrand know that voters demand action and are more supportive than ever of Medicare for All and universal childcare.
Gillibrand, long considered a moderate, has even gone as far as to endorse abolishing US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (Ice) and, along with Cory Booker, Bernie Sanders' single-payer healthcare bill. Harris has also backed universal healthcare and free college tuition for most Americans.

But outward appearances aren't everything. Booker, Harris and Gillibrand have been making a very different pitch of late -- on Wall Street. According to CNBC , all three potential candidates have been reaching out to financial executives lately, including Blackstone's Jonathan Gray, Robert Wolf from 32 Advisors and the Centerbridge Partners founder Mark Gallogly.

Wall Street, after all, played an important role getting the senators where they are today. During his 2014 Senate run, in which just 7% of his contributions came from small donors, Booker raised $2.2m from the securities and investment industry. Harris and Gillibrand weren't far behind in 2018, and even the progressive Democrat Sherrod Brown has solicited donations from Gallogly and other powerful executives.

When CNBC's story about Gillibrand personally working the phones to woo Wall Street executives came out, her team responded defensively, noting her support for financial regulation and promising that if she did run she would take "no corporate Pac money". But what's most telling isn't that Gillibrand and others want Wall Street's money, it's that they want the blessings of financial CEOs. Even if she doesn't take their contributions, she's signaling that she's just playing politics with populist rhetoric. That will allow capitalists to focus their attention on candidates such as Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, who have shown a real willingness to abandon the traditional coziness of the Democratic party with the finance, insurance and real estate industries.

Gillibrand and others are behaving perfectly rationally. The last presidential election cost $6.6bn -- advertising, staff and conventions are expensive. But even more important than that, they know that while leftwing stances might help win Democratic primaries, the path of least resistance in the general election is capitulation to the big forces of capital that run this country. Those elites might allow some progressive tinkering on the margins, but nothing that challenges the inequities that keep them wealthy and their victims weak.

Big business is likely to bet heavily on the Democratic party in 2020, maybe even more so than it did in 2016. In normal circumstances, the Democratic party is the second-favorite party of capital; with an erratic Trump around, it is often the first.

The American ruling class has a nice hustle going with elections. We don't have a labor-backed social democratic party that could create barriers to avoid capture by monied interests. It's telling that when asked about the former Colorado governor John Hickenlooper's recent chats with Wall Street political financiers, a staff member told CNBC: "We meet with a wide range of donors with shared values across sectors."

Plenty of Democratic leaders believe in the neoliberal growth model. Many have gotten personally wealthy off of it. Others think there is no alternative to allying with finance and then trying to create progressive social policy on the margins. But with sentiments like that, it doesn't take fake news to convince working-class Americans that Democrats don't really have their interests at heart.

Of course, the Democratic party isn't a monolith. But the insurgency waged by newly elected representatives such as the democratic socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Rashida Tlaib, Ro Khanna and others is still in its infancy. At this stage, it isn't going to scare capital away from the Democratic party, it's going to make Wall Street invest more heavily to maintain its stake in it.

Men like Mark Gallogly know who their real enemy is: more than anyone else, the establishment is wary of Bernie Sanders . It seems likely that he will run for president, but he's been dismissed as a 2020 frontrunner despite his high favorability rates, name recognition, small-donor fundraising ability, appeal to independent voters, and his team's experience running a competitive national campaign. As 2019 goes on, that dismissal will morph into all-out war.

Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats gaining power. It's afraid of the Democrats who will take them on -- and those, unfortunately, are few and far between.

Bhaskar Sunkara is a Guardian US columnist and the founding editor of Jacobin

memo10 -> Karen Maddening , 15 Jan 2019 14:05

Just like universal health care, let's give up, it's too hard, we're not winners, we're not number one or problem solvers and besides, someone at some time for some reason might get something that someone else might not get regardless if that someone else needs it. Let's go with the Berners who seem to believe there will never be none so pure enough to become president.

The corporate state does not cast the votes. The public does.

Leaning farther to the left on issues like universal healthcare and foreign wars would be agreeing with the public. Not only the progressive public, but the GENERAL public. The big money donors are the ONLY force against the Democrats resisting these things.

mp66 , 15 Jan 2019 13:38
2016 has shown that the Democratic party is beyond redemption. When it comes down to the choice of either win with a platform that may impact the wealth and power of their owners, or losing, they will always choose the latter, and continue as useful (and well paid) idiots in the charade presented as US democracy.
Pete Healey , 15 Jan 2019 13:31
Bernie's challenge will "morph into all-out war". "Wall Street isn't afraid of corporate Democrats", blah, blah, blah. But we're going to continue to play along? Why? Oh yeah, Bhaskar Sunkara will have us believe "There is no alternative". Remember TINA? Give it up, man, just give it up.
yayUSA , 15 Jan 2019 13:17
Tulsi entering is big news.
Danexmachina , 15 Jan 2019 12:31
One dollar, one vote.
If you want Change, keep it in your pocket.
We can't turn this sinking ship around unless we know what direction it's going. So far, that direction is just delivering money to private islands.
Democrats have a lot of talk, but they still want to drive the nice cars and sell the same crapft that the Republicans are.
Taxing the rich only works when you worship the rich in the first place.
Tim Cahill , 15 Jan 2019 12:00
Election financing is the single root cause for our democracy's failure. Period.

I really don't care too much about the mouthing of progressive platitudes from any 2020 Dem Prez candidate. The only ones that will be worth voting for are the ones that sign onto Sanders' (or similar) legislation that calls for a Constitutional amendment that allows federal and state governments to limit campaign contributions.

And past committee votes to prevent amendment legislation from getting to a floor vote - as well as missed co-sponsorship opportunities - should be interesting history for all the candidates to explain.

Campaign financing is what keeps scum entrenched (because primary challengers can't overcome the streams of bribes from those wonderful people exercising their 'free speech' "rights" to keep their puppet in govt) and prevents any challenges to the corporate establishment who serve the same rich masters.

Lenny Dirges -> Vintage59 , 15 Jan 2019 11:55
Lol, Social Security, Medicare, unemployement protections, so many of the things you mentioned, and so much more, were from the PROGRESSIVE New Deal, which managed to implement this slew of changes in 5 years! 5 years! You can't criticize "progressives" in one sentence and then use their accomplishments to support your argument. Today, the New Deal would be considered too far left by most so called "pragmatic liberals." I assume you are getting fully behind the proposed "Green New Deal" then, right?
memo10 -> L C , 15 Jan 2019 11:54

Vintage59 pointed out lots of things people have changed. Here's an exhaustive list of the legislation passed by people who didn't get elected but were more progressive than the people who did:

There is also a steadily growing list of Democrats who did worse in elections than a hypothetical Democratic candidate had been projected to do.

The party can either continue being GOP-Lite or it can start winning elections. It can't do both.

memo10 -> 2miners , 15 Jan 2019 11:49

Forget it Bernie and Co. -with the women haters in his ranks and his apparent tepid support from African Americans he's way off the pace

Way off the pace compared to who? Trump?

memo10 -> IamDolf , 15 Jan 2019 11:44

Nobody is going to get elected on a far left platform. Not in the USA and not anywhere. That's just a fact. And everybody is going to need $$$ in the campaign. Of course candidates are going to suck up to Wall street and business in general.
And we would have been a thousand percent better off with HRC in the white house than we are now with the Trumpostor.

We don't need a candidate with far-left platform, we need one that is left-leaning at all. HRC and her next generation of clones are mild Republicans.

memo10 -> xxxaaaxxx , 15 Jan 2019 11:40

Those who want to push the Democrats to the left in order to win perhaps need to stop talking to each other and talk to people who live outside of LA and NY. If you stay within your bubble it seems the whole world thinks like you.
How old will Sanders be in 2020?

The people (outside the coasts) lean to the left some big issues. Medicare for all. Foreign wars. etc.

A sane person might ask why in the hell the left-side party is leaning farther to the right than the general public.

memo10 -> Peter Krall , 15 Jan 2019 11:17

Sanders is a dinosaur. If there is a reason for Wall Street to be wary of him then it is that the mentally challenged orange guy may win another term if the Democrats run with Sanders.

Hopefully, Sanders will understand what many of his supporters do not want to see: At some time age becomes a problem. If the Democrats decide to move to the left rather than pursuing a pragmatic centrist approach, Ocasio-Cortez might be an option. If they opt for the centrist alternative, it might be Harris or Gillibrand. Or, in both cases, a surprise candidate. But Sanders' time is over, just as Biden's Bloomberg's.

It's true, but Trump is such a clusterfuck that an 80yo president is still be a better situation. Many countries have had rulers in their 80s at one time or another.

Trump is clearly showing early-stage dementia now. Compare footage of him 10+ years ago to anything within the last 6-12 months and it's obvious. The stress levels of being the POTUS + blackmailed by Putin + investigations bearing down on him . . . it's wearing him down fast.

L C -> HobbesianWorlds , 15 Jan 2019 11:15
Anti-trust would be a very good place to start with.

Universal healthcare is a lot harder than you seem to think. I'd love it, but getting there means putting so many people out of work, it'll be a massive political challenge, even if corporations have no influence. Progressives might be better off focusing on how to ensure the existing system works better and Medicaid can slowly expand to fill the universal roll in the future.

Vintage59 -> BaronVonAmericano , 15 Jan 2019 11:05
Wall Street is a casino. The House never loses.
Vintage59 -> Lenny Dirges , 15 Jan 2019 11:02
Everything changes constantly.

Where has offering candidates who actually have a chance to win gotten us? Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the ADA, Title 9, Social Security, and more. None of these exist without constant changes. All took years to pass against heavy opposition. None went far enough. All were improvements.

The list of wrongheaded things that were also passed is longer but thinking nothing changes because it takes time is faulty logic.

ytram -> ChesBay , 15 Jan 2019 10:30
Our capitalist predators are still alive and well. The finance, insurance, and real estate
organizations are the worst predators in the USA.
They will eat your babies if you let them.

[Jan 29, 2019] Bilderberg 2015: where criminals mingle with ministers by Charlie Skelton

Notable quotes:
"... The Bilderberg set call people like you either their "dogs" (if you are in politics or the military) or the "dead." ..."
"... What do you mean "where criminals mingle with ministers". That is assuming that ministers are not criminals. Considering that there will be ministers from the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK, I'd suggest that there is a near 100% certainty that some, if not all, the ministers there are criminals. ..."
"... That one group of almost-certainly-criminals meets another group of almost-certainly-criminals is hardly surprising. That the whole shebang is protected by the host's police force is even less so ..."
Jun 12, 2015 | The Guardian
Convicted criminals. Such as disgraced former CIA boss, David Petraeus, who's just been handed a $100,000 (£64,000) fine and two years' probation for leaking classified information.

Petraeus now works for the vulturous private equity firm KKR, run by Henry Kravis, who does arguably Bilderberg's best impression of Gordon Gecko out of Wall Street. Which he cleverly combines with a pretty good impression of an actual gecko.

... ... ...

"Can I go now?" Another no. So I continued my list of criminals. I moved on to someone closer to home: René Benko, the Austrian real estate baron, who had a conviction for bribery upheld recently by the supreme court. Which didn't stop him making the cut for this year's conference. "You know Benko?" The cop nodded. It wasn't easy to see in the glare of the searchlight, but he looked a little ashamed.

... ... ...

I decided to reward their vigilance with a chat about HSBC. The chairman of the troubled banking giant, Douglas Flint, is a regular attendee at Bilderberg, and he's heading here again this year, along with a member of the bank's board of directors, Rona Fairhead. Perhaps most tellingly, Flint is finding room in his Mercedes for the bank's busiest employee: its chief legal officer, Stuart Levey.

A Guardian editorial this week branded HSBC "a bank beyond shame" after it announced plans to cut 8,000 jobs in the UK, while at the same time threatening to shift its headquarters to Hong Kong. And having just been forced to pay £28m in fines to Swiss regulators investigating money-laundering claims. The big question, of course, is how will the chancellor of the exchequer, George Osborne, respond to all this? Easy – he'll go along to a luxury Austrian hotel and hole up with three senior members of HSBC in private. For three days.

High up on this year's conference agenda is "current economic issues", and without a doubt, one of the biggest economic issues for Osborne at the moment is the future and finances of Europe's largest bank. Luckily, the chancellor will have plenty of time at Bilderberg to chat all this through through with Flint, Levey and Fairhead. And the senior Swiss financial affairs official, Pierre Maudet, a member of the Geneva state council in charge of the department of security and the economy. It's all so incredibly convenient.

... ... ...

Related: The Guardian view on HSBC: a bank beyond shame | Editorial

consumersunite -> MickGJ 12 Jun 2015 15:23

Let's see, maybe because we have read over their leaked documents from the 1950s in which they discussed currency manipulation and GATT. Everything they have discussed in their meetings over the past decades has almost come to fruition. There are elected officials meeting with criminals such as HSBC. Did you even read the article? If you did, and you are not het up or whatever you call it, then you are of a peasant mentality, and there is no use talking to you.

The Bilderberg set call people like you either their "dogs" (if you are in politics or the military) or the "dead." I won't be looking for your response because you have confirmed that you do not matter.

Carpasia -> MickGJ 12 Jun 2015 10:52

Thank you for your comment, my good man. Hatred is human, and helps us all to avoid pain, for pain, especially unnecessary pain, is allowed to be hated by the agreement of all, if nothing else is. I would hate to be beaten by Nazis. Thus, I would avoid going to a place where that could occur. That is how hatred works for me. It is the only way it can work, and not be pernicious to the self and others.

I distrust the international order as it is the means, harnessed by money, whether corporate or state or individual or monarchical, by which this world is being destroyed. Could things have been better? Jesus is on one end of the spectrum, and Lord Acton on the other, of the spectrums of viewpoints from which that could be properly assessed.

If the corruption at the heart of the international order is not regulated properly, this world will come to an end, not the end of the world itself, but the end of the world as we know it. This is happening now. The world is finite.

I am not a xenophobe. In my experience, the people that are most likely to hurt me, and thus deserve fear, are those closest. Perhaps that is a cynical way of describing it, but anyone who thinks honestly about it would accede to the notion that it is the people who "love" us that hurt us the most, for we agree too be vulnerable to them. It is the matrix of love.

As for Austria and Bavaria, I have visited both places and they were, both, the cleanest locales I have ever seen, with Switzerland having to be mentioned in the same breath, of course.

I take a certain liberty in writing. I am not damning the human race, or strangers to me. If I did not entertain, but caused offence, I apologize to you. I do not possess omniscience, and my words will have to speak for themselves.

Thank you, again.

DemonicWarlordSlayer 12 Jun 2015 08:02

"How Geo Bush's Grandfather Helped Hitler's Rise to Power" in the UK Guardian >

"Did Geo H W Bush Coordinate a JFK Hit Team" at Veterans Today >

"9/11 Conspiracy Solved, Names, Connections, Details" on youtube....dot-to-dot of the

Demonic Warlord's Crimes Against Humanity....end feudalism.


Carpasia 12 Jun 2015 07:09

Excellent article.

I visited Austria once, and I know of what he speaks. It was the one place I have ever visited that I thought I would be jailed if I littered. I was wandering at the time, but I tentatively had a meal of chicken and departed henceforth.

Austrians are an interesting lot, to be sure. That they are perfect goes without saying. Their main virtue is that they do not travel, and that strangers, which we call tourists these days, are not welcomed. If only we were all like that, the world would be a far better place.

Austrians do everything well, including crime. Some of the greatest crimes in the world have been committed by Austrians, but their crimes did not include not having their papers.

During World War 2, and I pass over Hitler, the German machine of death had an unusually high proportion of Austrians in commanding roles assisting it. It can not be explained away by saying they were some kind of faux Germans, and so it matters not. Indeed, if anything, Germans are faux Austrians, looked at in the broad brush of history. Men of many nations joined the Germans and adorned themselves with the Death's Head, but many Austrians might as well have tattooed it onto their foreheads. I know of what I speak, for I read on it, and will justify if questioned.

Reinhard Heydrich is an epitome of this, in the true sense of the word. Kurt Waldheim was another, too young too rise too far before the Ragnarok of May of 1945, but government of the world was not out of his reach, a man who had materially assisted the transportation of the Jews of Thessaloniki to the gas chambers of Auschwitz and, when challenged, was unrepentant, not as a racist, but as something worse even, as a man whose great virtue was that he followed orders. It is order that the Austrians value over everything. Even crime is ordered.

In the common-law west we think criminals are disordered beasts to be locked up. We do not give them papers. They are registered only to warn us of their existence, and we do not like to let them travel, as much as we could benefit by their absence, because we think they flee to license, and we think it wrong to inflict them upon innocents abroad. In Austria, the criminal is the man with no papers. If he has papers, all is well, and he is no criminal, whatever he has done.

colingorton 12 Jun 2015 03:19

What do you mean "where criminals mingle with ministers". That is assuming that ministers are not criminals. Considering that there will be ministers from the USA, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the UK, I'd suggest that there is a near 100% certainty that some, if not all, the ministers there are criminals.

That one group of almost-certainly-criminals meets another group of almost-certainly-criminals is hardly surprising. That the whole shebang is protected by the host's police force is even less so.

How far can all this mutual back scratching go? It seems that the only alternative left is far too drastic, but there really seems to be no place for a legal alternative, does there?

[Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby. ..."
"... I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. ..."
"... George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one). ..."
"... That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. ..."
"... Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's. ..."
"... The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it. ..."
"... They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishment ..."
"... well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/ ..."
Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org

Oslo - Norway, Dec 4, 2018

Let's never forget George H W Bush's love for incubator babies. He loved fake incubator babies.

The incubator baby actress wasn't just any 15 year old, she was the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador to Canada –

https://www.youtube.com/embed/cqiq8P8dRtY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Philpot, Dec 4, 2018
British and most western media are either in the direct or indirect pay of their governments. What journalist can expose this for us? Any of you willing to make the biggest scoop of the 21st century? Tom Bradbury at ITN must be on the spook payroll, for starters? MI6 had foreign correspondents for years, but domestic mouthpieces must now be on the take too? All paid to demonise Russia and Putin.
harry stotle, Dec 4, 2018

The Guardian has lost all sense of proportion – mention Tommy Robinson and the entire staff through themselves to floor and roll round like dying flies – yet for when it comes to US neocons they go all misty eyed, redolent of a broody couple when they come across a particularly adorable baby.

Simon 'white helmets' Tisdall is especially egregious – one can imagine him throwing darts at a picture of Putin while producing his latest homily to the murderous actions of gangsters like Bush and his crime family.

Its hard not to despair now this has become the official face of Britains so-called liberal media.

Yarkob, Dec 4, 2018
I would wager a medium sum that Tisdall is on a payroll other than the Grauniad's, or he's an actual asset per Ulfkötte's books and media appearances. As with Michael White, with whom I had a very illuminating argument via email a few years back. He *is* an asset, not a journalist (and a massive dick, to boot)
George cornell, Dec 4, 2018
I thought the attitude of the Bush family to their fellow Americans was best illustrated by Barbara's response to the plight of the homeless victims of Katrina who had been transported to the Houston domed stadium. They spent their nights there sleeping on hard benches and when good ole Babs heard of it, she opined that they probably had never had it so good so why were they complaining. Could Mother Theresa have had greater generosity of spirit?
Gekaufte Journalisten (bought journalism), Dec 4, 2018
Not just one article, the awful Guardian is full of contents eulogising [yet another] mongrel of a president.

But look at conservative media. The crazy Infowars.com described this Bush as an Anti-American Globalist and Traitor!! .. and zerohedge.com is celebrating: "The Evil Has Died" and "In 2016 he voted for Hillary Clinton, because the Deep State Swamp sticks together". https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-02/exploring-dark-side-bush-41

Just tell me, who is the rabid neo-con right-wing rag that is glorifying wars and mass murderers?

Norcal, Dec 4, 2018
Speaking of neighbors you might appreciate this excellent Journalism by Robert Parry: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/12/03/bush-41s-october-surprise-denials-2/
DunGroanin, Dec 4, 2018
The late Robert Parry, sad to say. Maybe that now both the 'MacBeths' are stains on the tarmac – Parry's notes of the bloodstained legacy of that dynasty can finally be displayed? That Barbara was one cold blooded mother! Would have happily pulled a trigger on JFK, MLK herself (some think).

Just about the whole century from the setup of the Fed, the two world wars, the depression, Hitler, Korea, Cuba all of it, had a a Bush hand in it. He was the self crowned Caesar having publicly executed the whole of Camelot and left us with a poison toad, reminds us how low the Bush's took the USA.

David Eire, Dec 3, 2018
George Bush spent his adult life organizing operations and wars that killed a few million people. Anyone who has spiritual beliefs must wonder how it is to die with so much killing on your record or conscience (if you have one).
Loverat, Dec 4, 2018
That's something I've wondered about many times. If you review John McCain's actions and comments before he died, it seems these people don't have a conscience. If you surround yourself with people of similar mindset and in a climate where war is considered obligatory for US Presidents, you go into self denial. Wars are probably like an addiction for these people and once you get to that stage you no longer have a conscience.

During John McCain's funeral where all living ex-presidents were in attendance, someone remarked on Twitter, 'Quick, lock the church doors and hold the war crimes trial in the church!'. This was a far more realistic observation than the sickening McCain apologist BBC coverage we were subjected to.

At the weekend I went to the place where Oliver Cromwell lived. There was an American tourist who told us she was shocked about Oliver Cromwell being dug up from his grave and his head stuck on a pike. She said it was gruesome. I was tempted to say that at least that was 350 years ago, and similar things are happening today in Iraq, Syria and Libya – all places where the US has instigated the chaos and supports the perpretators. I resisted the temptation.

I note that Cromwell thought he was chosen by God to do what he did. But again that was in different times and there were some redeeming factors in what he did, Probably on par with Obama – who wreaked havoc on the Middle East but reached agreements on Iran and Cuba. Plus Obama looked cool while killing and droning.

But what goes around comes around. I sense the pure evil involved in the current regime change wars, government, media etc will pay a heavy price – whether in this life or the next.

mark, Dec 4, 2018
The state controlled BBC has just done another puff piece on McCain saying what a splendid chap and great statesman and all round good egg he was.

The MSM likes to slag off Vlad The Bad by droning on about how he was in the KGB. But Bush wasn't just IN the CIA, he was the BOSS of the CIA, at a time when hundreds of thousands of Central American peasant farmers and Indians were being killed by CIA trained and orchestrated death squads.

Gezzah Potts, Dec 4, 2018
Mark: jayzus Mark, don't you just want to projectile vomit when you see all this absolute bullshit, just straight out revising of history, just the lies, on and on . I was involved in a Central American solidarity group in the 1980s – early 90s here in Aussie, found out then all about U.S style 'democracatic values' and 'human rights concerns' and death squads and various fascists fully supported by the United States, and places like Guatemala and Nicaragua. Its all an illusion for 'polite society' and the gullible to believe in. Sigh
mark, Dec 5, 2018
I can't remember the exact figures but I think it was over 200,000 murdered in Guatemala out of a population of 4 million. It was the same story in El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Colombia. And of course the CIA satrap Noriega was hauled off in chains when that country was invaded. But Uncle Sam is finally paying a price for his antics south of the border. Those societies were wrecked and brutalised beyond repair. There is now an unbelievably high murder rate of women in Guatemala. Millions of those people have sought some kind of refuge in the belly of the beast, causing an immigration crisis, with an illegal immigrant population that may be as high as 30 million. Hence all the uproar over Trump's wall. The immigration crisis was a factor in Trump's election, just as the tidal wave of migrants from the destroyed countries of the Middle East was a factor in Brexit. Cameron, Sarko and Clinton thought it was a spiffing idea and quite a wizard wheeze to bomb Libya back to the Stone Age. So we now have a Mad Max failed state complete with warlords and slave markets just across the Med. What goes around, comes around. You can't expect to export violence and mayhem abroad and remain immune to it at home.
Gezzah Potts, Dec 5, 2018
Mark: after Efrain Rios Montt seized power in a coup in Guatemala in 1982, US Ambassador Frederick Chapin declared that thanks to the coup of Rios Montt "the Guatemalan Govt has come out of the darkness into the light". That sums it up in one sentence, and you're probably aware of the mass killing and disappearances under his genocidal tyranny. Reagan kindly submitted that Rios Montt was 'getting a bum rap on human rights, the same Reagan who declared the Contra's were 'The moral equal of our founding fathers'. In El Salvador, the same mass slaughter, the same mass upheaval, and even murdering Archbishop Romero. You only need to look at what happened in Central & South America to understand what the United States really represents.
Jen, Dec 4, 2018
I would have bypassed the war crimes trial, locked the church and then built a moat stocked with crocodiles and piranhas around it.
mark, Dec 4, 2018
That's entirely right. People understandably despise and revile people like Brady and Hindley, Sutcliffe, Dahmer, Bundy and the like. But they killed a handful of people and were often very damaged individuals to begin with. And at least they did their own dirty work. Subhuman scum sucking filth like Bush, Bush 2, Obama, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Rice, Blair, Straw and Campbell are a thousand times worse. They kill millions without getting their hands dirty, and preen and posture as great statesmen and public servants, expecting deference and state funerals and puff piece obituaries from nauseating, loathsome, lickspittle media hacks like Tisdall.
Caitlin Ni Chonaill, Dec 6, 2018
You left out Kissinger and Albright.
Gezzah Potts, Dec 3, 2018
Nailed it Kit. The attempt at revionism and rewriting history by these craven creatures, these sycophantic slimebag shills for Imperialism and War and the Anglo Zionist Empire. They don't speak truth to power, they protect and grovel to the powerful. The eulogising and fawning of Bush was stomach churning, as it was for the arch Imperialist McCain when he croaked. Thank God for alternative news sites, and yeah Caitlin Johnston @ medium nailed it as well, as Fair Dinkum mentioned. Where's John Pilger when you need him?
Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018
GBH Bush's Highway of Death deserves mention. I'll spare you the pictures.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=highway+of+death+desert+storm&t=h_&atb=v92-2_f&ia=web
systemicfraud, Dec 3, 2018
What no one seems to realize is that the VP often takes charge of the US National Security Council when POTUS is not able to attend meetings, which are held weekly. Under Eisenhower it was Richard Nixon who often took charge of the meetings -- Tim Weiner's book "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA" gives some details on this. Reagan was primarily a mantle piece for the banking, oil and defense sectors to run wild. Is it really so hard to believe GHW Bush was running the National Security Council? It was a CIA wet dream come true (especially after the alligator-armed "investigations" of the 70's.
Fair dinkum, Dec 3, 2018
Caitlin sums it up: https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2018/12/01/if-you-murdered-a-bunch-of-people-mass-murder-is-your-single-defining-legacy/
Simon Hodges, Dec 3, 2018
The Deep State Guardian. Why don't they just change their name to 'The Daily Thatcherite' and have done with it.
Frankly Speaking, Dec 4, 2018
They should just show it's full title: The Guardian Of The Establishment
kevin morris, Dec 3, 2018
'Family of Secrets: The Bush Dynasty, America's Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years' by Russ Baker -- a fascinating account of the Bush family's involvement in a great deal of nefarious activity. Bush senior is one of the few people who didn't remember where he was when Kennedy was shot. Baker puts him in Dallas.
lysias, Dec 4, 2018
Now that G.H.W. Bush hss died, is there anybody suspected of involvement in the JFK assassination still alive?
kevin morris, Dec 4, 2018
I don't know but as a fairly apolitical individual, I never much bothered with the Kennedy Assasination. All that changed when during the fiftieth anniversary, BBC Radio Four ran a program which included an interview with the Dallas police officer who was handcuffed to Lee Harvey Oswald when he was shot by Jack Ruby. The consensus of that program was that the case was open shut and Oswald did it. Around that time, several newspapers in the UK featured articles claiming that Oswald acted alone.

Whether or not anyone actively involved still lives, their descendants still do and the probable organising body too. There still appears to be determination in some quarters to spread disinformation about the case. Given that as long ago as the late seventies the House of Representatives Assassination Committee concluded that JFK's death was probably the consequence of a conspiracy, determination amongst the mainstream media to lay Kennedy's death at the hands of Oswald alone suggests that there is still determination that the truth never becomes public.

Frankly Speaking, Dec 3, 2018
Exactly what i was thinking!

I'm sickened by the Guardian's and BBC's obedience to the US neocon project to seek, or create, and destroy "enemies" and whilst ignoring all the disgusting atrocities that arise as a consequence.

The Guardian is not even worth the paper it's printed on. It's become The Guardian Of The Establishment rather than of the Truth which it used to proclaim.

George cornell, Dec 4, 2018
It is in danger of losing its budgie-cage-liner status. If budgies can talk they may refuse to evacuate on it. What kind of person maintains ties to such a a poor excuse for cage toiletry. The moral crunch time for their journalists (actually their opinionists) came and went a long time ago.
Brutally Remastered, Dec 3, 2018
What a great piece. My parents knew them in New York and they came over once and left behind an embossed packet of White House cigs. I asked my father (before he died) what he thought of them and all he ever said was he thought that Barbara was the intellect in the family.
Bloody annoying, thanks Pater.
Marianne Birkby, Dec 3, 2018
From 2004

"The induction of DU weapons in 1991 in Iraq broke a 46-year taboo. This Trojan Horse of nuclear war continues to be used more and more. DU remains radioactive longer than the age of the earth (estimated at 4.5 billion years). The long-term effects from over a decade of DU exposures are devastating. The increased quantities of radioactive material used in Afghanistan are 3 to 5 times greater than Iraq, 1991. In Iraq, 2003, they are already estimated to be 6 to 10 times 1991, and will travel through a larger area and affect many more people, babies and unborn. Countries within a 1000-mile radius of Baghdad and Kabul are being affected by radiation poisoning

Badger Down, Dec 3, 2018
"DU remains radioactive longer than [ ] 4.5 billion years." It's worse than that. It loses half of its radioactivity in that time. The good news is that that slow release means "D"U doesn't zap you much. The bad news is it's chemically toxic, like a heavy metal (which it is).
nwwoods, Dec 3, 2018
Also no mention of the body of circumstantial evidence linking Bush to JFK's murder, though Bush repeatedly insisted that he couldn't recall his whereabouts that day (I can precisely recall where I was, and I was 9 years old in 1963), in spite of the fact that solid documentary evidence exists that puts him in Dallas on Nov 22, 1963.
Norcal, Dec 4, 2018
The very first Google Search I did was this, (George H.W. Bush+November 22, 1963) and it yielded a page like the following link, which began my research into the JFK Assassination.

http://www.lookingglassnews.org/viewstory.php?storyid=5420

nomad, Dec 3, 2018

well, yeah. but for us mad people it goes deeper even than that: https://geopolitics.co/2018/12/02/in-memoriam-george-h-scherff-jr-aka-george-hw-bush-sr/

Bush Sr. : Crypto-Nazi patriarch and his disciples
https://eclinik.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/barbara-bush-funeral-four-presidents-four-first-ladies.jpg?w=672&h=372&crop=1

[Jan 29, 2019] Brexit and the future of neoliberalism in UK

Dec 17, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Dave_P -> willpodmore , 23 Aug 2016 10:57

The EU didn't impose austerity on the UK, its own government did. We don't have the euro, in case you haven't noticed. The US is our top overseas buyer. If we want more of that, we'll have to take something like TTIP or worse.

The EU was a voice for African, Caribbean and Pacific producers against US transnationals, and offered favorable terms. We've weakened that voice.

Brexit makes us more dependent on the IMF, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley. They're not EU bodies.

Britain opposed EU democratisation for forty years by upholding national governments' veto powers over proposals supported by elected MEPs.

You voted against everything you claim to uphold. Because it was a vote against everything.

None of that's even the issue. Do you have an insight to offer beyond antipathy to the EU?

[Jan 24, 2019] Putin is routinely described as a murderer and a thug in the western MSM. With no evidence is provided to support this. Ditto the claims he has billions syphoned away in some offshore haven.

Jan 24, 2019 | off-guardian.org

grandstand says Jan, 16, 2019

Whatever the truth, and I become daily more distrustful of the media that regularly attack Putin in this way, I doubt very much if his crimes in this regard come anywhere near those of Bush, Cheney, Blair, Cameron, Obama, and Bill and Hillary Clinton.
mark says Jan, 16, 2019
This is just routinely parroted by the MSM and equally routinely expanded upon by them. Organs like the Guardian/ BBC casually announce that Putin has stolen £40 billion (sometimes this is casually raised to £200 billion, which would make him the richest man on the planet and people like Gates/ Buffett poor as church mice by comparison.)Occasionally someone does ask for details, like bank transfers, property holdings or whatever.

Nothing is ever forthcoming. All they come up with is that he has some nice Italian suits and a nice gold watch that cost him $1,200.

Apart from that, these allegations must be true because some financial fraudster mate of Khordokovsky who sought refuge in the US said so. Sounds pretty convincing to us here in the MSM – what more evidence do you need? Of course Putin is just a kleptocratic thug and James Bond cartoon villain who has people murdered purely for the fun of it.

George cornel l says Jan, 16, 2019
Very late in the game I finally saw the documentary Icarus recently. I had passed it up because I thought I could predict that it would be rampantly dishonest, and an exercise in propaganda. It having received an Academy award seemed to be an independent confirmation of my prejudice.

Well, I was right for once. It was disgraceful, and the most common image in it was of Putin, accompanied by feeble ad hominem claims, without any counterpoints of any kind. So the core issue, cheating at the Olympics, turned out to be presented with no context at all, for the anti-Russian smear job. No mention of Balco, Carl Lewis, Marion Jones, and just a few seconds of an unidentified Lance Armstrong.

So now we see awards for propaganda. The Americans don't do fairness or integrity, but now they don't even pretend.

mark says Jan, 17, 2019
They gave an Integrity in Journalism award to the Ukraine journalist who faked his own death.
Fair dinkum says Jan, 16, 2019
Tolkien also comes to mind here.
Us 'hobbits' are treated as inferior beings by the 'Saurons', 'Nazguls' and 'Gollums' of this world.
Gandalf ?
We're waiting
Francis Lee says Jan, 16, 2019
Comments were true and apposite enough, but it's all been said really. But given that this is largely an information war the truth needs continuously asserting.

Our opponents – the Guardian (minitru on thames) the New York Post (Pravda on the Hudson) the Washington Post (Izvestia on the Potomac) – sole tactic is constant repetition, this should be our tactic also but with evidence to back it up.

We need to constantly expand our readership and challenge the lunatic narrative of the PTB. We are now in a pivotal historical moment. If we fail it will be Hunger Games.

Loverat says Jan, 16, 2019
Francis Lee

I agree about the repetition but do you want to know what I think? I think you need to play MSM and others a little bit at their own game. They don't back anything up with evidence. They write short pieces of fiction as statements of fact. Yet they are believed.

The thing is all 'our' evidence is already out there just by taking a look. (e.g White Helmets will take you 15 minutes to doubt that narrative) You have an army of researchers/journalists (e.g Kit Klarenberg, Vanessa Beeley etc) posting detailed evidence out there. A lot of the independent/academic articles I read are well backed up with evidence but the problem is to someone not up to speed, is less inclined to read a long article backed up by detailed reasoning and evidence within it.

I think this article is clear and credible and prompts those new to independent thought to look at different sources of information.

So perhaps more independent writing, which is creative setting out the facts in an intelligent way as above and invite (through links) the reader to look at the evidence which is plentiful, at their leisure.

Humour is another good way of spreading the message. The CJ Hopkins piece a few days ago very effective.

[Jan 24, 2019] The Skripal case is a classic illustration of Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief, Roh's magical realism and Orwell's doublethink (the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct) all rolled into one

Skripals case reminds us that the Red Brigades in Italy and Baader-Meinhof in Germany were entirely bogus and controlled intelligence operations. It's the same story with the "Symbionese Liberation Army" in the US. Then there's Gladio and Northwoods.
Realpolitik has become surrealpolitik. In Skripals case Russia was immediately blamed, despite the fact an investigation had barely begun That instantly suggests british intelligence services participation in Skripals poisoning.
Were are currently the father and daughter who were allegedly poisoned is unknown. Why they are in hiding is also unknown. But such quetions are never raised by MSM.
In the Middle Ages, everybody knew that witches, fairies, pixies and elves existed and were responsible for everything that went wrong in life, like the cows or the pigs falling sick or the hens stopping laying. But round about the early 1600s, judges and juries started demanding evidence and acquitting defendants in witch trials. They accepted their existence, but still wanted to see some evidence. The folk in the 1600s were probably more sceptical and less credulous than our friends like Harding at the Guardian today.
The public can be persuaded to accept almost anything providing the story chimes with deep seated fears or prejudices, such as Russians threatening 'our way of life' (fears and prejudices continually stoked by the media of course)
Jan 16, 2019 | off-guardian.org

Skripal. The final illustration is the alleged of poisoning with "Novichok" of Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia in Salisbury in March 2018. This was immediately blamed on Russia, again before an investigation had been concluded, followed by sanctions, the expulsion of Russian diplomats (including by Australia) and a general tirade of abuse against Russia in general and President Putin in particular.

The Skripal case is a classic illustration of Coleridge's willing suspension of disbelief, Roh's magical realism and Orwell's doublethink (the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct) all rolled into one.

Rob Slane ( www.theblogmire.com 9 January 2019) has brilliantly deconstructed the many logical, scientific and political absurdities in the official story. One will wait in vain for the merest hint of this demolition in the mainstream media.

One possible reason for this non-coverage of the actual evidence and instead a non-stop barrage of disinformation, suppression of evidence and manipulation of the public can be found in the activities of a shadowy organisation known as the Institute for Statecraft, and one of its projects known as the Integrity Initiative (sic).

Fresh revelations are emerging about this project on a daily basis and a proper analysis must await developments. Suffice to note at this point that the Integrity Initiative is known to be funded by the United Kingdom government, ostensibly to counter 'Russian disinformation.' It is rather a major project to spread falsehoods about Russia through "clusters" of journalists working in mainstream media outlets.

The latter have gone beyond the willing suspension of disbelief and instead actively promote disinformation they know to be untrue. It is not only potential embarrassment that prevents this story getting the attention it deserves. It is a strong suspicion, no more than that at the time of writing, that a D Notice has been issued in the United Kingdom and Australia.

The effect has been to prevent discussion of what is an extraordinary campaign to mislead the public, attack opposition politicians and the alternative media, and generally undermine what used to be regarded as a free press.

That some of the same personnel involved in the Integrity Initiative are also involved in the Skripal matter (itself subject to a D Notice) reinforces the belief that this project has wider tentacles than originally thought .

Paul Carline says Jan, 18, 2019
Major credit due to U.K. Column News who originally researched and broke the story about the Integrity Initiative. Loading...
vexarb says Jan, 17, 2019
The Integrity Initiative

http://syriapropagandamedia.org/working-papers/briefing-note-on-the-integrity-initiative

Syrian Observatory For Human Wrongs says Jan, 17, 2019
"If I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. Nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't." Lewis Carroll.

"Integrity Initiative"
"United Nations"
"Free Press"
"Liberal"
"American Intelligence"

Syrian Observatory For Human Wrongs says Jan, 17, 2019
All you need to know ; )

https://syrianobservatoryforhumanwrongs.wordpress.com/2018/07/09/an-idiots-guide-to-the-skripal-affair/

[Jan 24, 2019] The Integrity Initiative web site has been scrubbed and their twitter acct is now by invitation only

Jan 24, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bart Hansen , Jan 23, 2019 12:03:08 PM | link

RT is reporting that the Integrity Initiative web site has been scrubbed and their twitter acct is now by invitation only.

[Jan 22, 2019] Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage together

Notable quotes:
"... Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason. ..."
Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

cagnusdei -> lullu616 , 15 Jan 2019 10:50

Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage together.

Bernie Sanders is widely considered by many to be one of the most popular American politicians, more than Trump and certainly more popular than Hillary. I think an interesting phenomenon to notice is the lengths the GOP, in particular, will go to in order to convince the average voter that anything that cuts taxes is inherently good for the 'little guy,' while anything that raises taxes is bad.

Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason.

[Jan 22, 2019] The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is the decisive factor in 2016 loss.

Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Art Glick, 15 Jan 2019 09:44

The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is one big factor in our 2016 loss. Even voters too ignorant to see Trump for what he really was - voters that are misinformed to the point that they unwittingly and continually vote against their own best interests - realized how much the Dems have sold out to Wall Street.

HRC would have been nominated in '08 if she had kissed more Wall Street you-know-what. That's why they anointed Obama who then proceeded to squander eight years of opportunity to remove big money from politics and enact progressive reforms to health care, the environment, etc.

Bernie is a bit long in the tooth, so I am all in for Liz Warren. She's the only one with both the courage and the intelligence to take on the big money that controls our politics.

Therefore, you can expect the Russian trolls to be coming for her in force. If you read anything negative about Warren in the coming months, check the source and don't trust the accuracy.

[Jan 22, 2019] Benito Mussolini defined fascism as "Barely able to slip a cigarette paper between business and government."

Jan 22, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

William Anthony -> BoneyOCoonassa , 15 Jan 2019 09:40

We've known since WW2, that fighting fascism is difficult. Benito Mussolini defined fascism as "Barely able to slip a cigarette paper between business and government." And when business runs government, we have even exceeded fascism. The new battle against fascism is not going to be easy.

[Jan 21, 2019] The hypocrisy on daily display in London and Washington of late has become difficult to stomach by Andrew J. Bacevich

Jan 17, 2019 | www.theamericanconservative.com
Our Elites' Selective Support for Democracy

The ongoing parallel crises in the United Kingdom and the United States invite us to contemplate unwelcome truths about the nature of politics in the 21st century. In both countries, deep divisions have resulted in paralysis. In both, that paralysis represents something more profound: disagreement over the meaning and proper conduct of contemporary democracy. Yet there is little evidence that elites on either side of the Atlantic understand the actual problem at hand. Hence, the likelihood that it will fester.

In a nominal sense, their immediate problem centers on Brexit -- how, or even whether, to honor the results of a 2016 national referendum in which a majority of voting Britons signaled their wish to leave the European Union. In a nominal sense, our immediate problem is a government shutdown. Yet overshadowing that shutdown is a persistent unwillingness to accept as legitimate the results of the 2016 presidential election in which Americans voted for Donald Trump in numbers sufficient to give him a majority in the Electoral College.

In both, the outcome of what was a manifestly democratic process confounded elite expectations. What happened wasn't supposed to happen. In a few short months, the onward march towards a multicultural society and an integrated global order, with well-refined products of a carefully vetted and suitably diverse meritocracy pulling the strings, had been stopped in its tracks.

Overnight, an alternative vision of greatness -- certainly the political term of the season -- had presented itself. For Brexiteers, greatness meant returning to the glory days when the United Kingdom had been a power to reckon with on the world stage. For pro-Trumpers, it meant going back to when we made stuff that others bought and when identifiable national interests shaped U.S. foreign policy.

Whether the imagined utopia of a dominant Great Britain prior to 1914 or a dominant America after 1945 ever actually existed is beside the point. In 2016, large numbers of citizens in both countries concluded that the solution to their complaints was to be found in reasserting national independence, with Britain breaking free of the EU and the United States severing entanglements that have cost plenty without delivering discernible benefits.

When similar assertions of the popular will occurred in other countries -- the protesters flooding Tiananmen Square in 1989, the crowds in Red Square that helped defeat the attempted putsch of August 1991, the 2011 uprising known as the Arab Spring -- British and American elites cheered. At such moments, they are all-in for democracy. Yet when the exercise of democracy at home yields outcomes likely to affect their interests adversely, they sing a different tune.

Politics is always fraught with hypocrisy. Yet the hypocrisy on daily display in London and Washington of late has become difficult to stomach. This is especially so when it emanates from quarters that otherwise do not hesitate to chastise other governments for failing to honor democratic principles.

In a recent op-ed denouncing Brexit, New York Times columnist Roger Cohen wrote, "A democracy that cannot change its mind is not a democracy." Let's unpack that. What Cohen really means is this: w hen a democracy comes to a decision of which I disapprove, there's always room for a do-over, yet when decisions win my approval, they become permanent and irreversible. So just because Americans elected a president who promised to withdraw from NATO and overturn Roe v. Wade doesn't mean that such possibilities qualify as worthy of consideration. NATO membership is forever. So, too, are abortion rights.

How Democracy is Losing the World What Made the Brexit Revolution

It is no doubt true that the United Kingdom and the United States are democracies, with the people allowed some say. But to be more precise, they are curated democracies, with members of an unelected elite policing the boundaries of acceptable opinion and excluding heretics. Members of this elite are, by their own estimation, guardians of truth and good sense. They know what is best.

But what if the elites get things wrong? What if the policies they promulgate produce grotesque inequality or lead to permanent war? Who then has the authority to disregard the guardians, if not the people themselves? How else will the elites come to recognize their folly and change course?

Andrew Bacevich is TAC' s writer-at-large.

[Jan 20, 2019] Buzzfeed, Question Time the purpose of Fake News by Kit Knightly

Notable quotes:
"... The point of this practice is to propagate lies into the public consciousness. It's a method that can be used to distract and disseminate and divide. The accuracy of the statement is immaterial. ..."
"... The point is, once it has been said it cannot be unsaid. There are countless examples: "Assange was working for Russia", "Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress", "Russia hacked the US election", "Donald Trump worked for the KGB", "Assad gassed his own people", "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite". The list goes on and on and on. None these have been proven. All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified. ..."
"... The lie was told, the audience laughed, the reality was created. "Labour are behind in the polls, anybody who says otherwise is a laughingstock" . The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on. That's why fake news is so important to them, and so dangerous us. ..."
Jan 20, 2019 | off-guardian.org

... ... ...

Trump has been a disappointment to his base and is yet to implement half the policies he discussed on the campaign trail, but he's not fully and totally being controlled by the warhawking Deep State yet, either. His policy of peace with North Korea and decisions to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan show that there is a tug-of-war ongoing inside the administration. It's probably no coincidence that this latest of many "bombshells" comes so quickly on the heels of Trump's announcement of the Syria withdrawal. Careful "leaks", planted stories and social media witch-hunts remind Trump how precarious his position is, whilst simultaneously distracting the public – both pro-Trump and anti-Trump – from real issues.

The case-specific "why?" doesn't matter so much as the general aim of this type of manipulation. The important question is: Why does the media tell lies if they know they will be revealed as such? Clearly, the lies serve a purpose, regardless of their retraction or qualification. Telling a lie loudly and then taking it back quietly is an old propaganda trick – it allows the paper to maintain a facade of "accountability".

The point of this practice is to propagate lies into the public consciousness. It's a method that can be used to distract and disseminate and divide. The accuracy of the statement is immaterial.

The point is, once it has been said it cannot be unsaid. There are countless examples: "Assange was working for Russia", "Trump ordered Cohen to lie to Congress", "Russia hacked the US election", "Donald Trump worked for the KGB", "Assad gassed his own people", "Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite". The list goes on and on and on. None these have been proven. All were asserted without evidence, fiercely defended as facts, and then discretely qualified.

That is the purpose of "fake news", to forge the Empire's "created reality" , and force us all to live in it. These are world-shaping, policy-informing, news-dominating narratives and are nothing but feathers in the wind .

A perfect exemplar of this occurred just two days ago on the BBC's flagship Political debate show Question Time : me title= The (notionally impartial) host not only sided with right-wing author Isabel Oakeshott in criticising Labour's polling, but then joined in mocking the Labour MP Diane Abbott for attempting to correct the record. Both Oakeshott and Fiona Bruce, the host, were factually incorrect – as shown a hundred times over since. But that doesn't matter.

The lie was told, the audience laughed, the reality was created. "Labour are behind in the polls, anybody who says otherwise is a laughingstock" . The lie goes around the world while the truth is still putting its boots on. That's why fake news is so important to them, and so dangerous us.

Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.

[Jan 20, 2019] This organisation and all of those part of it should be treated as enemies of the people, as they have attacked, disingenuously and using smears

Notable quotes:
"... Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity. ..."
"... I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people ..."
Jan 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Anne Jaclard , Jan 20, 2019 6:02:29 PM | link

On Integrity Initiative Endgame:

From Consortium News

It should be pointed out that the Integrity Initiative recently claimed on Twitter that some of the documents leaked in batch #4 were not theirs and had been misrepresented as part of the organisation.

It doesn't really matter, though: all that we know, anti-socialist shills writing propaganda on behalf of II (Nimmo, Cohen, Reid-Ross) have confirmed their own roles, and the Twitter account was proven to have pushed out slanderous material on Jeremy Corbyn.

Note that "misrepresented" could have referred to the inclusion of the Corbyn slide show document which was presented at but created by the II.

This organisation and all of those part of it should be treated as enemies of the people, as they have attacked, disingenuously and using smears,

-Yellow Vests
– Jill Stein
-Jeremy Corbyn
-George Galloway
-Seuams Milne
-German Left Party
-French Left Party
-French Communist Party
-Greek Communist Party
-Podemos
-Norwegian Red Party
-Norwegian Socialist Left Party
-Swedish Left Party
-Swedish Greens
-International Anti-NATO Groups
-Greyzone Project
-Julian Assange
-MintPressNews

Via

-Infiltrating Corbyn and Sanders campaigns
-Inserting propaganda anonymously into local media including the Daily Beast, Buzzfeed, The Times, the Guardian, and more
-Using social media to orchestrate hate and dismissal campaigns against those mentioned above
-Hosting events for collaboration between members
-Building online "clusters" to deploy and shape discourse in the media and elsewhere

By repeating or openly collaborating with:

-Ben Nimmo
-Oz Katergi
-Anne Applebaum
-Peter Pomerantsev
-Bellingcat
-Atlantic Council
-Carole Cadwalladr
-David Aaronovitch
-Center For A Stateless Society
-PropOrNot
-Alexander Reid-Ross
-Nick Cohen
-Michael Weiss
-Jamie Fly
-Jamie Kirchick

Directed by:

-Tory Government
-NATO
-Facebook
-German Multinationals

uncle tungsten | Jan 20, 2019 6:18:59 PM | 16

Thank you Anne Jaclard @ | 14

Sedition is a crime and it is clear that the multiple seditious acts of II and IfS toward many countries and with their band of controlled journalists was a deliberate and planned activity.

I don't expect any prosecutions but there is a chance of promotional impediments applying to some of those named. At least for the next month. Every named employee of II and IfS is an enemy of democracy and its people.

[Jan 20, 2019] Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever.

Highly recommended!
Now it looks like all this scene was staged by British government and is connected to the Integrity initiative... Poor cat and guinea pigs ...
See also The desperate efforts of the Western neoliberal establishment to build a new propaganda machine by globinfo freexchange
Jan 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
PavewayIV , Jan 20, 2019 11:15:51 AM | 1 ">link

And, one last bit from the BBC report on March 8, 2018:

"...Meanwhile, a doctor who was one of the first people at the scene has described how she found Ms Skripal slumped unconscious on a bench, vomiting and fitting. She had also lost control of her bodily functions.

The woman, who asked not to be named, told the BBC she moved Ms Skripal into the recovery position and opened her airway, as others tended to her father.

She said she treated her for almost 30 minutes, saying there was no sign of any chemical agent on Ms Skripal's face or body.

The doctor said she had been worried she would be affected by the nerve agent, but added that she "feels fine"

Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever...

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43326734

[Jan 20, 2019] The desperate efforts of the Western neoliberal establishment to build a new propaganda machine by globinfo freexchange

Notable quotes:
"... Recall that, leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists. Politicians and academics have reacted with fury to news a covert Government-funded unit had been attacking the official opposition in Parliament. ..."
Dec 25, 2018 | failedevolution.blogspot.com

propaganda machine

The UK government and other Western governments and the US in recent years have had increasing difficulties persuading enough of their populations as to the legitimacy of the foreign policies that they have been pursuing. And at the same time, Western countries have been going through a period of political crisis and economic crisis.

Piers Robinson, Chair in Politics, Society and Political Journalism at the University of Sheffield, further explains:

I think a lot of this drive is as much about trying to shore up shaky official narratives and trying to shore up political systems in a situation of political crisis, as it is actually about countering Russian propaganda. I would suspect that that's a little bit of an excuse here to really what's going on of problems much closer to home.
This is not just to do to UK, this is Europe-wide. And there are also indications from the documents that they are intending to start to have some kind of impact within the United States. So, it's a very wide-ranging network that seems to be established. The reason why it needs to be covert, of course, is that if a media organization, or if a journalist is to let on that he, or she, is involved in a program, which quite clearly is pushing a particular agenda, then the credibility of that journalist will be damaged.

And this is really what is very deceptive about the Integrity Initiative . It's about co-opting journalists and academics into, essentially, a campaign, which appears to be a propaganda campaign, in order to manipulate opinions. And the only way that can really work effectively, is if readers and viewers don't know that what they're reading is something which has emerged from a particular political agenda.

Integrity Initiative 'Army of propagandists disguised as anti-propagandists' - YouTube

Recall that, leaked documents passed to the Sunday Mail reveal Integrity Initiative is funded with £2million of Foreign Office cash and run by military intelligence specialists. Politicians and academics have reacted with fury to news a covert Government-funded unit had been attacking the official opposition in Parliament.

So, it's not accidental that the organized and systematic propaganda campaign against labour party has actually started under Corbyn's leadership. And that the campaign contains a lot of personal attacks against the leader of the Labour party. That's because, of course, Jeremy Corbyn is driving the party out of the neoliberal machine that has been dominating the UK politics for decades.

But it seems that the agents of the neoliberal establishment are really desperate as they see that the new narratives are not particularly successful.
It would not be exaggerating to suggest that the attacks against Leftist leaders like Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders essentially bring the opposite effect. That's because especially the younger generations have turned their back to the mainstream media.

And they understand that the more the media attack Corbyn and Sanders, the stronger the indication that these leaders are not part of the neoliberal establishment that ruined their lives becomes.

[Jan 19, 2019] Integrity Initiative was formed soon after Kissinger's Op-Ed in August 2014 and before Trump began his run for President.

Jan 19, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jackrabbit , Jan 19, 2019 8:32:00 PM | link

bevin: Suppose that ...

Suppose that ... CIA-MI6 were trying to ensure the election of Trump, not Hillary. As I described in previous comments , Trump's election followed a logical progression that, in sum, indicate manipulation on his behalf. Hal Duell @21 mentions some of the psyop reality-making: White Helmets, MH-17, Skripal, etc. Karlof1 @30 notes the absolute hubris of the Empire's "we make our own reality".

Lets say Integrity Initiative, working with CIA and MI6, wanted to use the 2016 election to cast aspersion on the Russians. A populist running against Hillary was the logical choice. The narrative: only with Russian help could a challenger hope to win against Hillary. "Russian meddling" and Wikileaks as Russian agent are major "wins" for the establishment. Integrity Initiative was formed soon after Kissinger's Op-Ed in August 2014 and before Trump began his run for President.

[Jan 18, 2019] On the British Establishment

Notable quotes:
"... The British Establishment has done with the concepts of honor. The loudest lying voices against Russia belong either to the whoring "aristocrats," who found that war profiteering (by any means) pays well, or the opportunistic parvenu like Gavin Williamson representing the vulgarity and intellectual inadequacy of the Establishment. ..."
Jan 18, 2019 | www.unz.com

annamaria says: April 10, 2018 at 2:44 pm GMT 100 Words On the British Establishment:
The Skripal affair is better understood in the context of "sir" Savile' knighthood -- when the influential pedophile had been raping and molesting kids for 40 years and none stood up to the criminal. The BBC has dutifully refused to publish anything that would upset "sir" Savile. The Scotland Yard looked the other way -- precisely as the Establishment ordered them to do.
Savile' specialty were orphans. He was the embodiment of British Establishment.

The British Establishment has done with the concepts of honor. The loudest lying voices against Russia belong either to the whoring "aristocrats," who found that war profiteering (by any means) pays well, or the opportunistic parvenu like Gavin Williamson representing the vulgarity and intellectual inadequacy of the Establishment.

[Jan 17, 2019] The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is one big factor in our 2016 loss

Notable quotes:
"... Even voters too ignorant to see Trump for what he really was - voters that are misinformed to the point that they unwittingly and continually vote against their own best interests - realized how much the Dems have sold out to Wall Street. ..."
"... That's why they anointed Obama who then proceeded to squander eight years of opportunity to remove big money from politics and enact progressive reforms to health care, the environment, etc. ..."
"... Bernie is a bit long in the tooth, so I am all in for Liz Warren. She's the only one with both the courage and the intelligence to take on the big money that controls our politics. ..."
"... Sanders or Warren would mean a change from neoliberal war mongering of the Clinton/W model. If the Democrats offer up another Clintonite they will lose. They need to offer something positive to the 90% who have lost the last 40 years of class war. ..."
Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Art Glick , 15 Jan 2019 09:44

The neoliberalism of the Democratic Party elite (and most of the rank and file) is one big factor in our 2016 loss. Even voters too ignorant to see Trump for what he really was - voters that are misinformed to the point that they unwittingly and continually vote against their own best interests - realized how much the Dems have sold out to Wall Street.

HRC would have been nominated in '08 if she had kissed more Wall Street you-know-what. That's why they anointed Obama who then proceeded to squander eight years of opportunity to remove big money from politics and enact progressive reforms to health care, the environment, etc.

Bernie is a bit long in the tooth, so I am all in for Liz Warren. She's the only one with both the courage and the intelligence to take on the big money that controls our politics.

Therefore, you can expect the Russian trolls to be coming for her in force. If you read anything negative about Warren in the coming months, check the source and don't trust the accuracy.

Canuckistan , 15 Jan 2019 09:30
Sanders or Warren would mean a change from neoliberal war mongering of the Clinton/W model. If the Democrats offer up another Clintonite they will lose. They need to offer something positive to the 90% who have lost the last 40 years of class war.

[Jan 17, 2019] Broadly, authoritarianism is the desire to impose one's own worldview on others in one's society by institutionalized coercion

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

JumpingSpider -> BluebellWood , 29 Nov 2018 13:34

Here are some articles about them.

Para from one of these articles:

Broadly, authoritarianism is the desire to impose one's own worldview on others in one's society by institutionalized coercion. Authoritarians, therefore, see punishment as an appropriate response when members of the group with which they identify [...] diverge too far from values that the authoritarian believes are best for society – even if the punished person has neither caused direct harm to another nor infringed another's rights.

[Jan 17, 2019] The farcical DNC leadership echoes the days of Brezhnev's intransigent politburo

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

TempsdesRoses , 15 Jan 2019 08:47

Yep,
The party has circled its wagons.
They insist that the Evil Vlad stole the last election.
Therefore, no need to examine Obama's centrist/neoliberal policies and the socio-economic conditions that fueled the rejection of Hillary.
We're doomed to repeat our errors.

The farcical DNC leadership echoes the days of Brezhnev's intransigent politburo.

Brassic , 15 Jan 2019 08:21
Excellent article. Thank you.

This is the realistic perspective we have to adopt in the US: the Democratic establishment is part of the neoliberal machinery that has generated Bush's wars, Obama's bank bailouts, deportations, and drone executions, and now Trump's anti-democratic populism.

[Jan 17, 2019] In regards to the Hillary v Bernie question, it also didn't help that the primary vote was wildly skewed by so-called 'superdelegates,' who don't actually commit their votes until the DNC convention

Notable quotes:
"... Bernie's bid was crushed by Clinton's superdelegates. No amount of throwing money against him in the direct sense was doing any good. He took popular positions on issues and stubbornly stayed on-message. ..."
Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

cagnusdei -> cagnusdei , 15 Jan 2019 10:53

In regards to the Hillary v Bernie question, it also didn't help that the primary vote was wildly skewed by so-called 'superdelegates,' who don't actually commit their votes until the DNC convention, but were being counted by the media as having already voted for Hillary, which made it appear to many of the uninformed that Bernie didn't have any chance of winning, which may have been intended to keep Bernie supporters home on primary day under the assumption that Hillary was unbeatable.
ehmaybe -> HobbesianWorlds , 15 Jan 2019 10:52
As sensible as your suggestions may be, what you're calling for would require at least three constitutional amendments to be practical - including scrapping the first amendment.

Maybe we should strive towards attainable goals instead?

cagnusdei -> lullu616 , 15 Jan 2019 10:50
Didn't help that the ostensibly neutral DNC was sending emails saying that they should play up Bernie Sanders' Jewish faith (among other attack strategies), fed debate questions to the Clinton campaign or tried to limit opportunities for Bernie and Hillary to share a stage together.

Bernie Sanders is widely considered by many to be one of the most popular American politicians, more than Trump and certainly more popular than Hillary. I think an interesting phenomenon to notice is the lengths the GOP, in particular, will go to in order to convince the average voter that anything that cuts taxes is inherently good for the 'little guy,' while anything that raises taxes is bad. Trump's recent tax cuts are a good example. Most of the actual cuts go toward the corporations and ultra-wealthy, which just increases the deficit while shifting the proportion of taxes paid onto the middle class. It's a con that many Americans are inexplicably susceptible to believing, for some reason.

ConBrio -> cnzewi , 15 Jan 2019 10:45

Progressive believe in inclusion and if that is "moralistic rhetoric" then so be it.

The litany goes "round and round.

Hillary Clinton:

" you could put half of Trump's supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right? The racist, sexist, homophobic, xenophobic, Islamaphobic -- you name it!

"Barack Obama:

"Referring to working-class voters in old industrial towns decimated by job losses, the presidential hopeful said: "They get bitter, they cling to guns or religion "

There's liberal "inclusion" for you!

memo10 -> GRBnative , 15 Jan 2019 10:34
Bernie's bid was crushed by Clinton's superdelegates. No amount of throwing money against him in the direct sense was doing any good. He took popular positions on issues and stubbornly stayed on-message.

[Jan 17, 2019] Managerialism is synonym for corporatism

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

JulesBywaterLees -> Zagradotryad , 29 Nov 2018 08:29

Managerialism is a state of European/Western politics, power has moved to large corporations. In 2008 the finance industry held countries to ransom...
Zagradotryad , 29 Nov 2018 08:03

power that has become too distant from the people.

That's the problem.

It's not technology, or Russians, or Trump or any other of the things you throw up to convince yourself the problem is external.

Managerialism has merely delivered gross inequality. The tools don't matter.

[Jan 17, 2019] The Coke or Pepsi and parties is a perfect corporatist arrangement, which guarantee filtering out any opposition to the oligarchy in 99 percent of elections

Only a severe political crisi can shake this "controlled duopoly" of the US coporatism.
Jan 16, 2019 | theguardian.com

William Williamson, 15 Jan 2019 10:38

Well put. All the USA has is Coke or Pepsi. With a lot of masquerading in between. A couple people who aren't on THE payroll, or wanting to be.
MyGenericUsername , 15 Jan 2019 07:38
Half of Americans don't bother voting for president. Why is the American media full only of people who insist that the country is divided in half between Democrat and Republican supporters? Where are the people of influence who think it's a problem and reflects poorly on the country that half of eligible voters don't see a reason to participate, and that it's worth changing things in order to get more people to change their minds about that?

Both parties are content with being unpopular, but with political mechanisms ensuring they stay in power anyway. The Democrats aren't concerned with being popular. They're content with being a token opposition party that every once in a while gets a few token years with power they don't put to any good anyway. It pays more, I guess.

CanSoc , 15 Jan 2019 07:34
It still looks like if Americans want to live in a progressive country, they'll have to move to one. But as it is clear that the neoliberalism of establishment Democrats has little or nothing to offer the poor and working class, or to non-wealthy millennials, the times they are a-changing.

[Jan 17, 2019] The rise of National Socialism in Germany in the 30s had many causes and some surprising supporters

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

RogerPalmer -> 5nufk1n4prez , 29 Nov 2018 07:30

True but incredibly naive.

The rise of National Socialism in Germany in the 30s had many causes and some surprising supporters.

Part of the problem was undeniably the crippling reparations for WWI forced on Germany by the victorious allies.

Part of the problem was communism strengthening in Russia and a growing communist threat in Germany.

Part of the problem was a desire by the entrenched elites to use the National Socialists as a counter to challenge the populism of the communism.

There are many contributing factors and the responsibility for the Nazis reaches far beyond the German border.

[Jan 17, 2019] Neoliberal elite which reigned disdainfully over us since the Second World War have ignored our fears over mass immigration and the changing of our established traditions and cultures.

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Selousscout1 , 29 Nov 2018 12:20

''Tis booming because the left/liberal/metropolitan muesli crunching elites (and I include the Tories in that) who have reigned disdainfully over us since the Second World War have ignored our fears over mass immigration and the changing of our established traditions and cultures. They have also connived in the insanity of insisting every hair brained liberal idea is worthy of being protected by the human rights legislative farce. Rapists being offered a say in the upbringing of their issue, school uniforms being dragged into law and a thousand and other one 'special issues' to a tiny minority being rammed down the throats of the fed up majority at every opportunity by activists.

[Jan 17, 2019] That populist has been so vaguely defined that neoliberal MSM use it as a label for anything the authors don't like. It's a straw man, a pejorative.

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

DanInTheDesert -> Tiny Toy , 29 Nov 2018 15:20

But that's the point, isn't it? That populist has been so vaguely defined that it encompasses anything the authors don't like. It's a straw man, a pejorative.

Populism is a belief in the goodness of people, a belief that masses make better decisions than elites and that the the rule of the elite come at the expense of the demos.

It's a term synonymous with grassroots, popular democracy. Proponents of elite rule with reductionistic views democracy (rule with the consent of the governed and all that trash) call their grassroots opponents 'populists' in attempt to tie them to strong men.

Signed, a left populist.

lagoalberche , 29 Nov 2018 15:00
Noam Chomsky has a view on this issue and I am inclined to think he has a better understanding of it than the author of this piece.

Chomsky rejects the term "populism" in this matter and offers, instead, the proposal that ;

"Working people are turning against elites and dominant institutions that have been punishing them for a generation"

The theory of 'cause and effect' seems eminently more sensible to me than the shrill cries of "It was the internet wot dun it"

The elites and dominant institutions that Chomsky refers to ( including mainstream media ) precipitated the current shift and would do better to acknowledge the part they played in it, rather than insult and demean the consequential reaction of people on the receiving end of it.

DanInTheDesert , 29 Nov 2018 12:06
Before people get out the pitchforks and burn the populists in effigy, perhaps we could hear from some left populists?

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/elites-no-credibility-left-interview-journalist-chris-hedges /

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CA7NA2TgXBQ&feature=youtu.be

The enemy is not populism, it's the right's capture of the populist narrative. Trump is a faux populist that has nothing but disdain for the people he employs and the people rules.

AnglophileDe -> JulesBywaterLees , 29 Nov 2018 11:39
Well, here's a very apposite quote:

The strain of anti-intellectualism has been a constant thread winding its way through our political and cultural life, nurtured by the false notion that democracy means that "my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge."
Isaac Asimov
"A Cult of Ignorance". Newsweek, January 21, 1980.

DanInTheDesert -> JulesBywaterLees , 29 Nov 2018 11:38

the very old school Christian conservative libertarians and old skool nutty right have seized on the success populist narrative has had in recent elections and referendum.

I would argue that is is because establishment figures in the Democratic party -- the New Democrats -- decided that the days of class struggle were over, that 'we are all capitalists now' and ceded the populist narrative to the right. Yes, this a populist moment and the question is not if we can reestablish faith in the elite but whether we can ensure that the new populism goes is a left rather than right direction.

I don't agree that populism lacks depth -- probably because when I think of populism I think of left populist intellectuals like Friere, Martin-Baro and the like who thought that democracy should be built on the virtues of the people.

The occupy movement was a populist movement. It said we, the people on the ground, know better than the elites in the towers. It made decisions democratically, this in stark contrast to the hierarchical structures of decision making exercised by the financial elite. I think populism, or grassroots, popular democracy has intellectual depth and sophistication. Take a look a the writing of Sheldin Wolin, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges, David Graeber . . .

I don't agree with most of the definitions of populism we've been offered -- I think they are little more that pejoratives dressed in academic language and have as much depth as the right's favored "snowflake" pejorative.

Brian_Drain -> The_Common_Potato , 29 Nov 2018 11:38
I remember watching 'Tomorrows World' ' in the 1970s and they showed us an unpuncturable cycle tyre that would last 25,000 miles.
The patent was bought by Europe's largest cycle tyre manufacturer, and AFAIK that was the last ever heard of it.
If that happened why is the water fuel idea so fanciful?
If you inject water into the inlet port or combustion chamber of a petrol engine, compression ratios, power output and efficiency can be raised dramatically, this has been known since WW1 and was employed in high altitude aero engines during WW2, yet has never been taken up by any major car manufacturer as far as I know, why?
So the notion that inventions could be suppressed for commercial reasons is really not fanciful at all, it would make less sense for such technology, if it existed, to be made altruistically available on a single purchase basis than to shitcan it.
BluebellWood -> CheshireSalt , 29 Nov 2018 11:30
But who are the 'liberal elite' exactly?

As far as I can see, our country has been ruled by a right-wing, monied elite for many years- not a 'liberal' one. Liberals at least tend to think in terms of economic equality and social freedoms, whatever their other faults might be.

But many working class and middle class people still carry on voting Tory even though it's against their own interests.

We don't have a 'liberal elite' in the UK. We still have the old-fashioned right wing Tory elite in power based on class and wealth. Why 'liberals' get all the abuse these days is beyond me.

(I'm a socialist, btw.)

JulesBywaterLees -> Albert Ravey , 29 Nov 2018 11:28
I'm researching populism on youtube - and it is seedy- and I have yet to turn on the FB news feed, but the algorithms do support populism- watch a PragerU video and the feed is full of other rightwing nonsense.
And all of it has the same empty lines.

I watched the Oxford Union Steve Bannon address- and it could have come from a left winger- the globalised corporate world has abandoned the little guy, and Trump is fixing it.
The on message is the MSM is lying
PC and activists are totalitarian = commies
either capitalism or socialism [commies] = freedom vs enslavement

and an over whelming anti intellectualism - where have we heard that before.

fredmb -> BluebellWood , 29 Nov 2018 11:25
True but there is still a case for having decent housing etc and training our own professionals as well and not hollow out professionals from less advantaged countries. When we took hundreds of nurses from the Philippines in 2000 and whole clinics there had to shut to terrible detriment of ill locals

[Jan 17, 2019] Critique or populism as providing simple solution to complex problems is deliberately overstated by political and media establishement. Lion share of the current nationalistic, anti-foreigner sentiments is due to reaction to neoliberalism in the USA

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

GBM1982 , 29 Nov 2018 08:56

"But populism has two chief characteristics. First, it offers immediate and supposedly obvious answers to complicated problems, which usually blame some other group along the way."

I think this point (simple solutions to complex problems) is often overstated. If you take the issue of immigration (an issue that has fuelled populism) , it actually shouldn't necessarily be that difficult to bring the number of new immigrants down, except that the political and media establishment pretend that it is.

Take Trump's plan to build a wall on the Mexican border. I see absolutely nothing wrong with this as it is ultimately every country's prerogative to defend its borders.

Ditto for intra-EU immigration (perhaps the main reason for Brexit): the EU acts as if this principle of free movement is sacred, but why should that be the case? Or Germany, where I live, where the constitution guarantees a right to asylum for those seeking refuge in the country. Again, this is spoken of as though it were cast in stone, when it really shouldn't be that difficult to amend. So I don't necessarily believe that solutions to problems always have to be difficult and complicated.

HippoMan -> PSmd , 29 Nov 2018 08:30
I agree that advances in people's abilities to interact with greater numbers of other people tend to usher in periods of social upheaval. A lot of the current nationalistic, anti-foreigner sentiments are the result of our initial reactions against unfamiliar influences coming from groups with whom we previously had relatively little contact.

Brexit, "Make America Great Again", and similar movements are the collective screams of resistance against dealing with unfamiliarity, learning new things, and growing. Over time, we will adapt, but this will probably require a generation or so, at minimum.


Of course, given the high pace of technological change, we are likely to be collectively bonded together even more tightly before we are able to adapt to the current state of the world. It won't be long before people will all be interconnected via implants, which means that each and every thing we do and every emotion we have will be sent out over the net.


It will be a brave new world.

[Jan 17, 2019] Populism is a range of political approaches that deliberately appeal to "the people," often juxtaposing this group against a so-called "elite."

In a way Populism is somewhat similar to Marxism: implicit message is that the class struggle in the societies is the key problem, which is completely true. American middle class was robbed from 1970th of a considerable chunk of its standard of living. So it is not surprising that the neoliberal elite ( the News Class of as they are called the US nomenklatura) now feels threatened and resorts to censorship, usage of intelligence agencies and mass surveillance, and other oppressive tactics to squash the dissent.
But in such cases the dissent grows stronger despise such an efforts and might turn, at some point, into insurrection against financial oligarchy as Marxists predicted.
The only problem is with Marxism is that they considered working class to the the next dominant class and this proved to be a false idea. That will never never happens.
Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

JulesBywaterLees -> Jason1925 , 29 Nov 2018 07:50

Populism is a range of political approaches that deliberately appeal to "the people," often juxtaposing this group against a so-called "elite." There is no single definition of the term, which developed in the 19th century and has been used to mean various things since that time. Few politicians or political groups describe themselves as "populists", and in political discourse the term is often applied to others pejoratively. Within political science and other social sciences, various different definitions of populism have been used, although some scholars propose rejecting the term altogether.

the wiki page is a bit more expansive you should try reading it.

The left is also guilty of populist ideas- blaming the rich, or banking [when in the UK we get a lot of tax from international banking as a service].

The right has just seized on populism and mainly through social media- brexit and trump are proof its works- but the people behind the populist message are the same old tired neo con christian right of the Reagan era and the sad old far right conspiracy nut jobs. Their message failed in the past- but people like Rees-mogg can now seize on this technique.

Your misunderstanding of what socialism means indicates you swallow the new right wing propaganda. Poorly funded education will result in people without proper opportunity- S.Korea is not a socialist country but they spend a huge amount on education and reap the rewards. But they have a culture where children doing well academically is praised but can also have negative pressure consequences.

It is complicated and worth discussion but populism wants the easy message.

[Jan 17, 2019] No wonder the neoliberal establishment is horrified and looking for ways to censor and control content available online!'

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Writeangle , 29 Nov 2018 07:19

One of the better reports on populism I've see recently is ''European Disunion'' by Yascha Mounk, a lecturer on government at Harvard https://newrepublic.com/article/143604/european-disunion-rise-populist-movements-means-democracy .
A analysis by Harvard ''Trump, Brexit, and the Rise of Populism: Economic Have-Nots and Cultural Backlash'' found that the primary factor driving populism is a cultural backlash i.e. against [neo]liberal policies and immigration.
kbg541 , 29 Nov 2018 06:59
Populism is growing because wealth is being concentrated into the hands of the wealthy, at the expense of everyone else.

Generations, instead of doing better, through working are doing worse because governments are allowing individuals and corporations to reduce terms and conditions of the workforce.

Twenty years ago, many UK workers had company pension schemes and jobs that paid the rent & bills. Now, the pensions have largely dried up and as housing has got more expensive, and incomes have shrunk.

Those at the top are pushing those beneath them closer to a bowl of rice a day, and shrug at the social consequences as inevitable - and a necessary step to protect shareholder values and profits.

In essence, it is the same situation that gave rise to populism in the thirties.

Who do you blame for the fact that house prices have gone up?

Who do you blame for the fact that your pension is going to be smaller than your parents'?

Thing is the populist politicians are the very same people who cut your pension and made money out of it. They just want you to blame someone else.

Candidly -> 5nufk1n4prez , 29 Nov 2018 06:54
The Long Read: https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/nov/29/why-we-stopped-trusting-elites-the-new-populism

[Jan 17, 2019] We are disenfranchised by what the elites are saying because the elites control the narrative in a way that makes sure the power will always reside with them.

One of the main power weapons of the elite is the control over the information flows
Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Albert Ravey , 29 Nov 2018 10:45

Some highlights from this thread (no names, no pack drill):

Populism is a kickback and correction to the forty years of political correctness where the white masses of Europe and America were forbidden by the liberal establishment to be their real selves

People are fed up with the elite consensus because of the failures of the elites.

Perhaps the reason that "populism" is thriving is that the liberal elites who ruled us in the entire post war period became complacent out of touch with those they were meant to represent.

there are millions of others whose voices have been ignored or silenced by the mainstream news

We are disenfranchised by what the elites are saying because the elites control the narrative in a way that makes sure the power will always reside with them.

The MSM has always been biased-

Why is democracy booming the article asks.
Well because the lies and bullshit of the liberal elite are there for all to see.

Take a look at what the MSM refuses to report, or what it deliberately distorts,

You can see the problem. It's like they are all reading from the same limited script which has been handed to them. Given the freedom to express our opinions, we are regurgitating what someone else has told us to say.

Maybe we should not be too pessimistic. The levels of opportunity for expression that the internet and social media have given us might currently have exceeded our ability to think critically about whatever bullshit we are being fed, but future generations may be better. After all, it's only a small step from doubting whatever mainstream thought tells you, to starting to wonder who is telling you to doubt those things and why and then to actually go back and think for yourself about the issues.

TheBorderGuard -> SomlanderBrit , 29 Nov 2018 10:44

... the white masses of Europe and America were forbidden by the liberal establishment to be their real selves.

Lifted straight from the pages of the Völkischer Beobachter , I suspect.

TheBorderGuard , 29 Nov 2018 10:43
Some people are more attracted to certainties than subtleties -- and I suspect such people are ideologues in general and populists in particular.
DanInTheDesert , 29 Nov 2018 09:46
Sigh.

So Corbyn and Trump are the same because they both have shirts. Well, color me convinced!

Like so many of these articles -- including the long but uninformative 'long read' on the same topic -- there is no mention of the failures of the elites.

Clinton sold us a false bill of goods. The Washington Consensus on economics would make the country richer and, after some 'pain', would benefit the working class. Sure you wouldn't be making cars but after some retraining you would work in tech.

This was a broken promise -- de industrialization has devastated the upper midwest. The goods are made in China and the money goes to Bezos. People are rightly upset.

The Washington Consensus on war sold us a false bill of goods. Instead of peace through strength we have seen a century of endless conflict. We have been caught in state of constant killing since 2001 and we are no safer for it. Indeed the conflicts have created new enemies and the only solution on offer is a hair of the dog solution.

People are fed up with the elite consensus because of the failures of the elites. Nowhere are the repeated failures of the elites, the decades of broken promises mentioned in the articles. Instead, those of us who prefer Sanders to Clinton, Corbyn to Blair are mesmerized by emotional appeals and seduced by simplistic appeals to complex problems. And they wonder why we don't accept their analyses . . .

TL;DR -- clickbait didn't get us here. The broken promises of the Washington consensus did.

[Jan 17, 2019] So why is "populist" now used as a derogatory term and populism seen as something to be feared? Part of this is that government and the MSM realise that developments brought by internet means that they have lost control of the narrative.

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

FallenApple , 29 Nov 2018 06:48

My Oxford English Dictionary defines a populist as "a member of a political party seeking to represent the interests of ordinary people."

Sounds good to me.

So why is "populist" now used as a derogatory term and populism seen as something to be feared?

Part of this is that government and the MSM realise that developments brought by internet means that they have lost control of the narrative.

Once only government pronouncements or newspaper commentary and propaganda could shape our views.

Newspapers in the UK could more or less bring down a government, such was their influence on the electorate.

Now we can search out information on the internet, fact-check for ourselves, listen to whom we want, and read a whole range of arguments and views.

No wonder the establishment is horrified and looking for ways to censor and control content available online!

samuelbear , 29 Nov 2018 06:22
Why is populism booming asks the writer - simple, because people feel that no-one's listening. Can it really be a surprise to The Guardian Opinion writers that people who have a zero hours contract, pay a high rent and have little job security won't vote for more of the same?
It's not a question as the writer suggests of 'if this wave of populism drifts into authoritarianism or worse' it's more a question of when - and when it does the liberal left will still be asking themselves - why?

[Jan 17, 2019] I've grown very sceptical over the years about the whole issue of asylum. To me, the idea that an individual can cross a border illegally without a visa, or without even a passport, and then suddenly become quasi legal be declaring that they wish to seek asylum is a bit of a farce

Jan 17, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

GBM1982 -> honeytree , 29 Nov 2018 10:25

I've grown very sceptical over the years about the whole issue of asylum. To me, the idea that an individual can cross a border illegally without a visa, or without even a passport, and then suddenly become quasi legal be declaring that they wish to seek asylum is a bit of a farce. The situation becomes even more farcical when failed asylum seekers still aren't deported. As for humanitarian and ethical obligations, I don't really buy into that either because the demographics of the world are such that the West is at risk of losing its very identity if it feels "obliged" to accept everyone seeking asylum and/or work from the world's more troubled regions. I see the admission of refugees as a generous gesture, not as an obligation.

[Jan 16, 2019] Neoliberal media will try to deral Sanders like they did in 2016

Notable quotes:
"... The NYTimes has already begun the exact same campaign for the 2020 cycle. ..."
Jan 16, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

Atlant -> partoftheproblem , 15 Jan 2019 09:55

If he can only succeed in a positive environment then there's not much hope for him, he needs to be able to fight and prove he's got what it takes. As it is I'm not sure he's got it.

That's not what I said at all and you know it.

Last time, the only stories that the NYTimes and (mostly) the Guardian could manage to run were Bernie-negative stories. The NYTimes has already begun the exact same campaign for the 2020 cycle. By comparison, the Guardian has been providing balanced Bernie coverage.

Matthew Hartman -> Atlant , 15 Jan 2019 08:00
Do not count on the mainstream media to support him. They're already hard at work smearing him and he hasn't even announced yet. Half the time they dont even mention him as being a likely contender. It's Biden all day, all night. Might as well be Hillary again.

Expect 2020 to be quite contentious, possibly even more than 2016. That just means as a supporter of Bernie you'll have to work twice, maybe three times as hard. The corporate media is going to suppress and challenge him as much as possible. They don't even mask it anymore.

[Jan 16, 2019] Corporatism is the control of government by big business. This is what we have in the USA today. The main difference between corporatism and fascism is the level of repressions against opposition. Corporatism now tales forma of inverted totalitarism and use ostracism instead of phycal repressions

Jan 16, 2019 | profile.theguardian.com

ChesBay -> KMdude 15 Jan 2019 10:07

That is why we need a Constitutional amendment to get the money OUT of politics. Make bribery illegal. THEN, we will not need Wall Street, which doesn't serve MOST of the population of this country, and is mostly responsible for the wealth gap and lack of opportunities for most of the population.
ChesBay , 15 Jan 2019 10:05
I'm not fooled. These are not progressives, they are corporatists, beholden to their donors. They have no courage, no interest in serving their constituencies, but are only interested in the power and money. What our country , and the world, needs is radical change from the profit-first point of view. I won't support either one of them.
William Anthony , 15 Jan 2019 09:28
It comes as no surprise that Wall Street runs the US Government.

Benito Mussolini defined fascism as "Barely able to slip a cigarette paper between business and government."

The US is a de-facto fascism.

[Jan 16, 2019] The travesty of the US elections

These corporate-Dem candidates are not being forced to sell out to win elections. Quite the opposite in fact. They are risking losing their elections for the sake of selling out.
Jan 16, 2019 | discussion.theguardian.com

BaronVonAmericano , 15 Jan 2019 07:54

Surely, many will comment that Democrats have no choice but to take the money in order to be competitive. I have one truism for such folks to ponder: Why would you trust your allegiance to those who don't care if you win?

Basic logic: rich people win the general election either way, so long as the primary-winning Democrat is in their pocket (the GOP is always on their side). So this monetary affection is certainly more about fixing an no-lose general than it is about ousting Trump, or any Republican.

[Jan 15, 2019] State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent

Notable quotes:
"... Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract. ..."
"... While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent. ..."
Jan 15, 2019 | grayzoneproject.com

Of all the State Department officials named in Integrity Initiative documents, the one who appeared most frequently was Todd Leventhal. Leventhal has been a staffer at the State Department's Global Engagement Center, boasting of "20 years of countering disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends." In an April 2018 Integrity Initiative memo, he is listed as a current team member:

Funded to the tune of $160 million this year to beat back Russian disinformation with "counter-propaganda," the State Department's Global Engagement Center has refused to deny targeting American citizens with information warfare of its own. "My old job at the State Department was as chief propagandist," confessed former Global Engagement Center Director Richard Stengel. "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don't necessarily think it's that awful."

Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message and destroy the messenger.

Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message and destroy the messenger.

Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract.

While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent.

[Jan 13, 2019] Deep State neutered Trump: I have been FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President

He essentially became a Republican Obama, save Nobel Peace Price. If Obama was/is a CIA-democrat, this guy is a Deep State controlled republican. In any case he betrayed his voters in a way that resembles Obama betrayal. One has a fake slogan "change we can believe in" that other equally fake "Make [middle] America Great Again" (which means restoration of well-being of middle class and working class in my book, not the continuation of Obama foreign wars, and tax cuts for for corporations and super rich.
And that means that he lost a considerable part of his electorate: the anti-war republicans and former Sanders supporters. He might do good and not to try to run in 2020. He definitely is no economic nationalist. Compare his policies with Tucker Carlson Jan 2, 2019 speech to see the difference. He is "national neoliberal" which rejects parts of neoliberal globalization based on treaties and prefer to bully nations to compliance that favor the US interests instead of treaties.
And his "fight" with the Deep State resemble so closely to complete and unconditional surrender, that you might have difficulties to distinguish between the two.
Most of his appointees would make Hillary proud. That that extends beyond rabid neocons like Haley, Mattis, Bolton and Pompeo.
Notable quotes:
"... The Washington Post is without a doubt the most pro-establishment among all large mainstream publications, not only do they defend the narratives of the Deep State but actively attacks anyone who challenges them. ..."
"... Jeff Bezos owner of the Washington Post is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. ..."
"... It's really sad that people in the public believe this stuff. It's insane and ridiculous. We're living in an Insane Asylum and the ones who should be there for the safety of themselves and others are walking around giving orders to Media and USG, fomenting war and making a mockery of laws and "normal behaviors. ..."
"... They flooded the news with the old Helsinki/Putin stuff to hide the real news. Lisa Page's testimony revealed that John Carlin, Mueller's former chief of staff was running the Russia investigation from the DOJ end, showing another conflict of Mueller's. Now Mueller is covering for two best friends, Comey and Carlin and he has to frame Trump to save them. ..."
"... The testimony also showed FBI David Bowditch was heavily involved, and Bowditch is now 2nd in command at the FBI and blocking the public release of witness testimony, and one reason for it is it reveals his involvement. ..."
"... It is also now revealed that John Brennan CIA had the dossier before the FBI, and the dossier was likely written by Nellie Ohr, who belonged to a CIA group, and then the dossier was laundered by Steele to look like foreign intelligence to get the Crossfire Hurricane investigation started on Trump. You would think it would be big news that Russians may have had nothing to do with the dossier but the media doesn't see it that way ..."
Jan 13, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com
Washington Post stating that he "has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal details" of his discussions with Russian President Vladimir Putin - telling Fox News host Jeanine Pirro in a phone interview that he would be willing to release the details of a private conversation in Helsinki last summer.

"I would. I don't care," Trump told Pirro, adding: "I'm not keeping anything under wraps. I couldn't care less."

"I mean, it's so ridiculous, these people making up," Trump said of the WaPo report.

The president referred to his roughly two-hour dialogue with Putin in Helsinki -- at which only the leaders and their translators were present -- as "a great conversation" that included discussions about "securing Israel and lots of other things."

"I had a conversation like every president does," Trump said Saturday. "You sit with the president of various countries. I do it with all countries." - Politico

In July an attempt by House Democrats to subpoena Trump's Helsinki interpreter was quashed by Republicans.

"The Washington Post is almost as bad, or probably as bad, as the New York Times," Trump said.

When Pirro asked Trump about a Friday night New York Times report that the FBI had opened an inquiry into whether he was working for Putin, Pirro asked Trump "Are you now or have you ever worked for Russia, Mr. President?"

"I think it's the most insulting thing I've ever been asked," Trump responded. "I think it's the most insulting article I've ever had written."

Trump went on an epic tweetstorm Saturday following the Times article, defending his 2017 firing of former FBI Director James Comey, and tweeting that he has been "FAR tougher on Russia than Obama, Bush or Clinton. Maybe tougher than any other President. At the same time, & as I have often said, getting along with Russia is a good thing, not a bad thing. I fully expect that someday we will have good relations with Russia again!"

rumcho

Jeff Bezos paid $250 million for Washington Post, five years later he gets a government contract with the CIA for $600 million. Are you connecting the dots? You do the numbers. This is how fascism works. Bezos is a crony capitalist joker.

Anunnaki

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2019/01/the-trump-russia-scam-how-obama-enabled-the-fbi-to-spy-on-trump.html#more

is Trump waiting for Mueller to lay down his cards? Head him off at the pass and arrest Obama, Rice, Jarrett, Lynch, Comey, Rosenstein and McCabe all on day 1

best defense is a good offense. Make the narrative about Dem sedition not impending House impeachment hearings.

You are President, start acting like it. Make them fear you.

your re-election depends on Mike Obama not being your opponent.

Let it Go

WaPo, again?

The Washington Post is without a doubt the most pro-establishment among all large mainstream publications, not only do they defend the narratives of the Deep State but actively attacks anyone who challenges them.

Jeff Bezos owner of the Washington Post is also a contractor with the CIA and sits on a Pentagon advisory board all part of doing everything he can to cozy up and ingratiate himself to the establishment on which his empire is built. The article below delves into how WaPo is behind many of the big stories that manipulate America and moves the needle of public opinion in huge ways.

http://Washington-post-influence-and-power.html

MoralsAreEssential

It's really sad that people in the public believe this stuff. It's insane and ridiculous. We're living in an Insane Asylum and the ones who should be there for the safety of themselves and others are walking around giving orders to Media and USG, fomenting war and making a mockery of laws and "normal behaviors.

shadow54

They flooded the news with the old Helsinki/Putin stuff to hide the real news. Lisa Page's testimony revealed that John Carlin, Mueller's former chief of staff was running the Russia investigation from the DOJ end, showing another conflict of Mueller's. Now Mueller is covering for two best friends, Comey and Carlin and he has to frame Trump to save them.

The testimony also showed FBI David Bowditch was heavily involved, and Bowditch is now 2nd in command at the FBI and blocking the public release of witness testimony, and one reason for it is it reveals his involvement.

It is also now revealed that John Brennan CIA had the dossier before the FBI, and the dossier was likely written by Nellie Ohr, who belonged to a CIA group, and then the dossier was laundered by Steele to look like foreign intelligence to get the Crossfire Hurricane investigation started on Trump. You would think it would be big news that Russians may have had nothing to do with the dossier but the media doesn't see it that way.

Then there is the news that Fusion GPS worked with the Democracy Integrity Project and Knew Knowledge to run a fake Russian bots campaign against Roy Moore. The Democracy Integrity Project was started by Feinstein's aide and with New Knowledge wrote a report on Russian bots for the Senate Intelligence Committee. So the Senate Intelligence Committee hired creators of fake Russian bots to write a report on Russian bots.

[Jan 11, 2019] New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In American Politics by Mark Ames

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... By Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast , author of Going Posta l and publisher of The eXile, and Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah , Goliath , The Fifty One Day War , and The Management of Savagery , which will be published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie . Originally published at the Greyzone Project ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US. ..."
Jan 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

By Mark Ames, co-host of the Radio War Nerd podcast , author of Going Posta l and publisher of The eXile, and Max Blumenthal, an award-winning journalist and the author of books including best-selling Republican Gomorrah , Goliath , The Fifty One Day War , and The Management of Savagery , which will be published in March 2019 by Verso. He has also produced numerous print articles for an array of publications, many video reports and several documentaries including Killing Gaza and Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie . Originally published at the Greyzone Project

The Integrity Initiative has mobilized an international disinformation campaign across Europe. Now, with government and right-wing foundation money, this massive "political smear unit" is infiltrating the US.

A bombshell domestic spy scandal has been unfolding in Britain, after hacked internal communications exposed a covert UK state military-intelligence psychological warfare operation targeting its own citizens and political figures in allied NATO countries under the cover of fighting "Russian disinformation."

The leaked documents revealed a secret network of spies, prominent journalists and think-tanks colluding under the umbrella of a group called "Integrity Initiative" to shape domestic opinion -- and to smear political opponents of the right-wing Tory government, including the leader of the opposition Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn.

Until now, this Integrity Initiative domestic spy scandal has been ignored in the American media, perhaps because it has mostly involved British names. But it is clear that the influence operation has already been activated in the US. Hacked documents reveal that the Integrity Initiative is cultivating powerful allies inside the State Department, top DC think tanks, the FBI and the DHS, where it has gained access to Katharine Gorka and her husband, the fascist-linked cable news pundit Sebastian Gorka .

The Integrity Initiative has spelled out plans to expand its network across the US, meddling in American politics and recruiting "a new generation of Russia watchers" behind the false guise of a non-partisan charity. Moreover, the group has hired one of the most notorious American "perception management" specialists, John Rendon, to train its clusters of pundits and cultivate relationships with the media.

Back in the UK, Member of Parliament Chris Williamson has clamored for an investigation into the Integrity Initiative's abuse of public money.

In a recent editorial , Williamson drew a direct parallel between the group's collaboration with journalists and surreptitious payments the CIA made to reporters during the Cold War.

"These tactics resemble those deployed by the CIA in Operation Mockingbird that was launched at the height of the cold war in the early 1950s. Its aims included using the mainstream news media as a propaganda tool," Williamson wrote.

"They manipulated the news agenda by recruiting leading journalists to write stories with the express purpose of influencing public opinion in a particular way," the Labour parliamentarian continued. "Now it seems the British Establishment have dusted off the CIA's old playbook and is intent on giving it another outing on this side of the Atlantic."

Unmasking a British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine

The existence of the Integrity Initiative was virtually unknown until this November, when the email servers of a previously obscure British think tank called the Institute for Statecraft were hacked, prompting allegations of Russian intrusion. When the group's internal documents appeared at a website hosted by Anonymous Europe, the public learned of a covert propaganda network seed-funded to the tune of over $2 million dollars by the Tory-controlled UK Foreign Office, and run largely by military-intelligence officers.

Through a series of cash inducements, off the record briefings and all-day conferences, the Integrity Initiative has sought to organize journalists across the West into an international echo chamber hyping up the supposed threat of Russian disinformation -- and to defame politicians and journalists critical of this new Cold War campaign.

A bid for funding submitted by the Integrity Initiative in 2017 to the British Ministry of Defense promised to deliver a "tougher stance on Russia" by arranging for "more information published in the media on the threat of Russian active measures."

The Integrity Initiative has also worked through its fronts in the media to smear political figures perceived as a threat to its militaristic agenda. Its targets have included a Spanish Department of Homeland Security appointee, Pedro Banos, whose nomination was scuttled thanks a media blitz it secretly orchestrated; Jeremy Corbyn, whom the outfit and its media cutouts painted as a useful idiot of Russia; and a Scottish member of parliament, Neil Findlay, whom one of its closest media allies accused of adopting "Kremlin messaging" for daring to protest the official visit of the far-right Ukrainian politician Andriy Parubiy -- the founder of two neo-Nazi parties and author of a white nationalist memoir, "View From The Right."

These smear campaigns and many more surreptitiously orchestrated by the Integrity Initiative offer a disturbing preview of the reactionary politics it plans to inject into an already toxic American political environment.

Lessons from "The Man Who Sold the War"

A newly released Integrity Initiative document reveals that the outfit plans an aggressive expansion across the US.

The Integrity Initiative claims to have already established a "simple office" in Washington DC, though it does not say where. It also boasts of partnerships with top DC think tanks like the Atlantic Council, the Center for European Policy Analysis, CNA, and close relationships with US officials.

A major hub of Integrity Initiative influence is the State Department's Global Engagement Center, a de facto US government propaganda operation that was established by President Barack Obama to battle online ISIS recruitment, but which was rapidly repurposed to counter Russian disinformation following the election of Trump.

The Integrity Initiative has also recruited one of the most infamous American PR men to organize its clusters of journalists and political figures.

He is John Rendon, best known as "The Man Who Sold The War" -- several wars, in fact, but most notoriously the Iraq invasion. Rendon was the self-described "information warrior" who planted fake news in the major US-UK media about non-existent WMD threats. With deep ties to the CIA and other military-intelligence agencies, his PR firm was paid $100 million to organize and sell Ahmed Chalabi's Iraqi National Congress. In 2002, the New York Times exposed a Pentagon program using Rendon to plant "disinformation" -- including "false stories" and "the blackest of black PR" -- in media outlets around the world, in order to shape public opinion and sell the Iraq invasion.

John Rendon (left) with Maj. Gen. Michael Snodgrass, US Africa Command Chief of Staff (photo by US Africom Public Affairs)

Journalist James Bamford outlined a catalogue of disinformation feats Rendon performed for the Pentagon, such as identifying "the biases of specific journalists and potentially obtain an understanding of their allegiances, including the possibility of specific relationships and sponsorships." Bamford also found proposals and programs Rendon was involved in that aimed to "'coerce' foreign journalists and plant false information overseas [and] find ways to 'punish' those who convey the 'wrong message.'"

These tactics seem particularly relevant to his work with the Integrity Initiative, especially considering the internal documents that reveal further Rendon-style plans to produce reports and studies to be "fed anonymously into local media." (Among the outlets listed as friendly hosts in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the center-left Spanish daily.)

Keeping Up with the Gorkas

Internal documents also refer to interactions between Integrity Initiative Director Chris Donnelly and top Trump officials like Katharine Gorka , a vehemently anti-Muslim Department of Homeland Security official, as well as her husband, Sebastian, who earned right-wing fame during his brief tenure in Trump's White House.

The latter Gorka is an open supporter of the Hungarian Vitezi Rend, a proto-fascist order that collaborated with Nazi Germany during its occupation of Hungary. Following Trump's election victory in 2016, Gorka appeared for televised interviews in a black Vitezi Rend uniform.

Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb, with his wife, Katharine, on Election Night

Gorka was among the first figures listed on an itinerary for Donnelly to Washington this September 18 to 22. The itinerary indicates that the two had breakfast before Donnelly delivered a presentation on "Mapping Russian Influence Activities" at the federally funded military research center, CNA .

According to the itinerary, Donnelly was granted access to Pentagon officials like Mara Karlin , an up-and-coming neoconservative cadre , and John McCain Institute executive director Kurt Volker , another neoconservative operative who also serves as the US Special Representative for Ukraine. Numerous meetings with staffers inside the State Department's Office of Global Engagement were also detailed.

A Foreign Agent in the State Department?

Of all the State Department officials named in Integrity Initiative documents, the one who appeared most frequently was Todd Leventhal. Leventhal has been a staffer at the State Department's Global Engagement Center, boasting of "20 years of countering disinformation, misinformation, conspiracy theories, and urban legends." In an April 2018 Integrity Initiative memo, he is listed as a current team member:

Funded to the tune of $160 million this year to beat back Russian disinformation with "counter-propaganda," the State Department's Global Engagement Center has refused to deny targeting American citizens with information warfare of its own. "My old job at the State Department was as chief propagandist," confessed former Global Engagement Center Director Richard Stengel. "I'm not against propaganda. Every country does it and they have to do it to their own population and I don't necessarily think it's that awful."

Like so many of the media and political figures involved in the Integrity Initiative's international network, the Global Engagement Center's Leventhal has a penchant for deploying smear tactics against prominent voices that defy the foreign policy consensus. Leventhal appeared in an outtake of a recent NBC documentary on Russian disinformation smugly explaining how he would take down a 15-year-old book critical of American imperialism in the developing world. Rather than challenge the book's substance and allegations, Leventhal boasted how he would marshall his resources to wage an ad hominem smear campaign to destroy the author's reputation. His strategic vision was clear: when confronting a critic, ignore the message and destroy the messenger.

Integrity Initiative documents reveal that Leventhal has been paid $76,608 dollars (60,000 British pounds) for a 50% contract.

While those same documents claim he has retired from the State Department, Leventhal's own Linkedin page lists him as a current "Senior Disinformation Advisor" to the State Department. If that were true, it would mean that the State Department was employing a de facto foreign agent.

As a cut-out of the British Foreign Office and Defense Ministry, the Integrity Initiative's work with current and former US officials and members of the media raises certain legal questions. For one, there is no indication that the group has registered under the Justice Department's Foreign Agent Registration Act, as most foreign agents of influence are required to do.

Grants from the Neocons' Favorite Foundation

An Integrity Initiative memo states that the right-wing Smith Richardson Foundation has also committed to ponying up funding for its US network as soon as the group receives 501 c-3 non-profit status. The foundation has already provided it with about $56,000 for covert propaganda activities across Europe.

The Smith Richardson Foundation has old ties to the US intelligence community and controversial cold war influence operations. According to reporter Russ Bellant , the foundation was secretly bankrolling radical right-wing "indoctrination campaigns for the American public on cold war and foreign policy issues" -- programs that got the attention of Senator William Fulbright, who warned then-President Kennedy of their dangers. At one of these indoctrination seminars, a Smith Richardson Foundation director "told attendees that 'it is within the capacity of the people in this room to literally turn the State of Georgia into a civil war college,' in order to overcome their opponents."

Smith Richardson has funded a who's who of the neoconservative movement, from hyper-militaristic think tanks like the American Enterprise Institute and the Institute for the Study of War. "To say the [Smith Richardson] foundation was involved at every level in the lobbying for and crafting of the so-called global war on terror after 9/11 would be an understatement," wrote journalist Kelley Vlahos.

Besides Smith Richardson, the Integrity Initiative has stated its intention to apply for grants from the State Department "to expand the Integrity Initiative activities both within and outside of the USA." This is yet another indicator that the US government is paying for propaganda targeting its own citizens.

The "Main Event" in Seattle

An Integrity Initiative internal document argues that because "DC is well served by existing US institutions, such as those with which the Institute [for Statecraft] already collaborates," the organization should "concentrate on extending the work of the Integrity Initiative into major cities and key State capitals [sic] across the USA."

This December 10, the Integrity Initiative organized what it called its "main event" in the US. It was a conference on disinformation held in Seattle, Washington under the auspices of a data firm called Adventium Labs. Together with the Technical Leadership Institute at the University of Minnesota, the Integrity Initiative listed Adventium Labs as one of its "first partners outside DC."

Adventium is Minneapolis-based research and development firm that has reaped contracts from the US military, including a recent $5.4 million cyber-security grant from the Pentagon's Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or DARPA.

Inside a modest-sized hotel conference room, the Adventium/Integrity event began with a speech by the Integrity Initiative's Simon Bracey-Lane. Two years prior, Bracey-Lane appeared on the American political scene as a field worker for Bernie Sanders' 2016 presidential primary run, earning media write-ups as the "Brit for Bernie." Now, the young operator was back in the US as the advance man for a military-intelligence cut-out that specialized in smearing left-wing political figures like Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader widely regarded as the British version of Sanders.

Bracey-Lane opened his address by explaining that Integrity Initiative director Chris Donnelly had been unable to appear at the event, possibly because he was bogged down in the scandal back home. He proceeded to read remarks prepared by Donnelly that offered a window into the frighteningly militaristic mindset the Integrity Initiative aims to impose on the public through their media and political allies.

According to Donnelly's comments, the West was no longer in a "peace time, rules based environment." From the halls of government to corporate boardrooms to even the UK's National Health System, "the conclusion is that we have to look for people who suit a wartime environment rather than peacetime."

During Q&A, Bracey-Lane remarked that "we have to change the definition of war to encompass everything that war now encompasses," referring vaguely to various forms of "hybrid warfare."

"There is a great deal to be done in communicating that to young people," he continued. "When we mean being at war we don't mean sending our boys off to fight. It's right here in our homes."

The emphasis on restructuring society along martial lines mirrored the disturbing thinking also on display in notes of a private meeting between Donnelly and Gen. Richard Barrons in 2016. During that chat, the two officers decided that the British military should be removed from democratic supervision and be able to operate as "an independent body outside politics."

While Bracey-Lane's presentation perfectly captured the military mindset of the Integrity Initiative, the speakers that followed him offered a diverse array of perspectives on the concept of disinformation, some more nuanced than others. But one talk stood out from the rest -- not because of its quality, but because of its complete lack thereof.

Reanimating the "Red-Brown" Grifter

Alexander Reid Ross (left) and Emmi Bevensee at the Integrity Initiative's "main event" in Seattle

The presentation was delivered by Alexander Reid Ross, a half-baked political researcher who peddles computer-generated spiderweb relationship charts to prove the existence of a vast hidden network of "red-brown" alliances and "syncretic media" conspiracies controlled by puppeteers in Moscow.

Ross is a lecturer on geography at Portland State University with no scholarly or journalistic credentials on Russia. His students have given him dismal marks at Rate My Professors, complaining about his "terrible monotone lectures" and his penchant for "insert[ing] his own ideologies into our class." But with a book, "Against the Fascist Creep," distributed by the well-known anarchist publishing house, AK Press, the middling academic has tried to make his name as a maverick analyst.

Before the Integrity Initiative was exposed as a military-intelligence front operation, Ross was among a small coterie of pundits and self-styled disinformation experts that followed the group's Twitter account. The Integrity Initiative even retweeted his smear of War Nerd podcast co-host John Dolan.

In a series of articles for the Southern Poverty Law Center last year, Ross attempted to bring his warmed-over Cold War theories to the broader public. He wound up trashing everyone from the co-author of this piece, Max Blumenthal, to Nation magazine publisher Katrina Vanden Heuvel to Harvard University professor of international relations Stephen Walt as hidden shadow-fascists secretly controlled by the Kremlin.

The articles ultimately generated an embarrassing scandal and a series of public retractions by the editor-in-chief of the Southern Poverty Law Center, Richard Cohen. And then, like some Dr. Frankenstein for discredited and buried journalism careers, the British Ministry of Defense-backed Integrity Initiative moved in to reanimate Ross as a sought-after public intellectual.

Before the Integrity Initiative-organized crowd, Ross offered a rambling recitation of his theory of a syncretic fascist alliance puppeteered by Russians: "The alt right takes from both this 'red-brown,' it's called, or like left-right syncretic highly international national of nationalisms, and from the United States' own paleoconservative movement, and it's sort of percolated down through college organizing, um, and anti-interventionism meets anti-imperialism. Right?"

In a strange twist, Ross appeared on stage at the Integrity Initiative's Seattle event alongside Emmi Bevensee , a contributor to the left-libertarian Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS) think tank, whose tagline, "a left market anarchist think-tank" expresses its core aim of uniting far-left anarchists with free-market right-libertarians.

Bevensee , a PhD candidate at the University of Arizona and self-described "Borderlands anarcho into tech and crypto," concluded her presentation by asserting a linkage between the alternative news site, Zero Hedge, and the "physical militarized presence in the borderlands" of anti-immigrant vigilantes. Like Bevensee, Ross has written for C4SS in the past.

The irony of contributors to an anarchist group called the "Center for a Stateless Society" auditioning before The State – the most jackbooted element of it, in fact – for more opportunities to attack anti-war politicians and journalists, can hardly be overstated.

But closer examination of the history of C4SS veers from irony into something much darker and more unsettling.

Pedophile Co-Founder, White Nationalist Associates

C4SS was co-founded in 2006 by a confessed child rapist and libertarian activist, Brad Spangler, who set the group up to promote "Market anarchism" to "replace Marxism on the left."

When Spangler's child rape confessions emerged in 2015, the Center for Stateless Society founder was finally drummed out by his colleagues.

There's more: Spangler's understudy and deputy in the C4SS, Kevin Carson -- currently listed as the group's "Karl Hess Chair in Social Theory" -- turned out to be a longtime friend and defender of white nationalist Keith Preston. Preston's name is prominently plastered on the back of Kevin Carson's book, hailing the C4SS man as "the Proudhon of our time" -- a loaded compliment, given Proudhon's unhinged anti-Semitism . Carson only disowned Preston in 2009, shortly before Preston helped white nationalist leader Richard Spencer launch his alt-right webzine, Alternative Right.

The C4SS group currently participates in the annual Koch-backed International Students For Liberty conference in Washington DC, LibertyCon, a who's who of libertarian think-tank hacks and Republican Party semi-celebrities like Steve Forbes, FCC chairman Ajit Pai, and Alan Dershowitz.

In 2013, C4SS's Kevin Carson tweeted out his dream fantasy that four Jewish leftists -- Mark Ames, Yasha Levine, Corey Robin, and Mark Potok -- would die in a plane crash while struggling over a single parachute. Potok was an executive editor at the Southern Poverty Law Center, which last year retracted every one of the crank articles that Alexander Reid Ross published with them and formally apologized for having run them.

For some reason, the super-sleuth Ross conveniently failed to investigate the libertarian group, C4SS, that he has chosen to partner with and publish in. That ability to shamelessly smear and denounce leftists over the most crudely manufactured links to the far-right -- while cozying up to groups as sleazy as C4SS and authoritarian as the Integrity Initiative -- is the sort of adaptive trait that MI6 spies and the Rendon Group would find useful in a covert domestic influence operation.

Ross did not respond to our request for comment on his involvement with the Integrity Initiative and C4SS.

Disinformation for Democracy

As it spans out across the US, the Integrity Initiative has stated its desire to "build a younger generation of Russia watchers." Toward this goal, it is supplementing its coterie of elite journalists, think tank hacks, spooks and State Department info-warriors with certifiable cranks like Ross.

Less than 24 hours after Ross's appearance at the Integrity Initiative event in Seattle, he sent a menacing email to the co-author of this article, Ames, announcing his intention to recycle an old and discredited smear against him and publish it in the Daily Beast -- a publication that appears to enjoy a special relationship with Integrity Initiative personnel.

Despite the threat of investigation in the UK, the Integrity Initiative's "network of networks" appears to be escalating its covert, government-funded influence operation, trashing the political left and assailing anyone that gets in its way -- all in the name of fighting foreign disinformation.

"We have to win this one," Integrity Initiative founder Col. Chris Donnelly said , "because if we don't, democracy will be undermined."

Disturbed Voter , January 10, 2019 at 4:26 am

This is why you don't put spooks in charge. They are paid to be paranoid.

pretzelattack , January 10, 2019 at 5:18 am

making up lies to get paid. james angleton was paranoid (not that it seemed to make him more effective in counterintelligence)–these people are just con artists, paid to be con artists.
i'm just waiting for "we have to undermine democracy in order to save it".

Pym of Nantucket , January 10, 2019 at 5:46 pm

Agreed. Not only are they paid to make things up, but they have an ingenious scheme for paying themselves from narcotics and arms dealing.

The most amazing feat of confidence artistry (apart from maybe the TARP bailout (c.f. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troubled_Asset_Relief_Program ) is their remarkable ability to convince the population they are needed and working on our behalf instead of being in jail where they belong.

nobody , January 10, 2019 at 6:06 am

I first heard about this enterprise/outfit from 21st Century Wire .

Peter , January 10, 2019 at 6:40 am

hat story has been around since at least December 17. https://grayzoneproject.com/2018/12/17/inside-the-temple-of-covert-propaganda-the-integrity-initiative-and-the-uks-scandalous-information-war/
maybe you should change your sources

Richard H Caldwell , January 10, 2019 at 6:52 am

Gotta love Mark Ames

jsn , January 10, 2019 at 6:55 am

b at Moon of Alabama posted on this on the 4th.

David , January 10, 2019 at 7:01 am

I submitted a long comment on this about an hour ago, which seems to have been eaten by the system. I won't repost it now, but I'll do so later if it doesn't surface.

PlutoniumKun , January 10, 2019 at 7:58 am

This is something that has repeatedly happened to me too recently – it often takes 2 or more hours for most of my recent posting to surface on the site. It rarely disappears altogether, so I would assume your post will eventually arrive.

hemeantwell , January 10, 2019 at 9:25 am

Same here on the delays. Keep a copy.
But anyway, very glad you posted this piece. Whatever we make of Patreon, it's one way to support Mark Ames' work.

flora , January 10, 2019 at 9:13 pm

Me, too. Though not on this post. Me thinks much sp@m and tr0llery happening behind the scenes that the mods have to wade through comment by comment.

jCandlish , January 10, 2019 at 7:50 am

Sir Alan Duncan, responding on behalf of the Government to Emily Thornberry's urgent question (Dec 12) on recent allegations that the Foreign Office funded a company which carried out a smear campaign against the official Opposition.

Chilling indeed.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GBOwO-MAPKI

RBHoughton , January 10, 2019 at 10:06 pm

What a frightful fellow that Alan Duncan is eh? Talks like a Mafia lawyer and he's supposed to be a national leader. He reminds that other MP, the POS who interrogated David Kelly on TV, they both use the same style. Is it a qualification for legislator?

The Rev Kev , January 10, 2019 at 8:23 am

Just a minor note to start off. That image of "Sebastian Gorka, in Vitezi Rend garb". I think that Vitezi Rend actually refers to the medal he wears on the left. The jacket itself more resembles the patrol jacket that British officers wore in the 19th century. Moving on! Notice how the same players keep on coming up again and again in all these stories of skulduggery? John Rendon, the Atlantic Council, Ajit Pai and Alan Dershowitz – the same scum-bags with a few new wannabe players. As an example.
The penchant that Brad Spangler, C4SS co-founder, has for under-age girls is disgusting of course but you have to put it into the context of the people that you are talking about. If Spengler was more rich or more powerful, you might see his name on a manifest for the "Lolita Express" but his activities would not be splashed about in an article like this one. That sort of activity is given a level of protection if you are in the right group. And it is a good thing that that British General Richard Barrons is retired as his comments are deserving of being cashiered.
Funny how a group that claims to be about protecting democracy wants to push it aside and install propaganda on a "1984" level in the pursuit of their aims. I cannot decide if their target of Russia is a means or an end. If it is a means, that means using the boogy-man of Russia to radically restructure western society to their tastes. If it is an end, well, it is true that Russia has about $75 trillion in resources, mostly in Siberia and the east, so if it was broken up eventually, that would be a bonanza of wealth appropriation.
I was thinking about the activities of this group and how they go about their activities, especially the smearing of anybody that talks truth to power. I wonder if anybody here made the connection with this story and the PropOrNot website that came out of nowhere about two years ago and that had the stamp of approval of the Washington Post. I would not be surprised if it turns out to be that PropOrNot was a trial balloon in the United States for the Integrity Initiative to establish what it was capable of. Just a thought.

Martin Finnucane , January 10, 2019 at 9:39 am

Vitezi Rend garb

He looks like an extra from Star Wars – one of those nazi guys working the bridge of the Death Star. The "look and feel" of a lot of pre-war fascism strikes us as silly in retrospect, though it really wasn't at the time.

EoH , January 10, 2019 at 10:35 am

That tailored black jacket Sebastian wears looks like something Winston Churchill would have changed out of before that last cavalry charge at Omdurman. It seems intentionally designed to mimic 19th century great power imperial army officer garb. Nostalgia for the good times, apparently. Goes with his fascist priorities.

bob , January 10, 2019 at 11:36 am

" my father was Moonraker and that is part of my origin story "

NSFW

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbQx0NTV4TU

Tomonthebeach , January 10, 2019 at 9:25 pm

Let us not get carried away with the exuberance of discovering skulduggery among fascist elements of the media and politics. This does not mean that the conspiracy means Russia is thereby a Goodie Twoshoes. It also does not mean that Russia is any less a pain in the ass than it has heretorfore be characterized.

It does mean that there is less reason (any?) than ever to put much faith in FoxNews (already a mere propaganda machine) or other orgs. I am uncomfortable hearing CNA is caught up in this as they are a pseudo government thinktank with some Pentagon influence.

If true, the story should be used to clear out some journalists and analyst riffraff. However, this story is surely not going to restore, much less create, any integrity among the Beltway Punditry.

Off The Street , January 10, 2019 at 8:56 am

The article and related matters may also shed more light on the abrupt resignation of Robert Hannigan from the leadership of GCHQ in January 2017 a few days after Trump's inauguration. Given previous revelations about GCHQ and NSA spying on each other's citizens, what else is next in the UK and in the US and elsewhere?

After reading about that Carson character and others I am ready for a shower to try to wash off the disgust.

DJG , January 10, 2019 at 9:01 am

Yves Smith: Thanks for this. I am wondering about two stories that have been flapping around here for a few days: That odd New Knowledge company that produced the report about Russian influence on the elections as well as the story about the case before the Supreme Court of the US in which a company is invoking claims of sovereign immunity.

I have a feeling that New Knowledge definitely fits into the framework outlined by Ames above. A contractor that appears out of nowhere with a "distinguished" board of concerned semi-liberals (at the trough)?

But what do I know? Some guy named Volodya showed up at my house and bought my vote in 2016 for two bottles of pickled mushrooms

diptherio , January 10, 2019 at 9:32 am

Kevin Carson is always showing up in my twitter feed. I knew there was something I didn't like about that guy, anarchist or no.

jfleni , January 10, 2019 at 9:38 am

Perfideus Albion is not just a neat saying, but a truth that the Irish, French and
Germans (etc.) have known forever, the people don't deserve it, but the
jumped up Tories do in spades.

pjay , January 10, 2019 at 9:48 am

Thank you for highlighting this article! It names names and connects some dots, including some connections reaching into the U.S. It also describes propaganda mechanisms that have been around forever but have become pervasive today. A few protruding tips of a massive iceberg, in my view. I'm sure *this* "bombshell" story will get the massive coverage it deserves in the MSM -- not!

diptherio , January 10, 2019 at 10:43 am

Here's the response from C4SS, if anyone is interested:
https://c4ss.org/content/51563

jsn , January 10, 2019 at 1:11 pm

That was interesting. Well argued all the way through I thought, but they could take a closer look at the unwinding of Yugoslavia; what Serbia and Syria have in common is having been targeted by outside state powers for dissolution, responses did vary.

pjay , January 10, 2019 at 2:27 pm

Thank you diptherio for posting the C4SS response. Such responses are helpful in evaluating issues like this, and we should always be open to the other side when they take the time to reply. However, I can't agree that the response was "well argued." The author does make some valid points, but mainly she resorts to ad hominem attacks on Ames (based on some juvenile antics at eXile that are often used to smear him), or on both authors because they may have agreed with "Assadists" like Ambassador Peter Ford or "9/11 Truthers" like Piers Robinson, whose claims about Syria or the White Helmets are, of course, Kremlin propaganda. Which brings up why Blumenthal would have changed his position on Syria; it was not because of his gradual understanding of what was really happening there. Rather, while he had once grasp the truth of the "revolution," he made the mistake of going to a Kremlin gala and the Rooskies (and RT) got to him. Now he is just another propagandist. Nowhere that I can see does the author discuss the major claims made in Ames and Blumenthal's article, or the evidence cited (except to say that if it was in RT or Sputnik, we can ignore it anyway as propaganda). Nor does she address the actual defamation made by Alexander Ross-Reid through the SPLC that pissed off Blumenthal in the first place. There are other problems (don't get me started on the "red-brown" smear), but that's enough.

Having said all that, I do think that in their criticism of C4SS, Ames and Blumenthal perhaps did some unnecessary punching down. They could have made clearer the distinction between organizations like the Integrity Initiative, that are pretty clearly intelligence operatives or cut-outs, versus groups like C4SS that function more like "useful idiots" because of their ideological position (e.g. equating U.S. and Russian imperialism in this case in their "anarchist" appeal). The latter are in no way as evil as the former, in my mind.

jsn , January 10, 2019 at 3:18 pm

You are clearly much more engaged with the related debates than I. I read the piece as a response to the punching down you mention in your last paragraph and felt like I got a respectable read on someone still developing their arguments. I'm not informed enough to argue with much of it, but having read Diana Johnstone's "Fools Crusade", the Syria/Serbia bit stuck in my craw.

I had thought about commenting on the ad hominems directed at Ames, but didn't want to get into the whole identity argument embedded in much of the language of the post. While I disagree with many of her positions and attitudes on the state actions she criticizes without, in my opinion, adequate grounding, I judged it a mostly good faith effort trying to find solid footing in a world increasingly thick with distorted narratives.

It's hard to argue now, from anywhere with out power, without being someone's "useful idiot": trust has decayed to the point where language impedes communication in the political sphere.

pjay , January 10, 2019 at 5:01 pm

It's funny you should mention Johnstone's book. I normally would not use the derogatory term "useful idiot" for the very reason you imply; most such people are acting in good faith. I admit that her comments on Syria irritated me. But the reason I sometimes overreact to that sort of narrative is because of my own experiences as a useful idiot, starting with Yugoslavia. I fell for the liberal "humanitarian" argument hook, line, and sinker in the 1990s, even though I considered myself a knowledgeable progressive at the time. It wouldn't be the last time I was duped, but I'd like to think I'm a little wiser today.

I appreciate your comment. We definitely need to distinguish empire propagandists from the beliefs of people honestly trying to find their way.

rojo , January 10, 2019 at 6:41 pm

I thought the later part of Ames' piece was unnecessary. It's kind of the same sort of guilt-by-attending-same-conference thing that I find annoying about the Russophobes.

Keep focused on government malfeasance, not basement brown-shirts.

Ignacio , January 10, 2019 at 11:00 am

Oh well, there would be a lot to argue here. In one side it is nice to see that the "Initiative" is being exposed although it doesn't appear yet to trigger any significant response from supposedly democratic institutions like, let's say the english parliament (at ransom by brexit).

Just to demonstrate how this article is well focused and pointed I wanted to comment on this bit:

(Among the outlets listed as friendly hosts in Integrity Initiative internal memos are Buzzfeed and El Pais, the center-left Spanish daily .)

YES! iIt is so true that the former "center-left" –if you wish– daily that years ago was a must read but has been degraded to levels that I wouldn't have imagined, in a case that makes the Guardian as the "guardian of reporting-as-it should-be". One has to bear in mind that the current most important shareholder of Grupo Prisa (owner of El Pais) is an english hedge fund Amber Capital whose CEO, Joseph Oughorlian is chairman at Grupo Prisa and probably responsible for the Russia!Russia!Russia! campaign observed in this medium that surprised me so much. You don't find nothing similar in Spain even in rigth and rigth of the rigth news outlets.

I believe this UK-based shareholder is clearly associated with the peculiar Russia!Russia!Russia! stance of the supposedly centre-left daily.

juliania , January 10, 2019 at 12:24 pm

For those of us from way back way back, these kooks relate to offshoots of the Watergate scandal, the original one, where people working on those burglaries of psychiatrist's offices and Democratic headquarters got their start organizing small gangs of crooks to infiltrate what was then a porous but trustable system of government – on they went to propose surveillance and collection of data that was at first publicly laughed about but on they went. On they went. Technology with all its pluses has these minuses we at first were able to counter (Church hearings) but the rats have scurried into all the back alleys and secretive pathways that need a thorough cleanup. It can be done, but it needs to be done periodically. Hopefully this is finally the year when that will happen.

Thank you, Yves. I believe these folk don't end up in a good place, but meanwhile they are wreaking havoc. The place to start, after the brooms and mops, is to get money OUT of politics and restore a verifiable voting system that happens methodically and is trustworthy. The citizenry will be behind this. We the people don't care how long it takes to vote or to find out who won. We don't! Haste makes waste in more ways than we know.

Let's do this. And please, judges, do your duty or go to jail yourselves.

Andrew Watts , January 10, 2019 at 1:37 pm

It's obvious that neither Ames or Blumenthal read the actual documents they're quoting from. Which is a shame considering the relevant one involving the CIA's Operation Mockingbird comparison was only seven pages long. The CIA were merely imitating British intelligence during the war and it is clearly stated as such when one of the replies involving General Sir Richard Barrons states that they've done this before during the 1930s. The US didn't possess a foreign intelligence agency at the time and I'd fervently argue that we still don't to this day.

but I've already commented about British Security Coordination in the aftermath of PropOrNot though and I'm reluctant to beat a dead horse.

https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2016/12/links-12312016.html#comment-2736471
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/100755.html#comment-2737564
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2017/01/links-11217.html#comment-2742827
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2018/05/links-5-21-18.html#comment-2971759

It's hard to be modest when you're this good.

Roady , January 10, 2019 at 4:02 pm

I wish I could be like Andrew Watts

Chauncey Gardiner , January 10, 2019 at 3:27 pm

Ah, the smell (or should we say stench) of domestic propaganda in the morning, ironically by some of the same individuals who brought us Iraq WMDs. While First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and other civil rights must be protected, it seems to me that a careful balance can be drawn under new legislation that insulates us from such government-sponsored propaganda. We should be able to rely on our government's representations. Instead, as with a former president who openly acknowledged, "My job is to catapult the propaganda," the reverse, together with a related loss of trust, unfortunately seems to be increasingly the case. Stop lying! What part of "of the People, by the People, for the People," is difficult to understand?

[Jan 10, 2019] Stuff To Read Integrity Initiative, Skripal, Kaspersky ...

Notable quotes:
"... Neither Rob nor I have a sound theory of what really happened in Salisbury. There are many possible explanations, but none for which there is sufficient evidence. What we do know is that the British government lied and lies about the case from A to Z. ..."
"... This wasn't an accident blamed on Putin but a planned semi-assassination in which at least one of the victims was unaware of the plan designed from the beginning to be used in the rolling anti-Putin regime change operation. ..."
Jan 10, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Stuff To Read: Integrity Initiative, Skripal, Kaspersky ...

The is no original piece ready to post today, but here are some interesting links:

There are several new stories about the Integrity Initiative though still none in any mainstream media.

Apropos Skripal

Use as open thread ...

Posted by b at 12:58 PM | Comments (55)


bevin | Jan 9, 2019 1:19:20 PM | 1

Comments I posted this comment at Off Guardian. There are a couple of points that may be of interest:

The essential feature of this "Integrity Initiative" is that it is purportedly a charity or an NGO. Like Atlantic Council, or Bellingcat, it is funded by government(s) but it has, as this video demonstrates, the capacity to distance itself from government, Deniability.

Deniability is the central feature of all British regime change operations since 1945. The UK takes (took?) the UN Charter and Nuremberg seriously. Not in the sense that it follows the rules but in so far as it tries not to get caught waging aggressive wars and interfering in sovereign states by carrying out regime change operations.

Britain has become very good not just at keeping its secret operations secret and deniable. But, through its controls over the media, stopping leaks by ensuring that whistle blowers are not heard.

What this case indicates is that people like Donnelly, contemptible careerists playing games with humanity's very existence, have prevailed over the more cautious and sensible Civil Servants in the Foreign Office, who used to keep a lid on the irrepressible folly of psychopaths like Christopher Nigel, and have been given license not only to kill but to do so without reference to 'M' and Whitehall.

In this case, thanks to the weakness and demoralised state of the current government what has happened is that Donnelly has improved on the rolling regime change operation against Russia, (consisting of taking advantage of opportunities to castigate the Kremlin and blaming Putin for everything that goes wrong, every Russian expatriate's death, every botched poison gas gambit by the White Helmets (another one of these NGOs run by 'retired MI types),).. improved on it to the extent that, now, rather than waiting to comment on, and build frames around such events as Litvinenko's death, they are constructing them out of whole cloth.
The key word here is bricolage, as used by Levi Strauss to describe one of the characteristic reactions of traditional societies to the irruption of western imperialism.

Donnelly, his acolytes and his dupes in the media are taking whatever they find lying around in the world and twisting it together to form apparent events. The White Helmets, for example, attempt a chlorine gas attack on Syrian forces. It fails but rather than deny that it ever happened British Intelligence convinces the media that, in fact the attack was not by the Jihadists but upon them. The media dutifully takes its cues, from the clusters and, almost before you know it, the US is bombing Damascus on the ground that Assad is carrying out poison gas attacks.

The MH17 affair is another instance: an airliner gets shot down, whether deliberately or not doesn't matter, and Russia is blamed. All manner of phony 'evidence' is publicised. The real evidence such as Air Traffic Control records is suppressed. Sanctions are imposed. Russia further isolated etc. Then we had the DNC emails, again, a leak probably by a decent person disgruntled by the utter cynicism and criminality of the DNC's tactics in the primary elections. Twisted into something resembling a Russian conspiracy against Clinton. Not one that anyone with enough brain to tie his shoelaces would credit but just enough to set the media lynch mobs, led by their clusters, into operation.

All of which leads inexorably to Salisbury and the Skripals.

And here perhaps there is more than bricolage: rather than picking up what providence has delivered and making a passably plausible story of it, here, one suspects, the matter was put together in advance. This wasn't an accident blamed on Putin but a planned semi-assassination in which at least one of the victims was unaware of the plan designed from the beginning to be used in the rolling anti-Putin regime change operation..

Which, and this is something that the old FO mandarins knew would happen if policy were left in the hands of Donnelly and Co, (straight out of schoolboy comics like Magnet or Hotspur), has proved to be exactly what Russia needed: a series of kicks at the Kremlin which drove it into the arms of Beijing and forced it to form an iron alliance which will lead not to regime change in Moscow but to the destruction of the Atlantic empire.

George Lane , Jan 9, 2019 1:30:15 PM | link
Just would like to point out a small, interesting parallel between these Integrity Initiative documents and some of the mainstream academic literature in the US about democracy, namely the use of the phrase "malign influence" to describe the influence of Russia (and China). If one reads the latest issue of the Journal of Democracy (which names the NED as a partner or some such) or the latest Freedom House report, one will find the academic version of the language used by mainstream journalism, warning of the threat that Russia and China pose to the Western liberal democratic way of life.
Hausmeister , Jan 9, 2019 4:38:00 PM | link
james | Jan 9, 2019 4:12:38 PM | 14

Sorry for that.

I would call them a country run fully by intel agencies. I made a game today. Google research results are personalized. I asked several friends to search Google for „Integrity Iniative". All the screenshots showed the same. One sputnik-Link, one to Nachdenkseiten, the rest international. Not one single main stream medium was mentioned. Since November! There has been even a debate in the British parliament. If this is no top-down organized consulting machine what is such a machine then?

james , Jan 9, 2019 4:49:08 PM | link
@19 russ.. thanks.. here is a link to their site.. http://www.medialens.org/

... ... ...

somebody , Jan 9, 2019 5:16:32 PM | link
The Guardian now has an obituary on the Integrity Initiative . They seem to have decided that they cannot silence the case.
Tony_0pmoc , Jan 9, 2019 5:48:51 PM | link
@26 Ross Stanford. I had been posting on Craig Murray's website for nearly 10 years since I read his book Murder in Samarkand, and very nearly turned up at the House of Commons as a witness - but he asked can anyone record this - which I did. I have never actually met him. bevin posted for maybe a couple of years a couple of years ago. bevin wrote about The French political situation, before it kicked off.

He is a very clever man, and to delete someone so intelligent who was almost literally predicting what was likely to happen with yellow vests etc, seems a little bit both arrogant and immature in my my view. However all of us regardless of our political views accept the Craig Murray is a Man of Great Integrity and Courage, even though on a lot of political issues I disagree with him. Surely thats O.K. disagreeing about politics?

"Craig Murray - Torture 1 of 7" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LF9spgagSHI

Tony

dh , Jan 9, 2019 5:59:56 PM | link
@30 The basic line seems to be that the West is vulnerable to Russian attacks because we have a free press. So why did it take the free press such a long time to come up with a response? James Ball does admit that a secretive organization using government funding to slander Jeremy Corbyn might not have been a great idea.
Jen , Jan 9, 2019 6:12:15 PM | link
Posted this over at Mark Chapman's The New Kremlin Stooge blog:

The latest news from Salisbury: first, the park bench and the dining table walked the Path of Fire, then the guinea pigs and a cat followed, a house may soon do so as well, and the latest perhaps to join the queue

"Amesbury ambulance station may never reopen after nerve agent attack": https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/17343540.amesbury-ambulance-station-may-never-reopen-after-nerve-agent-attack/

and then at some point in the future: "Revised plan to redevelop Salisbury's Maltings unveiled"
https://www.spirefm.co.uk/news/local-news/2707454/revised-plan-to-redevelop-salisburys-maltings-unveiled/

"Salisbury's shopping centre to be given £69million makeover and major rebrand after infamous Novichok poisonings": https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6275651/Salisburys-shopping-centre-given-69million-makeover-infamous-Novichok-poisonings.html

Several comments attached to that post are of "wish we had Novichok in our shopping centre" or "they planned this all along" type. It seems that Salisbury shopping centre as it is has not been doing well because of high rents previously imposed by Wiltshire Council and it desperately needs a makeover. Call me cynical but maybe Wiltshire Council is using the poisoning incident to bring forward its redevelopment plans for the Salisbury shopping centre that will all but kill off local businesses.

Blooming Barricade , Jan 9, 2019 6:17:08 PM | link
@3
The irony is that, with a genuinely free press, RT would cease to have any appeal. The corporate media is hopelessly biased against Jeremy Corbyn and Bernie Sanders, as well as pro-war, opposed to anarchism, openly pro-capitalism, and fails to report on issues like fracking, oligarchic trade deals Palestinian struggles, police state brutality against left, and almost every other topic the public would want to know about.

Projects like PropOrNot and the Intgerity Initiative exist solely to prevent the public from knowing about those things by locking down the information sphere against independent media (today they claimed that "neoliberalism" and "neoconservatism" aren't real concepts but Russian-invented insults against the rules-based liberal world order.

karlof1 , Jan 9, 2019 6:35:16 PM | link
George Galloway weighs in on the chaos engulfing the Empire in Washington, London and Paris. The Neoliberal ship is foundering while the uplifting of people-based policies of Russia and China keep them on track to reach their aims. Soon, if Trump keeps the government shutdown, those idled federal workers just might be seen in the streets. George has a penchant for connecting things, and had this to say about Macron:

"The very conditions Macron strove so very hard to bring about in Damascus and that France DID help bring about in Kiev are now rocking the very foundations of the French Republic."

The false flag of Austerity--Neoliberalism preying on its own as was predicted at its beginnings is what we're witnessing, while the actors that created the situation cling with bloody hands to the ship of state unwilling to surrender the wheel to those who might salvage the situation. Metaphorically, Rome burns while Nero and his Senators fiddle.

Peter Schmidt , Jan 9, 2019 6:50:14 PM | link
The Guardian has produced an article about Integrity Initiative. It was so poorly written that they had to close the comment section after 138 comments. People do know a lot more than the Guardian thinks.
pretzelattack , Jan 9, 2019 6:57:42 PM | link
the guardian never keeps comment sections open long if too many posters start disagreeing with their preferred line. their other tactic is simply never to open comments on posts where they think this is likely to happen. and of course they haven't even acknowledged the luke harding travesty, as they continue to beg for donations to support their fearless independent journalism.
dh , Jan 9, 2019 7:15:58 PM | link
I thought James Ball made a gallant effort to exonerate Western media considering he probably had a team of editors breathing down his neck. It's the lack of transparency that seems to upset him most. Perhaps his next article will be an in depth look at how Integrity Initiative got government funding.

[Jan 08, 2019] Shock Files- What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair- - Sputnik International

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the Skripal attack? -- ..."
"... The Skripal Files ..."
Jan 08, 2019 | sputniknews.com

Hacking syndicate Anonymous has just released its fourth tranche of documents hacked from the internal servers of the Institute for Statecraft and its subsidiary, the Integrity Initiative. Several explosive files raise serious questions about the shadowy British state and NATO-funded 'think tank' and its connections with the Skripal affair.

The files were released just after 2:30pm GMT on January 4 -- I've barely scratched the surface of the content, but what I've seen so far contains a panoply of bombshell revelations -- to say the least, the organization(s) now have serious questions to answer about what role they played in the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in March, and its aftermath both nationally and internationally.

Sinister Timeline

One file apparently dating to "early 2015" -- "Russian Federation Sanctions" -- written by the Institute's Victor Madeira outlines "potential levers" to achieve Russian "behaviour change", "peace with Ukraine", "return [of] Crimea", "regime change" or "other?". The suggested "levers" span almost every conceivable area, including "civil society", "sports", "finance" and "technology".

In the section marked "intelligence", Madeira suggests simultaneously expelling "every RF [Russian Federation] intelligence officer and air/defense/naval attache from as many countries as possible". In parentheses, it references 'Operation Foot' , the expulsion of over 1000 Soviet officials from the UK in September 1971, the largest expulsion of intelligence officials by any government in history.

The section on sports also suggests "advocating the view [Russia] is unworthy of hosting [sporting] events" -- and the section marked "information" recommends the sanctioning of 'Russian' media "in West for not complying with regulators' standards".

2015 File Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions 2015 File Written By Victor Madeira on Possible Anti-Russian Actions

In April that year, Institute for Statecraft chief Chris Donnelly was promoted to Honorary Colonel of SGMI (Specialist Group Military Intelligence), and in October he met with General Sir Richard Barrons. Notes from the meeting don't make clear who said what, but one despaired that "if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space."

"We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. We did this in the 1930s. My conclusion is it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside government. We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national capabilities [and/or] capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to do it? We need this debate now. There is not a moment to be lost," they said.

Operation IRIS Begins

On 4 March 2018, former Russian military officer and double agent for MI6 Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were poisoned in Salisbury, England.

Within days, the Institute had submitted a proposal to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, "to study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.

The bid was accepted, and the Initiative's 'Operation Iris' was launched. Under its auspices, the Institute employed 'global investigative solutions' firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal the world over.

It also conducted media monitoring of its own, with Institute 'research fellow' Simon Bracey-Lane producing regular 'roundups' of media coverage overseas, based on insights submitted by individuals connected to the Initiative living in several countries. One submission, from an unnamed source in Moldova, says they "cannot firmly say" whether the country's media had its "own point of view" on the issue, or whether news organizations had taken "an obvious pro-Russian or pro-Western position", strongly suggesting these were key questions for the Initiative.

Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal Incident Integrity Initiative Seeks Intelligence On How Overseas Media Reported Skripal Incident

Moreover though, there are clear indications the Institute sought to shape the news narrative on the attack -- and indeed the UK government's response. One file dated March 11 appears to be a briefing document on the affair to date, with key messages bolded throughout.

It opens by setting out "The Narrative" of the incident -- namely "Russia has carried out yet another brutal attack, this time with a deadly nerve agent, on someone living in Britain".

"Use of the nerve agent posed a threat to innocent British subjects, affecting 21 people and seriously affecting a police officer. This is not the first time such an attack has been carried out in the UK 14 deaths are believed to be attributable to the Kremlin Russia has poisoned its enemies abroad on other occasions, most notably then-candidate for the Presidency of Ukraine, Viktor Yushchenko, in 2004. Russian political activist Vladimir Kara-Murza has been poisoned twice; and the journalist Anna Politkovskaya was also poisoned and later shot dead. Since Putin has been running Russia, the Kremlin has a history of poisoning its opponents in a gruesome way," the "narrative" reads.

The file goes on to declare the British response has been "far too weak it's essential the government makes a much stronger response this time" -- and then lists "possible, realistic, first actions", including banning RT and Sputnik from operating in the UK, boycotting the 2018 World Cup, withdrawing the UK ambassador from Moscow and expelling the Russian ambassador to the UK, and refusing/revoking visas to leading Russians within Vladimir Putin's "circle", and their families.

Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative Post-Skripal Incident Anti-Russian Actions Recommended by Integrity Initiative

It's not clear who the document was distributed to -- but it may have been given to journalists within the Initiative's UK 'cluster', if not others. This may explain why the Institute's "narrative", and its various recommended "responses" utterly dominated mainstream media reporting of the affair for months afterwards, despite the glaring lack of evidence of Russian state involvement in the attack.

It's extremely curious so many of the briefing document's recommendations almost exactly -- if not exactly -- echo several of the suggested "levers" outlined in the 2015 document. It's also somewhat troubling the "Global Operation Foot" spoken of in that file duly came to pass on March 28 2018, with over 20 countries expelling over 100 Russian diplomats.

Likewise, it's striking Victor Madeira, the Institute staffer who made the recommendations in 2015, made many media appearances discussing the poisoning following the incident routinely documented by the Institute. Security consultant Dan Kaszeta also wrote a number of articles for the Integrity Initiative website about chemical weapons following the attack -- including a July 14 article, How could Novichok have poisoned people four months after the Skripal attack? -- receiving 40 pence per word .

Invoice submitted to Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Invoice submitted to Integrity Initiative by Dan Kaszeta Strange Connections

The Institute's bizarrely intimate connections with the incident don't end there. Another document apparently dating to July 2018 contains the contact details of Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and -- unbelievably -- neighbor in Salisbury. Anonymous claims the document is an invitee list for a meeting the Institute convened between a number of individuals and Syria's highly controversial White Helmets group, but this is yet to be verified.

Whatever the truth of the matter, the latest document dump raises yet further questions about how and why it was BBC Diplomatic and Defense Editor Mark Urban -- who was in the same tank regiment as Miller after leaving University -- came to meet with Skripal in the year before his poisoning. When I attended the launch of his book on the affair in October -- The Skripal Files -- he was evasive on whether he played a role in connecting him with Skripal, and denied Miller was Skripal's recruiter.

The latest trove also raises yet further questions about the activities of the Institute for Statecraft and Integrity Initiative. In light of these revelations, reading the record of Donnelly's meeting with General Barrons takes on an acutely chilling quality. It may be that purely serendipitously the pair got their "catastrophe", their "something dreadful", which "[woke] people up" and made the government "realise the problem" posed by Russia -- or it could be they one way or another played a facilitative role of some kind.

After months of refusing to answer the vast number of questions I and thousands of others have submitted to the paired organizations, it's high time for them to break cover, and be honest with the public.

[Jan 08, 2019] Skripal spin doctors- Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative

Highly recommended!
Images removed. Please brose the original to view them.
Notable quotes:
"... "Russian disinformation." ..."
"... "network of networks" ..."
"... It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence. ..."
"... "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" ..."
"... "global investigative solutions" ..."
"... What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... ..."
"... "pro-Russia troll accounts" ..."
"... "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case." ..."
"... Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" ..."
"... These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK." ..."
"... "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" ..."
"... "threat Russia poses." ..."
"... This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning ..."
"... One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot. ..."
"... "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history." ..."
"... "Makes you think " ..."
"... The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute. ..."
"... It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair. ..."
"... £2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019 ..."
"... It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance. ..."
Jan 05, 2019 | www.defenddemocracy.press

The Integrity Initiative, a UK-funded group exposed in leaked files as psyop network, played a key role in monitoring and molding media narratives after the poisoning of double agent Sergei Skripal, newly-dumped documents reveal. Created by the NATO-affiliated, UK-funded Institute for Statecraft in 2015, the Integrity Initiative was unmasked in November after hackers released documents detailing a web of politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics involved in purportedly fighting "Russian disinformation."

The secretive, government-bankrolled "network of networks" has found itself under scrutiny for smearing UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as a Kremlin stooge – ostensibly as part of its noble crusade against anti-Russian disinformation. Now, new leaks show that the organization played a central role in shaping media narratives after Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were mysteriously poisoned in Salisbury last March.

It's notable that many of the draconian anti-Russia measures that the group advocated as far back as 2015 were swiftly implemented following the Skripal affair – even as London refused to back up its finger-pointing with evidence.

Operation Iris

Days after the Skripals were poisoned, the Institute solicited its services to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office, offering to "study social media activity in respect of the events that took place, how news spread, and evaluate how the incident is being perceived" in a number of countries.

After receiving the government's blessing, the Integrity Initiative (II) launched 'Operation Iris,' enlisting "global investigative solutions" firm Harod Associates to analyze social media activity related to Skripal.

Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg

What role did # IntegrityInitiative play in the # Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow....

264 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

However, Harod's confidential report did more than just parse social media reactions to the Skripal affair: It compiled a list of alleged "pro-Russia troll accounts" accused of "bombarding the audience with pro-Kremlin propaganda and disinformation relevant to the Skripal case."

Among those who found themselves listed as nefarious thought-criminals were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa, and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.

Ian56 @Ian56789 · Jan 4, 2019 # IntegrityInitiative "

Top Kremlin Trolls" aka Truth Tellers. Congratulations if you made the list.

https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring.pdf

Neocon Fascist, al-Qaeda Supporting Treasonous Scumbag @ Benimmo is having a laugh with £2m of Taxpayers money. Nimmo should be IN JAIL for Fraud & Treason

Ian56 @Ian56789 # IntegrityInitiative

examples of Logical, Critical Thinking & Objective Analysis by yours truly Ian56.

https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-r---ian56789-example-tweets/appendix-r---ian56789-example-tweets.pdf

They didn't even include my best ones and they didn't show the pic that went with each tweet. I wonder why?

# Skripal # Novichok # FalseFlag pic.twitter.com/Zq8W9iJshk 41 1:39 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

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Moon of Alabama @MoonofA · Jan 4, 2019 @ Ian56789 @ MarkSleboda1 @ Malinka1102 @ ValLisitsa @ NinaByzantina

Folks, you are all noted as "trolls" in some of the files of the new # IntegrityInitiative release

https://www. cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation -integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all-part-4/ https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring/appendix-o---russian-propaganda-troll-sites-for-monitoring.pdf https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-p---troll-accounts-mutual-connections-graph/appendix-p---troll-accounts-mutual-connections-graph.pdf https://www. pdf-archive.com/2018/12/28/app endix-q---troll-geolocation-graph/appendix-q---troll-geolocation-graph.pdf

Operation 'Integrity Initiative': British informational war against all. Part 4

Greetings! We are Anonymous.We have warned the UK government that it must conduct an honest and transparent investigation into the activity of the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statec cyberguerrilla.org

Ruslana Boshirova @ValLisitsa

Wanna see something funny?

"The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents" - has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not.

https:// twitter.com/Antifake_Russi a/status/1073112488072437760?s=19 Antifake @Antifake_Russia СМИ выдали за манифест "желтых жилетов" твиты украинской пианистки с ником "Руслана Боширова" https:// theins.ru/antifake/131804 116 3:21 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

94 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

Pushing a narrative

Another document , dated March 11, 2018 – and titled "Sergei Skripal Affair: What if Russia is Responsible?" – contains a "narrative" of the Skripal incident, which blames Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally, as well as containing a number of recommended actions.

These included boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany, blocking Russian access to the SWIFT international banking system, and banning "RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK."

Other suggestions included propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicize what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion [sic]" and getting members of parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses." It's not clear who the document was drawn up for, but it may have been provided to II-affiliated journalists in the UK and other countries.

This would certainly explain the evidence-deficient echo chamber that emerged in the aftermath of Skripal's poisoning – which the UK and its allies unanimously blamed on Moscow.

Ahead of its time?

One of the more intriguing revelations from the fresh leaks is a document from 2015, in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot.

Coincidentally, more than 100 Russian diplomats were expelled from 20 Western countries in an apparently show of solidarity with the UK following the Skripal attack. At the time, UK Prime Minister Theresa May welcomed what she said was "the largest collective expulsion of Russian intelligence officers in history."

Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents, written long before the Salisbury events, also call for the arrest of RT and Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding: "Makes you think "

George Galloway @georgegalloway

So: # IntegrityInitiative funded by the British Govt called for the arrest of people like me like @ afshinrattansi @ JohnWight1 @ NeilClark66 et al in the event of an "incident" like the # Skripal affair.

Written incidentally before the # Salisbury events. Makes you think...

@ RT_com 688 12:53 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

606 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

A curious connection

The new trove of hacked documents also revealed an unexplained link between the II and Skripal himself – a connection made all the more noteworthy by the group's central role in coordinating an evidence-free campaign to blame and punish Moscow for the alleged nerve-agent attack. A document from July 2018 contains contact details for Pablo Miller, Skripal's MI6 recruiter, handler and (conveniently) neighbor in Salisbury. Miller, it seems, had been invited to a function hosted by the Institute.

Moon of Alabama @MoonofA

It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended # IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair.

# SergeiSkripal # Disinformation # Propaganda # InformationWar 283 2:38 PM - Jan 4, 2019 Twitter Ads info and privacy

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Fvnk @WhatTheFvnk

EXPLOSIVE: @ DanKaszeta of @ Strongpoint_UK invoiced @ InitIntegrity # IntegrityInitiative

£2,276.80 in July 2018 during the # Skripal # Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & # PortonDown @ RTUKproducer 160 1:24 PM - Jan 4, 2019

188 people are talking about this Twitter Ads info and privacy

It's not clear to what degree Miller is or was involved with the group, but his appearance on an Integrity Initiative guest list adds another layer of mystery to a coordinated campaign which sought to impose punishments on Moscow that were drawn up years in advance.

Read also:

[Jan 08, 2019] No, wealth isn t created at the top. It is merely devoured there by Rutger Bregman

Highly recommended!
Financialization is a new type of racket...
Notable quotes:
"... Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they're sucking the rest of us dry @rcbregman ..."
"... 'A big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body' ..."
"... This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state. These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have "made it". By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world. ..."
"... To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our "human capital" in economic terms) to create something new, whether that's a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth. ..."
"... But there is also a second way to make money. That's the rentier way : by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others' expense, using his power to claim economic benefit. ..."
"... For those who know their history, the term "rentier" conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century's large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty . These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier's right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley , from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere. ..."
"... It may take quite a mental leap to see our economy as a system that shows solidarity with the rich rather than the poor. So I'll start with the clearest illustration of modern freeloaders at the top: bankers. Studies conducted by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements – not exactly leftist thinktanks – have revealed that much of the financial sector has become downright parasitic. How instead of creating wealth, they gobble it up whole. ..."
"... In other words, a big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body. It's not creating anything new, merely sucking others dry. Bankers have found a hundred and one ways to accomplish this. The basic mechanism, however, is always the same: offer loans like it's going out of style, which in turn inflates the price of things like houses and shares, then earn a tidy percentage off those overblown prices (in the form of interest, commissions, brokerage fees, or what have you), and if the shit hits the fan, let Uncle Sam mop it up. ..."
"... Bankers are the most obvious class of closet freeloaders, but they are certainly not alone. Many a lawyer and an accountant wields a similar revenue model. Take tax evasion . Untold hardworking, academically degreed professionals make a good living at the expense of the populations of other countries. Or take the tide of privatisations over the past three decades, which have been all but a carte blanche for rentiers. One of the richest people in the world, Carlos Slim , earned his millions by obtaining a monopoly of the Mexican telecom market and then hiking prices sky high. The same goes for the Russian oligarchs who rose after the Berlin Wall fell , who bought up valuable state-owned assets for song to live off the rent. ..."
"... Even paragons of modern progress like Apple, Amazon, Google , Facebook, Uber and Airbnb are woven from the fabric of rentierism. Firstly, because they owe their existence to government discoveries and inventions (every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll). And second, because they tie themselves into knots to avoid paying taxes, retaining countless bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists for this very purpose. ..."
"... Even more important, many of these companies function as "natural monopolies", operating in a positive feedback loop of increasing growth and value as more and more people contribute free content to their platforms. Companies like this are incredibly difficult to compete with, because as they grow bigger, they only get stronger. ..."
"... Most of Mark Zuckerberg's income is just rent collected off the millions of picture and video posts that we give away daily for free. And sure, we have fun doing it. But we also have no alternative – after all, everybody is on Facebook these days. Zuckerberg has a website that advertisers are clamouring to get onto, and that doesn't come cheap. Don't be fooled by endearing pilots with free internet in Zambia. Stripped down to essentials, it's an ordinary ad agency. In fact, in 2015 Google and Facebook pocketed an astounding 64% of all online ad revenue in the US. ..."
"... Rentierism is, in essence, a question of power. That the Sun King Louis XIV was able to exploit millions was purely because he had the biggest army in Europe. It's no different for the modern rentier. He's got the law, politicians and journalists squarely in his court. That's why bankers get fined peanuts for preposterous fraud, while a mother on government assistance gets penalised within an inch of her life if she checks the wrong box. ..."
"... The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society's best and brightest. Where once upon a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks, law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it's insane. We are forking over billions in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts. ..."
"... One thing is certain: countries where rentiers gain the upper hand gradually fall into decline. Just look at the Roman Empire. Or Venice in the 15th century. Look at the Dutch Republic in the 18th century. Like a parasite stunts a child's growth, so the rentier drains a country of its vitality. ..."
Mar 30, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

Rutger Bregman

Bankers, pharmaceutical giants, Google, Facebook ... a new breed of rentiers are at the very top of the pyramid and they're sucking the rest of us dry @rcbregman

Comments 890

'A big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body'.

This piece is about one of the biggest taboos of our times. About a truth that is seldom acknowledged, and yet – on reflection – cannot be denied. The truth that we are living in an inverse welfare state. These days, politicians from the left to the right assume that most wealth is created at the top. By the visionaries, by the job creators, and by the people who have "made it". By the go-getters oozing talent and entrepreneurialism that are helping to advance the whole world.

Now, we may disagree about the extent to which success deserves to be rewarded – the philosophy of the left is that the strongest shoulders should bear the heaviest burden, while the right fears high taxes will blunt enterprise – but across the spectrum virtually all agree that wealth is created primarily at the top.

So entrenched is this assumption that it's even embedded in our language. When economists talk about "productivity", what they really mean is the size of your paycheck. And when we use terms like " welfare state ", "redistribution" and "solidarity", we're implicitly subscribing to the view that there are two strata: the makers and the takers, the producers and the couch potatoes, the hardworking citizens – and everybody else.

In reality, it is precisely the other way around. In reality, it is the waste collectors, the nurses, and the cleaners whose shoulders are supporting the apex of the pyramid. They are the true mechanism of social solidarity. Meanwhile, a growing share of those we hail as "successful" and "innovative" are earning their wealth at the expense of others. The people getting the biggest handouts are not down around the bottom, but at the very top. Yet their perilous dependence on others goes unseen. Almost no one talks about it. Even for politicians on the left, it's a non-issue.

To understand why, we need to recognise that there are two ways of making money. The first is what most of us do: work. That means tapping into our knowledge and know-how (our "human capital" in economic terms) to create something new, whether that's a takeout app, a wedding cake, a stylish updo, or a perfectly poured pint. To work is to create. Ergo, to work is to create new wealth.

But there is also a second way to make money. That's the rentier way : by leveraging control over something that already exists, such as land, knowledge, or money, to increase your wealth. You produce nothing, yet profit nonetheless. By definition, the rentier makes his living at others' expense, using his power to claim economic benefit.

'From Wall Street to Silicon Valley, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere.'

For those who know their history, the term "rentier" conjures associations with heirs to estates, such as the 19th century's large class of useless rentiers, well-described by the French economist Thomas Piketty . These days, that class is making a comeback. (Ironically, however, conservative politicians adamantly defend the rentier's right to lounge around, deeming inheritance tax to be the height of unfairness.) But there are also other ways of rent-seeking. From Wall Street to Silicon Valley , from big pharma to the lobby machines in Washington and Westminster, zoom in and you'll see rentiers everywhere.

There is no longer a sharp dividing line between working and rentiering. In fact, the modern-day rentier often works damn hard. Countless people in the financial sector, for example, apply great ingenuity and effort to amass "rent" on their wealth. Even the big innovations of our age – businesses like Facebook and Uber – are interested mainly in expanding the rentier economy. The problem with most rich people therefore is not that they are coach potatoes. Many a CEO toils 80 hours a week to multiply his allowance. It's hardly surprising, then, that they feel wholly entitled to their wealth.

It may take quite a mental leap to see our economy as a system that shows solidarity with the rich rather than the poor. So I'll start with the clearest illustration of modern freeloaders at the top: bankers. Studies conducted by the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements – not exactly leftist thinktanks – have revealed that much of the financial sector has become downright parasitic. How instead of creating wealth, they gobble it up whole.

Don't get me wrong. Banks can help to gauge risks and get money where it is needed, both of which are vital to a well-functioning economy. But consider this: economists tell us that the optimum level of total private-sector debt is 100% of GDP. Based on this equation, if the financial sector only grows, it won't equal more wealth, but less. So here's the bad news. In the United Kingdom, private-sector debt is now at 157.5% . In the United States, the figure is 188.8% .

In other words, a big part of the modern banking sector is essentially a giant tapeworm gorging on a sick body. It's not creating anything new, merely sucking others dry. Bankers have found a hundred and one ways to accomplish this. The basic mechanism, however, is always the same: offer loans like it's going out of style, which in turn inflates the price of things like houses and shares, then earn a tidy percentage off those overblown prices (in the form of interest, commissions, brokerage fees, or what have you), and if the shit hits the fan, let Uncle Sam mop it up.

The financial innovation concocted by all the math whizzes working in modern banking (instead of at universities or companies that contribute to real prosperity) basically boils down to maximizing the total amount of debt. And debt, of course, is a means of earning rent. So for those who believe that pay ought to be proportionate to the value of work, the conclusion we have to draw is that many bankers should be earning a negative salary; a fine, if you will, for destroying more wealth than they create.

Bankers are the most obvious class of closet freeloaders, but they are certainly not alone. Many a lawyer and an accountant wields a similar revenue model. Take tax evasion . Untold hardworking, academically degreed professionals make a good living at the expense of the populations of other countries. Or take the tide of privatisations over the past three decades, which have been all but a carte blanche for rentiers. One of the richest people in the world, Carlos Slim , earned his millions by obtaining a monopoly of the Mexican telecom market and then hiking prices sky high. The same goes for the Russian oligarchs who rose after the Berlin Wall fell , who bought up valuable state-owned assets for song to live off the rent.

But here comes the rub. Most rentiers are not as easily identified as the greedy banker or manager. Many are disguised. On the face of it, they look like industrious folks, because for part of the time they really are doing something worthwhile. Precisely that makes us overlook their massive rent-seeking.

Take the pharmaceutical industry. Companies like GlaxoSmithKline and Pfizer regularly unveil new drugs, yet most real medical breakthroughs are made quietly at government-subsidised labs. Private companies mostly manufacture medications that resemble what we've already got. They get it patented and, with a hefty dose of marketing, a legion of lawyers, and a strong lobby, can live off the profits for years. In other words, the vast revenues of the pharmaceutical industry are the result of a tiny pinch of innovation and fistfuls of rent.

Even paragons of modern progress like Apple, Amazon, Google , Facebook, Uber and Airbnb are woven from the fabric of rentierism. Firstly, because they owe their existence to government discoveries and inventions (every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll). And second, because they tie themselves into knots to avoid paying taxes, retaining countless bankers, lawyers, and lobbyists for this very purpose.

Even more important, many of these companies function as "natural monopolies", operating in a positive feedback loop of increasing growth and value as more and more people contribute free content to their platforms. Companies like this are incredibly difficult to compete with, because as they grow bigger, they only get stronger.

Aptly characterising this "platform capitalism" in an article, Tom Goodwin writes : "Uber, the world's largest taxi company, owns no vehicles. Facebook, the world's most popular media owner, creates no content. Alibaba, the most valuable retailer, has no inventory. And Airbnb, the world's largest accommodation provider, owns no real estate."

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'Every sliver of fundamental technology in the iPhone, from the internet to batteries and from touchscreens to voice recognition, was invented by researchers on the government payroll.' Photograph: Regis Duvignau/Reuters

So what do these companies own? A platform. A platform that lots and lots of people want to use. Why? First and foremost, because they're cool and they're fun – and in that respect, they do offer something of value. However, the main reason why we're all happy to hand over free content to Facebook is because all of our friends are on Facebook too, because their friends are on Facebook because their friends are on Facebook.

Most of Mark Zuckerberg's income is just rent collected off the millions of picture and video posts that we give away daily for free. And sure, we have fun doing it. But we also have no alternative – after all, everybody is on Facebook these days. Zuckerberg has a website that advertisers are clamouring to get onto, and that doesn't come cheap. Don't be fooled by endearing pilots with free internet in Zambia. Stripped down to essentials, it's an ordinary ad agency. In fact, in 2015 Google and Facebook pocketed an astounding 64% of all online ad revenue in the US.

But don't Google and Facebook make anything useful at all? Sure they do. The irony, however, is that their best innovations only make the rentier economy even bigger. They employ scores of programmers to create new algorithms so that we'll all click on more and more ads. Uber has usurped the whole taxi sector just as Airbnb has upended the hotel industry and Amazon has overrun the book trade. The bigger such platforms grow the more powerful they become, enabling the lords of these digital feudalities to demand more and more rent.

Think back a minute to the definition of a rentier: someone who uses their control over something that already exists in order to increase their own wealth. The feudal lord of medieval times did that by building a tollgate along a road and making everybody who passed by pay. Today's tech giants are doing basically the same thing, but transposed to the digital highway. Using technology funded by taxpayers, they build tollgates between you and other people's free content and all the while pay almost no tax on their earnings.

This is the so-called innovation that has Silicon Valley gurus in raptures: ever bigger platforms that claim ever bigger handouts. So why do we accept this? Why does most of the population work itself to the bone to support these rentiers?

I think there are two answers. Firstly, the modern rentier knows to keep a low profile. There was a time when everybody knew who was freeloading. The king, the church, and the aristocrats controlled almost all the land and made peasants pay dearly to farm it. But in the modern economy, making rentierism work is a great deal more complicated. How many people can explain a credit default swap , or a collateralised debt obligation ? Or the revenue model behind those cute Google Doodles? And don't the folks on Wall Street and in Silicon Valley work themselves to the bone, too? Well then, they must be doing something useful, right?

Maybe not. The typical workday of Goldman Sachs' CEO may be worlds away from that of King Louis XIV, but their revenue models both essentially revolve around obtaining the biggest possible handouts. "The world's most powerful investment bank," wrote the journalist Matt Taibbi about Goldman Sachs , "is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money."

But far from squids and vampires, the average rich freeloader manages to masquerade quite successfully as a decent hard worker. He goes to great lengths to present himself as a "job creator" and an "investor" who "earns" his income by virtue of his high "productivity". Most economists, journalists, and politicians from left to right are quite happy to swallow this story. Time and again language is twisted around to cloak funneling and exploitation as creation and generation.

However, it would be wrong to think that all this is part of some ingenious conspiracy. Many modern rentiers have convinced even themselves that they are bona fide value creators. When current Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein was asked about the purpose of his job, his straight-faced answer was that he is " doing God's work ". The Sun King would have approved.

The second thing that keeps rentiers safe is even more insidious. We're all wannabe rentiers. They have made millions of people complicit in their revenue model. Consider this: What are our financial sector's two biggest cash cows? Answer: the housing market and pensions. Both are markets in which many of us are deeply invested.

Recent decades have seen more and more people contract debts to buy a home, and naturally it's in their interest if house prices continue to scale new heights (read: burst bubble upon bubble). The same goes for pensions. Over the past few decades we've all scrimped and saved up a mountainous pension piggy bank. Now pension funds are under immense pressure to ally with the biggest exploiters in order to ensure they pay out enough to please their investors.

The fact of the matter is that feudalism has been democratised. To a lesser or greater extent, we are all depending on handouts. En masse, we have been made complicit in this exploitation by the rentier elite, resulting in a political covenant between the rich rent-seekers and the homeowners and retirees.

Don't get me wrong, most homeowners and retirees are not benefiting from this situation. On the contrary, the banks are bleeding them far beyond the extent to which they themselves profit from their houses and pensions. Still, it's hard to point fingers at a kleptomaniac when you have sticky fingers too.

So why is this happening? The answer can be summed up in three little words: Because it can.

Rentierism is, in essence, a question of power. That the Sun King Louis XIV was able to exploit millions was purely because he had the biggest army in Europe. It's no different for the modern rentier. He's got the law, politicians and journalists squarely in his court. That's why bankers get fined peanuts for preposterous fraud, while a mother on government assistance gets penalised within an inch of her life if she checks the wrong box.

The biggest tragedy of all, however, is that the rentier economy is gobbling up society's best and brightest. Where once upon a time Ivy League graduates chose careers in science, public service or education, these days they are more likely to opt for banks, law firms, or trumped up ad agencies like Google and Facebook. When you think about it, it's insane. We are forking over billions in taxes to help our brightest minds on and up the corporate ladder so they can learn how to score ever more outrageous handouts.

One thing is certain: countries where rentiers gain the upper hand gradually fall into decline. Just look at the Roman Empire. Or Venice in the 15th century. Look at the Dutch Republic in the 18th century. Like a parasite stunts a child's growth, so the rentier drains a country of its vitality.

What innovation remains in a rentier economy is mostly just concerned with further bolstering that very same economy. This may explain why the big dreams of the 1970s, like flying cars, curing cancer, and colonising Mars, have yet to be realised, while bankers and ad-makers have at their fingertips technologies a thousand times more powerful.

Yet it doesn't have to be this way. Tollgates can be torn down, financial products can be banned, tax havens dismantled, lobbies tamed, and patents rejected. Higher taxes on the ultra-rich can make rentierism less attractive, precisely because society's biggest freeloaders are at the very top of the pyramid. And we can more fairly distribute our earnings on land, oil, and innovation through a system of, say, employee shares, or a universal basic income .

But such a revolution will require a wholly different narrative about the origins of our wealth. It will require ditching the old-fashioned faith in "solidarity" with a miserable underclass that deserves to be borne aloft on the market-level salaried shoulders of society's strongest. All we need to do is to give real hard-working people what they deserve.

And, yes, by that I mean the waste collectors, the nurses, the cleaners – theirs are the shoulders that carry us all.

• Pre-order Utopia for Realists and How Can We Get There by Rutger Bregman

• Translated from the original Dutch by Elizabeth Manton

See also:

[Jan 07, 2019] How the BBC Manufactured 'Hate' by Jack Krak

Notable quotes:
"... Editor's Introduction: This article is about events that took place in 2012, but anyone who follows the news closely knows that nothing has changed. This is a remarkable account by someone who had an inside look at deliberate falsifications by what was once one of the most respected names in journalism. ..."
"... The program has disappeared from YouTube; it appears to be available only this much less trafficked site . But when it was broadcast, it made national headlines in Poland. The country's biggest television channel took the extraordinary step of broadcasting it just days later, dubbed in Polish. ..."
"... Many Poles were outraged at what they recognized as a vicious smear. It is worth noting that within a week or so, every single person ..."
"... Even Jacek Purski, director of Never Again , an organization dedicated to monitoring racism in Poland, says the program was one-sided . When a "watchdog" group calls a television program "one-sided," you can be sure it was outrageous. ..."
"... The Polish government demanded a clarification from the BBC, and even the foreign minister complained. Newspapers throughout Europe expressed skepticism, and reader comments left online were overwhelmingly outraged. The BBC took the very unusual step of publicly responding to criticism ..."
"... Then the BBC got a huge break from Barack Obama, of all people. During a ceremony at the White House honoring someone who had survived Auschwitz, Mr. Obama referred to it as a "Polish death camp" rather than a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. Angry demands for an apology from the US government pushed "Stadiums of Hate" off the front page. After that, the relentless media cycle quickly relegated the whole affair to yesterday's news. ..."
"... the BBC seems to have taken pains to get copies off the internet. ..."
"... Panorama ..."
"... Mr. Krak does not expect to get any more work from the BBC. ..."
"... The Grauniad is in the same business. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/09/raheem-sterling-newspapers-fuelling-racism-alleged-abuse-chelsea ..."
Jan 07, 2019 | www.unz.com
JACK KRAK DECEMBER 28, 2018 4,500 WORDS

Editor's Introduction: This article is about events that took place in 2012, but anyone who follows the news closely knows that nothing has changed. This is a remarkable account by someone who had an inside look at deliberate falsifications by what was once one of the most respected names in journalism.

In May of 2012, the BBC Panorama program broadcast a documentary about "racism" in the host countries of the 2012 European soccer championship: Poland and Ukraine. Those two countries were about to stage the second biggest event in the sport after the World Cup, and legions of journalists had arrived to cover it. The purpose of the BBC program -- aired strategically one week before the opening match -- was to argue that neither country was qualified to host the tournament because of their "hateful" soccer cultures. The message: All-white countries are hotbeds of violent racism, and non-white fans and players would be in danger.

I know a lot about the Panorama program because I helped produce it. I saw what is arguably the world's most famous and trusted media organization fabricate a false, sensationalist story. Through outright distortion -- and by using only those pieces that fit its predetermined views -- the BBC "documented" the vicious attitudes of people who live in countries that are not sufficiently "diverse." The program had a scripted conclusion before a single camera was turned on.

Panorama is the BBC's flagship investigative program. It is the longest-running such production in the world, having been on the air since 1953. The closest thing to it on American television is probably 60 Minutes . Panorama enjoys a reputation for hard-hitting and serious investigative journalism.

About three months before the tournament began, a BBC journalist got in touch with me through mutual media contacts and asked me to help with the part to be filmed in Poland. He said the program would be about aspects of the football culture -- hooliganism, trouble at stadiums, etc. -- that could cause problems for players and fans alike. This topic is something of a hobby of mine, and I have followed it carefully during my time in Poland. The BBC wanted me to be a "fixer" -- the person on the ground who arranges things in advance for the production team. That meant setting up interviews, scouting filming locations, getting press passes and access to events, arranging transport, and a hundred other odds and ends. I was also expected to contribute ideas based on my knowledge.

I suspected right from the start that they wanted things that make for good television rather than a true investigation -- conflict, tension, etc. -- but I was somewhat reassured because this was the BBC. Despite my reservations, I never thought they would make the television equivalent of sensationalist trashy tabloid headlines.

The producer and a cameraman made their first trip to Poland in March 2012. They had asked me to arrange an interview with Aviram Baruchian, an Israeli who played with Polonia Warsaw. They said the interview was supposed to be about "his experience as a football player in Poland," but the fact that they asked for him by name suggested they assumed he would have horror stories about being mistreated by fans because he is Jewish.

The press officer for Polonia was very accommodating, something I found again and again when dealing with officials from football clubs. People automatically trusted the BBC and went to extraordinary lengths to give them what they wanted.

I met the production crew for the first time the day after the interview. When I asked how it went, they joked about how useless it was. I was confused by their dismissive attitude and felt a bit responsible, but they told me not to worry. I learned later from the Polonia media spokesman that Mr. Baruchian had nothing but appreciative things to say about the fans and his experience in Warsaw -- which is exactly why he isn't in the final program.

There is a curious "Jewish" angle to Polish football that is easily misunderstood. Fans chant nasty things about Jews, but, strange as it may seem, it's not accurate to call it serious anti-Semitism.

Many of the older clubs originally had or are thought to have had Jewish financial backing. This is almost certainly true of the team in Lodz -- called Widzew Łódź -- since that city had a large Jewish population before the Second World War. These origins have become a source of cheap name calling for people who seize on any excuse to trade insults. When fans chant "death to the Jews," it sounds shocking -- and it certainly is brutish -- but this is mainly a way of attacking the other team rather than Jews.

There has been a similar situation with the London football club Tottenham Hotspur, which has had Jewish owners. Fans of rival clubs started chanting about the "Jewish" team. Tottenham supporters eventually embraced this and some even call themselves the " Yid Army ." The fans of one Polish club, Cracovia, were in the same position and did the same thing, now proudly calling themselves the "Jewish Sons of Bitches." When I told the BBC about that, they weren't interested.

Needless to say, there is a lot of anti-Jewish chanting in the final Panorama program, but it is presented without explanation. It falsely makes the fans look as though they want to send Jews to the ovens.

The Star of David is now used so much in soccer graffiti that a Polish teacher I met told me that the children in his class associate it with the sport. He also had a friend from Israel, so this seemed like gold for the BBC: a poignant combination of children, the star of David, racism, and a chance to talk to another Israeli and get what they missed from Aviram Baruchian.

I set up the interview, but it was another disaster. Both the teacher and his Israeli friend said that, yes, while there certainly are boorish people, just as there are in every country, most Poles are very nice etc. Again and again, the Israeli put a positive spin on things, even when asked melodramatic questions about the Second World War. It was another "useless" interview that didn't make the final cut. I remember that when we got back to the van everyone burst out laughing about what a complete waste of time it had been.

The first actual match we went to film was Legia Warsaw vs. Polonia Warsaw. This contest had an excellent chance of including all the things that make for great television, and it was before I understood what the real focus of the program was, so I was sure the BBC crew would not be disappointed. For about five hours, they filmed an army of police in full riot gear, flares and firecrackers being thrown around the stands and onto the field, an enormous banner unfurled by the home Legia fans declaring that Warsaw belonged to them, and a reply spelled out by the small but brave contingent of visiting Polonia supporters, who held up cards to form one big reply: "FUCK LEGIA." There was a hooligan with a bullhorn on an elevated platform and countless examples of a well-known hand gesture delivered straight into the camera. A section of the stadium was burned black by a flare that set fire to a banner.

The entire contingent of Polonia fans was still in that blackened section after the match, surrounded by hundreds of security guards who would escort them out of the stadium perhaps an hour or two later. This was to minimize the chance of contact with Legia hooligans who might be waiting for them. It was easy to capture the violent atmosphere of the game, and I was confident the production team was happy. As we made our way back to the van, I asked the assistant producer if he was pleased. He made a face that said "not really," and then out of nowhere asked, "Did you hear any racist or anti-Semitic chants?" He was visibly disappointed when I said I hadn't.

Boring

The lead producer said he was more or less satisfied with the "visuals" but was disappointed with the "substance." He asked again about something I had been unable to do: get one of the more committed hooligan types to go on camera. This time he explicitly said he wanted someone involved in "right-wing politics" as well as hooliganism.

I said it wasn't easy to get inside a violent crime syndicate. The higher-ups in any hooligan organization are wanted by the police, and anyone further down is too scared to speak to the media for fear of the "leaders." Believe me, anyone who goes on camera and says he's a hooligan is either a wannabe or gets a very personal lesson in media relations from his former friends. I did the best I could, striking up awkward and even dangerous conversations on dark streets, and I visited dodgy clubs in four different cities, but I never delivered. The closest I got was a conversation with the head of one club's "supporters organization," who demanded a "fee" for "security." To its credit, the BBC refused to pay.

Time to get serious

The team went back to London, and I continued to look into leads. I began to realize that what they wanted was bananas thrown at black players, Nazi salutes from the stands, and maybe some brutal beatings to add color.

In a phone conversation with the assistant producer at the end of March, I detected a note of urgency and in April, I got an e-mail message from him that said, "Our Executive Producer, Karen Wightman [who was in charge of the entire Panorama series], wants us to film black players and their experience of racism in Poland as a priority."

The BBC had dropped all pretense about what they were after -- at least with me -- though they kept up the charade of a neutral investigation with others.

The crew decided to come see a match in the city of Łódź between ŁKS Łódź and Widzew Łódź. Like the previous game in Warsaw, this was a derby, that is to say, a contest between two clubs in the same city. Derbies typically have the most intense atmosphere, and thus an elevated chance of the kind of incident the BBC was looking for.

Widzew had two Nigerian players, Princewill Okachi and Ugo Ukah, and the BBC wanted first-hand accounts of mistreatment. Mr. Ukah was of particular interest because he had played for Queens Park Rangers in London and could compare his treatment in diverse, tolerant, multicultural England with that of all-white, wicked Poland. Also, there would be two black men on the visiting team in a contest famous for its wild fans. Everything was lined up perfectly to provide the missing "substance."

I asked the BBC specifically what they wanted me to tell the press officer of Widzew and they told me to say we were interested in Poland's preparation for the Euro 2012 tournament. Someone else on the production team, who had also been in contact with Widzew by e-mail, sent me this note:

They don't know at this stage we want to specifically talk about racism in Polish football and their [the black players'] own personal experiences of abuse, so be prepared to schmuz [sic] and impress.

"At this stage" was after the club had agreed to make the players available -- on Easter Sunday, no less, to fit our tight schedule. We were supposed to "schmuz and impress" rather than be forthright about the reason for the interview. I remember wondering how often the BBC gets access and interviews under false pretenses. To my shame, I was helping set the trap.

Łódź was the BBC's last chance to find anti-black "racism." The broadcast date for the final program was already booked and Panorama was fully committed to a headline-grabbing account of the dark, racist side of what was soon to be Europe's biggest sporting stage. But they had no racism.

It was in Łódź that the host, Chris Rogers , finally parachuted into his own program. He was the one who had sold the BBC on the idea months earlier, and the entire Panorama episode is presented as "his" investigation. Mr. Rogers made something of a name for himself in 2007 with an undercover investigation of Romania's orphanages, and he has been dining out on it ever since.

He flew in to interview the two Nigerian players and to do PTC's (pieces to camera) the following day at the match to add to footage shot in Warsaw without him. He came across as a typical media type who was good at fake sincerity and spent a little too much time on his hair.

We went to the Widzew Łódź office to interview Mr. Okachi and Mr. Ukah. Mr. Rogers started with softball questions, such as how long the players had been in Poland, where else they had played professionally, etc. He turned things up a notch by asking about the reception they had received in Poland. Both players gave positive answers. Time and again Rogers dangled the carrot and time and again no one reached for it. Suddenly Rogers put on his best journalist Serious Face, turned to Mr. Ukah, and said "Why has Polish football been hijacked by racism?"

There was nothing in the interview up to that point to justify that question. It was so unexpected that Mr. Ukah was taken aback for a moment before he was finally able to give a suitably noncommittal answer. The next few minutes consisted of both Mr. Ukah and Mr. Okachi repeatedly stating that though they had heard of things happening to other people, they had never heard or seen anything that could be interpreted as racist abuse in Poland.

This went on for a few more minutes until both players had run out of nice ways to say "no" to the same question. Mr. Rogers had no choice but to wrap it up.

"For the hundredth time: No."

The players left quickly to enjoy what was left of Easter. I distinctly remember Mr. Rogers and the producer agreeing that they had "material to work with."

If you watch the final version of the program , you will see how they "worked" with it. They made it sound as though the players were talking about horrible things that happened to them . I was in the room the whole time, paying careful attention, and those bits were taken from rambling answers they gave about things they had heard happened to others . I was amazed at how editing and voice-overs transformed the interview into something I couldn't recognize. Needless to say, those were the only parts of the interview that were used.

I heard it. Trust me. Let's go.

The next day was the match. After filming the police using water cannons on fans, we went inside the stadium. We set up a camera behind one of the goals and a microphone at midfield in front the home fans. Mr. Rogers instructed me to be on the lookout for "anything good," and by then I knew what he meant. He also told me to keep an eye on the Nigerian players and look for any nastiness from the crowd. He constantly disappeared to sneak cigarettes and text his friends in England. He wasn't even there for the kickoff. When he finally reappeared he asked if I had seen or heard anything useful. When I said I hadn't, he disappeared again.

About 30 minutes in to the first half, we were still waiting for "something good," and Mr. Rogers was visibly anxious. He paced back and forth, checking his phone more than he watched the crowd or the match. Once, just to break the silence between us as we stood on the sidelines or maybe to vent his frustration, he actually said out loud "Come on! Sing some Jewish songs!"

At halftime, the five of us who were there got together to trade notes and suggestions, and we decided to switch places to maybe improve our "luck." I was with the producer and one cameraman; the other cameraman was high above the crowd on the opposite stand. Chris Rogers was . . . somewhere.

The second half kicked off and we went back to work. There was plenty of thuggishness in the stands -- you see a lot of it in the final version -- but still not what they wanted. There was a palpable feeling of frustration and hopelessness as another 30 or so minutes passed.

That's when Chris Rogers walked up and said he had heard monkey sounds coming from the crowd. No one knew quite what to say, but this certainly wasn't greeted with the kind of relief and interest you would have expected. For a moment it seemed as though we were just waiting for someone to say "Um . . . really?" but we just waited for Mr. Rogers to tell us exactly what happened. All he said was that the microphone at midfield had probably picked it up, and he told the producer to get ready to do a PTC about it. Thirty second later he was in Serious Face mode, intoning that he had just heard monkey sounds directed at a black player. I kept waiting for him to tell our cameramen what part of the stands the sounds came from so they could zoom in on it. Surely he wanted to watch those fans in the hopes that they would do it again, this time on camera?

No. Chris Rogers made no effort to get visual material for what was to be a key moment in a television program. And it wasn't as if we were in a massive stadium with 60,000 people, where it would be hard to pinpoint where sounds came from. The photo below is of the stadium, and the picture captures about 80 percent of the length of the stand from which the monkey sounds allegedly came. The banner says "This is how we have fun in Łódź." Not one of the BBC crew said, "OK, Chris, where should we look?"

The recording from the microphone is in the final version of the program, and I challenge anyone to detect what Chris Rogers claims to have heard. You might be at a loss to describe exactly what the noise is, but "monkey sounds" is way, way down on the list of possibilities.

In the broadcast version, this part of the recording is played over a shot they had taken earlier in the match of Ugo Ukah attacking the ball. However, the audio is from a microphone planted at the edge of the field. When they went back and "found" those sounds, they had no idea what was going on in the match at that moment. But in the program, the sounds start the moment Mr. Ukah is on the ball. The BBC took the audio from one moment and played it over a video from another moment. I would expect that from the North Korean press, not the BBC.

When we packed up to leave, we had to walk through the part of the stadium where the post-match press conference was to be held. It hadn't started, but print and video journalists were waiting. The BBC producer saw this, and asked Mr. Rogers if we should stop and ask about what he had heard at the match. What more perfect, made-for-television scene could there be? He could have walked into the after-match press conference and announced dramatically, "I'm Chris Rogers from the BBC and I want to know how it's possible that a black player was racially abused in a country that will be hosting the European Championships." That would be the dramatic moment they were looking for. But no, Mr. Rogers said we needn't waste the time. He wanted to go back to the hotel for dinner. He did not speak with Ugo Ukah after the match or the following day while we were still in Lodz.

Mr. Ukah never said anything about hearing monkey noises. No player from either team ever did. Nor did any of the many journalists from the Polish media, nor did a German television crew that was there.

I cannot say what Chris Rogers did or did not hear. However, I do know that in a stadium of around 5,000 people the only person who claims to have heard monkey sounds was the one person who flew to Poland for three days with the sole purpose of finding "racism."

The final version of the program stretches the truth in other ways. For example, Mr. Rogers says he has spent months on location studying local football culture, whereas he spent just a few days in the country. There is also a scene in which a British "anti-racist" named Nick Lowles is shown scanning the crowd with binoculars, looking for "hate." The voiceover says that "he has flown out to see what British fans can expect in Poland," and he obligingly gives an interview. The program makes it look as though the camera crew just stumbled onto him in the stands. In fact, the BBC flew him in just for that scene.

The team certainly didn't mind spending money. I was with the producer when he got a message from London telling him that they were well over budget. He said they had spent around £150,000 pounds (about $230,000). They stayed in expensive hotels and never thought about costs. I was amazed by how much they spent in restaurants and hotel bars. Remember: This is the BBC, to which mandatory payments of £150 pounds a year must be made if you own a television set in Britain. It is a criminal offense not to pay.

The results

Just days before the broadcast, the BBC showed some of the footage to Sol Campbell, son of Jamaican immigrants and former captain of the English national football team. They happily filmed him claiming -- predictably -- to be shocked. He said it was enough to convince him not to go to the tournament and to warn other non-whites not to go.

This was brilliant publicity for Panorama . Polish and Ukrainian media picked up Mr. Campbell's comments, which pushed "racism" to the forefront of any British discussion of the tournament. The program cast a pall over the tournament before the first match was even played, and put a small army of journalists on alert, scanning the stands for "hate."

I watched the show when it first aired at the end of May. I had been dreading it, but my dread turned to shock when I heard what the episode was called: "Stadiums of Hate ." They had come up with a suitably provocative title for their contrived, deliberately misleading fairy tale about a football culture permeated with vile racism.

The program has disappeared from YouTube; it appears to be available only this much less trafficked site . But when it was broadcast, it made national headlines in Poland. The country's biggest television channel took the extraordinary step of broadcasting it just days later, dubbed in Polish.

Many Poles were outraged at what they recognized as a vicious smear. It is worth noting that within a week or so, every single person who appeared on camera in the Polish part of the program claimed publicly to have been misrepresented. This includes Jonathan Ornstein, the director of the Jewish Community Center of Krakow. I was present for the interview with him, and he gave thoughtful answers to all of Chris Rogers' questions, always emphasizing that ugly graffiti and idiots making trouble at stadiums do not represent larger Polish attitudes. In the program, however, he seems to be leading the charge against horrible, hateful, anti-Semitic Poland. Mr. Ornstein told me personally how disgusted he was by how his interview was cut apart and stitched back together.

Even Jacek Purski, director of Never Again , an organization dedicated to monitoring racism in Poland, says the program was one-sided . When a "watchdog" group calls a television program "one-sided," you can be sure it was outrageous.

The Polish government demanded a clarification from the BBC, and even the foreign minister complained. Newspapers throughout Europe expressed skepticism, and reader comments left online were overwhelmingly outraged. The BBC took the very unusual step of publicly responding to criticism .

Then the BBC got a huge break from Barack Obama, of all people. During a ceremony at the White House honoring someone who had survived Auschwitz, Mr. Obama referred to it as a "Polish death camp" rather than a Nazi death camp in occupied Poland. Angry demands for an apology from the US government pushed "Stadiums of Hate" off the front page. After that, the relentless media cycle quickly relegated the whole affair to yesterday's news.

Today, criticism of the "Stadiums of Hate" episode takes up more space on the Wikipedia page for Panorama than any other episode in its history. As the doubts and questions mounted, the BBC seems to have taken pains to get copies off the internet. There are any number of other full episodes of Panorama on YouTube , but not this one.

I was the least important man on the production crew and had no editorial influence, but I still felt responsible the episode that millions of people ultimately watched. At the height of the furor I got in touch with the Polish and foreign press. Their reaction was always the same: intense initial interest that quickly faded after a better understanding of what was involved. The explanation I heard over and over was that attacking a program that attacked racism looks like you're defending racism.

One editor of a major UK newspaper told me it was hard to attack Panorama without a smoking gun. When I asked for an example, he said one would be someone who admitted he was paid by the BBC to pretend to be a "racist" hooligan. The man seemed jaded and not at all surprised by what I told him; he also said he simply could not risk coming across as defending "racism."

As time goes by, doubts about the program's credibility fade. All anyone will remember is that the great Chris Rogers exposed horrible racists in Poland and Ukraine. You will have to dig pretty deep to get the real story. That is the power of the biggest name in news.

Mr. Krak does not expect to get any more work from the BBC.


Tyrion 2 , says: January 7, 2019 at 8:08 am GMT

The documentary was called Stadiums of Hate. I think the quote below, by itself, is enough to rename it a Documentary of Hate.

Ornstein:

As an American-born Jew living happily and safely in Poland and working diligently to build Jewish life in that country, I am furious at the way the BBC has exploited me as a source. The organization used me and others to manipulate the serious subject of anti-Semitism for its own sensationalist agenda; in doing so, the BBC has insulted all Polish people and done a disservice to the growing, thriving Jewish community of Poland.

I have reason to believe the BBC similarly misrepresented the black African football players it used as sources in the same programme.

Moreover, the BBC knowingly cheated its own audience – the British people – by concocting a false horror story about Poland. In doing so, the BBC has spread fear, ignorance, prejudice and hatred.

I would urge the BBC to become more aware of its own negative stereotyping of Poles, before it goes pointing the finger of judgment.

Philip Smeeton , says: January 7, 2019 at 9:32 am GMT

Only causing physical harm to someone that you hate could be termed a hate crime. Hating someone or something and saying so is not a crime. Hate is a natural emotion and reaction to something that is unacceptable. Islam and what it teaches is unacceptable, therefore I hate Islam and I hate the followers of Islam that commit hate-crimes.

Simon Tugmutton , says: January 7, 2019 at 9:33 am GMT

The same dishonesty taints nearly everything the BBC puts out. Even drama is hijacked to carry the globalist message. Whatever is devoid of politics is mindless pap about baking or dance, etc., to keep the proletariat in a state of goodthink docility.

The author errs when he says

mandatory payments of £150 pounds a year must be made if you own a television set in Britain

You need only buy a TV 'licence' if you watch TV as it is broadcast , on any equipment belonging to you. Licences are issued to households; a 'household' may also comprise a student's room or a communal area such as is found in retirement homes. The BBC, through agents, maintains a spotty database of every address in the UK. Any unlicensed address is targeted with letters threatening criminal prosecution. It is legal to own a set if you just use it for watching DVDs or videos from the net.

There are plenty of ways to thwart the BBC's bagmen, the simplest, healthiest and most time-efficient being to stop watching television of any description. I did this in 2005. Since then I have withheld from them the inflation-adjusted equivalent of about £2,000, plus interest, been blessed with many hours of more interesting, lucrative and enjoyable pursuits, and saved myself innumerable episodes of anger and disgust. Moreover I have no idea who any of these 'celebrities' are who grace the tabloids, and have been spared the pontifications of the assorted arseholes and big-heads whose cretinous and toxic opinions the BBC daily spews on the British public and, indeed, on the hapless citizens of the rest of the globe via a propaganda outlet called the BBC World Service.

I commend going TV-free to all. It does wonders for the capacity to think clearly, not to mention the blood-pressure.

jilles dykstra , says: January 7, 2019 at 10:23 am GMT

BBC's neutrality ended when the BBC exposed Tony B-liar's lies about Saddam's 45 minutes WMD's.
The director was fired, replaced by a jew.

As to Polish antisemitism, it existed, still existed around 1967 when Polish jews were given the opportunity to leave. And of course, since Israel tries to make Poland responsible for a part of the holocaust, the gas chamber camps were on Polish territory, Poland responds, they have no desire whatsoever to be the next victim of the holocaust industry.

As to the why of Polish anti-Semitism, suppose it was in Poland more or less the same as in Lithuania in the thirties, Jews controlling the economy. Of course also Polish Catholicism may have played a role. Jews responsible for the death of the son of god.

Descriptions of Polish antisemitism one finds in

Jan T. Gross, 'Neighbours, The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, 1941', 2003, London
Bogdan Musial, ´Sowjetische Partisanen 1941 – 1944, Mythos und Wirklichkeit', Paderborn 2009

The book describes antisemitism among all E European resistance fighters. Jews were not or hardly allowed among these resistance fighters.

The novel

André Schwartz-Bart, 'Le Dernier des Justes', 1959, 1980 Paris seems to have been to some extent autobiographical, with as country of origin Poland.
Described is on the one hand how jews resisted assimilation, wanted to remain jews, even, or especially, in clothing, on the other hand how non jews did not accept jews, even trying to prevent they visited the synagogue, or jewish children being insulted in schools.

As nearly always, one wonders why the antagonism., no explanation.

Stan d Mute , says: January 7, 2019 at 10:45 am GMT

The program had a scripted conclusion before a single camera was turned on.

This seems self-evident and yet it's rarely or never said. Cameras and word processors don't operate autonomously. Somebody begins with a story, a narrative, they wish to convey. They then point their camera at things they choose, or cherrypick, to illustrate their narrative. Afterwards, they carefully edit, or censor, what they've recorded making sure that only that most sympathetic to their narrative is shown. It is ALL propaganda. And it is ubiquitous.

It is up to the viewer or reader to filter the information presented, to sift through it for specks of unbiased Truth that may have somehow survived their unlikely journey past the narrative writer, his editors, their advertisers and lawyers, to the end product. Thus we see a "News Report" about "a fight that broke out among a group of youths" where the amateur video shows us a pack of feral young negroes, without provocation, attacks a lone white and after knocking him unconscious rifles through his pockets removing his phone and wallet before running off in jubilation.

And yet, despite this being shown to us time and again, incessantly, most people still trust their "News" sources!

And, as Ron Unz has so often shown us on this very site, History is nothing more than yesterday's "News."

The open question, really, is whether or not it is even possible to obtain information assembled and presented by an organization that does not fit the paradigm described above. And, considering the amount of time and cognition required for one to even attempt to find Truth in media, what are the chances that an average viewer or reader (bear in mind illiteracy rates) of average intelligence (bear in mind the left side of the bell curve) can obtain anything resembling a sense of Reality on which he may inform his opinions and beliefs? How often do we hear older people say things like, "I remember when you used to be able to get straight News from Walter Cronkite.." oblivious to the Truth above?

forgottenpseudonym , says: January 7, 2019 at 10:54 am GMT

The BBC twists the truth!? Having also worked in the UK tv industry, the only proper response is "do bears etc?" But thank you, Mr Krak, for having recorded your experiences.

Heros , says: January 7, 2019 at 10:56 am GMT

The truth is that the Cultural Marxism movement was about the take over of all institutions of white european culture and turning them against white europeans.

Professional sports was subverted almost a century ago. The racist anti-German propaganda of WWI and WWII was already strongly "semitic". The ascendence of Hollywood really marks the heeb takeover of American entertainment industry and the beach head for the conquest of the entire culture.

So as we enter 2019, I cannot think of one aspect of western European culture that is not heavily influenced by heebs, under their control or outright under their ownership. Even the alt-right "nazi's" are really just a bunch of jew cut-outs like Breitbard, Savage and Shapiro. Then there are all the crypto jews like Alex Jones or even Jordan Peterson. Many white Europeans are talmudists without having even a drop of jewish blood.

The BBC has been a Tavistock propaganda organ since its inception. After the Armistice and Versailles in 1919, the masonic-zionist propaganda war against the planet never stopped. Every new technology was first weaponized for use in mind control before release to the general population. Even the internet itself was also conceived at Darpa as a mind control tool and is closely linked to the trans-humanist and cultural marxist agenda.

So if you want to successfully attack the BBC, you also have to attack MI5, MI6, CIA, NSA, MIC, the entire 5 eyes spy network, the Queen of England, the Catholic Church, the US deep state, Israel, and ultimately their jewish god who in reality is Satan.

So to me it seems that obsessing about football hooligans is rather pointless, any movement to try to deal with any of the symptoms of our take over will quickly be subsumed. Like the occupy movement. Or the alt-right. Or the yellow-vests.

To kill this snake you will have to cut off its head.

Bill Jones , says: January 7, 2019 at 11:03 am GMT

The Grauniad is in the same business. https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/dec/09/raheem-sterling-newspapers-fuelling-racism-alleged-abuse-chelsea

[Jan 06, 2019] Integrity Initiative - New Documents From Shady NGO Released

Notable quotes:
"... The British Private Eye finds a relation between the Integrity Initiative and the Rendon Group which drove the propaganda for the Iraq invasion. ..."
Jan 04, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Forgot to link this: The Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative by Paul McKeigue, David Miller, Jake Mason and Piers Robinson is the most complete analysis of the Integrity Initiative papers.

The British Private Eye finds a relation between the Integrity Initiative and the Rendon Group which drove the propaganda for the Iraq invasion.

I'll have to say more on the issue. For some fun, check the attachment to this tweet. (Klarenberg writes for Sputnik.)

Kit Klarenberg @KitKlarenberg - 19:51 utc - 5 Jan 2019

Head of @InitIntegrity's German cluster says he's going to bring criminal charges against me for accessing II internal files.

In the process helpfully confirming many of the people I contacted in the cluster for comment ARE collaborating with the organization!!

Cheers pal!

[Jan 06, 2019] Intelligence stooges dominate Western MSM or How Putin s Russia Weaponizes Everything

"Jornos for hire" are now mainstream. Much like escort services.
Again, it's pure projection. These vermin are literally incapable of looking at anything except in terms of how it can be used as a weapon (or how it can be destroyed), so they automatically attribute that fundamentalist way of looking at things to everyone else, and especially to the "enemy". So by definition anything Putin and the Russians do is some kind of "weaponization".
Notable quotes:
"... Yes! All true! But I weaponised Vladimir Putin to make media profits, newspapers (Guardian!), radio (BBC), internet (Bellingcat). Evidently only the Brits understand me. The US does the same in a different style. ..."
"... Here is what Americans really think about the anti-Russia hysteria coming from Washington: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/08/americans-on-russia-will-of-people.html Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes. ..."
"... And besides humor I am sure Putin is also weaponizing calendars, at least in Japan. Maybe in exchange for keeping the Kuril islands: Putin calendar sales surpassing those of Japanese stars in Japan What I am wondering is, if the socalled "Western Elite" maybe actually believe what they are saying and are not aware that it is a self-created illusion they are chaught in. Otherwise I can not understand why they are again and again surprised if Russia is not behaving they way they expected. ..."
"... Yes, these are projections, and they tell us the final world war, a war of aggression by the US against China and Russia, will be a total war beyond our imaginations. (Unless real leftists and real lovers of peace can stop it.) ..."
"... I think this insane epidemic illustrates the degree to which the Western propaganda system has completely decoupled the population from reality. ..."
"... The underlying problem: Russia has weaponized telling the truth. ..."
"... Yes, I'd agree that's part of its purpose -- to prevent the unification of Eurasia, which as I wrote last week's proceeding apace. They're trying to wall off Japan too, so I wonder if Japanese media's as flush with the same garbage as BigLie Media. ..."
"... Although likely covered by weaponizing incompetence and stupidity, Putin has certainly weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's appalling lack of a professional diplomatic corp--just look at who he gets Trump to nominate to key diplomatic positions. ..."
"... Hey guys, guys, you are not getting the point man. There is something really creepy about this Russia place, like Midas. Everything they touch turns to weapons. ..."
"... But since the fall of Communism in Russia, I have lost all belief in anything like a new Cold War. After all, when I was in parochial school, we prayed for the conversion of Russia. Now, that has been accomplished. Russia's government is more Christian than Western governments ..."
"... Truth weaponized. Five eyes pulling out all stops in its propaganda campaign to defeat it. ..."
Dec 17, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
Russ , Dec 17, 2018 9:26:23 AM | link

Q: What do humor, health information, giant squids, robotic cockroaches, tedium and postmodernism have in common?

A: Russia weaponized them.

Back in March 2016 we created a list of news items that accused Russia and its bear riding president Vladimir Putin of weaponizing things.

Others have since copied the idea .

Several of the pieces listed in it are products of the recently uncovered British government financed disinformation campaign , or of similar efforts by other governments. But these are only a part of the general anti-Russian reflex that is ingrained in our 'western' culture. Nothing else can explain the craziness of these 'weaponizing' claims.

The updated list with some 65 issues, ideas and things that Russia allegedly 'weaponizes' will hopefully help to convince people that most of what is said or written about Russia is likewise blatant nonsense.

Posted by b on December 17, 2018 at 09:20 AM | Permalink

Comments next page "


Quentin , Dec 17, 2018 9:40:02 AM | link

Yes! All true! But I weaponised Vladimir Putin to make media profits, newspapers (Guardian!), radio (BBC), internet (Bellingcat). Evidently only the Brits understand me. The US does the same in a different style.
Sally Snyder , Dec 17, 2018 9:44:29 AM | link
Here is what Americans really think about the anti-Russia hysteria coming from Washington: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/08/americans-on-russia-will-of-people.html Washington has completely lost touch with what Main Street America really believes.
old Bill , Dec 17, 2018 9:47:49 AM | link
until the US actually incorporates term limits the same corruption will continue unabated
TJ , Dec 17, 2018 10:01:04 AM | link
The BBC has become Monty Python I await the BBC report on Putins weaponizzation of silly walks.
Fran , Dec 17, 2018 10:20:44 AM | link

And besides humor I am sure Putin is also weaponizing calendars, at least in Japan. Maybe in exchange for keeping the Kuril islands: Putin calendar sales surpassing those of Japanese stars in Japan What I am wondering is, if the socalled "Western Elite" maybe actually believe what they are saying and are not aware that it is a self-created illusion they are chaught in. Otherwise I can not understand why they are again and again surprised if Russia is not behaving they way they expected.

fairleft , Dec 17, 2018 10:28:53 AM | link

Yes, these are projections, and they tell us the final world war, a war of aggression by the US against China and Russia, will be a total war beyond our imaginations. (Unless real leftists and real lovers of peace can stop it.)

William Bowles , Dec 17, 2018 10:48:39 AM | link

I think this insane epidemic illustrates the degree to which the Western propaganda system has completely decoupled the population from reality. Now whether it's believed or not is neither here nor there as it's built upon decades of anti-communism and the inherent racism of the Anglo-Saxon Empire that has demonized the Russians as essentially backward peasants who cannot be trusted. Worse still, the Russkies have ginormous weapons!

It would be ludicrous if it wasn't so dangerous.

Peter VE , Dec 17, 2018 10:59:02 AM | link
The underlying problem: Russia has weaponized telling the truth.
BRF , Dec 17, 2018 11:04:59 AM | link
I agree that both 'sides' in a phony cold war 2.0 weaponize just about anything of a controversial nature or event in civilization. Both sides are advancing agenda that are leading humanity in the same direction even as they create a false adversarial paradigm.

This has been termed non linear psychological warfare under which such a confusing array of created realities leaves the greater public unable to define what is real or a fabrication. It takes at least two or more to create the illusions and the 'other' can simply be created/funded as controlled opposition and then even this can be published to further create more confusion within the confusion. Carl Rove told us this. He just didn't tell us that the 'Empire' also includes Russia, China and any number of other corporate national jurisdictions.

vk , Dec 17, 2018 11:19:06 AM | link
It seems Russia has weaponized the African-Americans too: Russian Effort to Influence 2016 Election Targeted African-Americans
Putin , Dec 17, 2018 11:23:05 AM | link
More seriously, this is not "stupidity" of the political class, as some pundits would have you believe. It is a well thought-out retrenchment plan of attempting to institute a new "iron curtain" to separate Europe from Asia after the demise of unipolarity.
Jackrabbit , Dec 17, 2018 11:58:37 AM | link
Putin | Dec 17, 2018 11:23:05 AM | 23: new "iron curtain"
karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 12:16:12 PM | link
Putin @23--

Yes, I'd agree that's part of its purpose -- to prevent the unification of Eurasia, which as I wrote last week's proceeding apace. They're trying to wall off Japan too, so I wonder if Japanese media's as flush with the same garbage as BigLie Media.

Russia's weaponized Arctic Ocean or perhaps Russia's weaponized the lack of proper marine maintenance. Russia's also weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's lack of naval or other Arctic Ocean land-based infrastructure -- there's zip to support any off-shore drilling from Alaska's coastline. IOW, Russia's weaponizing a plethora of Outlaw US Empire weaknesses.

jrkrideau , Dec 17, 2018 12:56:26 PM | link
@ 27 karlof1

And what the Sputnik article refers to as the heavy US icebreaker Polar Star is more roughly one half the size of the nuclear powered Russian icebreaker 50 Years of Victory, 50 лет Победы . I suspect the Russians would call the Polar Star a light icebreaker. Sputnik probably probably being polite.

GeorgeV , Dec 17, 2018 1:00:57 PM | link
Way back in the 1950s the Pentagon (specifically the Air Force) was all atwitter over unsubstantiated reports (again leaked by the Air Force) that the Soviets (read: the Russians) were building a nuclear powered strategic bomber that would have unlimited range and flight time. Well now. You know what that means? We gotta have one too! So guess what. The Air Force dutifully volunteered to save the US and Western civilization from being bombed back to the stone age and godless communism all at the same time by building a nuclear powered bomber of our own. To make a long story short the effort failed miserably. The project managed to last into the Kennedy administration but was cancelled in favor of developing submarine launched ICBMs. While the nuclear bomber program died it's spirit lived on. During the Carter administration the then chief of Air Force intelligence (yes I know there's no such thing) became convinced that the russkies were building ground-based and orbiting death ray machines to use against US satellites and ICBMs. Thus was born "Star Wars." Of course this fit in perfectly with the Reagan administration's defense views even though the engineering and science simply didn't exist then of now. Well as the french say the "more things change the more they remain the same"
snake , Dec 17, 2018 1:15:43 PM | link
Some people get weaponized on business trips to Moscow. This video shows how they do it... https://youtu.be/8cs4tKdiiI4 Posted by: dh | Dec 17, 2018 10:36:48 AM | 15

Move over Russia make room for the Chinese weapon program.. its much more dangerous than the Russian disinformation program, unlike Russia, the Chinese circumvent the USA Senate, the President, and the SCOUS and go directly to the poor, innocent governed humans, lending them money, creating for them jobs and developing infra structure to make life easier; such will be the end of us all. WE MUST REMEMBER Aake news and made up fictions are produced by the six entities that own 92 of the media. Without the Internet and other public infra structure, the media could not smear you with its dirty tricks. Someone please pass the soap.

the pair , Dec 17, 2018 1:17:03 PM | link
"weaponizing terrorism "? because until Putin all "terrorists" sat around talking and sipping tea like the goddamn mclaughlin group? then again, given the outsize influence of objectively insane think tanks in DC, maybe they were onto something.

funny how this can also be seen as what psychology types call "projection". in a culture like the west's (especially the states) where the economies are built on warfare and financial voodoo, everything is either "weaponized" or collateralized. look at anything on that list and it's something from which someone "atlantic" has tried or will try to make money. of course, many things start out weaponized and are then collateralized . weaponized taxes? weaponized corporate welfare?

the pair , Dec 17, 2018 1:28:55 PM | link
@#33 see also : https://www.voanews.com/a/putin-rap-must-be-controlled-not-banned/4702678.html

hey, if a bunch of white/israeli suburbanite music executives in LA can control rap, it should be pretty easy. side note: rap is officially banned in iran. some say it's been deemed "satanic". Years ago when i was grooving to das efx or public enemy i'd have disagreed but now that the big names are drake, minaj and meek mill...only malevolent supernatural evil can explain that.

Glenn Brown , Dec 17, 2018 2:08:07 PM | link
I'm shocked to learn that "Russia is weaponizing its Coast Guard", https://warisboring.com/russia-is-weaponizing-its-coast-guard/ The author seems quite angry the Russians are using their "Coast Guard" of all things, to defend their coast. He thinks they should have used their Navy instead!

"The use of the Russian Federation Navy to close the strait would have been more likely to escalate because it would have been a military-on-military clash. In contrast, using the Russian coast guard made it a law enforcement issue rather than a military-sanctioned act of war. Russia is adept at using legal channels to pursue violations of justice. It now appears willing to use its coast guard for this purpose.

Onshore, the situation in eastern Ukraine has been stuck in a rut. Perhaps the escalation in the Sea of Azov was seen by the Russians as a means to break the impasse, using the flimsy legal cover provided by the coast guard. No similar terrestrial options exist, as the Russians have exhausted their plausible deniability for operations by police, volunteers and undercover "little green men."

While Russian seizure of the Azov coast was anticipated, it was not expected to use its coast guard. Utilizing the Russian coast guard in this way opens a new range of options for Moscow, in the Sea of Azov and beyond."

lysias , Dec 17, 2018 2:34:37 PM | link
Easy way for an author to get an article published.
karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 2:38:03 PM | link
Although likely covered by weaponizing incompetence and stupidity, Putin has certainly weaponized the Outlaw US Empire's appalling lack of a professional diplomatic corp--just look at who he gets Trump to nominate to key diplomatic positions. Indeed, perhaps this ought to be enlarged to include weaponizing mediocrity as portrayed by Trump's entire Cabinet. We can also see the great strides Putin's made in making the Outlaw US Empire appear as the Ogre it is by weaponizing Anglo-American Exceptionalism. It seems, given the above list and its additions via comments, that the Outlaw US Empire is most exceptional at being incapable of weaponizing anything aside from its #1 go-to--The BigLie.
dh , Dec 17, 2018 3:00:26 PM | link
@45 They look like happy smiley people untroubled by any ethical issues... https://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/people/
Strategic Message Code One , Dec 17, 2018 3:04:33 PM | link
Hey guys, guys, you are not getting the point man. There is something really creepy about this Russia place, like Midas. Everything they touch turns to weapons. I seen it here as well, every Russia thing is trouble of some kind, like there is nothing else that comes from there. I seen Russian people and they ok, but now I'm frightened to get close to them in case I turn into a weapon. Aan here too guys, Russia touches the west an the west as consequence are all buying weapons an using them everywhere, they cant do nothing cause Russia makes them weaponators too. Oh my, we are doomed man and waponized press freakin me out aaaaaaahhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
bjd , Dec 17, 2018 3:48:24 PM | link
A quote from the report mentioned in (50): "Although the NDS generally reflects the right priorities and objectives, it is not supported by adequate investments. It is beyond the scope of this Commission's work to identify the exact dollar amount required to fully fund the military's needs, but the available means are clearly insufficient to fulfill the strategy's ends. This is true despite the two-year funding increase for FY2018 and FY2019 provided by the Bipartisan Budget Act of 2018."
john , Dec 17, 2018 4:14:53 PM | link
weaponize this .
Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 4:19:22 PM | link
The Russia "did it" is part of The Rise of the Weaponized AI Propaganda Machine http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49060.htm
Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 4:24:15 PM | link

Seems like the renewed anti Russian psyops is a cover for the possible Ukrainian false flag/war coming weeks:

"Russia deploys ten fighter jets to Crimea amid rising tensions with Ukraine "
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2018/12/17/583233/Russia-fighter-jets-Crimea-armed-provocation

Josh , Dec 17, 2018 4:26:27 PM | link
What would be particularly interesting is also to see how the money flow is helping the (we all know it) struggling news organizations. I believe many of these quasi-journalists are going hat in hand to various agencies that have some of that propaganda money. Most of them would need to work for weeks getting paid a measly amount, but doing a couple of these anti-Russia pieces gets them paid well. I certainly think the Guardian has such an arrangement with MI5/6.

The recipe is using the wonderwords like Putin, Russia, 'weaponizing', hackers, cyber, fake news...

jrkrideau , Dec 17, 2018 4:31:02 PM | link
40 Glenn Brown

I'm shocked to learn that "Russia is weaponizing its Coast Guard", https://warisboring.com/russia-is-weaponizing-its-coast-guard/

I believe the Saker was pointing out a few days ago that the Border Guards were often more like spetsnaz than what we in the west think of as a border patrol. The Russian Coast Guard has probably maintained the tradition.

karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 4:47:55 PM | link
I see culture's already been deemed weaponized, but here's Putin's actual plan he laid out in his speech to a meeting of the Presidential Council for Culture and Art in St Petersburg two days ago. Introductory remarks:

"... global competition in creating best conditions for self-fulfilment and revealing the potential of each individual is growing, and the world's leading powers including Russia, rightly see it as a key to the future. Of course, a significant role here will belong to establishing a vibrant, rich cultural space, which will be interesting and attractive not only for the citizens of our country but also for the whole world."

Meanwhile within the Outlaw US Empire, Boy Scouts of America is about to file for bankruptcy thanks to the many sexual abuse lawsuits it now faces. This leads me to declare yet another Russian accomplishment: Putin has weaponized Machiavellian divide and rule by enticing the Outlaw US Empire's Deep State -- years prior to his birth! -- to promote and escalate what's known as the Culture Wars used to ensure a continuing inability to achieve solidarity by the USA's polity.

William Bowles , Dec 17, 2018 5:04:28 PM | link
Posted by: Anaya | Dec 17, 2018 2:52:00 PM | 45

Anaya, I take it you took a look-see at its staff and there's a lot of them! Yeah, that's what prompted my own feelings about it. The report has apparently been published but I've not yet seen it.

The '150 million' influenced by those scheming Russkies, has been floating for awhie. I first saw it used in a Euro-based setup, funded by NATO I think. I'll try and dig it out as I remember writing something about.

Babyl-on , Dec 17, 2018 5:12:15 PM | link
This kind of "Weaponization" is far less expensive than say an F35 or a 13bn Ford class Aircraft carrier, but the more of them you build the safer you will be from the "Weaponization" of coloring books. Nuke crayons now! The state of the US and its military in my view is that they can't win a war against anyone, all they can do is blow up the world with nukes - the only question is will they deny the world to everyone if they can't own it.
karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 5:15:00 PM | link
It's a shame we can't massively disseminate our weaponization of ridicule contained in b's article and our commentary. I wonder how many comedians are making good money ridiculing the entire weaponization meme, and not just in English.

What I'd like to see at all US government pressers is for uncontrollable laughter to break out amongst the press when the spokesperson begins speaking and continue until it leaves the podium, followed by the press exiting the room.

Jen , Dec 17, 2018 6:05:03 PM | link
Karlof1 @ 69:

In case you haven't yet heard, Heather Nauert replaces Nutty Nikki as US ambassador to the UN so 'tis there that Matt Lee and his fellow journos must trek (it's gonna be a long way to NYC) to get their regular dose of laughter.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-d-day-america-germany-strong-relationship-state-department-spokeswoman-heather-nauert-a8387221.html

Bart Hansen , Dec 17, 2018 6:12:43 PM | link
Here in my exceptional country it is customary at the end of each year to declare a "word of the year", some from past years were truthiness, Y2K and hashtag.

For 2018 will it be "weaponize"?

Curtis , Dec 17, 2018 6:28:52 PM | link
and then today I hit ZH and this headline: Soviet Dissidents, America's Academia, & The Weaponization Of Psychiatry https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-16/soviet-dissidents-americas-academia-weaponization-psychiatry

but it didn't go after the current Russian govt. It pointed out how the US imitates the Soviets in weaponizing psychiatry by declaring dissidents crazy. You have to be insane to disagree with TPTB.

Curtis , Dec 17, 2018 6:30:11 PM | link
It looks like our media has weaponized their obsession with all things Putin and Russia.
Curtis , Dec 17, 2018 6:33:53 PM | link
and last but not least, Russia is blamed for inflaming the protests in France: https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-12-14/france-turmoil-blame-russia

It reminds me of the meme taken from The Brady Bunch instead of "Marcia, Marcia, Marcia" it's "Russia, Russia, Russia."

Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 6:55:47 PM | link
France: No signs of russian involvement found. https://sptnkne.ws/kq53
karlof1 , Dec 17, 2018 6:57:54 PM | link
Jen @71--

I'm sure the comedian replacing Nauert will be just as distracting and of similar character.

Did you happen to read Caitlin Johnstone's Twenty-One Thoughts On The Persecution Of Julian Assange , particularly #s 8-10 as they relate to her essay about narratives? All our rather witty ridicule is almost totally wasted on us--we don't need to hear it; it's those people Caitlin refers to in her 8-10 that require the deep pin-prick of ridicule to snap them from their torpor and return them to reality and to rational thinking.

Lozion , Dec 17, 2018 7:08:38 PM | link
@18 Best comment so far! Truth as the Weapon of Choice..
Cyril , Dec 17, 2018 7:10:06 PM | link
@Peter VE | Dec 17, 2018 10:59:02 AM | 18

The underlying problem: Russia has weaponized telling the truth.

That's the truth!

time2wakeup , Dec 17, 2018 7:43:08 PM | link
Next thing you know, the media will be weaponizing all their available weapons of mass distraction

Oh wait.....bit late for that.

psychohistorian , Dec 17, 2018 8:41:27 PM | link
The biggest weapon in the West arsenal is private finance. Private finance is the jackboot that keep nations/governments/individuals in line. Private finance has been the primary weapon of control for centuries. China/Russia are trying to weaponize alternative finance......and succeeding......which is why the world is all in a tither.
lysias , Dec 17, 2018 10:36:33 PM | link
@ Jen 82

I think it has to do with what one has studied. I have four university degrees: B.A. in Classics from Princeton, A.B. in Classics from Oxford, Ph.D. in Classical Philology from Harvard, and a J.D. from Yale. I spent a lot of time in the U.S. military: four years in the active duty U.S. Air Force, plus something like 15 years in the reserves, largely of the U.S. Navy. For as long as the original Cold War lasted and Communism ruled Russia, I was a true believer in the Cold War. It now looks to me as if I was misguided at the time, but that is what I believed, whether despite or because of my education, I don't know which.

But since the fall of Communism in Russia, I have lost all belief in anything like a new Cold War. After all, when I was in parochial school, we prayed for the conversion of Russia. Now, that has been accomplished. Russia's government is more Christian than Western governments. I think someone with a classical education like the one I got is more capable of thinking for himself. I don't think my education disabled me from thinking critically and independently.

Peter AU 1 , Dec 18, 2018 3:11:59 AM | link

BB 93 Truth weaponized. Five eyes pulling out all stops in its propaganda campaign to defeat it.

Hoarsewhisperer 95 He may well be, but with the passing of several years and his actions in that time appear to be ardent zionist. The swamp to him are those that frittered away US unilateral power and those that did not sufficiently support Israel. What Trump views as the swamp is not what most of us view as the swamp. Kissinger was not forced upon Trump, rather his thinking is in line with that of Kissinger.

[Jan 06, 2019] Integrity initiative is Gladio 2.0 in disguise

Notable quotes:
"... To get an idea of how Gladio 2.0 is now investing each corner of our lives, including art and education, I saw recently on the flyer of a sculpture exhibition in a 5-eyes country that two artists, one born in 1901 and one in 1914 were "famous Cold War artists". Of course, there was nothing political in their work, the first died in 1966 and the other in 2003... ..."
Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Mina , Dec 17, 2018 1:19:30 PM | link

To get an idea of how Gladio 2.0 is now investing each corner of our lives, including art and education, I saw recently on the flyer of a sculpture exhibition in a 5-eyes country that two artists, one born in 1901 and one in 1914 were "famous Cold War artists". Of course, there was nothing political in their work, the first died in 1966 and the other in 2003...

In EU universities you now see all sorts of "labs" popping out, with EU funding from the "digital" budget. They are trying to recruit people with a very odd profile: ambitious, ONG oriented, IT familiar. The reason why these labs insist on the ONG type activities is dubious. An example of US/EU sponsored project involving refugees in Greece, neurosciences and mobile phones (check Harvard/Data&Society: Refugee Connectivity)

Jackrabbit , Dec 17, 2018 11:58:37 AM | link
Putin | Dec 17, 2018 11:23:05 AM | 23: new "iron curtain"

[Jan 06, 2019] Is Integrity Initiative controls the USA media as well ?

Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

alaff , Dec 17, 2018 8:20:19 PM | link

Check it out & add to your nice collection, if you want.

Russia is:

* Weaponizing 'technology':
https://www.axios.com/russia-misinformation-campaigns-us-elections-83428979-b184-4ed6-b153-25ed72d2f993.html

* Weaponizing 'the continent / Venezuela':
https://www.breitbart.com/latin-america/2018/12/11/russia-places-nuclear-capable-bombers-venezuela/
https://www.krediblepolitics.com/cs/article/breitbart-russia-places-nuclear-capable-bombers-in-venezuela
(December 11, 2018)

* Weaponizing 'Interpol red notices':
https://www.newsweek.com/russian-interpol-president-putting-fox-charge-hen-house-experts-say-1224160
(November 20, 2018)

* Weaponizing 'Heather Nauert':
https://qz.com/1468983/russian-hackers-are-weaponizing-heather-nauert-a-trump-pick-for-un-ambassador/
(November 18, 2018)

* Weaponizing 'Social media hate':
https://www.ign.com/articles/2018/10/02/the-last-jedi-study-blames-russian-trolls-for-weaponizing-social-media-hate
(October 2, 2018)

* Weaponizing 'Debt':
https://sputniknews.com/us/201806191065559610-us-debt-dollar/
(June 19, 2018)
https://money.cnn.com/2018/07/30/investing/russia-us-debt-treasury/index.html
(July 30, 2018)

* Weaponizing 'leaks':
https://www.wired.com/2017/05/russian-hackers-using-tainted-leaks-sow-disinformation/
(May 25, 2017)

* Weaponizing 'History':
https://codastory.com/disinformation-crisis/information-war/weaponizing-history-world-war-ii-memorial-attackers-aim-to-divide-poland-and-ukraine
(February 27, 2017)

[Jan 06, 2019] Is BBC a part of Integrity Initiative ?

Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Dec 17, 2018 5:57:48 PM | link

News that the BBC is trying to tie the Gilets Jaunes movement to the Kremlin reaches the Russian Foreign Ministry. Betting that Lavrov, Zakharova and company are all having a laugh as well.

"Russia to turn to OSCE over reports on BBC's trying to prove Moscow behind 'Yellow Vests'"
http://tass.com/politics/1036309

"BBC Seeks To Link 'Yellow Vests' To Kremlin"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YknwBSjJZWc

Just when you think British news media couldn't fall any deeper into their rabbit hole ... down, down farther they go into the abyss ... aaarrgghhh ...

[Jan 06, 2019] "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project" might well be tied to "Integrity Initiative".

Notable quotes:
"... Some of the people at the Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project are banal presstitutes ready to oblige the top clients (management) for a modest pay, whereas others are real criminals whose ideas and orders have been endangering the western civilization -- and humankind at large. ..."
"... People are building their careers on this garbage! ..."
Jan 06, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org
Anaya , Dec 17, 2018 2:52:00 PM | link
The Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project are run by people.

These people display a stunning level of immorality by lying and war-mongering.

Some of the people at the Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project are banal presstitutes ready to oblige the top clients (management) for a modest pay, whereas others are real criminals whose ideas and orders have been endangering the western civilization -- and humankind at large.

It would be proper to publish a roster of the presstitutes and their idiotic managers working at the Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project and the Integrity Initiative Project

bjd , Dec 17, 2018 3:43:06 PM | link
Bipartisan panel: US must prepare for "horrendous," "devastating" war with Russia and China:
https://off-guardian.org/2018/12/17/bipartisan-panel-us-must-prepare-for-horrendous-devastating-war-with-russia-and-china/

librul , Dec 17, 2018 11:12:26 AM | link

About half an hour ago I opened News.Google.Com these are some of their major headlines:

I opened the one from the Washington Post:

The headline is meant to give the impression that the report was prepared at *The Behest* of the Senate. If you read the article it would have you believe that it *was* written at the behest of the Senate but does not say that specifically.

Well? Was it? I have tried to track it down and could use some assistance.

Buried in a CBS NEWS version of the article is this sentence: "The Committee welcomed the research effort without endorsing either report's findings."

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/new-reports-detail-sophistication-of-russian-influence-efforts-in-u-s/

USA TODAY says it *was* "Senate Reports". The lead paragraph is this: "WASHINGTON – The Senate released Monday a pair of reports that found Russia engaged in an all-out social media campaign on Donald Trump's behalf during the 2016 election and continued to support him after he took office."

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2018/12/17/russia-social-media-senate-report/2334382002/

All these articles reference some of the authors as: "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project"

My question is whether "Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project" is tied to "Integrity Initiative".

William Bowles , Dec 17, 2018 11:35:31 AM | link
And the BBC, had this to say today:

https://comprop.oii.ox.ac.uk/

https://www.graphika.com/solutions/

People are building their careers on this garbage!

Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 3:49:51 PM | link
"Oxford University's Computational Propaganda Project" is funded by European union!

See last block of text here: http://www.ox.ac.uk/news/2017-11-03-top-democracy-award-fake-news-research-project.

Zanon , Dec 17, 2018 5:03:20 PM | link
This is what it is all about: Money :

William Bowles said at #16

"People are building their careers on this garbage!"

Josh said at #60

"What would be particularly interesting is also to see how the money flow is helping the (we all know it) struggling news organizations. I believe many of these quasi-journalists are going hat in hand to various agencies that have some of that propaganda money. Most of them would need to work for weeks getting paid a measly amount, but doing a couple of these anti-Russia pieces gets them paid well. I certainly think the Guardian has such an arrangement with MI5/6.
The recipe is using the wonderwords like Putin, Russia, 'weaponizing', hackers, cyber, fake news..."

[Jan 06, 2019] British elite fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another. ..."
"... The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.' ..."
"... There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech. ..."
"... I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. ..."
"... Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome. ..."
Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Pat Lang Mod -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago

After contemplating the likely intelligence and propaganda efforts of HMG over the last 15 years or so I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little to do with the welfare of Britain. Why? I suppose that the same question can be asked for the US and I have.

In re "Our man in Havana" I think there are many issues raised in the work that apply directly to the trade of espionage.

David Habakkuk -> Pat Lang , 2 months ago
Colonel Lang,

The question why? is a very interesting but also very dispiriting one, but also one which it is quite hard to get one's head round. I hope to have something more coherent to say about it.

Among many reasons, however, there has been a kind of intellectual disintegration.

If I had the talent and energy, I might write a sequel to the 'Quiet American', to be entitled 'The Noisy Englishmen.' It would feature a series of inept conspiracies, involving ludicrous means used in support of preposterous ends, necessitating one ham-fisted cover-up after another.

The central characters might be loosely based on Christopher Steele, Matt Tait, Eliot Higgins, and our former UN Ambassador Matthew Rycroft, author of the July 2002 Downing Street memorandum, in which Sir Richard Dearlove was quoted explaining how, in Washington, 'the intelligence and the facts were being fixed around the policy.'

Subsequently, of course, he set about colluding in the process. And, sixteen years later, Dearlove is still at it, with 'Russiagate' -- and the product being actually accepted much more uncritically by the MSM than it was then.

And that is one of the problems -- nobody any longer pays any penalty for failure, or indeed feels any sense of shame about it..

johnf -> David Habakkuk , 2 months ago
DH

I agree with this.

There is a 1990's British historian (whose name I've been trying to rediscover without success) who wrote a sunny book saying Britain should return to its imperialist ways to bring light to the dark and repressive world we live in. It was a great hit with Blair and his henchmen. Blair used its arguments in his notorious 1999 Chicago neo-conservative/liberal interventionist speech.

As the Colonel eloquently asks:

"I am puzzled as to motivation. Why? Why? The UK is now a regional power for which events in places like Syria would seem to have little todo with the welfare of Britain. Why?"

I'd draw attention to "The Brideshead Revisited" generation especially at Oxford in the early 80's. Unashamedly celebrating their wealth and upper middle class privately-educated backgrounds, they viewed themselves as a gilded, golden generation, preened in narcissism, adept at networking and self-promotion. They are the generation now in power - politically, financially, in the deep state. Their fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies.

Our economic power - the base of any imperial power - is shrinking daily. All the Oxfordites (chief amongst them Theresa May, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove) are still playing Oxford Union/PPE games and stabbing each other joyously in the back as though there's no tomorrow. It most ressembles the halluciogenic decadence of the court of late Imperial Rome.

(I don't include the Maurice Cowling-ites in this fandango because they strike me as more Little Englanders. Though Peterhouse is of course, shamefully, the HQ of the Henry Jackson Society).

[Jan 05, 2019] 'Operation Iris' more New documents tie Integrity Initiative to spin of Skripal affair

Notable quotes:
"... "Institute for Statecraft," ..."
"... "mainstream & social media analysis" ..."
"... "Operation Iris." ..."
"... "Russian trolls" ..."
"... "ban RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK." ..."
"... "threat Russia poses." ..."
"... "good sources of further information" ..."
"... "Makes you think " ..."
"... Like this story? Share it with a friend! ..."
Jan 05, 2019 | www.rt.com

Hackers who leaked documents from the Integrity Initiative, a shadowy outfit funded by the UK government, claim they show its connections to the March 2018 alleged poisoning attack in Salisbury and proposed actions against Russia. The Integrity Initiative (II) was set up in 2015 by the equally shadowy "Institute for Statecraft," according to the documents published online in November by hackers calling themselves a part of the Anonymous collective. While Anonymous has denied the group was behind the leak, the Institute confirmed the authenticity of the first batch of documents.

The hackers posted a fresh batch of documents purportedly from the Initiative and the Institute on Friday, hinting that both outfits had connections with Western media coverage of the March 2018 alleged poisoning of former Russian spy Sergey Skripal, and the actions against Russia taken subsequently by the UK government and its allies.

What role did #IntegrityInitiative play in the #Skripal affair? I looked for answers from a brief look at the newly released files. More very much to follow.... https://t.co/cH2gXItRy7 #SergeiSkripal #Disinformation #Propaganda #InformationWar

-- Kit Klarenberg (@KitKlarenberg) January 4, 2019

One of the documents is the confidential report by Harod Associates, a company hired by the Initiative to conduct "mainstream & social media analysis" of the Skripal scandal coverage. The entire undertaking was dubbed "Operation Iris."

Among those who found themselves named "Russian trolls" and Kremlin agents in the report were Ukrainian-born pianist Valentina Lisitsa and a gentleman from Kent who goes by Ian56 on Twitter.

#IntegrityInitiative examples of Logical, Critical Thinking & Objective Analysis by yours truly Ian56. https://t.co/mwGEOUBjaX

They didn't even include my best ones and they didn't show the pic that went with each tweet.
I wonder why? #Skripal #Novichok #FalseFlag pic.twitter.com/Zq8W9iJshk

-- Ian56 (@Ian56789) January 4, 2019

Wanna see something funny? 🤣
"The Insider" - the same "Insider", that was credited by Bellingcat with "outing Boshirov and Petrovas GRU agents" - has investigated and found me guilty of passing Putin orders to French yellow jackets. I kid you not. https://t.co/I3X4ypylAP

-- Ruslana Boshirova (@ValLisitsa) January 4, 2019

Another document , dated March 11, 2018, contains a "Narrative" of the Skripal incident, blaming Russia and President Vladimir Putin personally and containing a number of recommended actions, such as boycotting the 2018 World Cup, starting campaigns to boycott the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline from Russia to Germany and block Russian access to SWIFT international banking system, but also to "ban RT TV and Sputnik from operating in the UK."

Other suggestions include propaganda directed at British Muslims "to publicise what has been happening with their Muslim brethren in Crimea since the Russian invasion" (sic) and getting members of Parliament to publicize the "threat Russia poses."

Also on rt.com Was 'Institute for Statecraft' behind Ofcom's targeting of RT? Sleuths point to yes

The document dump also contains the April 14, 2018 email from Andy Pryce, whom the hackers describe as "chief propaganda man" at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, containing the official government narrative of the Skripal affair and the alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria. Pryce ends the email by recommending "good sources of further information" on alleged Russian propaganda, including the Atlantic Council's DFR Lab, Bellingcat and Stopfake.

Documents obtained and published by the hackers also show connections between Skripal's recruiter and neighbor Pablo Miller, the Institute for Statecraft, and the so-called rescue group White Helmets, created in militant-held areas of Syria by a former British official in 2013.

It was already known that Pablo Miller, the MI6 handler of Sergej Skripal, attended #IntegrityInitiative meetings. There is now more material to draw a connection. It is indeed possible that IfS/II initiated the affair. https://t.co/Xv29Uk9z3e

-- Moon of Alabama (@MoonofA) January 4, 2019

There are also several invoices from Dan Kaszeta of the Institute for Statecraft, for articles he wrote as supposedly a chemical weapons expert advancing the Institute's narrative on both the Skripals and Syria.

EXPLOSIVE: @DanKaszeta of @Strongpoint_UK invoiced @InitIntegrity #IntegrityInitiative £2,276.80 in July 2018 during the #Skripal #Novichok affair for writing articles on the subjects of poison gas; nerve agents; treatment; nerve agent persistency & #PortonDown @RTUKproducer pic.twitter.com/V35PemrN9E

-- Fvnk (@WhatTheFvnk) January 4, 2019

The most intriguing, however, is a document from 2015 , in which Victor Madeira of the Institute for Statecraft proposes a series of measures targeting Russia, including mass expulsion of diplomats along the lines of 1971's Operation Foot. One of the actions by the UK, US and several other NATO countries in the wake of claims that Russia used a nerve agent against Skripal was a mass expulsion of Russian diplomats.

Former MP George Galloway noted that the documents written long before the Salisbury events call for arrests of RT and Sputnik contributors (such as himself), adding, "Makes you think "

So: #IntegrityInitiative funded by the British Govt called for the arrest of people like me like @afshinrattansi @JohnWight1 @NeilClark66 et al in the event of an "incident" like the #Skripal affair. Written incidentally before the #Salisbury events. Makes you think... @RT_com

-- George Galloway (@georgegalloway) January 4, 2019

Previously published documents have revealed the Initiative and the Institute as being involved in widespread propaganda operations targeting not only foreign countries and media outlets – as one might expect from someone doing the bidding of the Foreign Office – but also domestic political figures , such as Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn.

Like this story? Share it with a friend!

[Jan 02, 2019] Britain must surely be in the running for the Wooden Spoon award doe 2018

Notable quotes:
"... Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military establishment. ..."
Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Jen , Dec 31, 2018 3:36:34 PM | link

If Syria wins the award for Country of the Year 2018, I'd hate to see who gets the Wooden Spoon for 2018. There must be quite a few serious contenders for that prize!

Britain must surely be in the running for many reasons: among others, the sheer disaster that is Theresa May's government (and the various clowns and thuggish goons that constitute her Cabinet), the Brexit mess, the Skripal poisoning circus, Britain's own collapse in controlling the propaganda narrative on Syria and the revelations about Integrity Initiative and the Institute of Statecraft, and their ties to the British military establishment.

[Jan 02, 2019] Russia has really become the all-purpose pouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled - massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.

Jan 02, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette , Feb 21, 2018 11:38:52 AM | link

US media has gone bonkers. The original claim was Russian meddling and Russian interference in the election. Then, a sort of bridging meme showed up (see also b above), undermining democracy or subverting it. This in turn then morphed into promoting divisive issues which is new (circa 2018, not before?)

Imho. US pols make it their business to create divisive issues, diviusses (neologism), to the point of inventing rubbish ones. Part of the US public embraces that sh*t as well, > tribalism and religious economics in lieu of policy politics. So such actions should be viewed as gloriously democratic, ;) - ok easy to make fun.

The emphasis on 'divisive' is curious, it signals that some managers are calling for 'union' - 'cohesion' - 'group soldering' facing the outside enemy, threat.

Russia has really become the all-purpose épouvantail scarecrow, specter of doom, etc. An awareness of the high costs of divisiveness if uncontrolled -> massive social unrest, at extreme, civil war -- and that these are to be avoided, is evidenced.

Heh, or the whole storm is just fluff that distracts, occupies the pixels, airwaves, a jamboree of knee-jerk reactions irrelevant to the present World Situation, with practically no important body - faction of the PTB, Trump, the MIC, lame outsiders like the EU, etc. having any clue.

[Dec 31, 2018] Academic bottomfeeders at service of financial oligarchy by George Monbiot

Notable quotes:
"... By abetting the ad industry, universities are leading us into temptation, when they should be enlightening us ..."
Dec 31, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Originally from: Advertising and academia are controlling our thoughts. Didn't you know- - George Monbiot - Opinion - The Guardian

By abetting the ad industry, universities are leading us into temptation, when they should be enlightening us

... ... ...

I ask because, while considering the frenzy of consumerism that rises beyond its usual planet-trashing levels at this time of year, I recently stumbled across a paper that astonished me . It was written by academics at public universities in the Netherlands and the US. Their purpose seemed to me starkly at odds with the public interest. They sought to identify "the different ways in which consumers resist advertising, and the tactics that can be used to counter or avoid such resistance".

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Among the "neutralising" techniques it highlighted were "disguising the persuasive intent of the message"; distracting our attention by using confusing phrases that make it harder to focus on the advertiser's intentions; and "using cognitive depletion as a tactic for reducing consumers' ability to contest messages". This means hitting us with enough advertisements to exhaust our mental resources, breaking down our capacity to think.

Intrigued, I started looking for other academic papers on the same theme, and found an entire literature. There were articles on every imaginable aspect of resistance, and helpful tips on overcoming it. For example, I came across a paper that counsels advertisers on how to rebuild public trust when the celebrity they work with gets into trouble. Rather than dumping this lucrative asset, the researchers advised that the best means to enhance "the authentic persuasive appeal of a celebrity endorser" whose standing has slipped is to get them to display "a Duchenne smile", otherwise known as "a genuine smile". It precisely anatomised such smiles, showed how to spot them, and discussed the "construction" of sincerity and "genuineness": a magnificent exercise in inauthentic authenticity.

ss="rich-link tone-news--item rich-link--pillar-news"> Facebook told advertisers it can identify teens feeling 'insecure' and 'worthless' Read more

Another paper considered how to persuade sceptical people to accept a company's corporate social responsibility claims, especially when these claims conflict with the company's overall objectives. (An obvious example is ExxonMobil's attempts to convince people that it is environmentally responsible, because it is researching algal fuels that could one day reduce CO2 – even as it continues to pump millions of barrels of fossil oil a day ). I hoped the paper would recommend that the best means of persuading people is for a company to change its practices. Instead, the authors' research showed how images and statements could be cleverly combined to "minimise stakeholder scepticism".

A further paper discussed advertisements that work by stimulating Fomo – fear of missing out . It noted that such ads work through "controlled motivation", which is "anathema to wellbeing". Fomo ads, the paper explained, tend to cause significant discomfort to those who notice them. It then went on to show how an improved understanding of people's responses "provides the opportunity to enhance the effectiveness of Fomo as a purchase trigger". One tactic it proposed is to keep stimulating the fear of missing out, during and after the decision to buy. This, it suggested, will make people more susceptible to further ads on the same lines.

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Yes, I know: I work in an industry that receives most of its income from advertising, so I am complicit in this too. But so are we all. Advertising – with its destructive impacts on the living planet, our peace of mind and our free will – sits at the heart of our growth-based economy. This gives us all the more reason to challenge it. Among the places in which the challenge should begin are universities, and the academic societies that are supposed to set and uphold ethical standards. If they cannot swim against the currents of constructed desire and constructed thought, who can?

• George Monbiot is a Guardian columnist

[Dec 31, 2018] Britain fell for a neoliberal con trick even the IMF says so by Aditya Chakrabortty

Looks like Guardian start turning away from neoliberalism.
Notable quotes:
"... What price is paid when a promise is broken? Because for much of my life, and probably yours, the political class has made this pledge: that the best way to run an economy is to hack back the public realm as far as possible and let the private sector run free. That way, services operate better, businesses get the resources they need, and our national finances are healthier. ..."
"... I don't wish to write about the everyday failings of neoliberalism – that piece would be filed before you could say "east coast mainline". Instead, I want to address the most stubborn belief of all: that running a small state is the soundest financial arrangement for governments and voters alike. Because 40 years on from the Thatcher revolution, more and more evidence is coming in to the contrary. ..."
"... The other big reason for the UK's financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a "fiscal illusion". British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, "increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government's asset holdings". ..."
"... IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future generations ..."
Oct 17, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

The fund reports that Britain's finances are weaker than all other nations except Portugal, and says privatisation is to blame

Columnists usually proffer answers, but today I want to ask a question, a big one. What price is paid when a promise is broken? Because for much of my life, and probably yours, the political class has made this pledge: that the best way to run an economy is to hack back the public realm as far as possible and let the private sector run free. That way, services operate better, businesses get the resources they need, and our national finances are healthier.

It's why your tax credits keep dropping , and your mum has to wait half a year to see a hospital consultant – because David Cameron slashed public spending, to stop it "crowding out" private money. It's why water bills are so high and train services can never be counted on – because both industries have been privatised.

We let finance rip and flogged our assets. Austerity was bound to follow Will Hutton

From the debacle of universal credit to the forced conversion of state schools into corporate-run academies, the ideology of the small state – defined by no less a body than the International Monetary Fund as neoliberalism – is all pervasive. It decides how much money you have left at the end of the week and what kind of future your children will enjoy, and it explains why your elderly relatives can't get a decent carer.

I don't wish to write about the everyday failings of neoliberalism – that piece would be filed before you could say "east coast mainline". Instead, I want to address the most stubborn belief of all: that running a small state is the soundest financial arrangement for governments and voters alike. Because 40 years on from the Thatcher revolution, more and more evidence is coming in to the contrary.

Let's start with the IMF itself. Last week it published a report that barely got a mention from the BBC or in Westminster, yet helps reframe the entire debate over austerity. The fund totted up both the public debt and the publicly owned assets of 31 countries, from the US to Australia, Finland to France, and found that the UK had among the weakest public finances of the lot. With less than £3 trillion of assets against £5tn in pensions and other liabilities, the UK is more than £2tn in the red . Of all the other countries examined by researchers, including the Gambia and Kenya, only Portugal's finances look worse over the long run. So much for fixing the roof.

'British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City.' Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Rex/Shutterstock

Almost as startling are the IMF's reasons for why Britain is in such a state: one way or another they all come back to neoliberalism. Thatcher loosed finance from its shackles and used our North Sea oil money to pay for swingeing tax cuts. The result is an overfinancialised economy and a government that is £1tn worse off since the banking crash. Norway has similar North Sea wealth and a far smaller population, but also a sovereign wealth fund. Its net worth has soared over the past decade.

The other big reason for the UK's financial precarity is its privatisation programme, described by the IMF as no less than a "fiscal illusion". British governments have flogged nearly everything in the cupboard, from airports to the Royal Mail – often at giveaway prices – to friends in the City. Such privatisations, judge the fund, "increase revenues and lower deficits but also reduce the government's asset holdings".

Throughout the austerity decade, ministers and economists have pushed for spending cuts by pointing to the size of the government's annual overdraft, or budget deficit. Yet there are two sides to a balance sheet, as all accountants know and this IMF work recognises. The same goes for our public realm: if Labour's John McDonnell gets into No 11 and renationalises the railways, that would cost tens of billions – but it would also leave the country with assets worth tens of billions that provided a regular income.

Instead, what this IMF research shows is that the Westminster classes have been asset-stripping Britain for decades – and storing up financial trouble for future generations.

Just look at housing to see the true cost of privatisation Dawn Foster

Privatisation and austerity have not only weakened the country's financial position – they have also handed unearned wealth to a select few. Just look at a new report from the University of Greenwich finding that water companies could have funded all their day-to-day running and their long-term investments out of the bills paid by customers. Instead of which, managers have lumbered the firms with £51bn of debt to pay for shareholders' dividends. Those borrowed billions, and the millions in interest, will be paid by you and me in our water bills. We might as well stuff the cash directly into the pockets of shareholders.

Instead of competitively run utilities, record investment by the private sector and sounder public finances, we have natural monopolies handed over to the wealthy, banks that can dump their liabilities on the public when things get tough, and an outsourcing industry that feasts upon the carcass of the public sector. As if all this weren't enough, neoliberal voices complain that we need to cut taxes and red tape, and further starve our public services.

This is a genuine scandal, but it requires us to recognise what neoliberalism promised and what it has failed to deliver. Some of the loudest critics of the ideology have completely misidentified it. Academics will daub the term "neoliberal" on any passing phenomenon. Fitbits are apparently neoliberal, as is Ben & Jerry's ice-cream and Kanye West. Pundits will say that neoliberalism is about markets and choice – tell that to any commuter wedged on a Southern rail train. And centrist politicians claim that the great failing of neoliberalism is its carelessness about identity and place, which is akin to complaining that the boy on a moped who snatched your smartphone is going too fast.

Let us get it straight. Neoliberalism has ripped you off and robbed you blind. The evidence of that is mounting up – in your bills, in your services and in the finances of your country.

• Aditya Chakrabortty is a Guardian columnist and senior economics commentator

[Dec 27, 2018] The Rehabilitation of Robert Mueller by Kit Knightly

off-guardian.org

The "Resistance" -- the loose affiliation of liberals, progressives and neo-conservatives dedicated to opposing Donald Trump -- is NOT a grass-roots movement. They don't speak for the everyman or the poor or the oppressed. They are a distraction, nothing more. A parlor game. The face to Trump's heel .

The Resistance is the voice of the Deep State -- Pro-war, pro-globalisation, pro-Imperialism. It just hides its true face behind a mask of "progressive values". They prove this with their own actions -- opposing Trump's moves toward peace with North Korea and finding common ground with Russia.

In fact, though the resistance lives to criticize the Trump administration, they have been notably quiet -- even in favour of -- three key issues: The bombing of Syria, the tearing up of the INF treaty and the prosecution of Julian Assange.

They tell us, in clear voices, who they are and what they want and millions of people refuse to listen. So totally brain-washed by the "Orange Man Bad" hysteria, that they will side with anyone hitting the same talking points, spouting the right buzzwords, using the same hashtags.

This process has contrived to turn hard-line, inveterate warmongers into a pantheon of "liberal" heroes . John "bomb bomb Iran" McCain was mourned across the media as if he were a champion of civil rights, while Bill Kristol and his ilk are suddenly regular guests on notionally "liberal" channels .

and Robert Mueller receives a glowing write-up in the Guardian, being praised as "America's straightest arrow" .

The painful prose paints a blurry picture of Mueller. Slapping ounces of vaseline onto the lens of reality. It praises his hair and his clothes and his 35 dollar watch. It declares him a soldier "forged in combat", regaling us with tales of the bravery of Mueller's marine regiment -- "The Magnificent Bastards".

Vietnam is reduced to a movie set -- nothing but a backdrop for Mueller's courage under fire. He won a bronze star, you know. Apparently while "The Magnificent Bastards" strode around the Vietnamese jungle, burning villages down and watching the napalm fall from the sky, a couple of angry farmers shot back and Mueller was wounded.

Taking a bullet in the leg from a terrified peasant who just wants you to sod off out of his country will always win you medals, but it shouldn't.

Voluntarily signing on to enforce Imperial foreign policy in a war of conquest will always have the media paint you as a hero, but it shouldn't.

What flaws the author does ascribe to Mueller are those we all happily admit to having ourselves. He's a "micromanager" and he's "too tough".

Yes, and I'm sure he works himself too hard and doesn't suffer fools gladly and always speaks his mind aswell.

Read the column if you want, but I'd suggest not eating for a few hours first. A more nauseating panegyric I have not witnessed, at least since Barack Obama left office .

Far more telling than what it does say is what it does not say. It mentions Mueller's role as head of the FBI during the launch of the "war on terror", but doesn't go into any of the abuse of human rights that accompanied (and still accompanies) the increasingly authoritarian powers granted to US intelligence agencies by the Patriot Act.

Let's be clear: Mueller's FBI was complicit in rendition, torture, Gitmo. All of it.

Given that, it's rather unsurprising that the article doesn't mention the word "Iraq" once. A breath-taking omission, considering Mueller's testimony in front of congress played a key role in spreading the lie of Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction":

https://www.youtube.com/embed/x0CfAh2PJ6k?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

It doesn't matter how many Vietnamese peasants took pot-shots at him, it doesn't matter how tidy his hair is, or how cheap his watch. It doesn't matter if he looks like Cooper or speaks like Eastwood or walks like Wayne. He is a proven liar -- a man culpable in the greatest crime of the 21st century. He is, and always will be, a servant of the Deep State.

A proven liar. A proven killer. An Imperialist. A criminal.

Is this the stuff of which political heroes should be made?

Only in "the Resistance".

Obviously, Trump's administration is dangerous -- it still stokes warlike approaches to Iran and Russia. It has directly threatened Venezuela and Cuba. But you can't fight the right-hand of the Deep State by clasping the left. They all join in the middle. They're the same monster.

Anti-Trumpers, all over the world, need to take a good look at WHO they're fighting alongside, and ask themselves WHAT they are fighting for.

Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.


systemicfraud Nov, 26, 2018

Mueller's FBI named their 9/11 investigation PENTTBOM=Pentagon Twin Towers Bombing
There were also numerous media accounts of explosives being used on 9/11–even ABC's John Miller
stated initial FBI feedback was that there were additional explosives used at WTC on 9/11.

Did FBI test for explosives?
What were the results?
If no tests were done–why the F not?
Why didn't media or Congress ever follow up and ask FBI about the explosions which were reported?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PENTTBOM

Yarkob Nov, 25, 2018

i was reading that puff-piece yesterday, thinking "i wonder how long off-g's response to this journalistic offal will be in coming" you haven't disappointed! Kit..sorry, i sound like a gushing fanboi. most people outside of america don't realise how deep statey Mueller really is. he's the Harvey Keitel character from pulp fiction. the mob cleanup guy

the Graun is particularly odious at the moment. today's leader is a blatant opinion piece where the "writer" is practically rubbing their hand on their thighs with glee, telling us how trump is facing a subpoena cannon from the dems. good too see they're using their newly re-minted political capital on the important business of running the country resistance my arse

Antonym Nov, 25, 2018

The same Mueller went after Iranians instead of Saudis for the Khobar bombing despite contrary evidence, and ignored Russia's warnings about future Boston bomber Tsarneav. He was also the biggest obstacle for Sept. 11 families who wanted to sue Saudi Arabia. https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/opinion/robert-mueller-was-the-biggest-obstacle-for-sept-11-families-who-wanted-to-sue-saudi-arabia
A "good ol boy" in rogue CIA speak.

homeslicez Nov, 25, 2018

And with the anthrax investigation (which of course the Guardian doesn't mention), he's also a proven incompetent.

Have to say though–I'm looking forward to the day when this investigation is wrapped, the report comes out, and it's not at all what the Maddows wanted to hear. At that point Mueller will suddenly be a Russian agent himself; incompetent; compromised, and any/all other smears to explain why his investigation didn't find their irrational hysteria to be true.

Then maybe a few months later Trump will fire him and he'll be a hero again and get a Gofund to help this poor unemployed honorable soul.

Einstein Nov, 24, 2018

Wonder how the Grauniad will explain away the Skripal case when it's revealed that Mueller's Steele dossier was written by Skripal.
No wonder the British Deep State are panicking to prevent the publication of the documents ordered by the Orange One.

https://widgets.wp.com/likes/#blog_id=89387340&comment_id=138778&origin=off-guardian.org&obj_id=89387340-138778-5c256efa22ddd

Paul Nov, 24, 2018

What documents has he ordered?

https://widgets.wp.com/likes/#blog_id=89387340&comment_id=138780&origin=off-guardian.org&obj_id=89387340-138780-5c256efa2400a

Roberto Nov, 24, 2018

The ones specified in late September 2018.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-23/mi6-scrambling-stop-trump-releasing-classified-docs-russia-probe

USAma Bin Laden Nov, 24, 2018

The so-called anti-Trump Resistance(TM) plays the role of Good Cop to the Trump Regime's Bad Cop. Nothing more.

This is the nature of the political shell game that passes for American democracy, which in reality is an imperial plutocracy.

In all these Anglo imperialist nations in general like America, Britain, or Australia, there is only one true party: the party of Anglo American imperialism.

The anti-Trump "Resistance" is merely one faction of the Anglo-American Empire, which is in conflict with another faction of the Anglo-American Empire.

The supposed differences between them are similar to the differences between Coke and Pepsi, or McDonald's and Burger King.

Distinctions without a difference.

A pox on all their houses.

Gary Weglarz Nov, 24, 2018

("A proven liar. A proven killer. An Imperialist. A criminal.

Is this the stuff of which political heroes should be made?

Only in "the Resistance").

-- - ah, there you go again bringing in reason, a rational argument, the historical record, common sense, and in short objective – "reality" – into the equation. Of course if you are using these sort of criteria Mueller isn't going to look so good. You have to understand that the "Resistance" is, well, more of a "feeling" than anything rational or intellectually defensible.and valorizing Muller certainly isn't based on his "real-world" behavior. Simply put, Muller stands in opposition to Trump and that "feels" right to the "resistance." You know, just like it "feels right" to this same segment of the U.S. population not to let themselves think about the fact that Obama was illegally and immorally bombing 8 Muslim countries as he left office.

Of course in the end Mueller as "hero" of the "resistance" is simply the deep state's slight of hand PR campaign to oppose Trump as the impossibly and unacceptably "bad face" for U.S. empire that he is.
I mean how are Merkel or Macron or May supposed to rally their even half-awake citizenry into dutifully following our tweet crazed endlessly offensive "Orange One" into the next all important battle against the newest deep state defined "Hitler" in Iran, or Syria, or . . . while maintaining any credibility with their own populations?

Paul Nov, 24, 2018

It's astonishing how many self professed 'Progressives' swallow the Resistance line. There certainly is a war within the Administration, Dark State v the President. The latest episode seems to have centred around cutting off the legs of Trump's big partner in the ME and his son in law's close friend, Crown Prince bin Salman. What promoted Turkey to release the information they had on the murder in Istanbul? We can be satisfied it wasn't borne out of humanitarianism! Were they acting in lock step with the American Agencies like the CIA that now tells Turkey it has intercepts 'proving' the Crown Prince ordered the killing? The 'bloodless' Regime Change that is underway aims to remove an arrogant and reckless not to say bloodthirsty man from Absolute Power, a position he might have held for 50 years or more. No wonder Erdoghan would like to see him sidelined. 50 years of Absolute Power in one of the richest countries on earth is an awful lot of time! For the Americans it is a case of seizing control of Foreign Policy in the ME from Trump who keeps talking about 'getting out' of Syria: the Military and the Agencies regard that as not in American interests; they intend to stay and control the vast oil wells in the NE. But it requires agreement with Turkey so who knows what the Agencies promise Turkey in return? It sounds like a deal dividing northern Syria between the Turks and the Americans; no room for the Kurds (again). It's the most serious blow to Trump's authority akin to the time the American military disobeyed Obama over the cease fire with Russia in Syria when instead they 'accidently' bombed Syrian soldiers, killing 80 of them. President's it seems are not allowed their own Foreign Policy and in reality that has been the case since the CIA was founded. Only Kennedy seriously tried to break away

[Dec 27, 2018] Private Eye has reported that the #IntegrityInitiative anti-propoaganda unit is taking tips from the security masterminds who tried to sell the wisdom of going to war in Iraq!

Dec 27, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Blooming Barricade , Dec 26, 2018 12:18:48 PM | link

@2

My jaw dropped to the floor when I read that... the fact that they're reverting to the old name is the final step in the rehabilitation of the Iraq War criminals without liberals and pseudo left none of which would be possible

New podcast by Max Blumenthal and Ben Norton on Integrity Initiative https://m.youtube.com/watch?feature=youtu.be&v=doip79-pYn0

And tying this together.....

Chris Williamson: Private Eye has reported that the #IntegrityInitiative anti-propoaganda unit is taking tips from the security masterminds who tried to sell the wisdom of going to war in Iraq!
And this outfit was set up by the Institute for Statecraft that's received £millions from HM Govt!!! https://mobile.twitter.com/DerbyChrisW/status/1076983080131416066

psychohistorian , Dec 26, 2018 9:32:36 PM | link

Reporting on the Integrity Initiative is spotty yet but I did come across the link below of an article by Max Blumenthal....and promises of more.

Inside the Temple of Covert Propaganda: The Integrity Initiative and the UK's Scandalous Information War

[Dec 27, 2018] 'Trickle down effect' and pub test

Dec 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Phoroneus57 , 3 Jun 2018 23:03

'Trickle down effect' - the favourite buzzword of neoliberal supporters. I'd like to see trickle down effect tried at the local pub on the taps by the local mp. Imagine what would happen. Definitely doesn't pass the pub test.

[Dec 27, 2018] Dumping On The Donald

Dec 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Dumping On The Donald

by Tyler Durden Tue, 12/25/2018 - 15:00 41 SHARES Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth,

I still had some things I didn't talk about in Sunday's Trump Derangement International , about how the European press have found out that they, like the US MSM, can get lots of viewers and readers simply by publishing negative stories about Donald Trump. The US president is an attention magnet, as long as you only write things about him designed to make him look bad.

The Guardian is only too happy to comply. They ran a whole series of articles on Sunday to do juts that: try to make Trump look bad. Note that the Guardian editorial team that okayed the articles is the same as the one that allowed the fake Assange/Manafort one , so their credibility is already shot to pieces. It's the magic triangle of today's media profits: spout non-stop allegations against Russia, Trump and Julian Assange, and link them when and where you can. It doesn't matter if what you say is true or not.

Anyway, all the following is from the Guardian, all on December 23. First off, Adam Gabbatt in New York, who has painstakingly researched how Trump's businesses, like Trump Tower and the Trump store, don't appear to have sufficiently (as per him) switched from Happy Holidays to Merry Christmas. Sherlock Holmes would have been proud. A smash hit there Adam, bring out the handcuffs.

Trump's 'Merry Christmas' Pledge Fails To Manifest

During Donald Trump's presidential campaign he talked often about his determination to win one particular war. A war that had been raging for years, he said. Specifically: the war on Christmas. But despite Trump's repeated claims that "people are saying Merry Christmas again" instead of the more inclusive "happy holidays", there are several places where the Christmas greeting is absent: Trump's own businesses.

The Trump Store, for example. Instead of a Christmas gift guide – which surely would be more in keeping with the president's stated desire for the phrase to be used – the store offers a holiday gift guide. "Shop our Holiday Gift Guide and find the perfect present for the enthusiast on your list," the online store urges. "Carefully curated to celebrate the most wonderful time of year with truly unique gifts found only at Trump Store. Add a bow on top with our custom gift wrapping. Happy Holiday's!"

The use of the phrase "Happy Holiday's" [sic] in Trump marketing would seem particularly egregious. The long-standing "War-on-Christmas" complaint from the political right is that stores use the phrase "Happy Holidays", rather than specifically mentioning the Christian celebration. It is offered as both an example of political correctness gone mad, and as an effort to erase Christianity from the US.

It's just, I think that if Trump had personally interfered to make sure there were Merry Christmas messages all around, you would have remarked that as president, he's not allowed to be personally involved in his businesses. But yeah, you know, just to keep the negativity going, it works, no matter how fluffy and hollow.

Second, still on December 23, is Tom McCarthy for the Guardian in New York, who talks about Robert Mueller's phenomenal successes. Mueller charged 34 people so far. In a case that involves "this complexity which has international implications, aspects relying on the intelligence community, complicated cyber components". It really says that.

And yes, that's how many people view this. What do they care that Mueller's original mandate was to prove collusion between the Trump campaign and 'Russians', and that he has not proven any collusion at all so far, not even with 34 people charged? What do they care? It looks like Trump is guilty of something, anything, after all, and that's all the circus wants.

Robert Mueller Has Enjoyed A Year Of Successes 2019 Could Be Even Stronger

One measure of special counsel Robert Mueller's prosecutorial success in 2018 is the list of former top Donald Trump aides brought to justice: Michael Cohen pleaded guilty, a jury convicted Paul Manafort, a judge berated Michael Flynn. Another measure is the tally of new defendants that Mueller's team charged (34), the number of new guilty pleas he netted (five) and the amount of money he clawed back through tax fraud cases ($48m).

Yet another measure might judge Mueller's pace compared with previous independent prosecutors. "I would refer to it as a lightning pace," said Barb McQuade, a University of Michigan law professor and former US attorney. "In a case of this complexity which has international implications, aspects relying on the intelligence community, complicated cyber components – to indict that many people that quickly is really impressive work."

But there's perhaps a more powerful way to measure Mueller's progress in his investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 US election and links between Moscow and the Trump campaign; that's by noticing how the targets of his investigation have changed their postures over the course of 2018, from defiance to docility – or in the case of Trump himself, from defiance to extreme, hyperventilating defiance.

In reality, you would be at least as correct if you would claim that Robert Mueller's investigation has been an abject failure. Not one iota of collusion has been proven after 20 months and $20 million in funds have been used. And any serious investigation of Washington's culture of fixers and lobbyists would land at least 34 people who have committed acts that border on or over illegality. And in a matter of weeks, for a few hundred bucks.

Third, still on December 23, is Julian Borger in Washington, who's been elected to convey the image of chaos. Trump Unleashed, says our modern day Shakespeare. With Jim Mad Dog Mattis characterized as ".. the last independently minded, globally respected, major figure left in the administration".. . Again, it really says that.

Because woe the man who tries to bring US troops home, or even promises to do so a few days before Christmas. For pulling out America's finest, Donald Trump is being portrayed as something eerily close to the antichrist. That truly is the world on its head. Bringing troops home to their families equals chaos.

Look, guys, if Trump has been guilty of criminal behavior, the US justice system should be able to find that out and convict him for it. But that's not what this is about anymore. A million articles have been written, like these ones in the Guardian, with the sole intention, evidence being scarce to non-existent, of smearing him to the extent that people see every subsequent article in the light of a man having previously been smeared.

Chaos At Home, Fear Abroad: Trump Unleashed Puts Western World On Edge

The US stumbled into the holiday season with a sense of unravelling, as a large chunk of the federal government ground to a halt, the stock market crashed and the last independently minded, globally respected, major figure left in the administration announced he could no longer work with the president. The defense secretary, James Mattis, handed in his resignation on Thursday, over Donald Trump's abrupt decision to pull US troops out of Syria.

On Saturday another senior official joined the White House exodus. Brett McGurk, the special envoy for the global coalition to defeat Isis and the US official closest to America's Kurdish allies in the region, was reported to have handed in his resignation on Friday. That night, senators flew back to Washington from as far away as Hawaii for emergency talks aimed at finding a compromise on Trump's demand for nearly $6bn for a wall on the southern border, a campaign promise which has become an obsession.

Now look at the next headline, December 23, Graeme Wearden, Guardian, and ask yourself if it's really Trump saying he doesn't agree with the rate hikes that fuels the fears, or whether it's the hikes themselves. And also ask yourself: when Trump and Mnuchin both deny reports of Trump firing Powell, why do journalists keep saying the opposite? Because they want to fuel some fears?

From where I'm sitting, it looks perfectly logical that Trump says he doesn't think Powell's decisions are good for the US economy. And it doesn't matter which one of the two turns out to be right: Trump isn't the only person who disagrees with the Fed hikes.

The main suspect for 2019 market turmoil is the inevitable fallout from the Fed's QE under Bernanke and Yellen. And there is something to be said for Powell trying to normalize rates, but there's no doubt that may hasten, if not cause, turmoil. Blaming it on Trump not agreeing with Jay Powell is pretty much as left field as it gets.

White House Attacks On Fed Chair Fuel Fears Of Market Turmoil In 2019

Over the weekend, a flurry of reports claimed Donald Trump had discussed the possibility of firing the Federal Reserve chairman, Jerome Powell. Such an unprecedented move would trigger further instability in the markets, which have already had their worst year since the 2008 crisis. US officials scrambled to deny Trump had suggested ousting Powell, who was appointed by the president barely a year ago.

The Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, tweeted that he had spoken to the president, who insisted he "never suggested firing" Powell, and did not believe he had the right to do this . However, Trump also declared – via Mnuchin – that he "totally disagrees" with the Fed's "absolutely terrible" policy of raising interest rates and unwinding its bond-buying stimulus programme, piling further pressure on the US's independent central bank.

And now, in the only article in the Guardian series that's December 24, not 23, by Victoria Bekiempis and agencies, the plunging numbers in the stock markets are Trump's fault, too.

Trump 'Plunging Us Into Chaos', Democrats Say, As Markets Tank And Shutdown Persists

Top Democrats have accused Donald Trump of "plunging the country into chaos" as top officials met to discuss a growing rout in stock markets caused in part by the president's persistent attacks on the Federal Reserve and a government shutdown. "It's Christmas Eve and President Trump is plunging the country into chaos," the two top Democrats in Congress, House speaker nominee Nancy Pelosi and Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer, wrote in a joint statement on Monday. "The stock market is tanking and the president is waging a personal war on the Federal Reserve – after he just fired the Secretary of Defense."

Trump criticized the Federal Reserve on Monday, describing it as the "only problem" for the US economy, even as top officials convened the "plunge protection team" forged after the 1987 crash to discuss the growing rout in stock markets. The crisis call on Monday between US financial regulators and the US treasury department failed to assure markets, and stocks fell again amid concern about slowing economic growth, the continuing government shutdown, and reports that Trump had discussed firing Federal Reserve chairman Jerome Powell.

The last one is from one Jonathan Jones, again December 23, again for the Guardian. And it takes the top award in the narrative building contest.

Again, the Guardian editorial team that okayed this article is still the same as the one that allowed the fake Assange/Manafort one, an editorial team that sees no problem in making things up in order to smear people. To portray Trump, Assange and anyone who's had the misfortune of being born in Russia as suspicious if not outright criminal.

But look at what Jones has to say, and what Guardian editor-in-chief Kathy Viner and her ilk allowed and pressured him to say. He wants to have a say in how Trump should dress (seasonal knitwear), he evokes the image of Nazi architect Albert Speer for no reason at all, and then it's a matter of mere inches until you arrive at Trump as a king, an emperor, an inner tyrant.

"He's in a tuxedo!", Like that's a bad thing for Christmas. "She's in white!". Oh dear, call the pope. If both Trumps would have put on Christmas sweaters in front of a fire, the writer would have found something negative in that.

Trump Portrait: You Couldn't Create A Creepier Yuletide Scene If You Tried

The absence of intimacy in the Trumps' official Christmas portrait freezes the heart. Can it be that hard to create a cosy image of the presidential couple, perhaps in front of a roaring hearth, maybe in seasonal knitwear? Or is this quasi-dictatorial image exactly what the president wants to project? Look on my Christmas trees, ye mighty, and despair! If so, it fuels suspicions that it is only the checks and balances of a 230-year-old constitution that are keeping America from the darkest of political fates. You couldn't create a creepier Yuletide scene if you tried. Multiple Christmas trees are currently a status symbol for the wealthy, but this picture shows the risks.

Instead of a homely symbol of midwinter cheer, these disciplined arboreal ranks with their uniform decorations are arrayed like massed soldiers or colossal columns designed by Albert Speer. The setting is the Cross Hall in the White House and, while the incumbent president cannot be held responsible for its architecture, why heighten its severity with such rigid, heartless seasonal trappings? Everything here communicates cold, empty magnificence. Tree lights that are as frigid as icicles are mirrored in a cold polished floor. Equally frosty illuminations are projected on the ceiling. Instead of twinkling fairy magic, this lifeless lighting creates a sterile, inhuman atmosphere.

You can't imagine kids playing among these trees or any conceivable fun being had by anyone. It suggests the micromanaged, corporate Christmas of a Citizen Kane who has long since lost touch with the ordinary, warm pleasures of real life. In the centre of this disturbing piece of conceptual art stand Donald and Melania Trump. He's in a tuxedo, she's wearing white – and not a woolly hat in sight. Their formal smartness adds to the emotional numbness of the scene. Trump's shark-like grin has nothing generous or friendly about it. He seems to want to show off his beautiful wife and his fantastic home rather than any of the cuddly holiday spirit a conventional politician might strive to share at this time.

It begs a question: how can a man who so glaringly lacks anything like a common touch be such a successful "populist"? What can a midwestern voter find in this image to connect with? Perhaps that's the point. After more than two centuries of democracy, Trump is offering the US people a king, or emperor. In this picture, he gives full vent to his inner tyrant. If this portrait contains any truth about the state of America and the world, may Santa help us all.

I realize that you may be tired of the whole story. I realize you may have been caught in the anti-Trump narrative. And I am by no means a Trump fan. But I will keep on dragging you back to this. Because the discussion should not be based on a handful of media moguls not liking Trump. It should not be based on innuendo and smear. If Trump is to be convicted, it must be on evidence.

And there is no such evidence. Robert Mueller has charged 34 people, but none with what his mandate was based on, none with Russia collusion. This means that the American political system, and democracy itself, is under severe threat by the very media that are supposed to be its gate keepers.

None of this is about Trump, or about whether you like him or not, or even if he's a shady character or not. Instead, it's about the influence the media have on how our opinions and ideas about people and events are being shaped on a daily basis.

And once you acknowledge that your opinions of Trump, Putin et al, even without any proof of a connection between them, are actively being molded by the press you expect to inform you about the truth behind what goes on, you will have to acknowledge, too, that you are a captive of forces that use your gullibility to make a profit off you.

If our media need to make up things all the time about who's guilty of what, because our justice systems are incapable of that, then we have a problem so enormous we may not be able to overcome it in our present settings.

Alternatively, if we trust our justice systems to deliver true justice, we don't need a hundred articles a day to tell us how Trump or Putin are such terrible threats to our world. Our judges will tell us, not our journalists or media who are only in it for a profit.

I can say: "let's start off 2019 trying to leave prejudice behind", and as much as that is needed and you may agree with me, it's no use if you don't realize to what extent your views of the world have been shaped by prejudice.

I see people reacting to the star writer at Der Spiegel who wrote a lot about Trump, being exposed as a fraud. I also see people trying to defend Julian Assange from the Guardian article about his alleged meetings with Paul Manafort, that was an obvious big fat lie (the truth is Manafort talked to Ecuador to help them 'sell' Assange to the US).

But reacting to the very obvious stuff is not enough . The echo chamber distorts the truth about Trump every single day, and at least six times on Sunda y, as this essay of mine shows. It's just that after two years of this going on 24/7, it is perceived as the normal.

Everyone makes money dumping on the Donald, it's a proven success formula, so why would the Guardian and Der Spiegel stay behind? They'd only hurt their own bottom line.

It has nothing to do with journalism, though, or news. It's smear and dirt, the business model of the National Enquirer. That's how far our once truthful media have fallen.

dcmbuffy , 18 minutes ago link

"Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown." Shakespeare Henry IV

like trump said- "no-one said it would be easy."

uhland62 , 54 minutes ago link

All these journalists are influenced and manipulated by 'Australian-American Leadership Dialogue', 'Atlantikbrücke', Open Society Foundation money etc. Wars boost the NYSE because many weapons manufacturers are listed there.

If the journalists weren't manipulated all 2018 compilations would not have omitted the World Cup in Russia.

[Dec 27, 2018] The MSM are hardly going to publish this article, nor are they going to reference it, why should they? It goes against everything they have been fighting for and the tin ear of their readership are unwilling to change teir views. The only thing that they understand is money and they work for to further the concentration of wealth.

Notable quotes:
"... Friends of mine who make a living out of dealing both in stock and wealth creating schemes have no loyalty to this country, they are self motivated and libertarian in persuasion. "Government should get out of the way!" This is nothing short of scandalous. ..."
"... Unless we stand up for our rights and a civil society that provides adequate provision for fair and balanced policy making,xwe will continue until we will see an implosion. History is littered with examples of revolution based on the kind of inequality we are seeing happen in this country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that. ..."
Dec 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

PossumBilly , 3 Jun 2018 23:25

This message is clear and concise. It is however never going to be heard beyond the 'Guardian'.

The MSM are hardly going to publish this article, nor are they going to reference it, why should they? It goes against everything they have been fighting for and the tin ear of their readership are unwilling to change teir views.

The only thing that they understand is money and the concentration of wealth. This misonception as Dennis So far this has been handed to them on a plate, the taxation system has enabled them to manipulate an multiply their earnings. So much of money the has nothing to do with adding value to this countries economy but is speculative in nature based on financial and overseas instruments.

No is the time for our government to take the lead and start as the Victorian ALP have done and invest in people and jobs on the back of strategic investment. It is a fallacy that governments don't create jobs they, through their policies do just that.

Friends of mine who make a living out of dealing both in stock and wealth creating schemes have no loyalty to this country, they are self motivated and libertarian in persuasion. "Government should get out of the way!" This is nothing short of scandalous.

Unless we stand up for our rights and a civil society that provides adequate provision for fair and balanced policy making,xwe will continue until we will see an implosion. History is littered with examples of revolution based on the kind of inequality we are seeing happen in this country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

[Dec 27, 2018] All talk about "small government" and "slashing red tape" it is NeeSpeak for small government and NO red tape for the rich

Dec 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

MajorMalaise , 3 Jun 2018 23:44

A couple of thoughts - in no particular order.

When governments like the LNP (driven as it is by its ideology of greed, the IPA manifesto and Gina Rinehart's idea of what Australia should look like [and how little she should pay to pillage "communally owned" assets to enrich herself beyond imagination - she has no greater claim over the Pilbara than any other Australian, but like all who live by the ethos of greed, she thinks she should get it all for nothing]).

When the LNP talk about "small government" and "slashing red tape" it is politician-speak for small government and NO red tape for the rich. What it also means is much more government and red tape for the poor and vulnerable - as we would expect, the rich and powerful, who really dictate economic and social policy in this country enlist willing governments to enact measures that suppress the lower classes. It is not quite calling out the military (as Hawke did during the pilot's strike at the insistence of the corpulent Ables - one act for which I will always despise Hawke), but it has the same result by more surreptitious, lasting and egregious means.

And one of the lasting legacies of the philosophies of neo-liberalism, from which the Hanson's of the world "suck their oxygen" is that the political and corporate dialogue of the last 30 or so years has pushed the notion of self-entitlement and vilification of the poor and vulnerable further down the economic ladder. So now, we have countless Australians on reasonable incomes who, like the rich, are convinced that all of our social and economic ills can be rectified if we stop giving handouts to the bludgers, the malingerers, the disabled and the indigenous - the neo-liberal rhetoric is now so widespread that it is easier than ever for the vulnerable to be attacked and for many, that is seen as absolutely necessary. It is the false US-sourced notion that if you are poor, it is because you deserve to be and if I am rich - it isn't luck or inheritance - it is because I deserve it. This world-view makes it so much easier to attack the vulnerable as receiving way to much to sit at home and bludge.

Want to forget the now disgraced CEO of Australia Post who bought a Sydney mansion for $22 million and now wants to sell it for $40 million - tax free I might add. He is entitled to that wealth enhancement. But someone on the dole smokes a spliff now and then and we think they should lose their entitlements to an income that doesn't even get them up to the poverty line (but they should be grateful for that pittance). Want to forget the CEO's who pretentiously do their "sleeping rough" for a night and proclaim their empathy for the homeless who would shriek at paying more tax to genuinely fund programmes to help the down and outs. No problem - just embrace the selfish and greedy neo-liberalism philosophy.

[Dec 27, 2018] Is it possible to wrench control of MSM out of hand on large corporations and intelligence agencies?

Dec 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

RatioDecidend , 4 Jun 2018 01:33

This article is excellent and well overdue. All we need to do now is to wrench control of our mainstream media out of the hands of Corporate (foreign) control. We are being told to vote against ourselves in order for the few corporate elite to accrue massive wealth and power over us.

MEDIA laws need to be very strict with very, very severe financial penalties for bias and propaganda. Certainly remove this concept of self regulation whereby they sit on their own disciplinary boards. Raise the standards of our media and allow us to retrieve some semblance of our democracy.

Without media control, how would corporations be able to manipulate and propagandise the populace with their own vested interests.

That is why governments are doing corporate bidding and getting fascist style surveillance of its people, in order to counteract the ability of the people to gain knowledge through the internet and vote against corporate control of our democracy.... nothing to do with terrorism which was caused mostly by corporate foreign extraction of wealth through weapon sales; resource acquisition, etc.

Oops, got to go, hope that makes sense.

RatioDecidend -> Lawrie Griffith , 4 Jun 2018 00:51
It is back to control of our mainstream media by the very (foreign) corporations that are sucking out our wealth and putting nothing back.

Corporate media ia all powerful. They insidiously permeate the populace with corporate views of Australia's financial and economy; infrastructure and every aspect of social life from birth to euthanasia with racism and religion thrown in for good measure.

Should a politician have the audacity to act against their corporate interests, they do not last long, without exclusions - PMs Whitlam and Rudd being prime examples.

This current mob of gutless underachieving dinosaur neo con nutters in govt, are completely turning over Australia to these Corporate (foreign) parasites and our prospect is not looking good.

Within no time we will be a Corporatocracy (as is the USA) and along with that comes 1% owning 99% of the wealth; third world poverty; crime through the roof; drugs out of control; public health and education a joke; public services non existent; legal system in disarray and entrenched with bias and inequity.

[Dec 27, 2018] The big con how neoliberals convinced us there wasn't enough to go around by Richard Denniss

Notable quotes:
"... The political strategy behind these contradictions is simple: it is difficult to criticise government spending on health and education, or popular regulations like consumer protection and limits on executive pay. So why not just criticise all government spending and all ..."
Jun 03, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

After the mining boom and decades of economic growth, how can Australia be broke?

Gina Rinehart was becoming the world's richest woman those on the minimum wage were falling further and further behind

Australia just experienced one of the biggest mining booms in world history. But even at the peak of that boom, there was no talk of the wonderful opportunity we finally had to invest in world-class mental health or domestic violence crisis services.

Nor was there much talk from either major party about how the wealth of the mining boom gave us a once-in-a-generation opportunity to invest in remote Indigenous communities. Nope, the peak of the mining boom was not the time to help those who had missed out in decades past, but the Howard government thought it was a great time to introduce permanent tax cuts for high-income earners. These, of course, are the tax cuts that caused the budget deficits we have today.

Millions of tonnes of explosives were used during the mining boom to build more than 100 new mines, but it wasn't just prime farmland that was blasted away in the boom, it was access to the middle class. At the same time that Gina Rinehart was becoming the world's richest woman on the back of rising iron ore prices, those on the minimum wage were falling further and further behind their fellow Australians.

https://www.theguardian.com/email/form/plaintone/4148

Like Joe Hockey, Rinehart saw the problem of inequality as having more to do with the character of the poor than with the rules of the game: "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising, and more time working."

Privatisation is deeply unpopular with voters. Here's how to end it | John Quiggin

Australia isn't poor; it is rich beyond the imagining of anyone living in the 1970s or 80s. But so much of that new wealth has been vacuumed up by a few, and so little of that new wealth has been paid in tax, that the public has been convinced that ours is a country struggling to pay its bills.

Convincing Australians that our nation is poor and that our governments "can't afford" to provide the level of services they provided in the past has not just helped to lower our expectations of our public services and infrastructure, it has helped to lower our expectations of democracy itself. A public school in Sydney has had to ban kids from running in the playground because it was so overcrowded. Trains have become so crowded at peak hours that many people, especially the frail and the disabled, are reluctant to use them. And those who have lost their jobs now wait for hours on the phone when they reach out to Centrelink for help.

Although people with low expectations are easier to con, fomenting cynicism about democracy comes at a long-term cost. Indeed, as the current crop of politicians is beginning to discover, people with low expectations feel they have nothing to lose.

As more and more people live with the poverty and job insecurity that flow directly from neoliberal welfare and industrial relations policies, the scare campaigns run so successfully by the likes of the Business Council of Australia have lost their sting. Scary stories about the economy become like car alarms: once they attracted attention, but now they simply annoy those forced to listen.

'If governments can't make a difference and all politicians are corrupt, why not vote for outsiders?

After decades of hearing conservative politicians say that government is the problem, a growing number of conservative voters no longer care which major party forms government. If governments can't make a difference and all politicians are corrupt, why not vote for outsiders like Jacqui Lambie or Clive Palmer? There is perhaps no clearer evidence of the short-termism of the Liberal and National parties today than their willingness to fan the flames of anti-politician rhetoric without considering that it is their own voters who are most likely to heed the message.

Back when he was leading the campaign against Australia becoming a republic, Tony Abbott famously argued that you couldn't trust politicians to choose our head of state. And more recently, in campaigning against marriage equality, Minister Matt Canavan was featured in a television advertisement laughing at the thought that we could trust politicians.

Neoliberalism: the idea that swallowed the world

Convincing Australians that the country was broke also helped convince us that we have no choice but to sell the family silver. But of course we have a choice. Just as there is no right answer as to whether it's better to rent a home or buy one, there is no right answer to whether it's better for governments to own the electricity supply, the postal service or the water supply, or none of these things.

Different governments in different countries make different decisions at different points in time. While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the so-called free marketeers in Australia can see alternatives.

Consider stadiums, for example. The NSW Liberal government has a long track record of being pro-privatisation. It has sold off billions of dollars' worth of electricity, water and health infrastructure. But when it comes to football stadiums, it has no ideological problem with public ownership, nor any fiscal inhibition about spending billions of taxpayers' dollars.

In 2016 the NSW Liberal government spent $220m buying back ANZ Stadium, built in the 1990s with taxpayer funds at a cost of $690m and subsequently sold to Stadium Australia Group. Having bought back the stadium, the NSW government plans to spend hundreds of millions of dollars refurbishing it. That same money could build a lot of school science labs, domestic violence crisis centres or skate parks for the bored kids the shopping malls don't want scratching up their marble stairs. For the past 30 years, Australians have been told that we can't afford high-quality public services, that public ownership of assets is inefficient, and that the pursuit of free markets through deregulation would create wealth and prosperity for all. But none of this is true.

While the policy agenda of neoliberalism has never been broadly applied in Australia, for 30 years the language of neoliberalism has been applied to everything from environmental protection to care of the disabled. The result of the partial application of policy and the broad application of language is not just a yawning gap between those with the greatest wealth and those with the greatest need, but a country that is now riven by demographic, geographic and racial divides.

Cutting the budget deficit is very important – except when it isn't

Australian politics isn't about ideology, it's about interests. The clearest proof of that claim is that neoliberal ideas such as deregulation were never aimed at powerful interest groups like the pharmacists or the gambling industry. And savage spending cuts were never aimed at subsidies for the fossil-fuel industry or private health insurers.

Tony Abbott, who claimed to have a philosophical problem with carbon taxing, once proposed a 20% increase in the tobacco excise

Just as conservative Christian theology provides an excuse for sexism and homophobia, neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national interests – systematically cutting spending on their enemies and giving money to their friends. Here are some examples:

John Howard said he was obsessed with deregulating the labour market, but introduced 762 pages of labour-market regulation, which he entitled WorkChoices. He didn't deregulate the labour market; he re-regulated it in his preferred form. He knew that government decisions matter. Similarly, the Abbott government declared it was waging a war on red tape, yet the Turnbull government is determined to pass new laws restricting unions and NGOs. If there is one thing that neoliberals really seem to believe, it is that reducing the budget deficit is very, very important. Except when it isn't. The political and business leaders who said we needed to slash welfare spending because we had a "budget emergency" are currently advocating a $65bn tax cut for business – even though the deficit is bigger now than it was at the time of the alleged emergency. The Productivity Commission and state treasuries spent years advocating the deregulation and privatisation of the electricity industry – and succeeded in creating a "free market" system governed by 5,000 pages of electricity market rules. Electricity is too dangerous and too important to be deregulated, and those pushing for deregulation always knew that. They didn't want a free market; they simply wanted a market, one in which the government played a smaller role and the private sector made large profits selling an essential service for much higher prices than the government ever charged. The NSW government requires NGOs and disability service providers to compete with each other but, when it sold Port Botany and the Port of Newcastle, it structured the sales to ensure that Newcastle could not compete with Port Botany for the landing of the millions of containers that arrive by ship each year. While "competition policy" is applied to the vulnerable, those buying billion-dollar assets are protected from those same forces of competition.

To be clear, there has been no obsession among the political elite with the neoliberal goals of reducing government spending, regulation or tax collection in Australia over the past three decades. None. They didn't mean a word of it. While there may have been economists, commentators and even business leaders who sincerely believed in those goals, it is clear from their actions, as distinct from their words, that John Howard, Tony Abbott and even the former head of the Business Council of Australia Tony Shepherd, the man tasked with running Abbott's National Commission of Audit, had no principled objection to spending large amounts of public money on things they liked spending large amounts of public money on. Indeed, in his speakers' agency profile, Tony Shepherd brags about his ability to get public money for private ventures:

It is no mean feat to convince governments to support private sector proposals, but as former prime minister, the honourable Paul Keating, said, "Tony managed to get more money out of my government than any other person I can recall."

Hundreds of new pages of regulation now govern the conduct of charities. Billions of taxpayers' dollars have been spent by "small government" politicians on everything from television ads for innovation to subsidies for marriage counselling. And Tony Abbott, who claimed to have a philosophical problem with carbon taxing, once proposed a 20% increase in the tobacco excise.

The political strategy behind these contradictions is simple: it is difficult to criticise government spending on health and education, or popular regulations like consumer protection and limits on executive pay. So why not just criticise all government spending and all red tape in general? Once you have convinced the public that all government spending is inefficient, you can set about cutting spending on your enemies and retaining it for your friends. And once you convince people that all regulation is bad, you can set about removing consumer protections while retaining the laws that protect the TV industry, the gambling industry, the pharmaceutical industry and all your other friends.

Cover of Dead Right by Richard Denniss, Quarterly Essay.

When powerful groups want subsidies, we are told they will create jobs. When powerless groups want better funding for domestic violence shelters or after-school reading groups, they are told of the need to reduce the budget deficit. When powerful groups demand new regulations, we are told it will provide business with certainty, but when powerless groups demand new regulations, they are told it will create sovereign risk.

Ideology has a bad name these days, but it simply means a "system of ideas and ideals." By that definition, it is possible to think of neoliberalism as an ideology focused on the idea that market forces are superior to government decision-making. But while large segments of Australian politics and business have draped themselves, and their policy preferences, in the cloak of neoliberal ideas and ideals, in reality to call them "ideologues" is to flatter them. They lack the consistency and strength of principle to warrant the title.

This is an edited extract of Richard Denniss's Quarterly Essay 70, Dead Right: How Neoliberalism Ate Itself and What Comes Next , $22.99

[Dec 27, 2018] Neoliberalism has caused 'misery and division', Bernie Fraser says

Dec 27, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Former RBA governor says Coalition pursues low-tax road to jobs and growth despite lack of evidence to support it

Paul Karp and Gareth Hutchens

Tue 16 Oct 2018 13.00 EDT Last modified on Tue 16 Oct 2018 19.11 EDT Share on Facebook Share on Twitter Share via Email This article is over 2 months old Australian economic growth has been a 'standout' says Bernie Fraser, but too many have missed the benefits. Photograph: Tracey Nearmy/EPA Neoliberalism has caused "misery and social polarisation" yet remains in vogue with the Coalition government, according to the economist Bernie Fraser.

The former Treasury secretary and Reserve Bank governor has made the comments in a presentation circulated to participants of the Australia Institute's revenue summit to be held in Canberra on Wednesday.

Michael Keating, a former secretary to the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet, will also use the summit to raise doubts about the Morrison government's budget forecasts.

Australia's housing boom is not heading for a soft landing. How did we get here? | Greg Jericho Read more

In the background notes for Fraser's speech, seen by Guardian Australia, he says that Australia's 27 consecutive years of economic growth is a "standout", "Winx-like" performance.

But the record deserves only "qualified applause" because "too many Australians remain unemployed, under-employed, underskilled, underpaid and lack job security".

Fraser warns that society has become "less fair, less compassionate and more divided" and "more devoid of trust in almost every field of human activity" in the past 20 years.

"As a disinterested player in climate change negotiations and a miserable foreign aid donor, we have slipped well down the list of good global citizens."

Political ideologies appear to have contributed to inequality and disadvantage in Australia in that time, he argues.

Fraser in large part blames "neoliberalism" and its influence on policymaking for the "disconnect between Australia's impressive economic growth story and its failure on so many markers to show progress towards a better, fairer society".

"Favouring the market system ahead of the state system, and individual interests ahead of community interests, can lead to profoundly unfair social outcomes.

More than three million Australians living in poverty, Acoss report reveals Read more

"Those unable to afford access to decent standards of housing, healthcare, and other essential services have to settle for inferior arrangements, or go without."

Fraser says charitable organisations see the effects of "real poverty" that result in "misery, anxiety and loss of self-esteem of mothers unable to put food on the table for their kids, of old and young homeless people, and the victims of domestic violence and drug overdoses".

Fraser summarises the key thrusts of neoliberalism as "the pursuit of the lowest possible rates of income and most other taxes and the maximum restraint on government interventions and spending programs".

Evidence in Australia and overseas shows the influence of neoliberalism on fiscal policy "and the misery and social polarisation that has come with it", he says.

The global financial crisis "should have" marked a tipping point, when the "idealised view of financial markets being self-regulating" was shattered. While Australia "avoided the worst traumas of the GFC" with prompt fiscal and monetary policy responses, in Europe "taxes were increased and spending programs slashed", resulting in a further five or six years of severe recession.

Fraser says that all political ideologies – taken to extremes – can be divisive and cause damage, including an ideology "based on a state system".

But the former Reserve Bank governor focuses on neoliberalism because it "remains in vogue". The Morrison government "continues to reaffirm its over-riding commitment to lower taxation, and to assert that this is the best way to increase investment, jobs and economic growth" - despite the lack of evidence to support the theory .

Although Fraser recognises that politics never can or should be taken out of policymaking, he suggests the best course is to "hammer away" at flaws of particular approaches.

For example, Fraser praises "the avoidance of costly tax cuts accruing to large corporations" as a positive development – referring to the Turnbull government abandoning the big business component of its $50bn 10-year company tax cut plan.

He suggests the "quick done-deal" of Labor signing up to the Coalition's proposed acceleration of the cut to taxes on small and medium business was an example that "political interests are always lurking nearby".

In a separate presentation Keating – who headed PM&C from 1991 to 1996 – warns the government's promise to cap expenditure while simultaneously cutting taxes and returning the budget to surplus is based on overly optimistic assumptions of growth in GDP, wages and productivity.

Why are stock markets falling and how far will they go? Read more

According to Keating, the government must stop assuming there have been no structural changes in the relationship between unemployment and the rate of wage increases.

He notes that predictions of a tightening labour market leading to higher wages are predicated on assumptions of growth averaging 3% or as much as 3.5%.

He will also say a sustained return to past rates of economic growth will be impossible unless we can ensure a reasonably equitable distribution of income, involving a faster rate of wage increases, especially for the low-paid.

[Dec 27, 2018] Nationalism can be a good thing. We have to make the case for it Discussion The Guardian

Dec 27, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Eric Kaufmann, professor of politics at Birkbeck, has a forthcoming book, Whiteshift: Populism, Immigration and the Future of White Majorities . He argues that what I would call "bad nationalism" – the global surge in rightwing populism – is driven by large-scale immigration, and the threat it poses to the cultural identity of the ethnic majority. Some people fear change; they prefer the monocultural landscape in which they grew up, and visible changes to it threaten their sense of belonging and security. Certain attitudes are, if not hereditary, baked in to the point where they may as well be.

He supports this view with plentiful survey data, a favourite nugget being that the way you answer the question, "Would you prefer your children to be well-mannered, or to be considerate?" is a major predictor of whether you'd vote for or against Trump and Brexit .

The question is a proxy for what the cognitive linguist George Lakoff calls the strict father (well-mannered) versus the nurturant family (considerate) model. These frames are the timeless and elemental organising principles for our political divisions – authoritarian versus pluralist, right versus left – all the way back to Christ the Warrior versus Christ the Saviour.

I believe people respond to authoritarian and pluralist arguments according to who's making them, how trenchantly they are made, and the economic, media and political environment around them. Austerity soil has always been notoriously fertile for authoritarian ideas. Yet Kaufmann dismisses any economic factor, saying that had there been one, 2008 would have seen an upturn in rightwing nationalism, not 2017. My view is that depressions take years, not months, to grind people down.


UnstableGenius -> KingOfNothing , 9 May 2018 15:20

To me the key questions are how are the key decisions made and by whom are they made?

Globalism (not globalization, mind you) is a process whereby decisionmaking gets shifted farther and farther from the people and democratic accountability is continually weakened - ironically often with the rationale that we need this to "compete with China".

As a result, national borders (and therefore cultures) become less and less important and institutions like central banks, the EU, the WTO, etc. become ever more powerful. What you call neoliberalism is an effect - not the cause - of this phenomenon, in my opinion.

By the way, I agree with you that there is hope - in fact I am more optimistic today than I have been for many years - although probably for very different reasons than you.

DavidPavett -> formerlefty , 9 May 2018 15:16
I am quite sure that for the time being the nation state is an essential form of political and economic organisation. So I accept the necessity of nations. I reject nationalist ideologies which at best are confused, like ZW's argument, and at worst are very nasty things indeed.

I was stunned by the modernity of Renan's speech when I read it. Glad to see that it is available online. Hope you read it.

KingOfNothing -> UnstableGenius , 9 May 2018 15:01
No, thats not the case.

Globalisation is the ability to move goods/finance/ideas/culture around the global at speeds unheard of - there is no way to alter this, so your definition is inexact by quite a margin.

What is happening is neoliberalism - the economic sytem which has hijacked Globalisation - is playing havoc across the world.

These are not one and the same thing. Nationalism is a reaction to neoliberailsm, and the way it is concentrating wealth in the hands of the few.

Take a look at places like Finland, Norway and other parts of Europe, where they have restrained neoliberalism and do not have the same levels of inequality as in the USA or the UK. Japan is the most equal developed nation in the world. We need to marry strong democratic structures (at national and global level) with globalisation at the expense of neo-liberalism, not in support of it.

In short, your view is depressing and misguided. There is hope.

UnstableGenius -> KingOfNothing , 9 May 2018 14:15
Globalism is a system where a cosmopolitan class of technocratic elites makes all the decisions after talking among themselves in well-appointed conference rooms to which common people are not given access (think of what goes on in Brussels or in the ECB tower every day).
Democracy is something else.
In my opinion the two are mutually incompatible.
TheVixen -> hflashman , 9 May 2018 09:32
Yes, I'm talking about both British and non-British Muslims. Here's the clarification you're looking for: ICM Research for Channel 4 found that more than 100,000 British Muslims sympathize with suicide bombers and people who commit other terrorist acts. Moreover, only one in three British Muslims (34%) would contact the police if they believed that somebody close to them had become involved with jihadists.

In addition, 23% of British Muslims said Islamic Sharia law should replace British law in areas with large Muslim populations.

On social issues, 52% of the Muslims surveyed said they believe homosexuality should be illegal, compared to 22% of non-Muslim Britons.

39% of Muslims surveyed believe women should always obey their husbands, compared to 5% for non-Muslims. One in three British Muslims refuse completely to condemn the stoning of women accused of adultery.

Admittedly, this ICM survey is from 2016 so the picture may have improved, but I think you'll agree, these attitudes are quite a long way from the enlightenment values mentioned.

DavidPavett -> brexitman , 9 May 2018 07:21
Open borders and nationalism are really different issues. One can recognise the need for borders and border controls without convincing oneself that the people within a given border line are therefore endowed with some common essence about which they can feel pride or shame.

The pity about this is that liberal writers like ZW nearly always start from zero on this issue as if there wasn't a whole mass of discussion of a very detailed kind that has already taken place. Thus I would say that Ernest Renan's speech to the Surbonne in the 1880s published as What is a Nation? (reprinted in Shloma Sand's book On the Nation and the 'Jewish People' ) is well in advance of ZW's musings.

DavidPavett , 9 May 2018 03:37
I am with Einstein on this. He was once asked if he regarded himself as a German or a Jew. He replied: "I look upon myself as a man. Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind".
DavidPavett -> DrDeYoung , 9 May 2018 03:26
I found ZW's suggestion that "you do not need to be proud of Oliver Cromwell in order to be proud of Jessica Ennis-Hill" both revealing and ridiculous. If one is going to pick a figure from English history not to be proud of why on earth would one choose Cromwell? And on what grounds exactly does ZW feel proud of JE-H?

The Cromwell reference leads to a further point. Can the English, on ZW's argument, take pride in the actions of Scots prior to the Act of Union? And can they take pride in the actions of the Irish from Northern but not Southern Ireland?

I would nuance what you say just a little. Our actions contribute to producing not only things but also people. A parent can feel justified pride in the actions of his/her children as can a teacher in the actions of his/her pupils. There can also be a justified sense of collective pride for people who have contributed to that collective. ZW is right about that. She gets into a muddle when she tries to project this collective pride backwards in time to things we could have had no part in.

ponkala , 9 May 2018 02:13
People can be proud of their country , there is nothing wrong with it ,but when a country consists of many ethnic groups and religions, identifying the country only with majority ethno linguistic or religious group can lead to discrimination , alienation and resentment . This has led to civil wars in many regions. Canada and Switzerland are some of the exceptions where federal system and equalities of ethno linguistic groups have strengthened their countries .I would call this good nationalism.
On the other hand, many countries in Asia and Africa are suffering from the conflicts due to persecution or discrimination inflicted upon minorities from the majoritarian governments.
Modi in India is using the nationalistic card, trying to give an impression that the country only belongs to Hindus and Hindi speakers. In reality, India is not even a country , it is a collection of nation states with many ethnic groups , languages and religions which were united during the British rule. It is more diverse than the whole of Europe .However Modi is keen to perpetuate the myth India is homogenous , this natinalistic ideology might risk formenting divisions and conflicts in the future.I would call it 'bad nationalism '
joylessnortherner , 9 May 2018 00:50
Aren't we looking for the word patriotism as opposed to nationalism here Mz. Williams? I've always cleaved to Orwell's definitions of patriotism and nationalism. Predictably, nationalism gets short shrift.....largely because nationalism is dim, divisive and utterly undigestible for the vast majority of a nation at ease with itself. This is why Moggo, Bojo, Foxy and Gove prefer nationalism.

[Dec 27, 2018] Neoliberalism mantra: The dog eat dog economy simply represents our nature, it's who we are, we thrive under libertarianism.

Dec 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Jas636 -> Friarbird , 4 Jun 2018 01:38

Why would I refute points that I agree with?

I'm not the one who has a problem with neo-liberalism, it's provided for me more than adequately. Having spent a lot of time living overseas, it's provided ALL Australians with a far better deal than a few billion others.

If you are too naive to see this, then maybe you need to try an alternative for a while. It's quite ok, i'll be waiting for when the alternative fails (they always do) and I can come back and pick off the assets from the carcus of that little experiment for less than a cent in the dollar.

The dog eat dog economy simply represents our nature, it's who we are, we thrive under libertarianism.

internationalist07 07 -> Jas636 , 4 Jun 2018 01:34
I think you mean Neo liberal utopia
Friarbird -> GoronwyPrice , 4 Jun 2018 01:31
Po-faced, Libertarian BOLLOCKS.
Privatisation is sucker-farming.
Milking the punters, like ants milk aphids.
Farming them, like bellbirds do with leaf-bugs.
And even THAT is only part of the equation.
The fondest goal, the one which gives the management class hard-ons ?
Privatisation de-unionises their workforces.
GreyBags -> Shiner01 , 4 Jun 2018 01:29
It is quite strange that the biggest supporters of neo-liberal economics with its belief that giving money to the rich will solve all our problems call themselves 'Christians'.

I can't remember when Jesus preached trickle down. I don't remember the bit where Jesus said to treat those seeking asylum and fleeing violence like they are the scum of the earth. I don't remember when Jesus said the poor needed a good kick in the guts while they are down to motivate them to work harder. I don't remember when Jesus said we should cut funds from the sick to balance the budget. I don't remember Jesus saying that if you bear false witness often enough then you will fool enough of the people enough to keep power so you can look after your corporate buddy buddies.

In fact, almost all of the politicians in the Coalition who proclaim to be 'Christian' must have their own secret bible because nothing I have heard from the New Testament justifies their actions.

Me, I'm an atheist and I have more care, consideration, ethics and compassion than the entire collection of right wing bible bashers sitting in parliament today.

Friarbird -> RobertJREYNOLDS , 4 Jun 2018 01:20
"......the scam that is neo-liberalism."

No throwaway line.
A 'farming the suckers' scam is all it ever was.
With a view to massive wealth transfer.

Hasn't it worked well ?

Ozponerised , 4 Jun 2018 01:19
Thanks for this. We need more of these articles pointing out the bullshit behind this story that the Coalition has been feeding the gullible peasantry with for over 30 years, sneering, smirking and sniggering as truckloads of public money goes to private corporations. The money received from selling off public assets has been shoved into private businesses who then feel very free to charge like bulls.
It's a shame so many folk still fall for this bullshit meaning that their own families, work colleagues and community get shafted through diminishing public services.
Mal_Function , 4 Jun 2018 01:16
Brother Can You Spare a Dime

They used to tell me I was building a dream
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow or guns to bear
I was always there right on the job

They used to tell me I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?

Once I built a railroad, I made it run
Made it race against time
Once I built a railroad, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime
Once I built a tower, now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?

Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell
Full of that yankee doodle de dum
Half a million boots went sloggin' through hell
And I was the kid with the drum

Say, don't you remember, they called me Al
It was Al all the time
Say, don't you remember, I'm your pal
Buddy, can you spare a dime?

Songwriters: E. Y. Harburg / Jay Gorney
Brother Can You Spare a Dime lyrics © Warner/Chappell Music, Inc, Next Decade Entertainment, Inc, Shapiro Bernstein & Co. Inc.

prettygoody -> GoronwyPrice , 4 Jun 2018 01:11
'This is more or less the definition of increased productivity and it is what ultimately leads to improved living standards for everyone'

Lazy, neoliberal, supply-side economic guff. Neoliberals undermine government and democracy and then scavenge on the wreckage. When does 'ultimately' begin for 'everyone'? Never.

'Private companies provide the same service with much less labour'

Firing people is the answer? What a hardened realist you are. Must be great to be so certain in your neoliberal convictions. Are you really telling us that every privatisation has been a success?

These pieces of infrastructure have been built through generations of work and wise investment - they are not any one government's to sell. It's just easier for a corrupt, rudderless, feckless neoliberal shill to sell it than it is for them to to run it.

Friarbird -> ADamnSmith2016 , 4 Jun 2018 01:05
Can't even begin to address the characteristic Libertarian slyness in all that.
But I'll try.
"What you call neoliberalism was a set of responses to the failure of socialism or as Tony Blair said 'what matters is what works'."
Incorrect.
What I--what the world--calls "Neoliberalism', is the corpse of Classical economics, resurrected post-WW2 by Friedman and Hayek's 'Mont Pelerin Society. '
Why was it buried ?
Because during the Great Depression, its dogmatic insistence on continued austerity and wage cuts only made things worse.
After all, in an economic slump, whats the worst thing you can do ?
Deprive people of whatever little purchasing power they have.
So, goodbye Classical economics.
After which, govts SPENT their societies out of slump, putting people to work.
(O, the horror ! O, the heresy !)
The public works of that era include Germany's autobahns and the US New Deal projects, including the Tennessee Valley system and similar in Western States.
( O the horror ! O the heresy !)
Friedman, Hayek and the gang looked at those and post-WW2 programs of public benefit, such as the UK's NHS and shat themselves. Typical fear-driven conservatives, they were convinced such programs represented the thin end of the wedge which MUST end in imposition of Soviet-style conditions.
What utter paranoid crap.
Their resurrected corpse of Classical economics ?.
THAT is what is 'Neoliberalism'.
Whether or not I call it so is immaterial.
Then, this lofty bit of finger-wagging assertion;
"This process of economic evolution is necessarily imperfect and incomplete...."
Your Lordship's overview is appreciated...
"....but currently leaves you free to own a computer, read news on-line, communicate using the internet (maybe using NBN?) and express your views freely. "
Sez who ?
You ?
Besides, the only one talking about that old bogey, "socialism" is you.
Because its a conveniently perjorative label, eh ?
Pretty infantile, though.

"Anybody who doesn't agree with EVERYTHING I say, must be a 'socialist.' And they can't play with my toys."

PS 'Adam', why do LIbertarians always project a Superiority Complex ?
Why are the buggers always so PLEASED WITH THEMSELVES ?

Tasmanian Cryptik -> 20thCenturyFox , 4 Jun 2018 00:58
Socialise the losses, privatise the gains.
RatioDecidend -> Elizabeth Connor , 4 Jun 2018 00:55
intelligent comment. Due to corporate media indoctrinating propaganda it will take sometime for others to understand where the problem lies.
20thCenturyFox , 4 Jun 2018 00:41
Neoliberalism = Socialism for the Rich - Capitalism for the Poor.

Politics needs reform, plain & simple. Fed ICAC and Integrity Commission is a good start but it's not enough. The rules have to change too. Major decisions like privatising services or tax handouts to the rich, shouldn't by law be allowed to get through parliament or the senate unless the claims being made to justify them are quantifiable & demonstrated to be in the National Interest. Currently politicians have no obligation to do either.

e.g. claiming that jobs will be created if Penalty rates are cut = there's no way to quantify such a BS claim and Doug Cameron got them to admit that in Senate Estimates. Even so they were allowed to lie through their teeth and impose it anyway with no requirement to prove their BS claims. This corporate tax handout = once again they claim it will lead to more wealth to average Australians and more jobs but it can't be quantified or guaranteed via regulation so it's all bullshit. The rich will hoard the wealth & kick Australians in the guts as usual. That's what they've always done and always will do. Privatisation of electricity..what a crock of shit. They claimed it would create competition and drive down prices. What's happened? The complete opposite but politicians KNOW they're not accountable and therein 'lies' the problem. The shortsheeting of the original NBN, = yet another lie. They've totally crippled Australia's ability to compete in a digital age and completely screwed regional 2nd tier cities and towns in terms of growth. As far as the National interest is concerned the shortsheeting of the NBN is the complete opposite. Even so they were allowed to bastardise that too without any accountability whatsoever. Australians need to start demanding political reform so these bastards are accountable to the people.

grumpyom -> Fred1 , 4 Jun 2018 00:28
Neoliberalism is just the academic name for the political ideology of greed, corruption, self interest, self entitlement, corporate welfare, inequality, user pays, and poverty is your fault.

George Monbiot does it well too.
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2016/apr/15/neoliberalism-ideology-problem-george-monbiot

grumpyom , 4 Jun 2018 00:18
Do you see any contradiction between privatised electricity and socialised stadiums?

Neoliberalism explains it all. Corruption in politics means that only profitable assets are privatised. Stadiums lose money, so are kept in private hands as corporate welfare for the various billionaire team owners and TV networks.

Elizabeth Connor , 4 Jun 2018 00:10
I love Richard Denniss! What a brilliantly concise and yet well supported argument. Now we just need someone who can say it in terms that will persuade unwilling voters to think carefully about their vote. If they do think carefully they simply cannot return this government to power, now that they're all revealed as nothing but crony capitalists.

I must admit that like many people I also thought neoliberalism was an ideology, but then I couldn't understand why they were so inconsistent in their spending of 'tax-payers' funds'.

From now on I'll be pointing out those inconsistencies with more confidence - armed with Richard's incontrovertible points, and also by a closer reading of Canadian Kean Birch's article:

https://theconversation.com/what-exactly-is-neoliberalism-84755.

Here's Birch's definition of neoliberalism:

[The term neoliberalism ] is used to refer to an economic system in which the "free" market is extended to every part of our public and personal worlds.

And here's wikipedia's definition of crony capitalism:

Crony capitalism is an economy in which businesses thrive not as a result of risks they take, but rather as a return on money amassed through a nexus between a business class and the political class.

NB But there's a more explicit definition here, which I like much better:

Crony capitalism is a term describing an economy in which success in business depends on close relationships between business people and government officials. It may be exhibited by favoritism in the distribution of legal permits, government grants, special tax breaks, or other forms of state interventionism.

https://www.quora.com/What-does-the-term-crony-capitalism-mean-What-are-the-long-term-economic-costs-of-crony-capitalism-for-a-country

And from where I sit, crony capitalism cannot be defended by anyone with any kind of integrity.

sierrasierra -> telbraithwaite , 4 Jun 2018 00:04
Yes, we have a spot of bother, and I think that their name - Institute of Public Affairs - is quite a misnomer.

The way these people operate is more akin to Opus Dei and many other 'secret societies' that have another public face altogether.

Given that IPA's agenda is a private members wish list which has a huge impact on matters of a broad public nature, it's rather akin to incest, and we know where the confusion between Church and State takes us regarding separation of powers, exactly where we are right now .two Royal Commissions that are joined at the hip, Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse (2013 – 2017) and our current horror show Misconduct in the Banking, Superannuation, and Financial Services Industry which could for all intents and purposes be as long as aforementioned.

Stay with me, as these are issues that relate to other 'energy' systems, namely money, sex and power, and if we have any doubts as to how far this cancer has spread, a quick purview of the following members ought to resolve it for you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institute_of_Public_Affairs#Political_links

https://www.reddit.com/r/australia/comments/1bz7et/ipas_75_point_list_for_abbott /

For the 70th Birthday big bash, we know that guests to the party were:
• Gina Rinehart
• Rupert Murdoch
• Tony Abbott
• George Pell - Australian Cardinal of the Roman Catholic Church
• Michael Kroger - President of the Victorian division of the Liberal Party of Australia and former director of the IPA
• Mitch Fifield - Communications Minister

Think horizontal and vertical industries/associations and you begin to get the picture, and that's before thinking about BCA and VECCI.

Billyswagg , 4 Jun 2018 00:03
First, elect the other mob next time around. They're in the pockets of the multinationals and the US alliance as well, but they're not quite as bad, yet. The next thing is a full-on assault on mainstream media. The frontline of the revolution, if there is to be one, is the media. No more guns or territorial claims, it's a battle for the mind. Education is the key. The "Neolibs" attack education at every opportunity - teachers, curriculum, funding etc. etc. but there's nothing wrong with education - the real problem is that the mainstream media relentlessly, all day every day works to an agenda of dis-education, deliberately undermining and destroying the work of our schools. They preach doubt and mistrust - of learning, facts, truth, intelligence, pure science, art, music, culture, thoughtfulness, forbearance, empathy and altruism. They teach us to monetise and gamble on everything. Their aim is to dumb everyone down to the point where not only can't they read an analog clock or drive their own car but become entirely dependent on the word of authority (of which they are the mouthpiece) for a continued existence. Today, with our vast social platforms we can target their lies and threats, one by one. Pick each one, attack it, viciously, loudly, risibly, with facts, comedy, derision and invitations to dance. Spread it wide. Call them out at every opportunity. Sneer them into oblivion. Mainstream media is the primary problem. That's what must be destroyed.
Dunkey2830 -> Dave Bradley , 3 Jun 2018 23:53

Maybe the ALP have learnt from their mistakes


No, regrettably they have not.
The neoliberalist 'mistake' has been going on for around 40 yrs now - it has proved a relentless descent into inequality and austerity.

Chris Bowen at the National Press Club :
"...Labor will go to the next election:
Achieving budget balance in the same year as the government;
Delivering bigger cumulative budget surpluses over forward estimates as well as substantially bigger surpluses over the ten year medium term; and
That the majority of savings raised from our revenue measures over the medium term will go towards budget repair and paying down debt...."

Pure neoliberal economic poison that will create further hardship for our citizens, worsen inequality and recess the economy yet further.

People have got to come to understand that the bigger surpluses Bowen speaks of are federal tax collection surpluses; i.e. he intends to withdraw further spending capacity from the private sector, all while the current account deficit already draws 3.5% GDP (~$30bn) a yr from that same heavily indebted private sector.

This Bowen statement report from the SMH :
"The whiff of a surplus, not reaching at least 1 per cent of GDP until 2026-27, does not adequately protect Australia against the potential roiling seas of international uncertainty," he will say.
"Australia needs bigger surpluses, sooner than the government is scheduling.
"We can't afford to let the next four years go to waste in the efforts for a healthier, safer budget surplus."

Absolute macroeconomic stupidity, arrogant, vandalous ideological madness.
When will the people come to their senses and stop supporting such socially destructive errant neoliberal economic alchemy?

BiggerPictureCait -> Stopthelibs , 3 Jun 2018 23:53
Just look at the Citizens Assembly overseeing the law change in the recent Irish referendum. Worked a treat, cause those involved wanted to find the bvest alternative, rather than feather their own nest.

[Dec 27, 2018] Neoliberal ideology is free market, neoliberal practice is crony capitalism

Dec 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

jclucas , 3 Jun 2018 23:25

It is indeed important to make the distinction between the ideology of neoliberalism - the ideology of private enterprise is good, and public spending is bad - and the operational system of crony capitalism - the game of mates played by government and the special interests.

And it is certainly equally important to call out the monumental hypocrisy involved in the government's application of the ideology's set of rules to the powerless and public and the government's application of corrupt practice rules to the special interests.

The system is destroying the egalitarian character of Australia and fanning the flames of nativist authoritarianism here.

But what's even more dangerous is the fundamental dishonesty that the system necessitates, and the alienating influence it has - on top of the growing economic inequality.

The system has destroyed the economic and environmental viability and sustainability of the planet on which human civilization depends.

What is becoming increasingly clear to more and more of the public is that - simple put- the system cannot be allowed to go on as it has been proceeding because it threatens the future of civilization on earth.

Change is imperative now. However, how that will unfold is unclear, as well as, the toll the destruc5turing system will take.

What is clear is that a great restructuring must happen - and soon.

[Dec 25, 2018] The problem with neoliberalism

Guardian readers responces
Notable quotes:
"... Winchester, Hampshire ..."
"... Wallington, Surrey ..."
Dec 25, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Michael Greenwood , Geoff Naylor and David Murray on the failures of economic policy

While agreeing with the thrust of Paul Mason's article ( A new politics of emotion is needed to beat the far right , Journal, 26 November), it is surely necessary to employ economics if we are to defeat neoliberalism. We have lived under this regime, with increasing severity, for 25 years or so. The result has been the stagnation of real incomes for the large majority, with the benefits of GDP growth accruing to those at the top of income and wealth distributions. This has suppressed growth, as those with less money tend to spend it and those with more hide it and avoid tax. Lower UK growth is clearly shown in comparative data.

So if neoliberalism is a school of economics, it is a failure if the aim of economic policy is to encourage growth and the reinvestment of the benefits. Of course, neoliberalism is not economics, it is political dogma, supported by its beneficiaries. We need economics undergraduates to demand to be taught real economics and not the propaganda of power that is neoliberalism.
Michael Greenwood
Manchester

• In his search for a political narrative of economic hope to counteract the rise of rightwing populism, Paul Mason overlooks the sense of belonging that exists in faith communities. Here, a selfless collaboration for the inclusive good of one another has never required disruption of the free-market economy. It is just that this ethos has not been introduced at the national economic and political levels.
Geoff Naylor
Winchester, Hampshire

• All suffered the same 2007-08 financial crash, but the "UK has weakest wage growth of wealthy nations" ( Report , 27 November). Anything to do with Tory-led government economic policy?
David Murray
Wallington, Surrey

[Dec 25, 2018] Seven signs of the neoliberal apocalypse by Van Badham

Dec 25, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

For 40 years, the ideology popularly known as "neoliberalism" has dominated political decision-making in the English-speaking west.

People hate it . Neoliberalism's sale of state assets, offshored jobs, stripped services, poorly-invested infrastructure and armies of the forcibly unemployed have delivered, not promised "efficiency" and "flexibility" to communities, but discomfort and misery. The wealth of a few has now swelled to a level of conspicuousness that must politely be considered vulgar yet the philosophy's entrenched itself so deeply in how governments make decisions and allocate resources that one of its megaphones once declared its triumph "the end of history".

... ... ...

Paul Keating's rejection

It was a year ago that a third sign first appeared, when the dark horse of Australian prime ministers, Paul Keating, made public an on-balance rejection of neoliberal economics. Although Liberal PM Malcolm Fraser instigated Australia's first neoliberal policies, it was Keating's architecture of privatisation and deregulation as a Labor treasurer and prime minister that's most well remembered.

Now, "we have a comatose world economy held together by debt and central bank money," Keating has said, "Liberal economics has run into a dead end and has had no answer to the contemporary malaise." What does the disavowal mean? In terms of his Labor heir Bill Shorten's growing appetite for redistributive taxation and close relationship to the union movement, it means "if Bill Shorten becomes PM, the rule of engagement between labour and capital will be rewritten," according to The Australian this week. Can't wait!

Tony Abbott becomes a fan of nationalising assets

Or maybe's Sukkar's right about the socialists termiting his beloved Liberal party. How else to explain the earthquake-like paradigm shift represented by the sixth sign? Since when do neoliberal conservatives argue for the renationalisation of infrastructure, as is the push of Tony Abbott's gang to nationalise the coal-fired Liddell power station? It may be a cynical stunt to take an unscientific stand against climate action, but seizing the means of production remains seizing the means of production, um, comrade. "You know, nationalising assets is what the Liberal party was founded to stop governments doing," said Turnbull, even as he hid in the dens and in the rocks of the mountains to weather – strange coincidence – yet another Newspoll loss.

• Van Badham is a Guardian Australia columnist


uhurhi , 27 Apr 2018 05:43

"new introduction to a re-released Marx and Engels' Communist Manifesto. Collective, democratic political action is our only chance for freedom and enjoyment."

Might be true. But frightening that people should naively still think that democracy is to be found in the 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat' [ ie those who know what's good for you even if you don't like it ] of the Communist Manifesto after the revelations of what that leads to in the Gulag Archipelago , Mao's China , Pol Pot , Kim John - un .

How quickly the world forgets. - you might just as well advocate Mein Kampf it's the same thing in the end !

fleax -> internationalist07 07 , 27 Apr 2018 05:43
most "isms" kill off their rivals and the unbelievers when they usurp power
charleyb23 -> RedmondM , 27 Apr 2018 05:37
That's what you claim and it might be so but I'm not interested in keeping a score on the matter. The point you failed to get is that the people you mentioned where totalitarian thugs. They used the banner of communism to achieve their ends. They would have used what ever ideology that was in fashion to achieve the same results.
daily_phil , 27 Apr 2018 05:35
Does present day neo-liberalism actually qualify as a political movement?

Vested interests and the dollar seem to have all the power. Lies and deception are so common the truth is seen as the enemy. The voting public are merely fools for manipulation. Nah, neo-liberalism is not government, it is something far nastier, and clearly not what the public vote for, presuming a vote actually counts for anything anymore.

[Dec 24, 2018] The Guardian's Bush obituary plumbs new depths of sycophantic hypocrisy by Kit Knightly

Dec 24, 2018 | off-guardian.org

The strong man with the dagger is followed by the weak man with the sponge." Lord Acton

George Herbert Walker Bush died on Saturday. He was 94 years old. Thanks to decisions he made throughout his career, thousands – perhaps millions – of people never got near 94. He invaded Iraq in 1991, instituted sanctions that destroyed the country. He pardoned those involved in the Iran-Contra affair and was head of the CIA when Operation Condor launched the military coup in Argentina in 1976 .

None of that makes it into The Guardian 's obituary , of course.

Instead, Simon Tisdall – a mindless servant to the status quo, always happy to weave invective about our designated enemies – treats us to paragraph after paragraph of inane anecdotes.

Good old Georgie once gave him a lift in Air Force One.

Barbara gave him useful advice about raising Springer Spaniels.

The following words and phrases are not found anywhere in this article: CIA, Iraq, Iran-Contra, Argentinian coup, Iran Air Flight 655, NAZI, Panama.

Rather, Tisdall refers Bush's term as "before the era of fake news". Which makes him either a complete a liar or profoundly under-qualified to write on the subject – as the Bush-era spawned the original fake news: The Nayirah testimony . A pack of lies told before the Senate, and used to justify a war in the middle-east.

A Bush family tradition.

Tisdall talks of Bush's family – "he enjoyed a privileged upbringing in a monied east coast family" – but doesn't say that his father, Prescott Bush, was a known Nazi sympathiser and was even implicated in an alleged plot to overthrow the government of Franklin Delano Roosevelt .

Bush started two wars as President. Planned and enabled countless crimes as director of the CIA. pardoned all those implicated in the Iran-Contra affair. Refused to apologise when the US Navy "accidentally" shot down an Iranian airliner, killing over 200 civilians, including 60 children.

He was the original neocon – his administration brought us Cheney and Powell and Rumsfeld. Gave birth to the ideology that stage-managed 9/11, launched the "War on Terror", and cut a blood-stained swath across North Africa and the Middle East.

We don't hear about that.

What we DO hear about is Bush's "deep sense of public duty and service" and that "Bush was a patriot who did not need cheap slogans to express his belief in enduring American greatness". No space is given over to analysis, to examine the fact that "belief in enduring American greatness" is quasi-fascism, and responsible for more violent deaths this century than any other cause you can name.

In hundreds of words, a notionally left-wing paper has nothing but praise for a highly unpopular right-wing president. No space is given over even to the gentlest of rebukes.

The whole article is an exercise in talking without saying anything. Pleasantries replacing truth. Platitudes where facts should be. A nothing burger, with a void on the side and an extra order of beige.

It's an obituary of Harold Shipman that eschews murder talk and rhapsodises about his love of gardening.

A eulogy to Pinochet that praises his economic reforms but neglects all the soccer stadiums full of corpses.

An epitaph to Hitler that focuses, not on his "controversial political career", but on his painting and his vegetarianism.

Did you know Genghis Khan once lent me a pencil? He was a swell guy. The world will miss him.

We're no longer supposed to examine the lives, characters or morals of our leaders. Only "honour their memory" and be "grateful for their service". History is presented to us, not as a series of choices made by people in power, but as a collection of inevitabilities. Consequences are tragic but unavoidable. Like long-dead family squabbles – To dwell on them is unseemly, and to assign blame unfair.

Just as with John McCain, apologism and revisionism are sold to us as manners and good taste. Attempts to redress the balance and tell the truth are met with stern glares and declarations that it is "too soon".

It's never "too soon" to tell the truth.

John McCain was a dangerous war-mongering lunatic. George Bush Sr was a sociopath from a family of corrupt sociopaths. The world would be a far better, and much safer place if just one major newspaper was willing to say that.

Really, there are two obituaries to write here:

First – George HW Bush, corrupt patriarch of an old and malign family, passing out of this world to face whatever eternal punishment (hopefully) awaits those who sell their immortal soul in exchange for a brief taste of power.

Second – The Guardian, perhaps a decent newspaper once-upon-a-time, now a dried out husk. A zombified slave to the state, mindless and brainless and lifeless. No questions, no reservations, no hesitation. Obediently licking up the mess their masters leave behind.

It's sickening.

Kit Knightly is co-editor of OffGuardian. The Guardian banned him from commenting. Twice. He used to write for fun, but now he's forced to out of a near-permanent sense of outrage.


Michael McNulty says Dec, 9, 2018

My mother believed it was only Bush Senior's longevity that prevented some of the neo-cons from bumping off Bush Junior. He was President in name only and has long since fulfilled his usefulness in committing the US to endless war. He is prone to verbal gaffes and that must make him a liability, and when powerful evil people get nervous they often turn deadly.
vexarb says Dec, 5, 2018
Like son, like father -- Bush War Crimes in Iraq:

https://youtu.be/cqiq8P8dRtY

vexarb says Dec, 4, 2018
Cut&Pasted from Lavrov interview in today's Saker Vineyard:

Question: When the death of President George H.W. Bush was announced, President Putin expressed his condolences in a very emotional message. George Bush Sr. believed that one of the worst mistakes of his presidency was failure to prevent the Soviet Union's dissolution. Did you meet with him? What are your impressions of him?

Sergey Lavrov: I believe that George Bush Sr greatly contributed to the development of the United States and ensured that his country responsibly played its role in the world, considering its weight in international affairs.

I remember very well how President George H.W. Bush visited Moscow, and then he went to Ukraine where he encouraged the Soviet republics' political forces to do their duty by preserving the country rather than create huge, tragic problems for millions of people who became citizens of different states the morning after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Mr Bush was a great politician. I believe that every word that will be said about his achievements reflect the people's true attitude to this man. However, one comment about the link between President Bush and the demise of the Soviet Union. I heard a commentator say that George Bush Sr made history by helping Mikhail Gorbachev soft-land the Soviet Union. In fact, George Bush Sr never did that; he simply wanted to protect millions of people from political games. This is what we can say confidently about him.

https://thesaker.is/lavrovs-interview-and-answers-to-questions-for-the-programme-moscow-kremlin-putin/

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different frank says Dec, 4, 2018
The Webster tarpley book about him is interesting
Also regarding the "gulf war". The then US ambassador to Iraq April Glaspie gave saddam the nod to invade Kuwait.
He was set up.
http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/WRHARTICLES/ARTICLE5/april.html
Francis Lee says Dec, 4, 2018
It was German journalist, Udo Ulfkotte actually spilled the beans regarding the western media in his best seller, Journalisten Gekaufte, (Bought Journalists). Ulfkotte described the degree to which the CIA has penetrated the western media and corrupted, or bribed ( including himself) the system which has become a PR organization for the intelligence services, and MIC. On publication it immediately sold 120,000.00 copies and then strangely became unavailable in English. He was described as a 'conspiracy theorist' (but of course) and died at the relatively young age of a heart attack at 56. There are some salient issues surrounding his death raised by Jonas Schneider in his book 'The Mysterious Death of Udo Ulfkotte: Evidence for a Murder.

[Dec 24, 2018] People like you must count as a great success for the obedience training that keeps capitalist society running smoothly, with the few dissidents casually dismissed as "a bunch of tin foil hat wearing fruitcakes".

Dec 24, 2018 | off-guardian.org

Peter Bolton says Dec, 6, 2018

You know already what I will respond to this. And I know already what you will say in return. So, instead of getting into a back and forth about it, I will simply leave you with something to consider.

The fact that each successive report that comes out that refutes the claims of the truther movement is automatically dismissed by people like you shows how conspiracy theory thinking works. The final 9/11 report comes out in 2004 and, of course, the truthers dismiss it because it was written by a branch of the federal government who you believe perpetrated 9/11 in the first place. Then Popular Mechanics publishes a 5,500 word report in 2005 extensively answering and debunking the movement claims.

Here, you people can't claim that it was a government cover-up -- at least not directly -- because Popular Mechanics is a privately owned publication. Therefore, new sub-conspiracy theories are invented to "prove" how Popular Mechanics is part of the cover-up. To give just one example Christopher Bollyn "claimed to have discovered why the 100-year-old engineering magazine would take part in a government cover-up of the crime of the century: A young researcher on the magazine's staff named Benjamin Chertoff was a cousin of then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, and the magazine was seeking to whitewash the criminal conspiracy with its coverage." (Slate 2011) Here we are seeing the kind of incredible mental contortion that truthers are willing to engage in to continue believing their theories.

Then in 2008 the National Institute of Standards and Technology released the final installment of its study into the causes behind the collapse of the buildings -- $16 million was invested into the investigation. And, as I well know, you and other truthers will have a smart Alec come-back as to why the NIST report is wrong, its authors are part of the vast conspiracy and so on. On and on it goes no matter how many reports are published by however many experts.

Again, I am not interested in getting dragged into a back-and-forth about the merits and demerits of these reports. Rather, I wish to point out the flawed reasoning inherent to 9/11 trutherism: that it has its own internal mechanisms for discounting any evidence that contradicts its central tenets. It therefore constitutes a closed system of thought because there is nothing that would ever count as a refutation. In other words, for all contradictory evidence another explanation is made to retroactively fit the latest gap in the theory that is exposed.

Now, I know full well that this is probably not going to change your mind either. And I'm sure that there will be plenty of responses to this comment and thumbs down from Off-Guardian readers. But I hope that you at least consider whether you are wrong about this subject. For my part, I worry that 9/11 trutherism obscures what are indeed important subjects -- US imperialism, US govt. corruption, the nefarious influence of the CIA, the legitimate grievance that people in the Middle East have against the US, Israel, the Saudi dictatorship and so on. Above all, I worry that 9/11 trutherism makes it open season for the real enemies -- the US foreign policy establishment, et cetera -- to portray the resistance to them and their agenda as a bunch of tin foil hat wearing fruitcakes. I feel strongly that the left needs to jettison this in-group, conspiracy theory-type stuff really become a major force and overturn the status quo.

milosevic says Dec, 9, 2018
People like you must count as a great success for the obedience training that keeps capitalist society running smoothly, with the few dissidents casually dismissed as "a bunch of tin foil hat wearing fruitcakes".

Even NIST eventually admitted that WTC-7 free-fell for 2.5 seconds. That can only happen if all the support columns fail at exactly the same time; otherwise it would topple over sideways. Only controlled explosives can make that happen.

Your touching faith in the word of ruling-class "experts", over the evidence of your own eyes, and basic physics, is a credit to the Middle Ages. It would warm the hearts of the Catholic theologians who refused to look through Galileo's telescope because they knew, as a matter of revealed truth, that what he said couldn't possibly be true.

What do the claims of a bunch of tinfoil-hat-wearing fruitcakes count for, against not just ruling class dogma, but the entire weight of respectable middle-class opinion? The social status and careers of millions of right-thinking professionals, like you, depend on believing, or at least pretending to believe, not just the 9/11 Official Story, but all the other Official Stories as well. How could all those comfy middle-class people, with their comfy middle-class careers and high-status friends, be wrong? That would throw the entire plan for next weekend's dinner party into question.

Do you believe the Offical Skripal Story? The Official ISIS story? The Official Syrian Chemical Weapons Story? The Official JFK Assassination Story? The Official USS Liberty Story? The Official Tonkin Gulf Story? How do you decide which Official Stories to believe, except on the basis of careerism and status-seeking?

https://www.ae911truth.org/evidence/free-fall-acceleration

https://www.youtube.com/embed/SBmyPW6gGGI?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Peter Bolton says Dec, 16, 2018
Again, I am not interested in getting drawn into a back-and-forth about the various claims of 9/11 truthers like yourself. I would just like to make one comment and then leave two things for yourself and other truthers on here to consider.

First, I would like to comment upon the fact that I have been subjected to some rather nasty personalized abuse on this thread simply for challenging the claims of trutherism. I'm not pointing this out to feel aggrieved or to search for sympathy or to make myself out as some kind of victim. Rather I do so to illustrate how it is indicative of the negative and mind-closing effects of the group-think and the conspiracy theorist mind-set. It goes something like this: "everyone who questions the tenets of the great truther theory is the enemy, not just a skeptic but rather a collaborator in the evil system that suppresses the "truth"."

Second, I want to provide a link to an excellent article that addresses the claims of truthers head-on: https://www.skeptical-science.com/critical-thinking/911-conspiracy-theories-debunked/

The people it discusses were truthers and many of them reexamined their beliefs after being confronted by actual specialists on the subjects basing their truther beliefs on. If you are open-minded as you claim to be, then have the decency to at least read the article and consider its points, rather than just reflexively rejecting the source as part of the great cover-up.

Finally, I would like to leave you with a quote from Noam Chomsky. Now, I am well aware that you think Chomsky is a sell-out for not getting on board with trutherism and that you have all kinds of fancy come-backs as to why he is wrong. But he raises a very important issue of priorities for people on the anti-imperialist left to consider. Is this obsession with this issue really helping us to fight against imperialism and all of the other iniquities of the world? I think not:

"One of the major consequences of the 9/11 movement has been to draw enormous amounts of energy and effort away from activism directed to real and ongoing crimes of state, and their institutional background, crimes that are far more serious than blowing up the WTC would be, if there were any credibility to that thesis. That is, I suspect, why the 9/11 movement is treated far more tolerantly by centers of power than is the norm for serious critical and activist work." Noam Chomsky

Makropulos says Dec, 3, 2018
Ah "truther", that neologism which serves the same purpose as the recasting of the term "conspiracy" to designate foolishness, gullibilty etc.

And as for Chomsky, well here's what he had to say about the 9/11 "inside job" theory:

"And even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, who cares? It doesn't have any significance. It's a little bit like the huge energy that's put out on trying to figure out who killed John Kennedy. Who knows? Who cares? Plenty of people get killed all the time, why does it matter that one of them happened to be John F. Kennedy?"

Let's just consider that for a moment. Chomsky is considering the possibilty -- however remote in his view -- that 9/11 may indeed have been an inside job. And he's saying it doesn't have any significance that the US goverment carried out an attack on its own population! It doesn't have any significance that the "war on terror" was launched on the basis of a lie!

This is the moment when Chomsky truly stood revealed. He was like the kid with his hand in the cookie jar who instantly concocts any number of excuses all of which contradict each other. And yet even when caught out like this, he has his supporters who say he "dispels 9/11 theories with sheer logic"!

milosevic says Dec, 3, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/embed/TwZ-vIaW6Bc?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Makropulos says Dec, 3, 2018
That's the one. I mean – who knows and who cares? It's not as if a terrorist attack on mainland America that altered the face of New York and launched a war across the world is actually important.
Peter Bolton says Dec, 4, 2018
Well, I think the fact that Noam Chomsky has said this demonstrates how few people accept these 9/11 truther ideas -- even amongst people who generally agree with your (and my) kind of politics. George Galloway, who like Chomsky is about as far politically from the neocons as you can get, has also spoken very eloquently against trutherism: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_A5ToK6g0m8

Ironically, the only remotely public figure who does that I've heard mentioned on this thread is some Reaganite crank that I had never heard of until now. That really does not bode well for you, does it?

Makropulos says Dec, 4, 2018
Au contraire Peter, it does not bode well for the entire realm of mainstream discourse. Logically what Chomsky said is simply monstrous. As is this:

"I think the fact that Noam Chomsky has said this demonstrates how few people accept these 9/11 truther ideas"

What is the hold that this man has that he only has to say something to "demonstrate" what most think?

Makropulos says Dec, 4, 2018
And having now listened to Mr Galloway and once again having to put up with his portentous stretching out ..of the ..sentence to -- quite frankly pad the time out, I see that his "points" come down to the following:

Two planes flew into the twin towers. Yes -- there's no disputing that one.

GW Bush could not possibly have planned the thing himself. Yes again -- no dispute. At this point I must express my gratitude to Reagan for finally proving that the guy in front is just a puppet.

If the US did it themselves and it "got out" it would be the end of America's credibility. Yes indeed. Which is why, all across the mainstream press, it will only ever be presented as a "nutty conspiracy theory"

milosevic says Dec, 4, 2018
Galloway: "I saw, myself, the airplanes hitting the twin towers."

-- which is supposed to constitute proof of the official Evil-Terrorists-In-A-Cave-In-Afghanistan story.

attention, "flaxgirl": your grand unified theory of 9/11 now needs to incorporate George Galloway as a fake witness for the US government, which seems strange, given his decades of opposition, both before and after, to the imperial warfare for which 9/11 served as a pretext.

The political function of the No-Planes-At-WTC claims could not be more clear; it's so that people who dispute other aspects of the Official Story can all be dismissed as deranged idiots.

flaxgirl says Dec, 4, 2018
But Peter you need to look at the evidence for yourself and not take others' word for it. And be guided by those who know how buildings collapse -- Chomsky certainly doesn't.
This is a wonderful tutorial by Richard Gage, founder of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth.

The story of 9/11 is utterly preposterous. The only reason people believe it is to do with psychology of how we relate to power nothing to do with the actuality of the story -- because it's utterly ludicrous.

flaxgirl says Dec, 4, 2018
Forgot link to tutorial: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ged-FIf46dc

This is my article on Chomsky's sophistry on 9/11:
https://off-guardian.org/2016/10/11/analysis-of-the-sophistry-of-noam-chomsky-on-911/

Jay-Q says Dec, 4, 2018
Wut? " less violent ones like England, the US or France " From here on it just gets worse until Chomsky has no credible position left to argue from.

Heightened sense of cognitive dissonance by old Noam.

' even if it were true, which is extremely unlikely, then who cares? It doesn't have any significance."

Wow, for someone with such intellect this is some low-level thinking. I almost feel sorry for Chomsky for holding such an immoral position. Would he feel the same way if his wife was murdered? "Ah, there's other things to worry about, anything else is a diversion of energy." Very sad.

flaxgirl says Dec, 4, 2018
Where basic physics is concerned we should not speak of theory. The only possible explanation for the collapse of the buildings is controlled demolition. There is no doubt whatsoever that 9/11 was an inside conspiracy. There is also no doubt that death and injury were staged – at least, there is zero evidence of its reality in the visual record and one would think that for the 3,000 dead and 6,000 injured claimed there would be at least one piece of evidence for their reality, rather than every piece (anomalously small in number) in the visual record perfectly fitting "staged". Not to mention other anomalies unrelated to the visual record and that actual killing and injuring of people by the perpetrators would take a highly-problematic form in the shape of a great number of loved ones (as opposed to the tiny number presented) and the injured themselves when controlled demolition was so obvious.
kevin morris says Dec, 4, 2018
When you say that there is no doubt whatsoever that 9/11 was an inside conspiracy, I feel you are being overconfident unless what you are saying is that there is some evidence that some figures at the World Trade Centres seemed to have foreknowledge.

Frankly, although we all have our theories as to who was responsible, I remain in full agreement with Architects and Engineers for 9/11 truth who state simply that the official account conflicts with physics. All else is suspicion and supposition. It may well be well grounded supposition, but until we discover who planned and executed the event and who definitely had foreknowledge, what we are dealing with is speculation.

The problem with that is that the great many people who refuse to believe anything other than the official account of 9/11 dismiss our views as those of cranks

milosevic says Dec, 4, 2018
there is some evidence that some figures at the World Trade Centres seemed to have foreknowledge

https://www.youtube.com/embed/Wq-0JIR38V0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

flaxgirl says Dec, 7, 2018
Kevin,

The buildings came down by controlled demolition. The evidence for that is incontrovertible and the rationale presented by NIST for fire being the cause is demonstrably not based on a skerrick of evidence and is obviously fraudulent and false. There is not a single reason to suspect that the cause of collapse of all the buildings wasn't controlled demolition. If you believe there is a single reason to suspect another cause can you please provide it.

Since waking up to 9/11, I find that people either decide something is something with too little evidence or refrain from deciding on what something is when the evidence is so overwhelming you're practically drowning in it. Being conservative in judgement in the face of overwhelming evidence is no virtue in my opinion.

I have engaged in conversation with Mick West who runs the metabunk.org website that allegedly debunks all the conspiracy theories. We have gone back and forth a number of times over the cause of WTC-7's collapse and I have invited him to respond to an Occam's Razor challenge to provide 10 points that favour "fire" over "controlled demolition". He did not respond to the challenge, nor could he provide a single point that favours fire over controlled demolition. Not a single point -- didn't change his mind though.
https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/5000-challenge.html

Nor has anyone responded to my other Occam's Razor challenges. I judge when I see that there is a reasonable amount of evidence and that evidence points all one way and there is no evidence pointing any other way. If you disagree with this method fair enough.

flaxgirl says Dec, 7, 2018
And just to add, that, of course, it must be an inside job in the case of controlled demolition. As Graeme MacQueen says, there is no room in the official story for controlled demolition.

The big secret is though that death and injury were staged. That's the real secret.

flaxgirl says Dec, 4, 2018
It was a totally excellent piece. No reservations.

"Theory"? Are you serious? If you believe that 9/11 was the work of 19 barely-trained terrorists (one of whom cried when asked to do steep turns and stalls according to his alleged flying instructor but was tasked with the most impossibly-expert manoeuvre of doing a 330 degree turn into the Pentagon), armed with boxcutters who managed to hijack 4 planes, navigate them into 3 iconic buildings without being molested by a single fighter interceptor through the most defended airspace on earth, which subsequently caused the 10-second collapses (displaying all the characteristics of controlled demolition and none of fire-caused collapses) of three high-rise steel frame buildings, here's a $5,000 challenge for you. All you have to do is provide 10 points that support the "fire" hypothesis over the "controlled demolition" hypothesis for the collapse of WTC-7 and you can choose your own structural engineer to validate your points. There's so very much material on the collapse it shouldn't be very difficult. In fact, all you have to do is come up with one point to support WTC-7's collapse by fire and I'll give you $5,000. One point -- validated by a structural engineer of your choice. https://occamsrazorterrorevents.weebly.com/5000-challenge.html

9/11 is probably the biggest hoax in history and includes the very clever subhoax of 3,000 dead and 6,000 injured. Not only was it a hoax but they did not aim for realism in any shape or form and gave us extra clues in addition to their preposterous against-physical-and-administrative-reality story.

This is what Paul Craig Roberts, chairman of The Institute for Political Economy, who has had careers in scholarship and academia, journalism, public service, and business, has to say about 9/11.
https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/pages/about-paul-craig-roberts/

According to the official story, on September 11, 2001, the vaunted National Security State of the World's Only Superpower was defeated by a few young Saudi Arabians armed only with box cutters. The American National Security State proved to be totally helpless and was dealt the greatest humiliation ever inflicted on any country claiming to be a power.

That day no aspect of the National Security State worked. Everything failed.

The US Air Force for the first time in its history could not get intercepter jet fighters into the air.

The National Security Council failed.

All sixteen US intelligence agencies failed as did those of America's NATO and Israeli allies.

Air Traffic Control failed.

Airport Security failed four times at the same moment on the same day. The probability of such a failure is zero.

If such a thing had actually happened, there would have been demands from the White House, from Congress, and from the media for an investigation. Officials would have been held accountable for their failures. Heads would have rolled.

Instead, the White House resisted for one year the 9/11 families' demands for an investigation. Finally, a collection of politicians was assembled to listen to the government's account and to write it down. The chairman, vice chairman, and legal counsel of the 9/11 Commission have said that information was withheld from the commission, lies were told to the commission, and that the commission "was set up to fail." The worst security failure in history resulted in not a single firing. No one was held responsible.

Washington concluded that 9/11 was possible because America lacked a police state.
The PATRIOT Act, which was awaiting the event was quickly passed by the congressional idiots. The Act established executive branch independence of law and the Constitution. The Act and follow-up measures have institutionalized a police state in "the land of the free."

Osama bin Laden, a CIA asset dying of renal failure, was blamed despite his explicit denial. For the next ten years Osama bin Laden was the bogyman that provided the excuse for Washington to kill countless numbers of Muslims. Then suddenly on May 2, 2011, Obama claimed that US Navy SEALs had killed bin Laden in Pakistan. Eyewitnesses on the scene contradicted the White House's story. Osama bin Laden became the only human in history to survive renal failure for ten years. There was no dialysis machine in what was said to be bin Laden's hideaway. The numerous obituaries of bin Laden's death in December 2001 went down the memory hole. And the SEAL team died a few weeks later in a mysterious helicopter crash in Afghanistan. The thousands of sailors on the aircraft carrier from which bin Laden was said to have been dumped into the Indian Ocean wrote home that no such burial took place.

The fairy tale story of bin Laden's murder by Seal Team Six served to end the challenge by disappointed Democrats to Obama's nomination for a second term. It also freed the "war on terror" from the bin Laden constraint. Washington wanted to attack Libya, Syria, and Iran, countries in which bin Laden was known not to have organizations, and the succession of faked bin Laden videos, in which bin Laden grew progressively younger as the fake bin Laden claimed credit for each successive attack, had lost credibility among experts.

Watching the twin towers and WTC 7 come down, it was obvious to me that the buildings were not falling down as a result of structural damage. When it became clear that the White House had blocked an independent investigation of the only three steel skyscrapers in world history to collapse as a result of low temperature office fires, it was apparent that there was a coverup.

After 13 years people at home and abroad find the government's story less believable.
The case made by independent experts is now so compelling that mainstream media has opened to it. Here is Richard Gage of Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth on C-SPAN: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Zbv2SvBEec#t=23

Anticitizen one says Dec, 4, 2018
The only thing that surprises me about 9/11 these days is that new evidence linking Russia to the event hasn't been fabricated, sorry, discovered yet.

[Dec 24, 2018] Revealed: the dark past of Outcast , MI6 s top wartime double agent

Notable quotes:
"... It is also a nice illustration of how "Westminster Style" democracy works. Any chance that the electorate might elect a left wing government and you get a Zinoviev letter or a Bologna railway station bombing. ..."
"... In other words "Elect whom you like". ("Provided we like them too!") It's really a bit like herding sheep. ..."
Oct 11, 2015 | The Guardian

The documents reveal him as Alexis Bellegarde, one of four White Russian aristocrats believed to have been behind an infamous forgery 15 years before the war began. The revelations of Bellegarde's importance to MI6 will increase suspicions that British agents had a hand in the production of the "Zinoviev letter"; its leak to the Daily Mail many believe cost Labour the 1924 general election.

foolisholdman -> Brian Milne 11 Oct 2015 05:55

Brian Milne

It is also a nice illustration of how "Westminster Style" democracy works. Any chance that the electorate might elect a left wing government and you get a Zinoviev letter or a Bologna railway station bombing.

In other words "Elect whom you like". ("Provided we like them too!") It's really a bit like herding sheep.

AlbertTatlock53 -> LordUpminster 11 Oct 2015 08:35

Despite the blandness of the OH volumes on Ultra, some facts did leak out, like having a month's notice of the Italian declaration of war and useful tactical and operational details like the positions of wolf packs. It also reminded me of a couple of anecdotes about Ultra information by unwitting sources in memoirs. I wouldn't deprecate Ultra or the British war effort that far. The British army that went to Normandy was the most mechanised and armoured army in history and pulled rather more than its own weight in the coalition. The principal offensive weapon of the British empire was Bomber Command, which in the spring-summer of 1943 began to devastate the German war economy.

The Soviet and then the US contributions to the war dwarfed the British empire but only relatively, it was still a superpower in 1945, though by the Suez crime it had become a wholly-owned subsidiary of Murder Inc.

LordUpminster ID7678903 11 Oct 2015 04:04

And no doubt the establishment will continue to play such dirty tricks to undermine our so called democracy

Not the slightest: according to our friend jamesforysthe below that's essentially what they're for.

Re. the Zinoviev letter, I did see one theory many years ago that the man behind it was the then-Polish Army Minister Władysław Sikorski, the one who later headed the Polish exile government in London and was killed in an air crash. Certainly in October 1924 he was bragging to people in governmental circles in Warsaw that it was his agents who had arranged it - though why exactly is not easy to see, given that Poland had no particular political interest in Britain at the time. I suspect that it was empty boasting, and that it was Russian emigrés who were responsible.

Coming up soon: conclusive proof that Jeremy Corbyn was once an agent of the Tsarist Okhrana.

Brian Milne 11 Oct 2015 04:00

Had Labour won, thus Baldwin, MacDonald, Baldwin, Chamberlain probably not have been the course of politics, would the UK necessarily have moved further left? The question remains to be seen, but unless somebody more genuinely socialist had replaced MacDonald probably not. However, the outcome may well have been a far more amicable relationship with the Soviet Union, the Versailles Treaty and League of Nations possibly better conformed to and the rise of Hitler less likely. The Zinoviev letter may well have been as much a contributory denominator in that than is implied. Of course, we hall never know really, only historians expounding their own theories and interpretations of history.

samuel glover -> jamesforsythe 11 Oct 2015 01:43

"Some brilliant espionage across the Middle-east and Israel is precisely what's needed to bring these politically infantile areas into western like democratic administrations, this century, not next. And with fewer wars. "

First, you think western intelligence agencies **haven't** been prominent in the history of that region?!?!?

Second, you think these same agencies are capable of just whipping up entire social and political structures and cultures on demand? Do you read newspapers?

Remember that these agencies -- in America, in Britain, in every NATO country -- spent decades and billions of dollars and billions of man-hours staring obsessively at the USSR. EVERY ONE of them was completely blindsided when the Soviet Union folded up.

error418 -> jamesforsythe 10 Oct 2015 23:21

"Our" best interests or that intelligence service´s best interests? ISI in Pakistan is a good example of such a service gone rogue. Experts in election rigging.

Frisco27 10 Oct 2015 19:06

"Sexing up" documents? What a scumbag... That would never happen these days.

[Dec 24, 2018] Income inequality happens by design. We cant fix it by tweaking capitalism

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Stocks have always been "a legal form of gambling". What is happening now however, is that a pair of treys can beat out your straight flush. Companies that have never turned a profit fetch huge prices on the stock market. ..."
"... The stock market suckered millions in before 2008 and then prices plummeted. Where did the money from grandpa's pension fund go? ..."
"... Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man's greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won't use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership. ..."
"... family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn't unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery. ..."
"... Correction: The average person in poverty in the U.S. does not live in the same abject, third world poverty as you might find in Honduras, Central African Republic, Cambodia, or the barrios of Sao Paulo. ..."
"... Since our poor don't live in abject poverty, I invite you to live as a family of four on less than $11,000 a year anywhere in the United States. If you qualify and can obtain subsidized housing you may have some of the accoutrements in your home that you seem to equate with living the high life. You know, running water, a fridge, a toilet, a stove. You would also likely have a phone (subsidized at that) so you might be able to participate (or attempt to participate) in the job market in an honest attempt to better your family's economic prospects and as is required to qualify for most assistance programs. ..."
"... So many dutiful neoliberals on here rushing to the defense of poor Capitalism. Clearly, these commentators are among those who are in the privileged position of reaping the true benefits of Capitalism - And, of course, there are many benefits to reap if you are lucky enough to be born into the right racial-socioeconomic context. ..."
"... Please walk us through how non-capitalist systems create wealth and allow their lowest class people propel themselves to the top in one generation. You will note that most socialist systems derive their technology and advancements from the more capitalistic systems. Pharmaceuticals, software, and robotics are a great example of this. I shutter to think of what the welfare of the average citizen of the world would be like without the advancements made via the capitalist countries. ..."
Dec 05, 2015 | The Guardian

The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality. They still struggle for access to the basics

... ... ...

The disparities in wealth that we term "income inequality" are no accident, and they can't be fixed by fiddling at the edges of our current economic system. These disparities happened by design, and the system structurally disadvantages those at the bottom. The poorest Americans have no realistic hope of achieving anything that approaches income equality; even their very chances for access to the most basic tools of life are almost nil.

... ... ...

Too often, the answer by those who have hoarded everything is they will choose to "give back" in a manner of their choosing – just look at Mark Zuckerberg and his much-derided plan to "give away" 99% of his Facebook stock. He is unlikely to help change inequality or poverty any more than "giving away" of $100m helped children in Newark schools.

Allowing any of the 100 richest Americans to choose how they fix "income inequality" will not make the country more equal or even guarantee more access to life. You can't take down the master's house with the master's tools, even when you're the master; but more to the point, who would tear down his own house to distribute the bricks among so very many others?

mkenney63 5 Dec 2015 20:37

Excellent article. The problems we face are structural and can only be solved by making fundamental changes. We must bring an end to "Citizens United", modern day "Jim Crow" and the military industrial complex in order to restore our democracy. Then maybe, just maybe, we can have an economic system that will treat all with fairness and respect. Crony capitalism has had its day, it has mutated into criminality.

Kencathedrus -> Marcedward 5 Dec 2015 20:23

In the pre-capitalist system people learnt crafts to keep themselves afloat. The Industrial Revolution changed all that. Now we have the church of Education promising a better life if we get into debt to buy (sorry, earn) degrees.

The whole system is messed up and now we have millions of people on this planet who can't function even those with degrees. Barbarians are howling at the gates of Europe. The USA is rotting from within. As Marx predicted the Capitalists are merely paying their own grave diggers.

mkenney63 -> Bobishere 5 Dec 2015 20:17

I would suggest you read the economic and political history of the past 30 years. To help you in your study let me recommend a couple of recent books: "Winner Take all Politics" by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson and "The Age of Acquiescence" by Steve Fraser. It always amazes me that one can be so blind the facts of recent American history; it's not just "a statistical inequality", it's been a well thought-out strategy over time to rig the system, a strategy engaged in by politicians and capitalists. Shine some light on this issue by acquainting yourself with the facts.


Maharaja Brovinda -> Singh Jill Harrison 5 Dec 2015 19:42

We play out the prisoner's dilemma in life, in general, over and over in different circumstances, every day. And we always choose the dominant - rational - solution. But the best solution is not based on rationality, but rather on trust and faith in each other - rather ironically for our current, evidence based society!


Steven Palmer 5 Dec 2015 19:19

Like crack addicts the philanthropricks only seek to extend their individual glory, social image their primary goal, and yet given the context they will burn in history. Philanthroptits should at least offset the immeasurable damage they have done through their medieval wealth accumulation. Collaborative philanthropy for basic income is a good idea, but ye, masters tools.


BlairM -> Iconoclastick 5 Dec 2015 19:10

Well, to paraphrase Winston Churchill, capitalism is the worst possible economic system, except for all those other economic systems that have been tried from time to time.

I'd rather just have the freedom to earn money as I please, and if that means inequality, it's a small price to pay for not having some feudal lord or some party bureaucrat stomping on my humanity.

brusuz 5 Dec 2015 18:52

As long as wealth can be created by shuffling money from one place to another in the giant crap shoot we call our economy, nothing will change. Until something takes place to make it advantageous for the investor capitalists to put that money to work doing something that actually produces some benefit to the society as a whole, they will continue their extractive machinations. I see nothing on the horizon that is going to change any of that, and to cast this as some sort of a racial issue is quite superficial. We have all gotten the shaft, since there is no upward mobility available to anyone. Since the Bush crowd of neocons took power, we have all been shackled with "individual solutions to societal created problems."

Jimi Del Duca 5 Dec 2015 18:31

Friends, Capitalism is structural exploitation of ALL WORKERS. Thinking about it as solely a race issue is divisive. What we need is CLASS SOLIDARITY and ORGANIZATION. See iww.org We are the fighting union with no use for capitalists!

slightlynumb -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 18:04

You'd be better off reading Marx if you want to understand capitalism. I think you are ascribing the word to what you think it should be rather than what it is.

It is essentially a class structure rather than any defined economic system. Neoliberal is essentially laissez faire capitalism. It is designed to suborn nation states to corporate benefit.

AmyInNH -> tommydog

They make $40 a month. Working 7 days a week. At least 12 hour days. Who's fed you that "we're doing them a favor" BS?

And I've news for you regarding "Those whose skills are less adaptable to doing so are seeing their earnings decline." We have many people who have 3 masters degrees making less than minimum wage. We have top notch STEM students shunned so corporations can hire captive/cheaper foreign labor, called H1-Bs, who then wait 10 years working for them waiting for their employment based green card. Or "visiting" students here on J1 visas, so the employers can get out of paying: social security, federal unemployment insurance, etc.

Wake up and smell the coffee tommydog. They've more than a thumb on the scale.

seamanbodine,
I am a socialist. I decided to read this piece to see if Mr. Thrasher could write about market savagery without propounding the fiction that whites are somehow exempt from the effects of it.

No, he could not. I clicked on the link accompanying his assertion that whites who are high school dropouts earn more than blacks with college degrees, and I read the linked piece in full. The linked piece does not in fact compare income (i.e., yearly earnings) of white high school dropouts with those of black college graduates, but it does compare family wealth across racial cohorts (though not educational ones), and the gap there is indeed stark, with average white family wealth in the six figures (full disclosure, I am white, and my personal wealth is below zero, as I owe more in student loans than I own, so perhaps I am not really white, or I do not fully partake of "whiteness," or whatever), and average black family wealth in the four figures.

The reason for this likely has a lot to do with home ownership disparities, which in turn are linked in significant part to racist redlining practices. So white dropouts often live in homes their parents or grandparents bought, while many black college graduates whose parents were locked out of home ownership by institutional racism and, possibly, the withering of manufacturing jobs just as the northward migration was beginning to bear some economic fruit for black families, are still struggling to become homeowners. Thus, the higher average wealth for the dropout who lives in a family owned home.

But this is not what Mr. Thrasher wrote. He specifically used the words "earn more," creating the impression that some white ignoramus is simply going to stumble his way into a higher salary than a cultivated, college educated black person. That is simply not the case, and the difference does matter.

Why does it matter? Because I regularly see middle aged whites who are broken and homeless on the streets of the town where I live, and I know they are simply the tip of a growing mountain of privation. Yeah, go ahead, call it white tears if you want, but if you cannot see that millions (including, of course, not simply folks who are out and out homeless, but folks who are struggling to get enough to eat and routinely go without needed medication and medical care) of people who have "white privilege" are indeed oppressed by global capitalism then I would say that you are, at the end of the day, NO BETTER THAN THE WHITES YOU DISDAIN.

If you have read this far, then you realize that I am in no way denying the reality of structural racism. But an account of economic savagery that entirely subsumes it into non-economic categories (race, gender, age), that refuses to acknowledge that blacks can be exploiters and whites can be exploited, is simply conservatism by other means. One gets the sense that if we have enough black millionaires and enough whites dying of things like a lack of medical care, then this might bring just a little bit of warmth to the hearts of people like Mr. Thrasher.

Call it what you want, but don't call it progressive. Maybe it is historical karma. Which is understandable, as there is no reason why globally privileged blacks in places like the U.S. or Great Britain should bear the burden of being any more selfless or humane than globally privileged whites are or have been. The Steven Thrashers of humanity are certainly no worse than many of the whites they cannot seem to recognize as fully human are.

But nor are they any better.
JohnLG 5 Dec 2015 17:23

I agree that the term "income inequality" is so vague that falls between useless and diversionary, but so too is most use of the word "capitalism", or so it seems to me. Typically missing is a penetrating analysis of where the problem lies, a comprehensibly supported remedy, or large-scale examples of anything except what's not working. "Income inequality" is pretty abstract until we look specifically at the consequences for individuals and society, and take a comprehensive look at all that is unequal. What does "capitalism" mean? Is capitalism the root of all this? Is capitalism any activity undertaken for profit, or substantial monopolization of markets and power?

Power tends to corrupt. Money is a form of power, but there are others. The use of power to essentially cheat, oppress or kill others is corrupt, whether that power is in the form of a weapon, wealth, the powers of the state, or all of the above. Power is seductive and addictive. Even those with good intensions can be corrupted by an excess of power and insufficient accountability, while predators are drawn to power like sharks to blood. Democracy involves dispersion of power, ideally throughout a whole society. A constitutional democracy may offer protection even to minorities against a "tyranny of the majority" so long as a love of justice prevails. Selective "liberty and justice" is not liberty and justice at all, but rather a tyranny of the many against the few, as in racism, or of the few against the many, as by despots. Both forms reinforce each other in the same society, both are corrupt, and any "ism" can be corrupted by narcissism. To what degree is any society a shining example of government of, for, and by the people, and to what degree can one discover empirical evidence of corruption? What do we do about it?

AmyInNH -> CaptainGrey 5 Dec 2015 17:15

You're too funny. It's not "lifting billions out of poverty". It's moving malicious manufacturing practices to the other side of the planet. To the lands of no labor laws. To hide it from consumers. To hide profits.

And it is dying. Legislatively they choke off their natural competition, which is an essential element of capitalism. Monopoly isn't capitalism. And when they bribe legislators, we don't have democracy any more either.

Jeremiah2000 -> Teresa Trujillo 5 Dec 2015 16:53

Stocks have always been "a legal form of gambling". What is happening now however, is that a pair of treys can beat out your straight flush. Companies that have never turned a profit fetch huge prices on the stock market.

The stock market suckered millions in before 2008 and then prices plummeted. Where did the money from grandpa's pension fund go?

Gary Reber 5 Dec 2015 16:45

Abraham Lincoln said that the purpose of government is to do for people what they cannot do for themselves. Government also should serve to keep people from hurting themselves and to restrain man's greed, which otherwise cannot be self-controlled. Anyone who seeks to own productive power that they cannot or won't use for consumption are beggaring their neighbor––the equivalency of mass murder––the impact of concentrated capital ownership.

The words "OWN" and "ASSETS" are the key descriptors of the definition of wealth. But these words are not well understood by the vast majority of Americans or for that matter, global citizens. They are limited to the vocabulary used by the wealthy ownership class and financial publications, which are not widely read, and not even taught in our colleges and universities.

The wealthy ownership class did not become wealthy because they are "three times as smart." Still there is a valid argument that the vast majority of Americans do not pay particular attention to the financial world and educate themselves on wealth building within the current system's limited past-savings paradigm. Significantly, the wealthy OWNERSHIP class use their political power (power always follows property OWNERSHIP) to write the system rules to benefit and enhance their wealth. As such they have benefited from forging trade policy agreements which further concentrate OWNERSHIP on a global scale, military-industrial complex subsidies and government contracts, tax code provisions and loopholes and collective-bargaining rules – policy changes they've used their wealth to champion.

Gary Reber 5 Dec 2015 16:44

Unfortunately, when it comes to recommendations for solutions to economic inequality, virtually every commentator, politician and economist is stuck in viewing the world in one factor terms – human labor, in spite of their implied understanding that the rich are rich because they OWN the non-human means of production – physical capital. The proposed variety of wealth-building programs, like "universal savings accounts that might be subsidized for low-income savers," are not practical solutions because they rely on savings (a denial of consumption which lessens demand in the economy), which the vast majority of Americans do not have, and for those who can save their savings are modest and insignificant. Though, millions of Americans own diluted stock value through the "stock market exchanges," purchased with their earnings as labor workers (savings), their stock holdings are relatively minuscule, as are their dividend payments compared to the top 10 percent of capital owners. Pew Research found that 53 percent of Americans own no stock at all, and out of the 47 percent who do, the richest 5 percent own two-thirds of that stock. And only 10 percent of Americans have pensions, so stock market gains or losses don't affect the incomes of most retirees.

As for taxpayer-supported saving subsidies or other wage-boosting measures, those who have only their labor power and its precarious value held up by coercive rigging and who desperately need capital ownership to enable them to be capital workers (their productive assets applied in the economy) as well as labor workers to have a way to earn more income, cannot satisfy their unsatisfied needs and wants and sufficiently provide for themselves and their families. With only access to labor wages, the 99 percenters will continue, in desperation, to demand more and more pay for the same or less work, as their input is exponentially replaced by productive capital.

As such, the vast majority of American consumers will continue to be strapped to mounting consumer debt bills, stagnant wages and inflationary price pressures. As their ONLY source of income is through wage employment, economic insecurity for the 99 percent majority of people means they cannot survive more than a week or two without a paycheck. Thus, the production side of the economy is under-nourished and hobbled as a result, because there are fewer and fewer "customers with money." We thus need to free economic growth from the slavery of past savings.

I mentioned that political power follows property OWNERSHIP because with concentrated capital asset OWNERSHIP our elected representatives are far too often bought with the expectation that they protect and enhance the interests of the wealthiest Americans, the OWNERSHIP class they too overwhelmingly belong to.

Many, including the author of this article, have concluded that with such a concentrated OWNERSHIP stronghold the wealthy have on our politics, "it's hard to see where this cycle ends." The ONLY way to reverse this cycle and broaden capital asset OWNERSHIP universally is a political revolution. (Bernie Sanders, are you listening?)

The political revolution must address the problem of lack of demand. To create demand, the FUTURE economy must be financed in ways that create new capital OWNERS, who will benefit from the full earnings of the FUTURE productive capability of the American economy, and without taking from those who already OWN. This means significantly slowing the further concentration of capital asset wealth among those who are already wealthy and ensuring that the system is reformed to promote inclusive prosperity, inclusive opportunity, and inclusive economic justice.

yamialwaysright 5 Dec 2015 16:13

I was interested and in agreement until I read about structured racism. Many black kidsin the US grow up without a father in the house. They turn to anti-social behaviour and crime. Once you are poor it is hard to get out of being poor but Journalists are not doing justice to a critique of US Society if they ignore the fact that some people behave in a self-destructive way. I would imagine that if some black men in the US and the UK stuck with one woman and played a positive role in the life of their kids, those kids would have a better chance at life. People of different racial and ethnic origin do this also but there does seem to be a disproportionate problem with some black US men and some black UK men. Poverty is one problem but growing up in poverty and without a father figure adds to the problem.

What the author writes applies to other countries not just the US in relation to the super wealthy being a small proportion of the population yet having the same wealth as a high percentage of the population. This in not a black or latino issue but a wealth distribution issue that affects everyone irrespective of race or ethnic origin. The top 1%, 5% or 10% having most of the wealth is well-known in many countries.

nuthermerican4u 5 Dec 2015 15:59

Capitalism, especially the current vulture capitalism, is dog eat dog. Always was, always will be. My advice is that if you are a capitalist that values your heirs, invest in getting off this soon-to-be slag heap and find other planets to pillage and rape. Either go all out for capitalism or reign in this beast before it kills all of us.

soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:32

Our antiquated class structure demonstrates the trickle up of Capitalism and the need to counterbalance it with progressive taxation.

In the 1960s/1970s we used high taxes on the wealthy to counter balance the trickle up of Capitalism and achieved much greater equality.

Today we have low taxes on the wealthy and Capitalism's trickle up is widening the inequality gap.

We are cutting benefits for the disabled, poor and elderly so inequality can get wider and the idle rich can remain idle.

They have issued enough propaganda to make people think it's those at the bottom that don't work.

Every society since the dawn of civilization has had a Leisure Class at the top, in the UK we call them the Aristocracy and they have been doing nothing for centuries.

The UK's aristocracy has seen social systems come and go, but they all provide a life of luxury and leisure and with someone else doing all the work.

Feudalism - exploit the masses through land ownership
Capitalism - exploit the masses through wealth (Capital)

Today this is done through the parasitic, rentier trickle up of Capitalism:

a) Those with excess capital invest it and collect interest, dividends and rent.
b) Those with insufficient capital borrow money and pay interest and rent.

The system itself provides for the idle rich and always has done from the first civilisations right up to the 21st Century.

The rich taking from the poor is always built into the system, taxes and benefits are the counterbalance that needs to be applied externally.

Iconoclastick 5 Dec 2015 15:31

I often chuckle when I read some of the right wing comments on articles such as this. Firstly, I question if readers actually read the article references I've highlighted, before rushing to comment.

Secondly, the comments are generated by cifers who probably haven't set the world alight, haven't made a difference in their local community, they'll have never created thousands of jobs in order to reward themselves with huge dividends having and as a consequence enjoy spectacular asset/investment growth, at best they'll be chugging along, just about keeping their shit together and yet they support a system that's broken, other than for the one percent, of the one percent.

A new report from the Institute for Policy Studies issued this week analyzed the Forbes list of the 400 richest Americans and found that "the wealthiest 100 households now own about as much wealth as the entire African American population in the United States". That means that 100 families – most of whom are white – have as much wealth as the 41,000,000 black folks walking around the country (and the million or so locked up) combined.

Similarly, the report also stated that "the wealthiest 186 members of the Forbes 400 own as much wealth as the entire Latino population" of the nation. Here again, the breakdown in actual humans is broke down: 186 overwhelmingly white folks have more money than that an astounding 55,000,000 Latino people.

family wealth" predicts outcomes for 10 to 15 generations. Those with extreme wealth owe it to events going back "300 to 450" years ago, according to research published by the New Republic – an era when it wasn't unusual for white Americans to benefit from an economy dependent upon widespread, unpaid black labor in the form of slavery.

soundofthesuburbs -> soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:26

It is the 21st Century and most of the land in the UK is still owned by the descendants of feudal warlords that killed people and stole their land and wealth.

When there is no land to build houses for generation rent, land ownership becomes an issue.

David Cameron is married into the aristocracy and George Osborne is a member of the aristocracy, they must both be well acquainted with the Leisure Class.

I can't find any hard work going on looking at the Wikipedia page for David Cameron's father-in-law. His family have been on their estate since the sixteenth century and judging by today's thinking, expect to be on it until the end of time.

George Osborne's aristocratic pedigree goes back to the Tudor era:

"he is an aristocrat with a pedigree stretching back to early in the Tudor era. His father, Sir Peter Osborne, is the 17th holder of a hereditary baronetcy that has been passed from father to son for 10 generations, and of which George is next in line."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/george-osborne-a-silver-spoon-for-the-golden-boy-2004814.html

soundofthesuburbs 5 Dec 2015 15:24

The working and middle classes toil to keep the upper class in luxury and leisure.

In the UK nothing has changed.

We call our Leisure Class the Aristocracy.

For the first time in five millennia of human civilisation some people at the bottom of society aren't working.

We can't have that; idleness is only for the rich.

It's the way it's always been and the way it must be again.

Did you think the upper; leisure class, social calendar disappeared in the 19th Century?
No it's alive and kicking in the 21st Century ....

Peer into the lives of today's Leisure Class with Tatler. http://www.tatler.com/the-season

If we have people at the bottom who are not working the whole of civilisation will be turned on its head.

"The modern industrial society developed from the barbarian tribal society, which featured a leisure class supported by subordinated working classes employed in economically productive occupations. The leisure class is composed of people exempted from manual work and from practicing economically productive occupations, because they belong to the leisure class."

The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study of Institutions, by Thorstein Veblen. It was written a long time ago but much of it is as true today as it was then. The Wikipedia entry gives a good insight.

DBChas 5 Dec 2015 15:13
"income inequality" is best viewed as structural capitalism. It's not as if, did black and brown people and female people somehow (miraculously) attain the economic status of the lower-paid, white, male person, the problem would be solved--simply by adjusting pay scales. The problem is inherent to capitalism, which doesn't mean certain "types" of people aren't more disadvantaged for their "type." No one is saying that. For capitalists, it's easier to rationalize the obscene unfairness (only rich people say, "life's not fair") when their "type" is regarded as superior to a different "type," whether that be with respect to color or gender or both.

Over time--a long time--the dominant party (white males since the Dark Ages, also the life-span of capitalism coincidentally enough) came to dominance by various means, too many to try to list, or even know of. Why white males? BTW, just because most in power and in money are white males does not mean ALL white males are in positions of power and wealth. Most are not, and these facts help to fog the issue.

Indeed, "income inequality," is not an accident, nor can it be fixed, as the author notes, by tweaking (presumably he means capitalism). And he's quite right too in saying, "You can't take down the master's house with the master's tools..." I take that ALSO to mean, the problem can't be fixed by way of what Hedges has called a collapsing liberal establishment with its various institutions, officially speaking. That is, it's not institutional racism that's collapsing, but that institution is not officially recognized as such.

HOWEVER, it IS possible, even when burdened with an economics that is capitalism, to redistribute wealth, and I don't just mean Mark Zuckerberg's. I mean all wealth in whatever form can be redistributed if/when government decides it can. And THIS TIME, unlike the 1950s-60s, not only would taxes on the wealthy be the same as then but the wealth redistributed would be redistributed to ALL, not just to white families, and perhaps in particular to red families, the oft forgotten ones.

This is a matter of political will. But, of course, if that means whites as the largest voting block insist on electing to office those without the political will, nothing will change. In that case, other means have to be considered, and just a reminder: If the government fails to serve the people, the Constitution gives to the people the right to depose that government. But again, if whites as the largest voting block AND as the largest sub-group in the nation (and women are the largest part of that block, often voting as their men vote--just the facts, please, however unpleasant) have little interest in seeing to making necessary changes at least in voting booths, then...what? Bolshevism or what? No one seems to know and it's practically taboo even to talk about possibilities. Americans did it once, but not inclusively and not even paid in many instances. When it happens again, it has to happen with and for the participation of ALL. And it's worth noting that it will have to happen again, because capitalism by its very nature cannot survive itself. That is, as Marx rightly noted, capitalism will eventually collapse by dint of its internal contradictions.


mbidding Jeremiah2000 5 Dec 2015 15:08

Correction: The average person in poverty in the U.S. does not live in the same abject, third world poverty as you might find in Honduras, Central African Republic, Cambodia, or the barrios of Sao Paulo.

Since our poor don't live in abject poverty, I invite you to live as a family of four on less than $11,000 a year anywhere in the United States. If you qualify and can obtain subsidized housing you may have some of the accoutrements in your home that you seem to equate with living the high life. You know, running water, a fridge, a toilet, a stove. You would also likely have a phone (subsidized at that) so you might be able to participate (or attempt to participate) in the job market in an honest attempt to better your family's economic prospects and as is required to qualify for most assistance programs.

Consider as well that you don't have transportation to get a job that would improve your circumstances. You earn too much to qualify for meaningful levels of food support programs and fall into the insurance gap for subsidies because you live in a state that for ideological reasons refuses to expand Medicaid coverage. Your local schools are a disgrace but you can't take advantage of so-called school choice programs (vouchers, charters, and the like) as you don't have transportation or the time (given your employer's refusal to set fixed working hours for minimum wage part time work) to get your kids to that fine choice school.

You may have a fridge and a stove, but you have no food to cook. You may have access to running water and electricity, but you can't afford to pay the bills for such on account of having to choose between putting food in that fridge or flushing that toilet. You can't be there reliably for your kids to help with school, etc, because you work constantly shifting hours for crap pay.

Get back to me after six months to a year after living in such circumstances and then tell me again how Americans don't really live in poverty simply because they have access to appliances.


Earl Shelton 5 Dec 2015 15:08

The Earned Income Tax Credit seems to me a good starting point for reform. It has been around since the 70s -- conceived by Nixon/Moynihan -- and signed by socialist (kidding) Gerald Ford -- it already *redistributes* income (don't choke on the term, O'Reilly) directly from tax revenue (which is still largely progressive) to the working poor, with kids.

That program should be massively expanded to tax the 1% -- and especially the top 1/10 of 1% (including a wealth tax) -- and distribute the money to the bottom half of society, mostly in the form of work training, child care and other things that help put them in and keep them in the middle class. It is a mechanism already in existence to correct the worst ravages of Capitalism. Use it to build shared prosperity.


oKWJNRo 5 Dec 2015 14:40

So many dutiful neoliberals on here rushing to the defense of poor Capitalism. Clearly, these commentators are among those who are in the privileged position of reaping the true benefits of Capitalism - And, of course, there are many benefits to reap if you are lucky enough to be born into the right racial-socioeconomic context.

We can probably all agree that Capitalism has brought about widespread improvements in healthcare, education, living conditions, for example, compared to the feudal system that preceded it... But it also disproportionately benefits the upper echelons of Capitalist societies and is wholly unequal by design.

Capitalism depends upon the existence of a large underclass that can be exploited. This is part of the process of how surplus value is created and wealth is extracted from labour. This much is indisputable. It is therefore obvious that capitalism isn't an ideal system for most of us living on this planet.

As for the improvements in healthcare, education, living conditions etc that Capitalism has fostered... Most of these were won through long struggles against the Capitalist hegemony by the masses. We would have certainly chosen to make these improvements to our landscape sooner if Capitalism hadn't made every effort to stop us. The problem today is that Capitalism and its powerful beneficiaries have successfully convinced us that there is no possible alternative. It won't give us the chance to try or even permit us to believe there could be another, better way.

Martin Joseph -> realdoge 5 Dec 2015 14:33

Please walk us through how non-capitalist systems create wealth and allow their lowest class people propel themselves to the top in one generation. You will note that most socialist systems derive their technology and advancements from the more capitalistic systems. Pharmaceuticals, software, and robotics are a great example of this.

I shutter to think of what the welfare of the average citizen of the world would be like without the advancements made via the capitalist countries.

VWFeature 5 Dec 2015 14:29

Markets, economies and tax systems are created by people, and based on rules they agree on. Those rules can favor general prosperity or concentration of wealth. Destruction and predation are easier than creation and cooperation, so our rules have to favor cooperation if we want to avoid predation and destructive conflicts.

In the 1930's the US changed many of those rules to favor general prosperity. Since then they've been gradually changed to favor wealth concentration and predation. They can be changed back.

The trick is creating a system that encourages innovation while putting a safety net under the population so failure doesn't end in starvation.

A large part of our current problems is the natural tendency for large companies to get larger and larger until their failure would adversely affect too many others, so they're not allowed to fail. Tax law, not antitrust law, has to work against this. If a company can reduce its tax rate by breaking into 20 smaller (still huge) companies, then competition is preserved and no one company can dominate and control markets.

Robert Goldschmidt -> Jake321 5 Dec 2015 14:27

Bernie Sanders has it right on -- we can only heal our system by first having millions rise up and demand an end to the corruption of the corporations controlling our elected representatives. Corporations are not people and money is not speech.

moonwrap02 5 Dec 2015 14:26

The effects of wealth distribution has far reaching consequences. It is not just about money, but creating a fair society - one that is co-operative and cohesive. The present system has allowed an ever divide between the rich and poor, creating a two tier society where neither the twain shall meet. The rich and poor are almost different species on the planet and no longer belong to the same community. Commonality of interest is lost and so it's difficult to form community and to have good, friendly relationships across class differences that are that large.

"If capitalism is to be seen to be fair, the same rules are to apply to the big guy as to the little guy,"

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/2-charts-that-show-what-the-world-really-thinks-about-capitalism-a6719851.html


Jeremiah2000 -> bifess 5 Dec 2015 14:17

Sorry. I get it now. You actually think that because the Washington elite has repealed Glass-Steagel that we live in a unregulated capitalistic system.

This is so far from the truth that I wasn't comprehending that anyone could think that. You can see the graph of pages published in the Federal Register here. Unregulated capitalism? Wow.

Dodd Frank was passed in 2010 (without a single Republican vote). Originally it was 2,300 pages. It is STILL being written by nameless bureaucrats and is over 20,000 pages. Unregulated capitalism? Really?

But the reality is that Goliath is conspiring with the government to regulate what size sling David can use and how many stones and how many ounces.

So we need more government regulations? They will disallow David from anything but spitwads and only two of those.


neuronmaker -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 14:16

Do you understand the concept of corporations which are products of capitalism?

The legal institutions within each capitalist corporations and nations are just that, they are capitalist and all about making profits.

The law is made by the rich capitalists and for the rich capitalists. Each Legislation is a link in the chain of economic slavery by capitalists.

Capitalism and the concept of money is a construction of the human mind, as it does not exist in the natural world. This construction is all about using other human beings like blood suckers to sustain a cruel and evil life style - with blood and brutality as the core ideology.


Marcedward -> MarjaE 5 Dec 2015 14:12

I would agree that our system of help for the less-well-off could be more accessible and more generous, but that doesn't negate that point that there is a lot of help out there - the most important help being that totally free educational system. Think about it, a free education, and to get the most out of it a student merely has to show up, obey the rules, do the homework and study for tests. It's all laid out there for the kids like a helicopter mom laying out her kids clothes. How much easier can we make it? If people can't be bothered to show up and put in effort, how is their failure based on racism


tommydog -> martinusher 5 Dec 2015 14:12

As you are referring to Carlos Slim, interestingly while he is Mexican by birth his parents were both Lebanese.

slightlynumb -> AmyInNH 5 Dec 2015 14:12

Why isn't that capitalism? It's raw capitalism on steroids.

Zara Von Fritz -> Toughspike 5 Dec 2015 14:12

It's an equal opportunity plantation now.

Robert Goldschmidt 5 Dec 2015 14:11

The key to repairing the system is to identify the causes of our problems.

Here is my list:

The information technology revolution which continues to destroy wages by enabling automation and outsourcing.

The reformation of monopolies which price gouge and block innovation.

Hitting ecological limits such as climate change, water shortages, unsustainable farming.

Then we can make meaningful changes such as regulation of the portion of corporate profit that are pay, enforcement of national and regional antitrust laws and an escalating carbon tax.

Zara Von Fritz -> PostCorbyn 5 Dec 2015 14:11

If you can believe these quality of life or happiness indexes they put out so often, the winners tend to be places that have nice environments and a higher socialist mix in their economy. Of course there are examples of poor countries that practice the same but its not clear that their choice is causal rather than reactive.

We created this mess and we can fix it.

Zara Von Fritz -> dig4victory 5 Dec 2015 14:03

Yes Basic Income is possibly the mythical third way. It socialises wealth to a point but at the same time frees markets from their obligation to perpetually grow and create jobs for the sake of jobs and also hereford reduces the subsequent need for governments to attempt to control them beyond maintaining their health.

Zara Von Fritz 5 Dec 2015 13:48

As I understand it, you don't just fiddle with capitalism, you counteract it, or counterweight it. A level of capitalism, or credit accumulation, and a level of socialism has always existed, including democracy which is a manifestation of socialism (1 vote each). So the project of capital accumulation seems to be out of control because larger accumulations become more powerful and meanwhile the power of labour in the marketplace has become less so due to forces driving unemployment. The danger is that capital's power to control the democratic system reaches a point of no return.


Jeremiah2000 -> bifess 5 Dec 2015 13:42

"I do not have the economic freedom to grow my own food because i do not have access to enough land to grow it and i do not have the economic clout to buy a piece of land."

Economic freedom does NOT mean you get money for free. It means that means that if you grow food for personal use, the federal government doesn't trash the Constitution by using the insterstate commerce clause to say that it can regulate how much you grow on your own personal land.

Economic freedom means that if you have a widget, you can choose to set the price for $10 or $100 and that a buyer is free to buy it from you or not buy it from you. It does NOT mean that you are entitled to "free" widgets.

"If capitalism has not managed to eradicate poverty in rich first world countries then just what chance if there of capitalism eradicating poverty on a global scale?"

The average person in poverty in the U.S. doesn't live in poverty:

In fact, 80.9 percent of households below the poverty level have cell phones, and a healthy majority-58.2 percent-have computers.

Fully 96.1 percent of American households in "poverty" have a television to watch, and 83.2 percent of them have a video-recording device in case they cannot get home in time to watch the football game or their favorite television show and they want to record it for watching later.

Refrigerators (97.8 percent), gas or electric stoves (96.6 percent) and microwaves (93.2 percent) are standard equipment in the homes of Americans in "poverty."

More than 83 percent have air-conditioning.

Interestingly, the appliances surveyed by the Census Bureau that households in poverty are least likely to own are dish washers (44.9 percent) and food freezers (26.2 percent).

However, most Americans in "poverty" do not need to go to a laundromat. According to the Census Bureau, 68.7 percent of households in poverty have a clothes washer and 65.3 percent have a clothes dryer.

(Data from the U.S. census.)

[Dec 22, 2018] Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative

Dec 22, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Sasha , Dec 22, 2018 10:38:52 AM | link

I do not know if this was included in "b"´s reports on Integrity Initiative, but worth the hour of reading ( without linking the hyeprlinks )

Briefing note on the Integrity Initiative

From what I have understood ( and as well you will, by extensive reading ) this, and other till now seeminlgy unknown initiatives, is the source

[Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray

Highly recommended!
Craig Murray is right that "As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier." Collapse of neoliberal ideology and rise of tentions in neoliberal sociarties resulted in unprecedented increase of covert and false flag operations by British intelligence services, especially against Russia, which had been chosen as a convenient scapegoat. With Steele dossier and Skripal affair as two most well known.
New Lady Macbeth (Theresa May) Russophobia is so extreme that her cabinet derailed the election of a Russian to head Interpol.
Looks like neoliberalism cannot be defeated by and faction of the existing elite. Only when shepp oil end mant people will have a chance. The US , GB and EU are part of the wider hegemonic neoliberal system. In fact rejection of neoliberal globalization probably will lead to "national neoliberals" regime which would be a flavor of neo-fascism, no more no less.
Notable quotes:
"... The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. ..."
"... I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign. ..."
"... It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia. ..."
"... the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it. ..."
"... By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building . It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London. ..."
"... Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence. ..."
"... I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills. ..."
"... I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information. ..."
"... one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day ..."
"... As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier. ..."
"... You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy". ..."
Dec 13, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

in Uncategorized by craig

The British state can maintain its spies' cover stories for centuries. Look up Eldred Pottinger, who for 180 years appears in scores of British history books – right up to and including William Dalrymple's Return of the King – as a British officer who chanced to be passing Herat on holiday when it came under siege from a partly Russian-officered Persian army, and helped to organise the defences. In researching Sikunder Burnes, I discovered and published from the British Library incontrovertible and detailed documentary evidence that Pottinger's entire journey was under the direct instructions of, and reporting to, British spymaster Alexander Burnes. The first historian to publish the untrue "holiday" cover story, Sir John Kaye, knew both Burnes and Pottinger and undoubtedly knew he was publishing lying propaganda. Every other British historian of the First Afghan War (except me and latterly Farrukh Husain) has just followed Kaye's official propaganda.

Some things don't change. I was irresistibly reminded of Eldred Pottinger just passing Herat on holiday, when I learnt how highly improbable left wing firebrand Simon Bracey-Lane just happened to be on holiday in the United States with available cash to fund himself, when he stumbled into the Bernie Sanders campaign.

Recent university graduate Simon Bracey-Lane took it even further. Originally from Wimbledon in London, he was inspired to rejoin the Labour party in September when Corbyn was elected leader. But by that point, he was already in the US on holiday. So he joined the Sanders campaign, and never left.
"I had two weeks left and some money left, so I thought, Fuck it, I'll make some calls for Bernie Sanders," he explains. "I just sort of knew Des Moines was the place, so I just turned up at their HQ, started making phone calls, and then became a fully fledged field organiser."

It is, to say the least, very interesting indeed that just a year later the left wing, "Corbyn and Sanders supporting" Bracey-Lane is hosting a very right wing event, "Cold War Then and Now", for the shadowy neo-con Institute for Statecraft, at which an entirely unbalanced panel of British military, NATO and Ukrainian nationalists extolled the virtues of re-arming against Russia.

Nor would it seem likely that Bracey-Lane would be involved with the Integrity Initiative. Even the mainstream media has been forced to give a few paragraphs to the outrageous Integrity Initiative, under which the MOD-sponsored Institute for Statecraft has been given millions of pounds of taxpayers' money by the FCO to spread covert disinformation and propaganda, particularly against Russia and the anti-war movement. Activities include twitter and facebook trolling and secretly paying journalists in "clusters of influence" around Europe. Anonymous helpfully leaked the Institute's internal documents. Some of the Integrity Initiative's thus exposed alleged covert agents, like David Aaronovitch, have denied any involvement despite their appearance in the documents, and others like Dan Kaszeta the US "novichok expert", have cheerfully admitted it.

The mainstream media have tracked down the HQ of the "Institute for Statecraft" to a derelict mill near Auchtermuchty. It is owned by one of the company directors, Daniel Lafayeedney, formerly of D Squadron 23rd SAS Regiment and later of Military Intelligence (and incidentally born the rather more prosaic Daniel Edney).

By sleuthing the company records of this "Scottish charity", and a couple of phone calls, I discovered that the actual location of the Institute for Statecraft is the basement of 2 Temple Place, London. This is not just any basement – it is the basement of the former London mansion of William Waldorf Astor, an astonishing building. It is, in short, possibly the most expensive basement in London.

Which is interesting because the accounts of the Institute for Statecraft claim it has no permanent staff and show nothing for rent, utilities or office expenses. In fact, I understand the rent is paid by the Ministry of Defence.

Having been told where the Institute for Statecraft skulk, I tipped off journalist Kit Klarenberg of Sputnik Radio to go and physically check it out. Kit did so and was aggressively ejected by that well-known Corbyn and Sanders supporter, Simon Bracey-Lane. It does seem somewhat strange that our left wing hero is deeply embedded in an organisation that launches troll attacks on Jeremy Corbyn.

I have a great deal more to tell you about Mr Edney and his organisation next week, and the extraordinary covert disinformation war the British government wages online, attacking British citizens using British taxpayers' money. Please note in the interim I am not even a smidgeon suicidal, and going to be very, very careful crossing the road and am not intending any walks in the hills.

I am not alleging Mr Bracey-Lane is an intelligence service operative who previously infiltrated the Labour Party and the Sanders campaign. He may just be a young man of unusually heterodox and vacillating political opinions. He may be an undercover reporter for the Canary infiltrating the Institute for Statecraft. All these things are possible, and I have no firm information.

But one of the activities the Integrity Initiative sponsors happens to be the use of online trolls to ridicule the idea that the British security services ever carry out any kind of infiltration, false flag or agent provocateur operations, despite the fact that we even have repeated court judgements against undercover infiltration officers getting female activists pregnant. The Integrity Initiative offers us a glimpse into the very dirty world of surveillance and official disinformation. If we actually had a free media, it would be the biggest story of the day.

As the Establishment feels its grip slipping, as people wake up to the appalling economic exploitation by the few that underlies the very foundations of modern western society, expect the methods used by the security services to become even dirtier.

You can bank on continued ramping up of Russophobia to supply "the enemy".

As both Scottish Independence and Jeremy Corbyn are viewed as real threats by the British Establishment, you can anticipate every possible kind of dirty trick in the next couple of years, with increasing frequency and audacity

[Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... In his just published book, War With Russia? ..."
"... To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition." ..."
"... Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared. ..."
"... The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned. ..."
www.theamericanconservative.com
Dec 22, 2018 |

Throughout the long Cold War Stephen Cohen, professor of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University was a voice of reason. He refused to allow his patriotism to blind him to Washington's contribution to the conflict and to criticize only the Soviet contribution. Cohen's interest was not to blame the enemy but to work toward a mutual understanding that would remove the threat of nuclear war. Although a Democrat and left-leaning, Cohen would have been at home in the Reagan administration, as Reagan's first priority was to end the Cold War. I know this because I was part of the effort. Pat Buchanan will tell you the same thing.

In 1974 a notorious cold warrior, Albert Wohlstetter, absurdly accused the CIA of underestimating the Soviet threat. As the CIA had every incentive for reasons of budget and power to overestimate the Soviet threat, and today the "Russian threat," Wohlstetter's accusation made no sense on its face. However he succeeded in stirring up enough concern that CIA director George H.W. Bush, later Vice President and President, agreed to a Team B to investigate the CIA's assessment, headed by the Russiaphobic Harvard professor Richard Pipes. Team B concluded that the Soviets thought they could win a nuclear war and were building the forces with which to attack the US.

The report was mainly nonsense, and it must have have troubled Stephen Cohen to experience the setback to negotiations that Team B caused.

Today Cohen is stressed that it is the United States that thinks it can win a nuclear war. Washington speaks openly of using "low yield" nuclear weapons, and intentionally forecloses any peace negotiations with Russia with a propaganda campaign against Russia of demonization, vilification, and transparent lies, while installing missile bases on Russia's borders and while talking of incorporating former parts of Russia into NATO. In his just published book, War With Russia? , which I highly recommend, Cohen makes a convincing case that Washington is asking for war.

I agree with Cohen that if Russia is a threat it is only because the US is threatening Russia. The stupidity of the policy toward Russia is creating a Russian threat. Putin keeps emphasizing this. To paraphrase Putin: "You are making Russia a threat by declaring us to be one, by discarding facts and substituting orchestrated opinions that your propagandistic media establish as fact via endless repetition."

Cohen is correct that during the Cold War every US president worked to defuse tensions, especially Republican ones. Since the Clinton regime every US president has worked to create tensions. What explains this dangerous change in approach? The end of the Cold War was disadvantageous to the military/security complex whose budget and power had waxed from decades of cold war. Suddenly the enemy that had bestowed such wealth and prestige on the military/security complex disappeared.

The New Cold War is the result of the military/security complex's resurrection of the enemy. In a democracy with independent media and scholars, this would not have been possible. But the Clinton regime permitted in violation of anti-trust laws 90% of the US media to be concentrated in the hands of six mega-corporations, thus destroying an independence already undermined by the CIA's successful use of the CIA's media assets to control explanations. Many books have been written about the CIA's use of the media, including Udo Ulfkotte's "Bought Journalism," the English edition of which was quickly withdrawn and burned.

The demonization of Russia is also aided and abetted by the Democrats' hatred of Trump and anger from Hillary's loss of the presidential election to the "Trump deplorables." The Democrats purport to believe that Trump was installed by Putin's interference in the presidential election. This false belief is emotionally important to Democrats, and they can't let go of it.

Although Cohen as a professor at Princeton and NYU never lacked research opportunities, in the US Russian studies, strategic studies, and the like are funded by the military/security complex whose agenda Cohen's scholarship does not serve. At the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I held an independently financed chair for a dozen years, most of my colleagues were dependent on grants from the military/security complex. At the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, where I was a Senior Fellow for three decades, the anti-Soviet stance of the Institution reflected the agenda of those who funded the institution.

I am not saying that my colleagues were whores on a payroll. I am saying that the people who got the appointments were people who were inclined to see the Soviet Union the way the military/security complex thought it should be seen.

As Stephen Cohen is aware, in the original Cold War there was some balance as all explanations were not controlled. There were independent scholars who could point out that the Soviets, decimated by World War 2, had an interest in peace, and that accommodation could be achieved, thus avoiding the possibility of nuclear war.

Stephen Cohen must have been in the younger ranks of those sensible people, as he and President Reagan's ambassador to the Soviet Union, Jack Matloff, seem to be the remaining voices of expert reason on the American scene.

If you care to understand the dire threat under which you live, a threat that only a few people, such as Stephen Cohen, are trying to lift, read his book.

If you want to understand the dire threat that a bought-and-paid-for American media poses to your existence, read Cohen's accounts of their despicable lies. America has a media that is synonymous with lies.

If you want to understand how corrupt American universities are as organizations on the take for money, organizations to whom truth is inconsequential, read Cohen's book.

If you want to understand why you could be dead before Global Warming can get you, read Cohen's book.

Enough said.

[Dec 21, 2018] Looks like an o ld, sick neocon Hillarty still tries to influence events, continuing her warmongring

The trouble with CIA democrats is not that they are stupid, but that that are evil.
Hillary proved to be really destructive witch during her Obama stunt as the Secretary of State. Destroyed Libya and Ukraine, which is no small feat.
Notable quotes:
"... The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided. ..."
"... She is truly an idiot. Thanks again, Ivy League. ..."
Dec 21, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

Pavel , December 21, 2018 at 10:47 am

The Grauniad just quoted a tweet from a predictably OUTRAGED @HillaryClinton:

Actions have consequences, and whether we're in Syria or not, the people who want to harm us are there & at war. Isolationism is weakness. Empowering ISIS is dangerous. Playing into Russia & Iran's hands is foolish. This President is putting our national security at grave risk.

This from the woman who almost singlehandedly (i.e. along with David Cameron and Sarkovy) destroyed Libya and allowed -- if not encouraged -- the flow of US weapons to go into the hands of ISIS allies in the US-Saudi-Israeli obsession with toppling Assad regardless of the consequences. As Justin Raimondo wrote in Antiwar.com in 2015:

The policy of the Obama administration, and particularly Hillary Clinton's State Department, was – and still is – regime change in Syria. This overrode all other considerations. We armed, trained, and "vetted" the Syrian rebels, even as we looked the other way while the Saudis and the Gulf sheikdoms funded groups like al-Nusra and al-Qaeda affiliates who wouldn't pass muster. And our "moderates" quickly passed into the ranks of the outfront terrorists, complete with the weapons we'd provided.

This crazy policy was an extension of our regime change operation in Libya, a.k.a. "Hillary's War," where the US – "leading from behind" – and a coalition of our Western allies and the Gulf protectorates overthrew Muammar Qaddafi. There, too, we empowered radical Islamists with links to al-Qaeda affiliates – and then used them to ship weapons to their Syrian brothers, as another document uncovered by Judicial Watch shows.

After HRC's multiple foreign policy fiascos she is the last person who should be commenting on this matter.

a different chris, December 21, 2018 at 11:50 am

> the people who want to harm us are there & at war

Sounds like then they are too busy to harm us? She is truly an idiot. Thanks again, Ivy League.

[Dec 20, 2018] Manufacturing Truth by CJ Hopkins

Dec 04, 2018 | off-guardian.org
you're one of the millions of human beings who, despite a preponderance of evidence to the contrary, still believe there is such a thing as "the truth," you might not want to read this essay. Seriously, it can be extremely upsetting when you discover that there is no "truth" or rather, that what we're all conditioned to regard as "truth" from the time we are children is just the product of a technology of power, and not an empirical state of being. Humans, upon first encountering this fact, have been known to freak completely out and start jabbering about the "Word of God," or "the immutable laws of quantum physics," and run around burning other people at the stake or locking them up and injecting them with Thorazine. I don't want to be responsible for anything like that, so consider this your trigger warning.

OK, now that that's out of the way, let's take a look at how "truth" is manufactured. It's actually not that complicated. See, the "truth" is well, it's a story, essentially. It's whatever story we are telling ourselves at any given point in history ("we" being the majority of people, those conforming to the rules of whatever system wields enough power to dictate the story it wants everyone to be telling themselves). Everyone understands this intuitively, but the majority of people pretend they don't in order to be able to get by in the system, which punishes anyone who does not conform to its rules, or who contradicts its story. So, basically, to manufacture the truth, all you really need is (a) a story, and (b) enough power to coerce a majority of people in your society to pretend to believe it.

I'll return to this point a little later. First, let's look at a concrete example of our system manufacturing "truth." I'm going to use The Guardian's most recent blatantly fabricated article ( "Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy" ) as an example, but I could just as well have chosen any of a host of other fabricated stories disseminated by "respectable" outlets over the course of the last two years. The "Russian Propaganda Peddlers" story. The "Russia Might Have Poisoned Hillary Clinton" story. The "Russians Hacked the Vermont Power Grid" story. The "Golden Showers Russian Pee-Tape" story. The "Novichok Assassins" story. The "Bana Alabed Speaks Out" story. The "Trump's Secret Russian Server" story. The "Labour Anti-Semitism Crisis" story. The "Russians Orchestrated Brexit" story. The "Russia is Going to Hack the Midterms" story. The "Twitter Bots" story. And the list goes on.

I'm not going to debunk the Guardian article here. It has been debunked by better debunkers than I (e.g., Jonathan Cook , Craig Murray , Glenn Greenwald , Moon of Alabama, and many others). [ ed. including us ]

The short version is, The Guardian's Luke Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well, absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece (employing the subjunctive mood rather liberally), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended like they had never published it.

[Dec 20, 2018] Opinion The Guardian's Desperate Attempt To Connect Assange To Russiagate Backfires

Dec 20, 2018 | disobedientmedia.com

The Guardian's latest attack on Julian Assange was not only a fallacious smear, it represented a desperate attempt on behalf of the British intelligence community to conflate the pending US charges against the journalist with Russiagate. The Guardian's article seeks to deflect from the reality that the prosecution of Assange will focus on Chelsea Manning-Era releases and Vault 7, not the DNC or Podesta emails.

We assert this claim based on the timing of the publication, the Guardian's history of subservience to British intelligence agencies, animosity between The Guardian and WikiLeaks, and the longstanding personal feud between Guardian journalist Luke Harding and Assange. This conclusion is also supported by Harding's financial and career interest in propping up the Russiagate narrative

[Dec 20, 2018] The Guardian's Reputation In Tatters After Forger Revealed To Have Co-Authored Assange Smear

Notable quotes:
"... " The information in this post alone should make everyone question why in the world the Guardian would continue to use a source like Villavicencio who is obviously tied to the U.S. government, the CIA, individuals like Thor Halvorssen and Bill Browder, and opponents of both Julian Assange and former President Rafael Correa." ..."
"... 2014 Ecuador's Foreign Ministry accused the Guardian of publishing a story based on a document it says was fabricated by Fernando Villavicencio, pictured below with the authors of the fake Manafort-Assange 'secret meeting' story, Harding and Collyns." ..."
"... "There is also evidence that the author of this falsified document is Fernando Villavicencio, a convicted slanderer and opponent of Ecuador's current government. This can be seen from the file properties of the document that the Guardian had originally posted (but which it has since taken down and replaced with a version with this evidence removed)." ..."
"... " This video from the news wire Andes alleges that Villavicencio's name appeared in the metadata of the document originally uploaded alongside The Guardian's story." ..."
"... One of my greatest journalistic experiences was working for months on Assange's research with colleagues from the British newspaper the Guardian, Luke Harding, Dan Collins and the young journalist Cristina Solórzano from @ somos_lafuente " ..."
"... The tweet suggests, but does not specifically state, that Villavicencio worked with the disastrous duo on the Assange-Manafort piece. Given the history and associations of all involved, this statement alone should cause extreme skepticism in any unsubstantiated claims, or 'anonymously sourced' claims, the Guardian makes concerning Julian Assange and Ecuador. ..."
"... The two photographs of Villavicencio with Harding and Collyns as well as the evidence showing he co-authored the piece doesn't just capture a trio of terrible journalists, it documents the involvement of multiple actors associated with intelligence agencies and fabricated stories. ..."
"... Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win." ..."
"... That Harding and Collyns worked intensively with Villavicencio for "months" on the "Assange story," the fact that Villavicencio was initially listed as a co-author on the original version of the Guardian's article, and the recent denial by Fidel Narvaez , raises the likelihood that Harding and the Guardian were not simply the victims of bad sources who duped them, as claimed by some. ..."
Dec 20, 2018 | disobedientmedia.com

Regular followers of WikiLeaks-related news are at this point familiar with the multiple serious infractions of journalistic ethics by Luke Harding and the Guardian, especially (though not exclusively) when it comes to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. However, another individual at the heart of this matter is far less familiar to the public. That man is Fernando Villavicencio, a prominent Ecuadorian political activist and journalist, director of the USAID-funded NGO Fundamedios and editor of online publication FocusEcuador .

Most readers are also aware of the Guardian's recent publication of claims that Julian Assange met with former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort on three occasions. This has now been definitively debunked by Fidel Narvaez, the former Consul at Ecuador's London embassy between 2010 and 2018, who says Paul Manafort has never visited the embassy during the time he was in charge there. But this was hardly the first time the outlet published a dishonest smear authored by Luke Harding against Assange. The paper is also no stranger to publishing stories based on fabricated documents.

In May, Disobedient Media reported on the Guardian's hatchet-job relating to 'Operation Hotel,' or rather, the normal security operations of the embassy under former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa. That hit-piece , co-authored by Harding and Dan Collyns, asserted among other things that (according to an anonymous source) Assange hacked the embassy's security system. The allegation was promptly refuted by Correa as "absurd" in an interview with The Intercept , and also by WikiLeaks as an "anonymous libel" with which the Guardian had "gone too far this time. We're suing."

A shared element of The Guardian's 'Operation Hotel' fabrications and the latest libel attempting to link Julian Assange to Paul Manafort is none other than Fernando Villavicencio of FocusEcuador. In 2014 Villavicencio was caught passing a forged document to the Guardian , which published it without verifying it. When the forgery was revealed, the Guardian hurriedly took the document down but then tried to cover up that it had been tampered with by Villavicencio when it re-posted it a few days later.

How is Villavicencio tied to The Guardian's latest smear of Assange? Intimately, it turns out.

Who is Fernando Villavicencio?

Earlier this year, an independent journalist writing under the pseudonym Jimmyslama penned a comprehensive report detailing Villavicencio's relationships with pro-US actors within Ecuador and the US. She sums up her findings, which are worth reading in full :

" The information in this post alone should make everyone question why in the world the Guardian would continue to use a source like Villavicencio who is obviously tied to the U.S. government, the CIA, individuals like Thor Halvorssen and Bill Browder, and opponents of both Julian Assange and former President Rafael Correa."

As most readers recall, it was Correa who granted Assange asylum in the Ecuadorian Embassy in London. Villavicencio was so vehemently opposed to Rafael Correa's socialist government that during the failed 2010 coup against Correa he falsely accused the President of "crimes against humanity" by ordering police to fire on the crowds (it was actually Correa who was being shot at). Correa sued him for libel, and won, but pardoned Villavicencio for the damages awarded by the court.

Assange legal analyst Hanna Jonasson recently made the link between the Ecuadorian forger Villavicencio and Luke Harding's Guardian stories based on dubious documents explicit. She Tweeted : 2014 Ecuador's Foreign Ministry accused the Guardian of publishing a story based on a document it says was fabricated by Fernando Villavicencio, pictured below with the authors of the fake Manafort-Assange 'secret meeting' story, Harding and Collyns."

Jonasson included a link to a 2014 official Ecuadorian government statement which reads in part:

"There is also evidence that the author of this falsified document is Fernando Villavicencio, a convicted slanderer and opponent of Ecuador's current government. This can be seen from the file properties of the document that the Guardian had originally posted (but which it has since taken down and replaced with a version with this evidence removed)."

The statement also notes that Villavicencio had fled the country after his conviction for libeling Correa during the 2010 coup and was at that time living as a fugitive in the United States.

It is incredibly significant, as Jonasson argues, that the authors of the Guardian's latest libelous article were photographed with Villavicencio in Ecuador shortly before publication of the Guardian's claim that Assange had conducted meetings with Manafort.

Jonasson's Twitter thread also states: " This video from the news wire Andes alleges that Villavicencio's name appeared in the metadata of the document originally uploaded alongside The Guardian's story." The 2014 Guardian piece, which aimed a falsified shot at then-President Rafael Correa, would not be the last time Villavicencio's name would appear on a controversial Guardian story before being scrubbed from existence.

Just days after the backlash against the Guardian reached fever-pitch, Villavicencio had the gall to publish another image of himself with Harding and Collyns, gloating : "

One of my greatest journalistic experiences was working for months on Assange's research with colleagues from the British newspaper the Guardian, Luke Harding, Dan Collins and the young journalist Cristina Solórzano from @ somos_lafuente " [Translated from Spanish]

The tweet suggests, but does not specifically state, that Villavicencio worked with the disastrous duo on the Assange-Manafort piece. Given the history and associations of all involved, this statement alone should cause extreme skepticism in any unsubstantiated claims, or 'anonymously sourced' claims, the Guardian makes concerning Julian Assange and Ecuador.

Astoundingly, and counter to Villavicencio's uncharacteristic coyness, a recent video posted by WikiLeaks via Twitter does show that Villavicencio was originally listed as a co-author of the Guardian's Manafort-Assange allegations, before his name was edited out of the online article. The original version can be viewed, however, thanks to archive services.

The two photographs of Villavicencio with Harding and Collyns as well as the evidence showing he co-authored the piece doesn't just capture a trio of terrible journalists, it documents the involvement of multiple actors associated with intelligence agencies and fabricated stories.

All of this provoke the question: did Villavicencio provide more bogus documents to Harding and Collyns – Harding said he'd seen a document, though he didn't publish one (or even quote from it) so readers might judge its veracity for themselves – or perhaps these three invented the accusations out of whole-cloth?

Either way, to quote WikiLeaks, the Guardian has "gone too far this time" and its already-tattered reputation is in total shambles.

Successful Propaganda, Failed Journalism

Craig Murray calls Harding an " MI6 tool ", but to this writer, Harding seems worse than an MI6 stooge: He's a wannabe-spook, hanging from the coat-tails of anonymous intelligence officers and publishing their drivel as fact without so much as a skeptical blink. His lack of self-awareness and conflation of anecdote with evidence sets him apart as either one of the most blatant, fumbling propagandists of our era, or the most hapless hack journalist to stain the pages of printed news.

To provide important context on Harding's previous journalistic irresponsibility, we again recall that he co-authored the infamous book containing the encryption password of the entire Cablegate archive, leading to a leak of the unredacted State Department Cables across the internet. Although the guilty Guardian journalists tried to blame Assange for the debacle, it was they themselves who ended up on the receiving end of some well-deserved scorn.

In addition to continuing the Guardian's and Villavicencio's vendetta against Assange and WikiLeaks, it is clearly in Harding's financial interests to conflate the pending prosecution of Assange with Russiagate. As this writer previously noted , Harding penned a book on the subject, titled: " Collusion: Secret Meetings, Dirty Money, and How Russia Helped Donald Trump Win." Tying Assange to Russiagate is good for business, as it stokes public interest in the self-evidently faulty narrative his book supports.

Even more concerning is the claim amongst publishing circles, fueled by recent events, that Harding may be writing another book on Assange, with publication presumably timed for his pending arrest and extradition and designed to cash in on the trial. If that is in fact the case, the specter arises that Harding is working to push for Assange's arrest, not just on behalf of US, UK or Ecuadorian intelligence interests, but also to increase his own book sales.

That Harding and Collyns worked intensively with Villavicencio for "months" on the "Assange story," the fact that Villavicencio was initially listed as a co-author on the original version of the Guardian's article, and the recent denial by Fidel Narvaez , raises the likelihood that Harding and the Guardian were not simply the victims of bad sources who duped them, as claimed by some.

It indicates that the fake story was constructed deliberately on behalf of the very same intelligence establishment that the Guardian is nowadays only too happy to take the knee for.

In summary, one of the most visible establishment media outlets published a fake story on its front page, in an attempt to manufacture a crucial cross-over between the pending prosecution of Assange and the Russiagate saga. This represents the latest example in an onslaught of fake news directed at Julian Assange and WikiLeaks ever since they published the largest CIA leak in history in the form of Vault 7, an onslaught which appears to be building in both intensity and absurdity as time goes on.

The Guardian has destroyed its reputation, and in the process, revealed the desperation of the establishment when it comes to Assange.

[Dec 18, 2018] Looks like AP joined Integrity Intiative

Dec 18, 2018 | news.yahoo.com

Yahoo News - Latest News & Headlines

Matt o'Brien and Barbara Ortutay, AP Technology Writers , Associated Press December 17, 2018

<img alt="Key takeaways from new reports on Russian disinformation" src="https://s.yimg.com/ny/api/res/1.2/9VGA29inJ83dPeqC.cvqTg--~A/YXBwaWQ9aGlnaGxhbmRlcjtzbT0xO3c9ODAwO2lsPXBsYW5l/http://globalfinance.zenfs.com/images/US_AHTTP_AP_HEADLINES_BUSINESS/e66de17c8e1a4cecaf1da81f2bf87093_original.jpg" itemprop="url"/>
Some suspected Russian-backed fake social media accounts on Facebook.

Russians seeking to influence U.S. elections through social media had their eyes on Instagram and the black community.

These were among the findings in two reports released Monday by the Senate intelligence committee. Separate studies from University of Oxford researchers and the cybersecurity firm New Knowledge reveal insights into how Russian agents sought to influence Americans by saturating their favorite online services and apps with hidden propaganda.

Here are the highlights:

INSTAGRAM'S "MEME WARFARE"

Both reports show that misinformation on Facebook's Instagram may have had broader reach than the interference on Facebook itself.

The New Knowledge study says that since 2015, the Instagram posts generated 187 million engagements, such as comments or likes, compared with 77 million on Facebook.

And the barrage of image-centric Instagram "memes" has only grown since the 2016 election. Russian agents shifted their focus to Instagram after the public last year became aware of the widespread manipulation on Facebook and Twitter.

NOT JUST ADS

Revelations last year that Russian agents used rubles to pay for some of their propaganda ads drew attention to how gullible tech companies were in allowing their services to be manipulated.

But neither ads nor automated "bots" were as effective as unpaid posts hand-crafted by human agents pretending to be Americans. Such posts were more likely to be shared and commented on, and they rose in volume during key dates in U.S. politics such as during the presidential debates in 2016 or after the Obama administration's post-election announcement that it would investigate Russian hacking.

"These personalized messages exposed U.S. users to a wide range of disinformation and junk news linked to on external websites, including content designed to elicit outrage and cynicism," says the report by Oxford researchers, who worked with social media analysis firm Graphika.

DEMOGRAPHIC TARGETING

Both reports found that Russian agents tried to polarize Americans in part by targeting African-American communities extensively. They did so by campaigning for black voters to boycott elections or follow the wrong voting procedures in 2016, according to the Oxford report.

The New Knowledge report added that agents were "developing Black audiences and recruiting Black Americans as assets" beyond how they were targeting either left- or right-leaning voters.

The reports also support previous findings that the influence operations sought to polarize Americans by sowing political divisions on issues such as immigration and cultural and religious identities. The goal, according to the New Knowledge report, was to "create and reinforce tribalism within each targeted community."

Such efforts extended to Google-owned YouTube, despite Google's earlier assertion to Congress that Russian-made videos didn't target specific segments of the population.

PINTEREST TO POKEMON

The New Knowledge report says the Russian troll operation worked in many ways like a conventional corporate branding campaign, using a variety of different technology services to deliver the same messages to different groups of people.

Among the sites infiltrated with propaganda were popular image-heavy services like Pinterest and Tumblr, chatty forums like Reddit, and a wonky geopolitics blog promoted from Russian-run accounts on Facebook and YouTube.

Even the silly smartphone game "Pokemon Go" wasn't immune. A Tumblr post encouraged players to name their Pokemon character after a victim of police brutality.

WHAT NOW?

Both reports warn that some of these influence campaigns are ongoing.

The Oxford researchers note that 2016 and 2017 saw "significant efforts" to disrupt elections around the world not just by Russia, but by domestic political parties spreading disinformation.

They warn that online propaganda represents a threat to democracies and public life. They urge social media companies to share data with the public far more broadly than they have so far.

"Protecting our democracies now means setting the rules of fair play before voting day, not after," the Oxford report says.

[Dec 17, 2018] The destruction of Convoy PQ.17'

Dec 17, 2018 | www.unz.com

jilles dykstra , says: December 17, 2018 at 9:14 pm GMT

@EugeneGur " that almost no aid came in 1941 when it would've been the most helpful "
How could it ?
USA war production began in fact just in 1943.
Read Lindbergh about the difficulties in organising the Ford factories into producing bombers.
The first plane that was shown to the public could not even fly.
In order to appease Stalin Churchill sent a whole convoy to an almost certain death.
Charles A. Lindbergh, ´The Wartime Journals of Charles A. Lindbergh', New York, 1970
David Irving, 'The destruction of Convoy PQ.17', London, 1968, 1980
likbez , says: December 18, 2018 at 2:31 am GMT
@jilles dykstra

In order to appease Stalin Churchill sent a whole convoy to an almost certain death.

Destruction of PQ17 might well be the result of double dealing on the part of Churchill. He did wanted that the convoy was destroyed and Russians bleed in the fight with Their Reich.

It is the same policy as in Harry Truman quote:

"If we see that Germany is winning we ought to help Russia and if Russia is winning we ought to help Germany, and that way let them kill as many as possible, although I don't want to see Hitler victorious under any circumstances."

― Harry S. Truman

Actions of the British navy was an act of betrayal:

On July 4, with the convoy well into the Barents Sea and out of range of the carrier Victorious, and because ULTRA intelligence intercepts caused him to believe an attack by the Tirpitz and the other capital ships was imminent, Adm. Sir Dudley Pound lost his nerve. At 9:11 p.m., the Admiralty issued the first of three messages to Hamilton. With the prefix most immediate, it read: "Cruiser Force withdraw to the westward at high speed." Then at 9:23 p.m.: "Owing to threat from surface ships, convoy is to disperse and proceed to Russian ports." Finally, at 9:36 p.m.: "Convoy is to scatter." With a heavy heart, Hamilton passed on the orders. Reaction was universally one of horror and fury.

https://www.defensemedianetwork.com/stories/the-destruction-of-convoy-pq-17/

[Dec 17, 2018] Withouth the USSR as a countervailing force the level of inequality in Western societies will always rise to the level on which riots will start and then will fluctuates around this level.

Dec 17, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

AmyInNH -> Riever , 23 Aug 2016 10:00

Swing between extremes, however, consistent in US history, economic predatory dependence on free/ultra cheap labor with no legal rights. Current instantiation, offshored and illegal and "temporary" immigrant labor. Note neither party in the US is proposing "immigration reform" is green card upon hire. Ds merely propose green card for time served for those over X number of years donated as captive/cheap.
The entitled to cheap/captive now want it in law, national laws and trade agreements.
All privilege/no responsibilities, including taxes.
Doesn't scale. 1929 says so, 2008 says so.
CivilDiscussion , 23 Aug 2016 10:25
Liberals, the Left, Progressives -- whatever you want to call them suffer from a basic problem. They don't work together and have no common goals. As the article stated they complain but offer no real solutions that they can agree on. Should we emphasize gay pride or should we emphasize good-paying jobs and benefits with good social welfare benefits? Until they can agree at least on priorities they will never reform the current corrupt system -- it is too entrenched. Even if the Capitalist Monstrosity we have now self-destructs as the writer indicates -- nothing good will replace it until the Left get their act together.
AmyInNH -> Juillette , 23 Aug 2016 10:16
"Lesser of two evils" needs to go on the burn pile.
Encumbent congress needs a turn over.
Not showing up to vote is not okay. If people can't think of someone they want to write-in, "none of the above" is a protest vote. Not voting is silence, which equals consent.
Local elections, beat back Koch/ALEC, hiding on ballots as "Libertarian". "Privatize everything" is their mantra, so they can further profitize via inescapeable taxes, while gutting "regulation" - safety and market integrity, with no accountability.
Corporation 101: limited liability. While means we are left holding the bag. As in bailout - $125 billion in 1990, up to $7.7 trillion in 2008.
Dave_P -> Isiodore , 23 Aug 2016 09:59
Anything the Economist presents as the overriding choice is probably best relegated to one factor among many. I respect Milanovic's work, but he's seeing things from where we are now. Remember we've seen populist surges come and go from the witch-burnings and religious panics of the 17th century to 1890s Bryanism and the 1930s far right, and each time they've yielded to a more articulate vision, though the last time it cost sixty million dead - not something we want to see repeated. This time it's hard because dissent still clings to a "post-ideological" delusion that those on top never succumbed to. But change will come as what I'd term "post-rational" alternatives fail to deliver. Let's hope it's sooner rather than later.
willpodmore , 23 Aug 2016 09:53
"Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt." Thank you Martin, at least someone writing in the Guardian has got the point!
We voted against the EU's unelected European Central Bank, its unelected European Commission, its European Court of Justice, its Common Agricultural Policy and its Common Fisheries Policy.
We voted against the EU's treaty-enshrined 'austerity' (= depression) policies, which have impoverished Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy.
We voted against the EU/US Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, which would privatise all our public services, which threatens all our rights, and which discriminates against the countries of Africa, Asia and Latin America.
We voted against the EU's tariffs against African farmers' cheaper produce.
We opposed the City of London Corporation, the Institute of Directors, the CBI, the IMF, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley, which all wanted us to stay in the EU.
We voted against the EU's undemocratic trilogue procedure and its pro-austerity Semester programme. We voted to leave this undemocratic, privatisation-enforcing, austerity-enforcing body.
AmyInNH -> ciaofornow , 23 Aug 2016 10:39
Bailout was because that was public savings, pensions, 401ks, etc. the banks were playing with, and lost. Bailout is billing all of us for it. Bad, letting the banks/financial "services" not only survive but continue the exact same practices.
Bailout: $7.2 to $7.7 trillion. Current derivative holdings: $500 trillion.
Not just moral hazard but economic hazard when capitalism basic rule is broken, allow bad businesses to die of their own accord. Subversion currently called "too big to fail", rather than tell the public "we lost all your savings, pensions, ...".
AmyInNH -> Dave_P , 23 Aug 2016 09:40
Relocating poverty from the East into the West isn't improvement.
Creating sweatshops in the East isn't raising their standard of living.
Creating economies so economically unstable that population declines isn't improvement.
Trying to bury that fact with immigration isn't improvement.
Configuring all of the above for record profit for the benefit of a tiny percentage of the population isn't improvement.
Gaming tax law to avoid paying into/for extensive business use of federal services and tax base isn't improvement.
Game over. Time for a reboot.
marxistelf -> Tobyrob , 23 Aug 2016 09:24
I am glad you finally concede a point on neo-liberalism. The moral hazard argument is extremely poor and typical in this era of runaway CEO pay, of a tendency to substitute self-help fables (a la "The monk who sold his Ferrari) and pop psychology ( a la Moral Hazard) for credible economic analysis.
The economic crisis is rooted in the profit motive just as capitalist economic growth is. Lowering of Tarrif barriers, outsourcing, changes in value capture (added value), new financial instruments, were attempts to restore the falling rate of profit. They did for a while, but, as always happens with Capitalism, the seeds of the new crisis were in the solution to the old.
And all the while the state continues growing in an attempt to keep capitalism afloat. Neoliberalism failed ( or should I say "small state" ) and here is the graph to prove it:
http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/include/usgs_chartSp03t.png
Homer32 , 23 Aug 2016 07:32
Interesting, and I believe accurate, analysis of the economic and political forces afoot. However it is ludicrous to state that Donald trump, who is a serial corpratist, out-sourcer, tax avoider and scam artist, actually believes any of those populist principles that you ascribe so firmly to him. The best and safest outcome of our election, in my opinion, would be to have a Clinton administration tempered by the influences from the populist wings of both parties.
Juillette , 23 Aug 2016 06:42
Great article, however the elite globalists are in complete denial in the US. Our only choice is to vote them out of power because the are owned by Wall Street. Both Bernie and Trump supporters should unite to vote establishment out of Washington.
Dave_P -> ShaunNewman , 23 Aug 2016 06:38
The opiate of the masses. As the churches empty, the stadiums fill.
Dave_P -> ciaofornow , 23 Aug 2016 06:36
There were similar observations in the immediate aftermath of 2008, and doubtless before. Many of us thought the crisis would trigger a rethink of the whole direction of the previous three decades, but instead we got austerity and a further lurch to the right, or at best Obama-style stimulus and modest tweaks which were better than the former but still rather missed the point. I still find it flabbergasting and depressing, but on reflection the 1930s should have been a warning of not just the economic hazards but also the political fallout, at least in Europe. The difference was that this time left ideology had all but vacated the field in the 1980s and was in no position to lead a fightback: all we can hope for is better late than never.
idontreadtheguardian -> thisisafact , 23 Aug 2016 05:16
Yes it is, it's an extremely bad thing destroying the fabric of society. Social science has documented that even the better off are more happy, satisfied with life and feel safer in societies (i.e. the Scandinavian) where there is a relatively high degree of economic equality. Yes, economic inequality is a BAD thing in itself.

Oh, give me a break. Social science will document anything it can publish, no matter how spurious. If Scandanavia is so great, why are they such pissheads? There has always been inequality, including in workers' paradises like the Soviet Union and Communist China. Inequality is what got us where we are today, through natural selection. Phenotype is largely dependent on genotype, so why shouldn't we pass on material wealth as well as our genes? Surely it is a parent's right to afford their offspring advantages if they can do so?

SaulGe -> John Black , 23 Aug 2016 03:30
Have you got any numbers? Or references for your allegations. I say the average or median wealth, opportunity, economic circumstance and health measures are substantially better than a generation (lets say 30 years) ago.

Heres this years data. Note the top 25 or so are almost all liberal western type democracies with mixed economies. http://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/country_price_rankings?itemId=105

And here is the graph showing growth in wages whilst it slowed for a variety of complex reasons has been overall strong for 25 of the last 30 years http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/bulletin/2015/jun/pdf/bu-0615-2.pdf

Again I don't think our system is perfect. I don't deny that some in our societies struggle and don't benefit, particularly the poorly educated, disabled, mentally ill and drug addicted. I actually agree that we could better target our social redistribution from those that have to those that need help. I disagree that we need higher taxes, protectionism, socialism, more public servants, more legislation. Indeed I disagree with proposition that other systems are better.

shastakath -> TimWorstall , 23 Aug 2016 03:17
George Orwell said, in the 30s, that the price of social justice would include a lowering of living standards for the working- & middle-classes, at least temporarily, so I follow your line of thought. However, the outrageous tilt toward the upper .1% has no "adjustment" fluff to shield it from the harsh despotism it represents. So, do put that in your statistical pipe and smoke it.

[Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation program !!! ..."
"... the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global elites? ..."
"... Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they are fighting the commies. ..."
"... Integrity Initiative ..."
"... From his curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth. ..."
"... He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's Stabilisation Unit which is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI). ..."
"... This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine. ..."
"... That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia" ..."
"... In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested Military measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea: ..."
"... Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia? ..."
"... Yes, Putin really believes his own propaganda ..."
"... Putin's paranoia is driving his foreign adventures ..."
"... Russian information warfare - airbrushing reality ..."
"... Distract, deceive, destroy: Putin at war in Syria ..."
"... Russian penetration in Germany ..."
"... Russian conspiracy theory and foreign policy ..."
"... Mapping Russia's whole influence machine ..."
"... Military Review ..."
"... BBC Newsnight ..."
"... The most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the Initiative commissioned such research (pdf) and paid for it. ..."
"... Here is an interesting look at how little the Russia-linked entities spent on advertising on Google during the 2016 election: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/12/google-russia-and-4700-in-advertising.html Slowly but surely, the Russian meddling narrative is falling apart. ..."
"... McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow vest protesters. ..."
"... Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would have responded with force. ..."
"... It looks like one of the decision was to get closer to France (after getting very close friends in Homs and Aleppo?) See the list of people in the French II cluster dumped yesterday by Anonymous: half the names work at the fr Min of F Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_House_Treaties and http://www.gmfus.org/publications/frances-defense-partnerships-and-dilemmas-brexit ..."
"... This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state. ..."
"... it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy. ..."
"... It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes fascism. ..."
"... Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art. ..."
"... Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller? ..."
"... Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. " Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11, with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians. ..."
"... Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM ..."
"... The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism (Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque (less defensible) reasons and missions. ..."
"... right after 2016 US elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation. Seems that veil has been dispensed with ..."
"... Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking, setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry. That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise of free markets and democracy. ..."
"... 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation Designed To Create A New Enemy ..."
Dec 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org
uncle tungsten , Dec 15, 2018 6:28:07 PM | 41

Labour is not "silent". Apart from Thornberry's questioning already mentioned in another post here, the party's newspaper published a news about it:

Government admits that Institute of Statecraft was funded through CSSF , by Lamiat Sabin, 14th December 2018.

Mark2 , Dec 15, 2018 7:12:28 PM | link
Sounds to me like that Integrity initiative dude needs to go on a 'de-radicalisation program !!! How many billions is that guna save us all ! not to mention lives saved.
NemesisCalling , Dec 15, 2018 7:42:22 PM | link
@45 jr

Wrong JR. It seems quite the obvious that the big boy in the west, the US, would seem to be the one spearheading the whole globalist agenda.

But this is a retarded proposition.

The US is nothing more than a Golem. It has been reduced to somnambulism and hijacked, utilized for the ends of these Non-National elites. Sure, like many posters here, it feels good to blame the US for everything. But the powerbrokers have always been in London and now its hypercentralized endgame in Brussels. You can say that it is the US through and through, but ask yourself who has more to gain from US FP abroad: average Americans or the global elites?

Or are we just arguing semantics?

NemesisCalling , Dec 15, 2018 7:44:57 PM | link
Those former-Eastern Bloc countries, i.e. Poland and Ukraine, do not count as power brokers. They have and will always be pawns in the game. So what if they still worship Icons of Americanism which is a remnant culture of their F*ed up narrative where they still believe they are fighting the commies.
Uncle $cam , Dec 15, 2018 8:06:15 PM | link
Yesterday marked the 10th anniversary of the decider aka Bush Jr. having had a shoe thrown at him.

'For the sake of Iraq': Bush shoe-thrower running for parliament refuses to exploit 'hero image'

Muntadhar al-Zaidi was arrested and tortured for it...

"They broke my teeth, my nose, my leg, they electrocuted me, lashed me, they would beat me, they even broke a table or a chair over my back. I don't know, they had my eyes covered," al-Zaidi recalled. "This was one thing I never experienced before. Torture by the authorities, by the rule of law."

I wish it had been a hand grenade.

The British government financed Integrity Initiative is tasked with spreading anti-Russian propaganda and with influencing the public, military and governments of a number of countries. What follows is an incomplete analysis of the third batch of the Initiative's papers which was dumped yesterday.

Christopher Nigel Donnelly (CND) is the co-director of The Institute for Statecraft and founder of its offshoot Integrity Initiative . The Initiative claims to "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation".

The Integrity Initiative does this by planting disinformation about alleged Russian influence through journalists 'clusters' throughout Europe and the United States.

Both, the Institute as well as the Initiative, claim to be independent Non-Government Organizations. Both are financed by the British government, NATO and other state donors.

Among the documents lifted by some anonymous person from the servers of the Institute we find several papers about Donnelly as well as some memos written by him. They show a russophobe mind with a lack of realistic strategic thought.

There is also a file (pdf) with a copy of his passport:


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From his curriculum vitae (pdf) we learn that Donnelly was a long time soldier in the British Army Intelligence Corps where he established and led the Soviet Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst. He later was involved in creating the US Army's Foreign Military Studies Office (FMSO) at Ft. Leavenworth.

He worked at the British Ministry of Defence and as an advisor to several Secretaries General of NATO. He is a director of the Statecraft Institute since 2010. Donnelly also advises the Foreign Minister of Lithuania. He is a "Security and Justice Senior Mentor" of the UK's Stabilisation Unit which is tasked with destabilizing various countries. He serves as a Honorary Colonel of the Specialist Group Military Intelligence (SGMI).

During his time as military intelligence analyst in the 1980s Donnelly wrote several books and papers about the Soviet Union and its military.

Donnelly seems to be obsessed with the 'Russian threat' and is determined to fight it by all means. His paranoia is obvious in a "private - confidential" report by the Statecraft Institute on The Challenge of Brexit to the UK: Case study – The Foreign and Commonwealth Offices (pdf):

Our problem is that, for the last 70 years or so, we in the UK and Europe have been living in a safe, secure rules-based system which has allowed us to enjoy a holiday from history.

... ... ...

Unfortunately, this state of affairs is now being challenged. A new paradigm of conflict is replacing the 19th & 20th Century paradigm.

... ... ...

In this new paradigm, the clear distinction which most people have been able to draw between war and peace, their expectation of stability and a degree of predictability in life, are being replaced by a volatile unpredictability, a permanent state of instability in which war and peace become ever more difficult to disentangle . The "classic" understanding of conflict being between two distinct players or groups of players is giving way to a world of Darwinian competition where all the players – nation states, sub-state actors, big corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and so on – are constantly striving with each other in a "war of all against all". The Western rules-based system, which most westerners take for granted and have come to believe is "normal", is under attack from countries and organisations which wish to replace our system with theirs. This is not a crisis which faces us; it is a strategic challenge, and from several directions simultaneously.

In reality the "Western rules-based system", fully implemented after the demise of the Soviet Union, is a concept under which 'the west' arbitrarily makes up rules and threatens to kill anyone who does not follow them. Witness the wars against Serbia, the war on Iraq, the destruction of Libya, the western led coup in Ukraine and the war by Jihadi proxies against the people of Syria and Iraq. None of these actions were legal under international law. Demanding a return to strict adherence to the rule of international law, as Russia, China and others now do, it is not an attempt to replace "our system with theirs". It is a return to the normal state of global diplomacy. It is certainly not a "Darwinian competition".

In October 2016 Donnelly had a Private Discussion with Gen Sir Richard Barrons (pdf), marked as personal and confidential. Barrons is a former commander of the British Joint Forces Command. The nonsensical top line is: "The UK defence model is failing. UK is at real risk."

Some interesting nuggets again reveal a paranoid mindset. The talk also includes some realistic truthiness about the British military posture Barrons and others created:

There has been a progressive, systemic demobilisation of NATO militarily capability and a run down of all its members' defences
...
We are seeing new / reinvented ways of warfare – hybrid , plus the reassertion of hard power in warfare
...
Aircraft Carriers can be useful for lots of things, but not for war v China or Russia, so we should equip them accordingly. ...
The West no longer has a military edge on Russia. ...
Our Nuclear programme drains resources from conventional forces and hollows them out. ...
The UK Brigade in Germany is no good as a deterrent against Russia. ...
Our battalion in Estonia are hostages, not a deterrent. ...

The general laments the lack of influence the military has on the British government and its people. He argues for more government financed think tank research that can be fed back into the government:

So, if no catastrophe happens to wake people up and demand a response, then we need to find a way to get the core of government to realise the problem and take it out of the political space. We will need to impose changes over the heads of vested interests. NB We did this in the 1930s

My conclusion is that it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. We must generate an independent debate outside government .

...

We need to ask when and how do we start to put all this right? Do we have the national capabilities / capacities to fix it? If so, how do we improve our harnessing of resources to do it? We need this debate NOW. There is not a moment to be lost.

This was an order from the core of the British thinking to Donnelly to get even deeper into the inner-British influence business. Hype Russia as a threat so more money can be taken from the 'vested interests' of the people and dumped into the military machine.

That particular advise of General Barrons was accepted. In 2017 the Integrity Initiative bid for funding from the Ministry of Defence (pdf) for various projects to influence the public, the parliament and the government as well as foreign forces. The bid lists "performance indicators" that are supposed to measure the success of its activities. The top indicator for the Initiative's proposed work is a "Tougher stance in government policy towards Russia" .


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Asking for government finance to influence the government to take a "tougher stand towards Russia" seems a bit circular. But this is consistent with the operation of other Anglo-American think tanks and policy initiatives in which one part of the government, usually the hawkish one, secretly uses NGO's and think-tanks to lobby other parts of the government to support their specific hobbyhorse and budget.

Here is how it is done. The 'experts' of the 'charity' Institute for Statecraft and Integrity Initiative testified in the British parliament. While they were effectively paid by the government they lobbied parliament under the cover of their NGO. This circularity also allows to use international intermediates. Members of the Spanish cluster (pdf) of the Initiative testified in the British Parliament about the Catalan referendum and related allegations against Wikileaks publisher Julian Assange. (It is likely that this testimony led to the change in the position of the Ecuadorian government towards Assange.)


Unfortunately, or luckily, such lobbying operations are mostly run by people who are incompetent in the specific field they are lobbying for. Chris Donnelly, despite a life long experience in military intelligence, has obviously zero competence as a military strategist or planner.

In March 2014, shortly after Crimea split from the Ukraine, Donnelly suggested Military measures (pdf) to be taken by the Ukraine with regards to Crimea:

If I were in charge I would get the following implemented asp
  1. Set up a cordon sanitaire across the Crimean Isthmus and on the coast N. of Crimea with troops and mines
  2. Mine Sevastopol harbour/bay. Can be done easily using a car ferry if they have no minelayers. Doesn't need a lot of mines to be effective. They could easily buy some mines.
  3. Get their air force into the air and activate all their air defences. If they can't fly the Migs on the airfield in Crimea those should be destroyed as a gesture that they are serious. Going "live" electronically will worry the Russians as the Ukrainians have the same electronic kit. If the Russians jam it they jam their own kit as well.
  4. Ukraine used to have some seriously important weapons, such as a big microwave anti-satellite weapon. If they still have this, they should use it.
  5. The government needs a Strategic communication campaign-so far everything is coming from Moscow. They need to articulate a long-term vision that will inspire the people, however hard that is to do. Without it, what have people to fight for?
  6. They should ask the west now to start supplying Oil and gas. There is plenty available due to the mild winter.

I am trying to get this message across

Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "guestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea. And how was the west to immediately supply gas to Ukraine and Ukraine's pipeline network is designed to unidirectionally receive gas from Russia?

Such half-assed thinking is typical for the Institute and its creation of propaganda. One of its employees/contractors is Hugh Benedict Nimmo who the Initiative paid to produce anti-Russian propaganda that was then disseminated through various western publications.

According to the (still very incomplete) Initiative files Ben Nimmo received a monthly consultancy fee of £2.500 between December 2015 and March 2016. In August 2016 he sent an invoice (pdf) of £5,000 for his "August work on Integrity Initiative". A Production Timetable (pdf) for March to June 2016 lists the following Nimmo outputs and activities:

One wonders how often Ben Nimmo double billed his various sponsors for these copy-paste fantasy pamphlets.

In late 2017 Ben Nimmo and Guardian 'journalist' Carole Cadwalladr disseminated allegations that Russia used Facebook ads to influence the Brexit decision. Cadwalladr even received a price for her work. Unfortunately the price was not revoked when Facebook revealed that "Russia linked" accounts had spend a total of 97 cents on Brexit ads. It is unexplained how that was enough to achieve their alleged aim.

Cadwalladr is listed as a speaker (pdf) at a "skill sharing" conference the Institute organized for November 1-2 under the headline: "Tackling Tools of Malign Influence - Supporting 21st Century Journalism".

This year Ben Nimmo became notorious for claiming that several real persons with individual opinions were "Russian trolls". As we noted :

Nimmo, and several other dimwits quoted in the piece, came to the conclusion that Ian56 is a Kremlin paid troll, not a real person. Next to Ian56 Nimmo 'identified' other 'Russian troll' accounts:

Ben Nimmo @benimmo - 10:50 UTC - 24 Mar 2018

One particularly influential retweeter (judging by the number of accounts which then retweeted it) was @ValLisitsa, which posts in English and Russian. Last year, this account joined the troll-factory #StopMorganLie campaign.

Had Nimmo, a former NATO spokesperson, had some decent education he would have know that @ValLisitsa, aka Valentina Lisitsa , is a famous American- Ukrainian pianist. Yes, she sometimes tweets in Russian language to her many fans in Russia and the Ukraine. Is that now a crime? The videos of her world wide performances on Youtube have more than 170 million views. It is absurd to claim that she is a 'Russian troll' and to insinuate that she is taking Kremlin money to push 'Russian troll' opinions.

The Institute for Statecraft Expert Team (pdf) list several people with military intelligence backgrounds as well as many 'journalists'. One of them is:

Mark Galeotti
Specialist in Russian strategic thinking; the application of Russian disinformation and hybrid warfare; the use of organised crime as a weapon of hybrid warfare. Educational and mentoring skills, including in a US and E European environment, and the corporate world.
Russian linguist

Galeotti is the infamous inventor of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' and of the propaganda about Russia's alleged 'hybrid' warfare. In February 2013 the Russian General Valery Gerasimov, then Russia's chief of the General Staff, published a paper that analysed the way the 'west' is waging a new type of war by mixing propaganda, proxy armies and military force into one unified operation.

Galeotti claimed that Gerasimov's analysis of 'western' operations was a new Russian doctrine of 'hybrid war'. He invented the term 'Gerasimov doctrine' which then took off in the propaganda realm. In February 2016 the U.S. Army Military Review published a longer analysis of Gerasimov's paper that debunked the nonsense (pdf). It concluded:

Gerasimov's article is not proposing a new Russian way of warfare or a hybrid war, as has been stated in the West.

But anti-Russian propagandist repeated Galeotti's nonsense over and over. Only in March 2018, five years after Galeotti invented the 'Germasimov doctrine' and two years after he was thoroughly debunked, he finally recanted :

Everywhere, you'll find scholars, pundits, and policymakers talking about the threat the "Gerasimov doctrine" -- named after Russia's chief of the general staff -- poses to the West. It's a new way of war, "an expanded theory of modern warfare," or even "a vision of total warfare."

There's one small problem. It doesn't exist. And the longer we pretend it does, the longer we misunderstand the -- real, but different -- challenge Russia poses.

I feel I can say that because, to my immense chagrin, I created this term, which has since acquired a destructive life of its own, lumbering clumsily into the world to spread fear and loathing in its wake.

The Institute for Statecraft's "Specialist in Russian strategic thinking", an expert of disinformation and hybrid warfare, created a non-existing Russian doctrine out of hot air and used it to press for anti-Russian measures. Like Ben Nimmo he is an aptly example of the quality of the Institute's experts and work.


One of the newly released documents headlined CND Gen list 2 (pdf) (CND= Chris Nigel Donnelly) includes the names and email addresses of a number of military, government and think tank people. The anonymous releaser of the documents claims that the list is "of employees who attended a closed-door meeting with the white helmets". (No document has been published yet that confirms this.) One name on the list is of special interest:


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Pablo Miller was the handler and friend of Sergej Skripal, the British double agent who was "novichoked" in Salisbury. When Miller's name was mentioned in the press the British government issued a D-Notice to suppress its further publishing,


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As we wrote in April:

Pablo Miller, a British MI6 agent, had recruited Sergej Skripal. The former MI6 agent in Moscow, Christopher Steele, was also involved in the case. Skripal was caught by the Russian security services and went to jail. Pablo Miller, the MI6 recruiter, was also the handler of Sergej Skripal after he was released by Russia in a spy swap. He reportedly also lives in Salisbury. Both Christopher Steele and Pablo Miller work for Orbis Business Intelligence which created the "Dirty Dossier" about Donald Trump.

In 1979, before becoming a spy, Pablo Miller served at the 4th Royal Tank Regiment . ( BBC Newsnight 'journalist' Mark Urban, who later published a book based on interviews with Skripal , served together with Miller in the same regiment.) The 4th regiment's motto was "Fear Naught". Pablo Miller's email address given in the Chris Donnelly list is [email protected].

At the very beginning of the Skripal affair, before there was any talk of 'Novichok', we asked if Skripal was involved in creating the now debunked "Dirty Dossier" and if that was a reason for certain British insiders to move him out of the way:

Here are some question: If there is a connection between the dossier and Skripal, which seems very likely to me, then there are a number of people and organizations with potential motives to kill him. Lots of shady folks and officials on both sides of the Atlantic were involved in creating and running the anti-Trump/anti-Russia campaign. There are several investigations and some very dirty laundry might one day come to light. Removing Skripal while putting the blame on Russia looks like a convenient way to get rid of a potential witness.

The most recent release of Integrity Initiative documents includes lots of in-depth reports (pdf) about foreign media reactions to the Skripal affair. One wonders why the Initiative commissioned such research (pdf) and paid for it.

After two years the Muller investigation found zero evidence for the 'collusion' between Russia and the Trump campaign that the fake Steele dossier suggested. The whole collusion claim is a creation by 'former' British intelligence operatives who likely acted on request of U.S. intelligence leaders Clapper and Brennan. How deep was the Russia specialist Chris Donnelly and his Institute for Statecraft involved in this endeavor?


Checking through all the released Initiative papers and lists one gets the impression of a secret military intelligence operation, disguised as a public NGO. Financed by millions of government money the Institute for Statecraft and the Integrity Initiative work under a charity label to create and disseminate disinformation to the global public and back into the government and military itself.

The paranoia about Russia, which does way less harm than the 'western' "rules based system" constantly creates, is illogical and not based on factual analysis. It creates Russia as an "enemy" when it is none. It hypes a "threat" out of hot air. The only people who profit from this are the propagandists and the companies and people who back them.

The Initiatives motto "Defend Democracy Against Disinformation" is a truly Orwellian construct. By disseminating propaganda and using it to influence the public, parliament, the military and governments, the Institute actively undermines the democratic process that depends on the free availability of truthful information.

It should be shut down immediately.

---
Note: There have already been attempts to delete the released files from the Internet. A complete archive of all Integrity Initiative files published so far is here . Should the public links cease to work, you can contact the author of this blog for access to private backups.

flayer , Dec 15, 2018 11:49:39 AM | link

Aside from the fact that the government itself funds this organization, the creepiest thing about it is that the "non-governmental individuals" that help fund it are the same people that run the think tanks: a bunch of Rhodesians.

Russ , Dec 15, 2018 11:59:03 AM | link

"Such half-assed thinking...Think for a moment how Russia would have responded to a mining of Sevastopol harbor, the frying of its satellites or the destruction of its fighter jets in Crimea. Those "gestures" would have been illegal acts of war against the forces of a nuclear power which were legally stationed in Crimea."

It sure seems like this half-assed thinking isn't just the domain of a fringe element, but is increasingly mainstream among the elites. Doesn't bode well.

Roy G , Dec 15, 2018 12:10:11 PM | link
Thank you B. It is truly amazing to watch the UK elites unravel as they have become truly unhinged by their own connivances. It is a bad joke at the commoner's expense that they propagandize and demonize in the name of the 'Western rules based system' even as they are busy shooting themselves in both feet by committing Brexit. Although there are legitimate grievances with the EU, it is clear that Brexit is a Tory power play that is all politics and zero governance. Alas, Perfidious Albion has succumbed to Mad Cow disease.
Sally Snyder , Dec 15, 2018 12:10:23 PM | link
Here is an interesting look at how little the Russia-linked entities spent on advertising on Google during the 2016 election: https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/12/google-russia-and-4700-in-advertising.html Slowly but surely, the Russian meddling narrative is falling apart.
bjd , Dec 15, 2018 12:46:08 PM | link
Thanks, b.

What remains mysterious (not really) is why --if these initiatives are truly meant to save and strengthen democracy-- they aren't proudly proclaimed and advertised, in the open, transparent, for everyone one to see and judge, like an adult democracy that they claim to stand for might want to debate and form an opinion on.

The fact that it isn't, is testimony to the nefarious anti-democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian streak that runs in between every two lines that they put on paper.

Jackrabbit , Dec 15, 2018 12:58:35 PM | link
McCarthyesque smear campaigns to discredit opponents and squash dissent has become normal practice. Integrity Initiative tweets against Corbyn is a stark example, but there have been MANY other people and groups that have been tarred with claims of being sponsored/led/influenced by Russia, including Catalonian independence activists and Yellow vest protesters.

Every time one scratches the surface of such smears, it seems there is a connection to US/British MIC, Ukraine, or Israel - essentially, those who benefit (financially or otherwise) from greater tensions with Russia.

At what point does neocon doubling-down on failed foreign policy become more than just picking our pockets and warping our minds? At what point do they start killing our kids in another unnecessary war?

Clueless Joe , Dec 15, 2018 1:01:40 PM | link
Cold War has been over for nearly 30 years. It's time enough for Western countries to send into real retirement every single cold-warrior, their time is over, their mindset is quaint and useless, if not downright dangerous and counter-productive.
Mark2 , Dec 15, 2018 1:11:36 PM | link
Thank you 'b'
I'll just say -- - there is safety in numbers ! Already valuable information, important to the public good and democracy has been spread wide enough to be certain, this gene won't go back in the bottle ! D notice or no ! And by doing that, has made the fearless journalists and investigators lives all the safer ! Safety in numbers, spread this wide everyone?

Are these people above the law ? ...

psychohistorian , Dec 15, 2018 1:12:59 PM | link
Thanks for the continued exposition of this story b.....may it go viral

I want to comment on some of the wording you quote Donnelly as writing

" .....is giving way to a world of Darwinian competition where all the players – nation states, sub-state actors, big corporations, ethnic or religious groups, and so on – are constantly striving with each other in a "war of all against all". "

This is Donnelly's characterization of a world in which finance is a public utility instead of the private jackboot that it currently is. This is the delusion these people have been led to believe.

So instead of his "war of all against all" that some might call human cooperation on the basis of merit we have a mythical God of Mammon religion that continues to instantiate the private finance led world of the West with it parasitic elite and fawning acolytes.

Kadath , Dec 15, 2018 1:34:30 PM | link
Dear god, what has gotten into the minds of the military and political "elite" within the UK! Mining Sevastopol would have been an obvious act of war against Russia and Russia would have responded with force.

Thankfully it wasn't done but the fact this was even discussed by senior figures confirms that there was at least a sizable minority pushing for it. 30 years after the fall of the Soviet Union, the Western elite have truly abandoned all sense of reality and embraced a consequence free view of the use of force. After Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya they haven't learned a thing! I'm becoming more and more certain that a peaceful transition to the multipolar world is impossible and that it will only happen after the US or one of its' vassal states blunder into a proxy war and get utterly and comprehensively defeated, forcing a radical world realignment, but with nuts like John Bolton and the neocons in the Whitehouse it could easily lead to a nuclear war

Mina , Dec 15, 2018 1:45:39 PM | link
It looks like one of the decision was to get closer to France (after getting very close friends in Homs and Aleppo?) See the list of people in the French II cluster dumped yesterday by Anonymous: half the names work at the fr Min of F Affairs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lancaster_House_Treaties and http://www.gmfus.org/publications/frances-defense-partnerships-and-dilemmas-brexit

The grumpy general at Turcopolier has skept the II topic entirely.

TJ , Dec 15, 2018 1:53:44 PM | link
@13 psychohistorian

" we have a mythical God of Mammon religion" I hope you're not here in dear old Blighty, as you'll probably get arrested for antisemitism

Peter AU 1 , Dec 15, 2018 2:13:14 PM | link
This group may have officially formed in 2015, but its work is no different from the British propaganda that swamped the MSM when MH17 was downed. Tied into the Steel dossier and Russian collusion in the US. This is the anglosphere or five eyes permanent state.
exiled off mainstreet , Dec 15, 2018 2:22:39 PM | link
As an aside this happens to be "Bill of Rights Day", the anniversary of the passage of the Bill of Rights as amendments to the yankee constitution. This reveals again how far from the rule of law the yankee imperium, now the key element of the British Empire they supposedly seceded from, has strayed, since it is apparent that this "Integrity Initiative" was engaged in to ensure that the regime was in the safe hands of the harpy.

It has also ensured that the victorious candidate has been neutered and faithfully follows the world control line put forward by the five eyes spy-masters making up the empire in its present iteration. This also shows what a farce the regime, based on the rule of law, now presents.

It is interesting that Trudeau, the Canadian figurehead, clothes his country's kidnapping of the Chinese business figure as "in defence of the rule of law." All in all, it is now apparent we would be far better off if the Kaiserreich, with all of its militaristic and bombastic flaws, had triumphed in the Great War. No Hitler, no Stalin, no five eyes fascism.

GeorgeV , Dec 15, 2018 2:27:49 PM | link
The "Western-based rules system" described in this article reminds me of a game called "Calvin Ball" which appeared in the former comic strip "Calvin and Hobbes." In the strip Calvin a wildly imaginative adolescent boy who plays a free-form of football with his imaginary pet toy tiger (Hobbes). Rules of the game are made up as the game is played to suit the players. There you have it real life imitates art.
bjd , Dec 15, 2018 2:38:50 PM | link
b, I downloaded the zip file, and had also downloaded all the PDF's from pdf-archive yesterday. There are more files in the zip, but the following were on pdf-archive and are NOT in the zip:
sejomoje , Dec 15, 2018 3:06:48 PM | link
Better yet, can anyone name an NGO, any NGO ever, that's not closely if not directly linked to "a secret military intelligence operation." Anyone? Mueller?
jayc , Dec 15, 2018 4:05:08 PM | link
Thank you very much for this terrific analysis. Donnelly: "... it is we who must either generate the debate or wait for something dreadful to happen to shock us into action. " Numerous American publications featured very similar language in the years ahead of 9/11, with "Islamic terrorist threat" substituted for the Russians.
Emmanuel Goldstein , Dec 15, 2018 4:21:51 PM | link
The transcript of his conversation with the general shows very starkly that we would last about two minutes in a nuclear exchange, but about half a day in a conventional one. No reserves, no equipment stockpiles, a navy consisting of two fat targets, neither of which has any aircraft and some destroyers which have propulsion problems, a smallish air force and very small numbers of troops. The tripwire force in Estonia is wholly sacrificial. In fact he lays bare the whole fallacy of biting the bear. With the armed forces in the state he describes, and with the recruitment and retention problems, wouldn't it be better, as one defense minister said, 'to go away and shut up'...
uncle tungsten , Dec 15, 2018 4:27:59 PM | link
Thanks b and especially the link to Valentina Lisitsa who I had tinkling in the background as I read your grand expose. These people are seditious morons, parasites infesting the state apparatus. Shut these fools down. Nice touch publishing the passport image. I can just imagine the frenzied aftermath of Kit's visit to the basement. Big thanks to anonymous and Craig Murray too. Their IT personel are probably visiting Devil's Island or Diego Garcia as we read.
Sasha , Dec 15, 2018 5:00:51 PM | link
Vesti News has published an excellent documentary on how "clusters" work....not only to spread Russophobia...but also on continuous intends to overthrown Russian legitimate government... https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=E8-Stfrl5aM

The British and US connections to loot and evade Russian riches and funds are exposed, as well as the origin of sanctions, supposed "alt-media" "truth-seakers" like Meduza...or supposed "pro-Russian" US intelligence operatives married to Russian women....

Sasha , Dec 15, 2018 5:32:32 PM | link
@Posted by: Mina | Dec 15, 2018 1:45:39 PM | 18

Amongst the many issues he usually passes over trying to make himself the fool, while at the same time trying to convince us of the oustanding intellectual capacities, honesty and classy stance of him and his "comittee"...

https://www.stalkerzone.org/an-american-military-attache-held-a-closed-meeting-with-uaf-commanders-in-mariupol/

For that travel, to end bluntly and in such public view siding with the nazis of the "Azov Regiment" and other criminals of war, there was no need of so many saddlebags, so as pretending that the people who supported Trump as if there was no tomorrow, were enlightened people who only wanted to rescue "America" for the "Americans", as if there would not be a sign of blatant exceptionalism in appropriating of the term "Americans" for themselves in such a huge continent....

NemesisCalling , Dec 15, 2018 5:44:31 PM | link
In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of chicken with Russia.

The FP pre-Soviet collapse consisted of one MO: GET THE COMMIES!

Since then, Neocons and Neolibs which are frontmen for this Non-National Globalized Elite, have hijacked our country's military and have steered it to a Global agenda where dominance in the ME means either superiority for these EURO elites or Vassal-hood.

The last two periods of the US FP could be understood thusly: (1) Pre-Soviet collapse which was marked by a horrifically tragic and misplaced ideal of defending against communism (Good guys v. Bad Guys); and (2) Post-Soviet collapse which has been a period of coup d'etats where our hijacked military has been used for a Globalist Agenda for increasingly opaque (less defensible) reasons and missions.

The average American could care less about the ME and the US would be 1000x better-off reverting to an isolationist stance.

But this will not happen so long as Nationalism in the US and UK is repeatedly put-down. It seems as though there is going to be another Brexit vote. Does anyone doubt that miraculously the people by then will have second-guessed their will to Brexit and so will vote against it given another crack at a vote?

Sickening.

slit , Dec 15, 2018 6:04:29 PM | link
"Unfortunately, or luckily, such lobbying operations are mostly run by people who are incompetent in the specific field they are lobbying for. "

Incompetence in general and IT and data analysis, physics 101, etc.:

Cry boo hoo hoo to wake up with indigenous capacity decades behind world players like Russia, China, India, etc who operate on fractional budgets...

But this drama also exposes ashura/emigods intra necine warfare: right after 2016 US elections there was a facade of split between military and intelligence differentiation. Seems that veil has been dispensed with , but it invites other questions, insofar as UK is Her Majesty's Service, so are we to read this with Prince Harry or Philip's culture, or a "consent by silence") in mind? Defending crown or EU "Saturnus Sattelitus"?

MadMax2 , Dec 15, 2018 6:28:58 PM | link
@Nemisis

Yeah, they hijacked a few other countries too, including Russia. Or if not hijacking, setting the mood right for some shenanigans in the near future... I think you're quite right about the cheif host of the globalist neolib parasite. Hijacked near fully. Being bled dry. That unaccounted for 21 Trillion at the pentagon is a bit of a giveaway. All under the guise of free markets and democracy.

Good to see Trump finally give it a face... 'you need freedom and security now pay up bitches'

Jackrabbit , Dec 15, 2018 6:38:00 PM | link
NemesisCalling | Dec 15, 2018 5:44:31 PM | 37
In my view, the USA's FP has been undermined by EURO elites which is forcing a game of chicken with Russia.... Globalist Agenda
I think the opposite is true.

The US-led Empire and their globalist sycophants seek to weaken Europe so that it can not act independently in its own best interests. They will do what ever they can to ensure that the vassals never join with Russia/China and the SCO.

Russian scare-mongering and immigration have been effective in furthering this agenda. Also note: what USA has termed "new Europe" - eastern European states like Poland and Ukraine - are solidly pro-American.

John2o2o , Dec 15, 2018 6:56:17 PM | link
'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation Designed To Create A New Enemy

Perfect description.

Why has this ageing nutjob been allowed to secretly dictate British foreign policy? He's clearly insane.

vk , Dec 15, 2018 6:58:49 PM | link
@

[Dec 16, 2018] Exploitation of other people as a priority as well as lack on empathy and compassion are two components which make up a psychopathic personality

Neoliberalism as "psychopath-friendly" social system...
Dec 16, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

ShaunNewman -> Mauryan , 23 Aug 2016 20:59

Exploitation is high on the priority list of any Tory government, wealth should be distributed much more fairly than it currently is. The tories only serve the rich, they have no time or empathy for the poor.

Empathy and compassion are vacant in the tory philosophy of the world. These two components make up a psychopathic personality.

[Dec 16, 2018] Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next (The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics) by Martin Jacques

Highly recommended!
It is very interesting and educational to read this pre-election article two years later and see where the author is right and where he is wrong. The death of neoliberalism was greatly exaggerated. It simply mutated in the USA into "national neoliberalism" under Trump. As no clear alternative exists it remain the dominant ideology and universities still brainwash students with neoclassical economics. And in way catchy slogan "Make America great again" under Trump means "Make American working and lower middle class great again"
It is also clear that Trump betrayed or was forced to betray most of his election promises. Standrd of living of common americans did not improve under his watch. most of hi benefits of his tax cuts went to large corporations and financial oligarch. He continued the policy of financial deregulation, which is tantamount of playing with open fire trying to warm up the house
What we see under Trump is tremendous growth of political role of intelligence agencies which now are real kingmakers and can sink any candidate which does not support their agenda. And USA intelligence agencies operated in 2016 in close cooperation with the UK intelligence agencies to the extent that it is not clear who has the lead in creating Steele dossier. They are definitely out of control of executive branch and play their own game. We also see a rise of CIA democrats as a desperate attempt to preserve the power of Clinton wing of the Democratic Party ('soft neoliberals" turned under Hillary into into warmongers and neocons) . Hillary and Bill themselves clearly belong to CIA democrats too, not only to Wall Street democrats, despite the fact that they sold Democratic Party to Wall Street in the past. New Labor in UK did the same.
But if it is more or less clear now what happened in the USa in 2016-2018, it is completely unclear what will happen next. I think in no way neoliberalism will start to be dismantled. there is no social forces powerful enough to start this job, We probably need another financial crisi of the scale of 2008 for this work to be reluctantly started by ruling elite. And we better not to have this repetition of 2008 as it will be really devastating for common people.
Notable quotes:
"... the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion. ..."
"... It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present. ..."
"... In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has stagnated for over 30 years . ..."
"... On average, between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014. ..."
"... As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable. ..."
"... Foreign Affairs ..."
"... "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both. ..."
"... According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population. ..."
"... The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement. ..."
"... Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation . ..."
"... those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s. ..."
"... Capital in the Twenty-First Century ..."
"... Financial Times ..."
Aug 21, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

In the early 1980s the author was one of the first to herald the emerging dominance of neoliberalism in the west. Here he argues that this doctrine is now faltering. But what happens next?

The western financial crisis of 2007-8 was the worst since 1931, yet its immediate repercussions were surprisingly modest. The crisis challenged the foundation stones of the long-dominant neoliberal ideology but it seemed to emerge largely unscathed. The banks were bailed out; hardly any bankers on either side of the Atlantic were prosecuted for their crimes; and the price of their behaviour was duly paid by the taxpayer. Subsequent economic policy, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, has relied overwhelmingly on monetary policy, especially quantitative easing. It has failed. The western economy has stagnated and is now approaching its lost decade, with no end in sight.

After almost nine years, we are finally beginning to reap the political whirlwind of the financial crisis. But how did neoliberalism manage to survive virtually unscathed for so long? Although it failed the test of the real world, bequeathing the worst economic disaster for seven decades, politically and intellectually it remained the only show in town. Parties of the right, centre and left had all bought into its philosophy, New Labour a classic in point. They knew no other way of thinking or doing: it had become the common sense. It was, as Antonio Gramsci put it, hegemonic. But that hegemony cannot and will not survive the test of the real world.

The first inkling of the wider political consequences was evident in the turn in public opinion against the banks, bankers and business leaders. For decades, they could do no wrong: they were feted as the role models of our age, the default troubleshooters of choice in education, health and seemingly everything else. Now, though, their star was in steep descent, along with that of the political class. The effect of the financial crisis was to undermine faith and trust in the competence of the governing elites. It marked the beginnings of a wider political crisis.

But the causes of this political crisis, glaringly evident on both sides of the Atlantic, are much deeper than simply the financial crisis and the virtually stillborn recovery of the last decade. They go to the heart of the neoliberal project that dates from the late 70s and the political rise of Reagan and Thatcher, and embraced at its core the idea of a global free market in goods, services and capital. The depression-era system of bank regulation was dismantled, in the US in the 1990s and in Britain in 1986, thereby creating the conditions for the 2008 crisis. Equality was scorned, the idea of trickle-down economics lauded, government condemned as a fetter on the market and duly downsized, immigration encouraged, regulation cut to a minimum, taxes reduced and a blind eye turned to corporate evasion.

It should be noted that, by historical standards, the neoliberal era has not had a particularly good track record. The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.

But by far the most disastrous feature of the neoliberal period has been the huge growth in inequality. Until very recently, this had been virtually ignored. With extraordinary speed, however, it has emerged as one of, if not the most important political issue on both sides of the Atlantic, most dramatically in the US. It is, bar none, the issue that is driving the political discontent that is now engulfing the west. Given the statistical evidence, it is puzzling, shocking even, that it has been disregarded for so long; the explanation can only lie in the sheer extent of the hegemony of neoliberalism and its values.

But now reality has upset the doctrinal apple cart. In the period 1948-1972, every section of the American population experienced very similar and sizable increases in their standard of living; between 1972-2013, the bottom 10% experienced falling real income while the top 10% did far better than everyone else. In the US, the median real income for full-time male workers is now lower than it was four decades ago: the income of the bottom 90% of the population has stagnated for over 30 years .

A not so dissimilar picture is true of the UK. And the problem has grown more serious since the financial crisis. On average, between 65-70% of households in 25 high-income economies experienced stagnant or falling real incomes between 2005 and 2014.

Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot

The reasons are not difficult to explain. The hyper-globalisation era has been systematically stacked in favour of capital against labour: international trading agreements, drawn up in great secrecy, with business on the inside and the unions and citizens excluded, the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) and the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) being but the latest examples; the politico-legal attack on the unions; the encouragement of large-scale immigration in both the US and Europe that helped to undermine the bargaining power of the domestic workforce; and the failure to retrain displaced workers in any meaningful way.

As Thomas Piketty has shown, in the absence of countervailing pressures, capitalism naturally gravitates towards increasing inequality. In the period between 1945 and the late 70s, Cold War competition was arguably the biggest such constraint. Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, there have been none. As the popular backlash grows increasingly irresistible, however, such a winner-takes-all regime becomes politically unsustainable.

Large sections of the population in both the US and the UK are now in revolt against their lot, as graphically illustrated by the support for Trump and Sanders in the US and the Brexit vote in the UK. This popular revolt is often described, in a somewhat denigratory and dismissive fashion, as populism. Or, as Francis Fukuyama writes in a recent excellent essay in Foreign Affairs : "'Populism' is the label that political elites attach to policies supported by ordinary citizens that they don't like." Populism is a movement against the status quo. It represents the beginnings of something new, though it is generally much clearer about what it is against than what it is for. It can be progressive or reactionary, but more usually both.

Brexit is a classic example of such populism. It has overturned a fundamental cornerstone of UK policy since the early 1970s. Though ostensibly about Europe, it was in fact about much more: a cri de coeur from those who feel they have lost out and been left behind, whose living standards have stagnated or worse since the 1980s, who feel dislocated by large-scale immigration over which they have no control and who face an increasingly insecure and casualised labour market. Their revolt has paralysed the governing elite, already claimed one prime minister, and left the latest one fumbling around in the dark looking for divine inspiration.

The wave of populism marks the return of class as a central agency in politics, both in the UK and the US. This is particularly remarkable in the US. For many decades, the idea of the "working class" was marginal to American political discourse. Most Americans described themselves as middle class, a reflection of the aspirational pulse at the heart of American society. According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.

Brexit, too, was primarily a working-class revolt. Hitherto, on both sides of the Atlantic, the agency of class has been in retreat in the face of the emergence of a new range of identities and issues from gender and race to sexual orientation and the environment. The return of class, because of its sheer reach, has the potential, like no other issue, to redefine the political landscape.

The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, is a function of politics

The re-emergence of class should not be confused with the labor movement. They are not synonymous: this is obvious in the US and increasingly the case in the UK. Indeed, over the last half-century, there has been a growing separation between the two in Britain. The re-emergence of the working class as a political voice in Britain, most notably in the Brexit vote, can best be described as an inchoate expression of resentment and protest, with only a very weak sense of belonging to the labour movement.

Indeed, Ukip has been as important – in the form of immigration and Europe – in shaping its current attitudes as the Labour party. In the United States, both Trump and Sanders have given expression to the working-class revolt, the latter almost as much as the former. The working class belongs to no one: its orientation, far from predetermined, as the left liked to think, is a function of politics.

The neoliberal era is being undermined from two directions. First, if its record of economic growth has never been particularly strong, it is now dismal. Europe is barely larger than it was on the eve of the financial crisis in 2007; the United States has done better but even its growth has been anaemic. Economists such as Larry Summers believe that the prospect for the future is most likely one of secular stagnation .

Worse, because the recovery has been so weak and fragile, there is a widespread belief that another financial crisis may well beckon. In other words, the neoliberal era has delivered the west back into the kind of crisis-ridden world that we last experienced in the 1930s. With this background, it is hardly surprising that a majority in the west now believe their children will be worse off than they were. Second, those who have lost out in the neoliberal era are no longer prepared to acquiesce in their fate – they are increasingly in open revolt. We are witnessing the end of the neoliberal era. It is not dead, but it is in its early death throes, just as the social-democratic era was during the 1970s.

A sure sign of the declining influence of neoliberalism is the rising chorus of intellectual voices raised against it. From the mid-70s through the 80s, the economic debate was increasingly dominated by monetarists and free marketeers. But since the western financial crisis, the centre of gravity of the intellectual debate has shifted profoundly. This is most obvious in the United States, with economists such as Joseph Stiglitz, Paul Krugman, Dani Rodrik and Jeffrey Sachs becoming increasingly influential. Thomas Piketty's Capital in the Twenty-First Century has been a massive seller. His work and that of Tony Atkinson and Angus Deaton have pushed the question of the inequality to the top of the political agenda. In the UK, Ha-Joon Chang , for long isolated within the economics profession, has gained a following far greater than those who think economics is a branch of mathematics.

Meanwhile, some of those who were previously strong advocates of a neoliberal approach, such as Larry Summers and the Financial Times 's Martin Wolf, have become extremely critical. The wind is in the sails of the critics of neoliberalism; the neoliberals and monetarists are in retreat. In the UK, the media and political worlds are well behind the curve. Few recognize that we are at the end of an era. Old attitudes and assumptions still predominate, whether on the BBC's Today programme, in the rightwing press or the parliamentary Labor party.

Following Ed Miliband's resignation as Labour leader, virtually no one foresaw the triumph of Jeremy Corbyn in the subsequent leadership election. The assumption had been more of the same, a Blairite or a halfway house like Miliband, certainly not anyone like Corbyn. But the zeitgeist had changed. The membership, especially the young who had joined the party on an unprecedented scale, wanted a complete break with New Labour. One of the reasons why the left has failed to emerge as the leader of the new mood of working-class disillusionment is that most social democratic parties became, in varying degrees, disciples of neoliberalism and uber-globalisation. The most extreme forms of this phenomenon were New Labour and the Democrats, who in the late 90s and 00s became its advance guard, personified by Tony Blair and Bill Clinton, triangulation and the third way.

But as David Marquand observed in a review for the New Statesman , what is the point of a social democratic party if it doesn't represent the less fortunate, the underprivileged and the losers? New Labour deserted those who needed them, who historically they were supposed to represent. Is it surprising that large sections have now deserted the party who deserted them? Blair, in his reincarnation as a money-obsessed consultant to a shady bunch of presidents and dictators, is a fitting testament to the demise of New Labour.

The rival contenders – Burnham, Cooper and Kendall – represented continuity. They were swept away by Corbyn, who won nearly 60% of the votes. New Labour was over, as dead as Monty Python's parrot. Few grasped the meaning of what had happened. A Guardian leader welcomed the surge in membership and then, lo and behold, urged support for Yvette Cooper, the very antithesis of the reason for the enthusiasm. The PLP refused to accept the result and ever since has tried with might and main to remove Corbyn.

Just as the Labour party took far too long to come to terms with the rise of Thatcherism and the birth of a new era at the end of the 70s, now it could not grasp that the Thatcherite paradigm, which they eventually came to embrace in the form of New Labour, had finally run its course. Labour, like everyone else, is obliged to think anew. The membership in their antipathy to New Labour turned to someone who had never accepted the latter, who was the polar opposite in almost every respect of Blair, and embodying an authenticity and decency which Blair patently did not.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better

Corbyn is not a product of the new times, he is a throwback to the late 70s and early 80s. That is both his strength and also his weakness. He is uncontaminated by the New Labour legacy because he has never accepted it. But nor, it would seem, does he understand the nature of the new era. The danger is that he is possessed of feet of clay in what is a highly fluid and unpredictable political environment, devoid of any certainties of almost any kind, in which Labour finds itself dangerously divided and weakened.

Labour may be in intensive care, but the condition of the Conservatives is not a great deal better. David Cameron was guilty of a huge and irresponsible miscalculation over Brexit. He was forced to resign in the most ignominious of circumstances. The party is hopelessly divided. It has no idea in which direction to move after Brexit. The Brexiters painted an optimistic picture of turning away from the declining European market and embracing the expanding markets of the world, albeit barely mentioning by name which countries it had in mind. It looks as if the new prime minister may have an anachronistic hostility towards China and a willingness to undo the good work of George Osborne. If the government turns its back on China, by far the fastest growing market in the world, where are they going to turn?

Brexit has left the country fragmented and deeply divided, with the very real prospect that Scotland might choose independence. Meanwhile, the Conservatives seem to have little understanding that the neoliberal era is in its death throes.

Dramatic as events have been in the UK, they cannot compare with those in the United States. Almost from nowhere, Donald Trump rose to capture the Republican nomination and confound virtually all the pundits and not least his own party. His message was straightforwardly anti-globalisation. He believes that the interests of the working class have been sacrificed in favour of the big corporations that have been encouraged to invest around the world and thereby deprive American workers of their jobs. Further, he argues that large-scale immigration has weakened the bargaining power of American workers and served to lower their wages.

He proposes that US corporations should be required to invest their cash reserves in the US. He believes that the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta) has had the effect of exporting American jobs to Mexico. On similar grounds, he is opposed to the TPP and the TTIP. And he also accuses China of stealing American jobs, threatening to impose a 45% tariff on Chinese imports.

To globalisation Trump counterposes economic nationalism: "Put America first". His appeal, above all, is to the white working class who, until Trump's (and Bernie Sander's) arrival on the political scene, had been ignored and largely unrepresented since the 1980s. Given that their wages have been falling for most of the last 40 years, it is extraordinary how their interests have been neglected by the political class. Increasingly, they have voted Republican, but the Republicans have long been captured by the super-rich and Wall Street, whose interests, as hyper-globalisers, have run directly counter to those of the white working class. With the arrival of Trump they finally found a representative: they won Trump the Republican nomination.

Trump believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources

The economic nationalist argument has also been vigorously pursued by Bernie Sanders , who ran Hillary Clinton extremely close for the Democratic nomination and would probably have won but for more than 700 so-called super-delegates, who were effectively chosen by the Democratic machine and overwhelmingly supported Clinton. As in the case of the Republicans, the Democrats have long supported a neoliberal, pro-globalisation strategy, notwithstanding the concerns of its trade union base. Both the Republicans and the Democrats now find themselves deeply polarised between the pro- and anti-globalisers, an entirely new development not witnessed since the shift towards neoliberalism under Reagan almost 40 years ago.

Another plank of Trump's nationalist appeal – "Make America great again" – is his position on foreign policy. He believes that America's pursuit of great power status has squandered the nation's resources. He argues that the country's alliance system is unfair, with America bearing most of the cost and its allies contributing far too little. He points to Japan and South Korea, and NATO's European members as prime examples. He seeks to rebalance these relationships and, failing that, to exit from them.

As a country in decline, he argues that America can no longer afford to carry this kind of financial burden. Rather than putting the world to rights, he believes the money should be invested at home, pointing to the dilapidated state of America's infrastructure. Trump's position represents a major critique of America as the world's hegemon. His arguments mark a radical break with the neoliberal, hyper-globalisation ideology that has reigned since the early 1980s and with the foreign policy orthodoxy of most of the postwar period. These arguments must be taken seriously. They should not be lightly dismissed just because of their authorship. But Trump is no man of the left. He is a populist of the right. He has launched a racist and xenophobic attack on Muslims and on Mexicans. Trump's appeal is to a white working class that feels it has been cheated by the big corporations, undermined by Hispanic immigration, and often resentful towards African-Americans who for long too many have viewed as their inferior.

A Trump America would mark a descent into authoritarianism characterised by abuse, scapegoating, discrimination, racism, arbitrariness and violence; America would become a deeply polarised and divided society. His threat to impose 45% tariffs on China , if implemented, would certainly provoke retaliation by the Chinese and herald the beginnings of a new era of protectionism.

Trump may well lose the presidential election just as Sanders failed in his bid for the Democrat nomination. But this does not mean that the forces opposed to hyper-globalisation – unrestricted immigration, TPP and TTIP, the free movement of capital and much else – will have lost the argument and are set to decline. In little more than 12 months, Trump and Sanders have transformed the nature and terms of the argument. Far from being on the wane, the arguments of the critics of hyper-globalisation are steadily gaining ground. Roughly two-thirds of Americans agree that "we should not think so much in international terms but concentrate more on our own national problems". And, above all else, what will continue to drive opposition to the hyper-globalisers is inequality.

[Dec 16, 2018] The neoliberals are organised and well funded. The left have fragmented and is infected with identity politics. That means that neoliberalism will survive and prosper in the foreseeable future and the standard of living of population will slide further

End of cheap oil is the next milestone in the development of neoliberalism. It remain to be seen if it can survive the end of cheap oil.
Notable quotes:
"... According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population. ..."
"... American politicians, Obama in particular, constantly talk about "the middle class" when they want to refer to the bulk of the working population, as if almost everybody were doctors, lawyers, teachers and managers. ..."
"... This situation in the USA remind me of Australia where we have a choice between two right wing parties ..."
"... austerity for the working class while the rich go untouched even to pay a fair share of taxation. It's world wide the servants of the 1% who own 50% of the world's economy. ..."
"... There is no country in the world that doesn't have a mixture of both. The mix is probably a bit strained in north Korea but those countries where private capital is supreme all have intolerable conditions for workers. The Nordic countries probably have the most enlightened approach and best living standards for the majority. Remember well the old adage: With communism man exploits man. With capitalism it's the other way round. ..."
"... one can only hope neoliberalism is dead and/or dying.... ..."
"... Trump does not truly represent the labor or economically frustrated class. He is saying things that they'd like to hear. He is a rich and pompous man who belongs to the class which benefited tremendously from neoliberalistic policies. People are so fed up with inequality, their emotions can be directed in any direction and manipulated. Anger needs a target - Mexicans, Blacks, women, Muslims, immigrants and the list expands. Trump is misleading them by speaking in their voices while enjoying the comfort of luxury that he built by exploiting those very people. ..."
Dec 16, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

opinerimo , 23 Aug 2016 23:23

Quote: According to a Gallup poll, in 2000 only 33% of Americans called themselves working class; by 2015 the figure was 48%, almost half the population.

How strange. American politicians, Obama in particular, constantly talk about "the middle class" when they want to refer to the bulk of the working population, as if almost everybody were doctors, lawyers, teachers and managers. It's good therefore to know that the American people know better than their politicians how to classify themselves.

ShaunNewman -> shockrah , 23 Aug 2016 21:28
This situation in the USA remind me of Australia where we have a choice between two right wing parties. The LNP is extreme/ultra right wing and our Labor Party is right wing controlled. At least in Britain you have a choice, from afar it seems that your Conservative Party is equal to our LNP but your Labour Party seems to be a little more Left wing than our Labor Party which is a good thing for Britain.
ShaunNewman -> willpodmore , 23 Aug 2016 21:21
willpodmore your next target must be your tory government, they are doing to you what our tory government in Australia is doing to us and if Trump gets elected the USA tory government will do to them, austerity for the working class while the rich go untouched even to pay a fair share of taxation. It's world wide the servants of the 1% who own 50% of the world's economy. If you don't believe me type the 1% own 50% of Earth's economy into Dr Goggle and see what come up.
ShaunNewman -> CivilDiscussion , 23 Aug 2016 21:16
The one thing all Left leaning people do agree on is 'fairness' and equity for all, in economic terms it means that huge corporations pay a fair share of tax, as working people do. Sadly Tory govts ignore the profits of corporations and fail to force them to pay a fair share of tax. The basic problem that the neo-cons suffer from is insatiable greed where enough is never enough, selfishness is also a trait along with lack of empathy or compassion for their fellow mankind.
ShaunNewman -> IsleWalker , 23 Aug 2016 21:12
"neoliberalism" is simply unregulated capitalism as practiced by Tory governments around the world. Labour governments usually regulate and force these huge corporations to pay a fair share of taxation from their huge incomes. The corporations are owned by the 1% who own 50% of the world economy and continuing to grow on a daily basis.
ShaunNewman -> Vintage59 , 23 Aug 2016 21:09
Yes, nothing has changed in my lifetime except the 1% now own 50% of Earth's economy. Working people have always struggled while the rich build their mansions, both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn have the right idea of a fair distribution of wealth. This means these huge corporations paying their fair share of their income in taxes to the host country so "all" the people receive some benefit, apart from the 1%.
ShaunNewman -> blaster1 , 23 Aug 2016 21:04
blaster1, the joke of the century, globalisation -- which will only increase to the benefit of everyone eventually. You obviously have little knowledge apart from what the Tories feed you. 1% of the global population own 50% of Earth's economy and through their corporations who the tories allow to avoid paying tax will build on that 50% how long will it eventually take the other 99% to receive any benefit? 200,000 years?
ShaunNewman -> Mauryan , 23 Aug 2016 20:59
Exploitation is high on the priority list of any Tory government, wealth should be distributed much more fairly than it currently is. The tories only serve the rich, they have no time or empathy for the poor. Empathy and compassion are vacant in the tory philosophy of the world. These two components make up a psychopathic personality.
ShaunNewman -> pantomimetorie , 23 Aug 2016 20:56
pantomimetorie yes, and England could also be if you had a government who were not merely servants of the rich. A government interested in the fair distribution of wealth. Not a tory government, obviously!
ShaunNewman -> pantomimetorie , 23 Aug 2016 20:53
There's no such thing as neoliberalism, it's just capitalism and capitalism actually works, unlike socialism.

Yes it works alright, it works for the 1% of the global population who own 50% of the global economy, sadly it leaves in its wake an underclass of people living below the poverty line struggling to survive. It works for the rich, but there is no mechanism in the system that the conservative will use to force the rich to pay their fair share of taxation to the country included in that are the multibillion pound multinational corporations who pay little to naught in taxes also which leaves a huge swathe of the population on Struggle Street and the sooner that democratic socialism is instituted the better off the other 99% will be.

foryousure -> pantomimetorie , 23 Aug 2016 19:00
Keep up! There is no country in the world that doesn't have a mixture of both. The mix is probably a bit strained in north Korea but those countries where private capital is supreme all have intolerable conditions for workers. The Nordic countries probably have the most enlightened approach and best living standards for the majority. Remember well the old adage: With communism man exploits man. With capitalism it's the other way round.
foryousure -> AmyInNH , 23 Aug 2016 18:51
Think they call it lobbying. Companies pay professional lobby firms staffed with ex MPs or whatever to ' meet' ministers. The PR companies make 'donations' to party funds and push for government contracts, changes in legislation, favorable to their industry tax breaks. You can do it of course. Write to your mp to get your local roads, parks, libraries, improved. Don't hold your breath.

That has to be the joke of the year if not the century!!!!!!!!!!!!

pantomimetorie , 23 Aug 2016 17:02
The most dynamic period of postwar western growth was that between the end of the war and the early 70s, the era of welfare capitalism and Keynesianism, when the growth rate was double that of the neoliberal period from 1980 to the present.

It would be interesting to see those growth figures with inflation taken into account or to average them out across the whole world and not just the West. I suspect that if the massive growth in India, China and the rest of Asia was taken into account the growth figures wouldn't be so bad.

66378741 , 23 Aug 2016 14:50
one can only hope neoliberalism is dead and/or dying....
Dave_P -> AmyInNH , 23 Aug 2016 13:58
Excuse me? You're the one claiming rural inhabitants "have no idea" what city life entails. That may have been the case centuries ago, but not now. Offshoring is small potatoes in the shift of global production. It may have been big news a decade ago. We aren't a decade ago.

"Poverty = no kids" is your myth. Human history proves otherwise. Nobody's "decimating western/westernized population for profit". Is what you're about really more white people, fewer brown people? Just say it, this is the Guardian, we've heard it all before.

So run your country then. But intelligently, not on the basis of twisted myth-making and dodgy race myths that we had enough of in 1945.

makingtime -> ijustcalledtosay85 , 23 Aug 2016 13:36

The left, at least as far as I know, have not been able to build up a solid set of ideas on which to build a political agenda nor have they sought to gain traction for their ideas in sites of knowledge production. The neoliberals were organised and waiting when their turn came. For me, the left have fragmented and have turned to cultural critiques and identity politics, forgoing any kind of realistic transformative agenda.

Apologies for not answering earlier.

i) Traction in sites of knowledge production is happening certainly. Again I can point to the article for support - Stiglitz, Ha-Joon Chang, Piketty etc did not arise to such prominence due to an organised left-wing agenda but because events in the real world demanded an explanation for why neoliberalism wasn't delivering its universal benison as promised, and indeed was showing empirical signs that it might be poisonous to economic activity in certain fundamental ways.

ii) In my view it is quite possible to support identity politics (social liberalism if you like) and a more left wing view of economics. At present the more enthusiastic placard wavers are seeing identity politics as more likely to produce a beneficial change, but many are recognising that the former hegemony of neoliberalism is breaking, and the best way to really enhance the welfare of vulnerable groups is to promote universal economic justice in some form.

iii) You appear to want to replace one hegemonic system of thought with another. But these are the wrong tactics for me, since we have things to do in the real world.

By all means explain some of the properties your new left hegemonic theory should have, I'd be very interested to hear them.
But in the end the practical steps are obvious and consist of applying left wing principles to the modern economy. An example would be privatising the natural monopoly of the railways.

If that sounds retro, it isn't, because we've never had to deal with an economy in this condition before. We must proceed step by step in my view. The hegemony of neoliberalism was damaging and lasted 40 years and counting. We must be pragmatic to be successful, given what we know about the modern economy, and proceed by finding successful strategies rather than an abstruse new theory that ignores the messy present in favour of some pure, simple conception of the world backed up by the PR department. As I said above, one of the critical faults of neoliberalism is its insistence that it is the answer to everyone's prayers. That certainty is also the seed of its destruction, because to avoid doubts it eventually has to answer those unrealistic prayers.

Mauryan , 23 Aug 2016 13:24
Trump does not truly represent the labor or economically frustrated class. He is saying things that they'd like to hear. He is a rich and pompous man who belongs to the class which benefited tremendously from neoliberalistic policies. People are so fed up with inequality, their emotions can be directed in any direction and manipulated. Anger needs a target - Mexicans, Blacks, women, Muslims, immigrants and the list expands. Trump is misleading them by speaking in their voices while enjoying the comfort of luxury that he built by exploiting those very people.
AmyInNH -> Dave_P , 23 Aug 2016 13:18
Billions of Chinese and Indian have never seen a toilet in their life, so yes, they really don't know what life in a city is. And that doesn't make them "dumb". In their domain, farming, you don't look like a brain storm either.

Offshoring isn't a "tiny element". We are no longer self sustaining and if China slammed the door (as they did for a brief instant on Japan), there'd be serious heartburn in the US before transitioning.

The official western tautology is fail/fail for the public. Not enough jobs to consider having kids? Too bad. Not enough money to raise your kids? Too bad. Due to natural events? No, due to political gaming.

Decimating western/westernized population for profit. It's not complicated. It is you who claim immigration is needed to leave it as it is. "Ending our ability to pay pensions by ending immigration isn't improvement either. "

The west has no business meddling with the rest of the planet if it can't run their own countries.

Matthew Coate -> blaster1 , 23 Aug 2016 12:52

What they are really referring to is globalisation -- which will only increase to the benefit of everyone eventually.

Given the available statistics, your statement can only be described as the proclamation of a sort of religious faith.

Dave_P -> AmyInNH , 23 Aug 2016 12:29
People aren't so dumb as you imagine. They really didn't know about life in the city? Every village had its emigrant. I've no such disdain for those who made that move.

Offshoring's now a tiny element in western deindustrialisation. Your costs are too high, you can't compete: don't blame those worse off than yourself, put your own house in order and educate your workforce to do better than flip burgers.

"Birth control brings down reproduction rates" is a meaningless tautology. People have been practising birth control for centuries, mainly by delaying marriage. The PRB peddles malthusian nonsense that the past half-century has clearly discredited. I thought you were for population growth anyway: "economies so economically unstable that population declines"? Make your mind up.

The ridiculous boom did crash, in 2008. Maybe you missed it. I want to know how we go forward. But people need to pay attention to what's going on outside our head too.

weematt -> Mizzentop , 23 Aug 2016 12:13
I correct misrepresentations of the truth such as yours.

And the problem with communism is that it suspends peoples right in favour of central control.

Communism and socialism is a post -capitalist society, means exactly the same thing to me as they did to Marx also.

The common ownership and democratic control by us all, of all the means and instruments for creating and distributing wealth. 'Common' and 'social' mean the same. Nothing to do with state ownership or corporate or private ownership.

Nothing to do with central control either . It is a post-capitalist system which utilises the technological advances of capitalism to produce for use to satisfy human needs, using self feeding loopback informational tools for stock measurements and control with direct inputs at local regional and global levels to allow calculation in kind, as opposed to the economic calculation of capitalism, only necessary to satisfy profit taking.

The reality is that we can all choose to be rich or poor. We are free to do as we wish (within the law).

Nonsense. If you are born poor you will most likely die poor. Poverty is both absolute and relative. All wealth comes from the exploited abour of the working class which creates a surplus value above its rationed access (wages). A commonly owned society, would not have rich or poor, we would all have free access to the commonly produced wealth, with no elite classes creaming it off and storing it.

Other than that, mind your own damn business, if you can't deal with the arguments.

blaster1 , 23 Aug 2016 12:04
One of the biggest downsides of the rise of Corbyn and Sanders, interesting though it is, is the oxygen it seems to be giving to several old Marxist hacks who have made a good living for decades banging on about their discredited and blood soaked ideology, ie Jacques et al. Recently joined by that newly hatched Marxist harpie on the block, the hipster bearded and thoroughly poisonous Richard Seymour.
The fact is there is not and never was any such thing as "neoliberalism". What they are really referring to is globalisation- which will only increase to the benefit of everyone eventually. The world is shrinking ever faster and that is no bad thing. Progress, evolution, the future, call it what you want. To try and make out that it is halting or in reverse is plainly nonsense.
AmyInNH -> foryousure , 23 Aug 2016 11:18
They buy politicians who gift them with cheap labor via labor glut. Buying politicians is called bribery.
AmyInNH -> Roger Elliott , 23 Aug 2016 11:14
???
What I remember of Reagan,
- spent like a drunken sailor, "defense" spending, til it broke US economy
- unbounded "adjustable rate" and "balloon" mortgages, first bank bailout, bill kicked down the road to Bush Sr., $125 billion, when it blew up
- "trickle down", wealth transfer, via having taxed public pick up the tab for not just his defense binge spending, but also corporate welfare programs (patent office, Import/Export bank, infrastructure, etc.)
- first soup kitchens, adults panhandling/will work for food signs that I'd ever seen
- illegal immigrant amnesty, millions
- "War On Drugs" and right after that black neighborhoods flooded with crack
Reagan and Thatcher kicking off their "gut the public of wealth" agenda.
AmyInNH -> ShaunNewman , 23 Aug 2016 11:00
Including suppression of wage/benefits by flooding the labor markets.
AmyInNH -> macsporan , 23 Aug 2016 10:57
Their story is "you're a failure". Because a) you don't work hard enough/long enough, b) hold your household together (if you were at work all waking hours), c) don't know how to raise decent, independent kids (whilst being at work every waking hour), d) aren't motivated to improve your lot in life if you need to work every waking hour and e) probably need to take stress management classes if this gets on your nerves because you personally are driving up "our" health care costs with your irresponsible neglect of your health.

Or, as the economists tout in the papers, "Productivity is up!" Or as the oligarchical put it, "we need immigrant work force", who'll do it for cheaper and not complain or burden us with their need for an actual life outside of work.

CivilDiscussion , 23 Aug 2016 10:54
Clinton is, was, and still is. despite her recent fake reversal, a staunch supporter of TPP and other trade agreements that will further impoverish the working class. She is the furthest thing from a populist. Case closed.
Vintage59 , 23 Aug 2016 10:54
It's the neobullshit era but then it always is.
AmyInNH -> Mkjaks , 23 Aug 2016 10:40
The "experts", like Greenspan, use extremely limited variables. Hence, reports of a "good economy". We ask, good for who?

[Dec 15, 2018] Newly Released Integrity Intitiative Papers Include Proposal For Large Disinformation Campaigns

Notable quotes:
"... It seemed to start with Bill Browder being kicked out of Russia. So I would assume that the main reason is that the west became aware that Russia was (had been) taking back control of their economy and resources and kicking out the western carpet-baggers. ..."
"... In June of 2016 a bill named Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 was introduced into the house by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu. H.R. 5181 sought a "whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions" to counter "foreign disinformation and manipulation," which they believe threaten the world's "security and stability." A similar bill was introduced in March in the Senate long before Russia gate. It was passed signed by Obama in December after the Russia Gate was played up following the election. ..."
"... Like I said US and UK are basically one entity on such matters. Soon after being passed we saw Prop or Not introduce its hit list of alt media sites. Sadly over the last 2 years alt media has been decimated. Engdahl seems to be the latest to fall, helped no doubt by Soros suit for 1 million against him for calling out his daughters NGO. Now he has fallen into line and backing Trump. Maybe next he will support the Climate Change meme. ..."
"... As I posted on an earlier thread, the demonization of Russia by Anglos began with the First Afghan War in the late 1830s and has continued at differing degrees of intensity ever since always due to geopolitics. ..."
"... The US State Department gives the title "public diplomacy" to its propaganda. ..."
"... Just ask John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who was sent to prison for telling the truth about US torture. ..."
"... Thanks, that looks great and should be reposted across alternative media- most of these groups use "anti-Russia" as a front to dismantle dissent and left-wing politics on behalf of the Multinationals and the Neoliberal Establishment- let's call it the "blob," and let's call that list Counter-Propornot. ..."
"... karlof1... my impression is the anti russian meme got real traction somewhere about 2014-2015 with the advent of Ukraine dynamics and Russia commitment to going into Syria.. around that time it all really picked up steam.. now you have think tanks and etc. etc. profiting from the sale of anti-russia spin.. there appears to be endless money available for this.. ..."
"... This is an incomplete narrative, think tanks are basically mercenaries who relieve the population from the need to think about the complicated matters, letting the folks to believe what is either true or should be believed to be true for the "common good". ..."
"... And indeed, Russian danger was identified ca. 2014 as the major worthy theme in the central parts of that nexus. So who are the paymasters? In part, "capitalists", wealthy individuals with means and motivation to set the course for the West and all forces of good. In part, intelligence agencies. Here Integrity Initiative seems an erratic creature: apparently, run by spooks on military and intelligence payroll, and yet also benefiting from a government grant that makes them a quango, "a semipublic administrative body outside the civil service but receiving financial support from the government, which makes senior appointments to it." In other words, they double dip. The total amount is relatively modest, so rather than getting fat on taxpayer money they merely double or triple they spare official salaries thus reaching "upper middle class" level. Therefore the morale in the outfit was mediocre and we can see one of the more amusing leaks of 2018. ..."
"... Note: Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed was published on August 29, 2014. Within weeks of its publication, the Obama Administration was in full anti-Russia swing. Trump would enter the race for Republican nomination 9 1/2 months after Kissinger's Op-Ed (June 15, 2015). ..."
"... The hate campaign against Russia is just the old campaign, against any country resisting the Empire's hegemony, focused on the one power that had resisted since 1917 and was able to do so, returning to its old role of saying 'Niet' when all the rest of the world said either 'Aye Aye,Sir' "If you insist" or kept quiet and said nothing at all. ..."
"... One can't just edit a Wikipedia article, no matter how fact-based. It will almost immediately be retracted if it doesn't follow the 'official' narrative. If said person then tries to reestablish that content or tries to engage in a discussion with the admins, in many cases, they simply get banned then. ..."
"... Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlgGx9LM5cM It's about a former female STASI-employee turned fighter for freedom and democracy. Currently she is the head of the Antonio-Amadeo-Foundation dedicated, to put it bluntly, to doing the bidding for the usual suspects - and to add insult to injury taxpayer funded to a large part. ..."
"... Russia is the go to enemy when you need to bump up your purchasing of very expensive military equipment and to pour money into various security projects to achieve to goals (1 is to lock down infrastructure etc. but the other is to suppress the US citizens so a two-for). ..."
"... The long game plan, which continues unabated regardless of which party or who is in power, is American hegemony of the planet. When you consider the US has military bases in 155 countries (who essentially have become colonies) it seems like the goal is nearly completed unless you consider that major nuclear armed nations are resisting (Russia, China and maybe Pakistan and India as well). ..."
"... If you take a look at Russia during Yeltsin the US companies nearly bought everything in the country and the raping was in full vigor. Someone at DoS or the CIA very badly miscalculated letting Putin come into power. He was, after all, a minor minion and basically came out of no where. I am assuming they thought he would continue the raping and disarmament of all former Soviet weapons and Russian businesses. Sadly for them he turned out to be a patriot and actively resisted everything the US was trying to do to Russia. I believe the Yukos deal was the final straw which would have given nearly all Russian oil and gas to Exxon/Mobil. So, Putin has been battling the US successfully since and is very slowly eliminating all the oligarchs the US put into power and draining his swamp of Atlantacists and 5th column. ..."
"... i recall how quickly 'cambridge analytica' came and went, in spite of the strength of the data on them manipulating much... i imagine a similar story hee with 'integrity initiative'.. ..."
"... as for wikipedia - everyone knows it's a full on propaganda site masquerading as a neutral info site. ..."
"... the Chinese government currently has its hands around the financial windpipe of the man ultimately responsible for Ms. Meng's arrest ..."
"... "MAGA was as much a policy change as it was a campaign slogan....To prevail, Empire strategists recognized that USA needed to be able to call on regular troops and a deep sense of patriotism and righteousness that required re-developing nationalism. In short, 'MAGA'." ..."
"... Trump's invocation of MAGA on the campaign trail was presented in such a way as to seem to overwhelmingly favour a pullback from Imperialism in order to make things right at home. ..."
"... Trump engaged in a bare, pointed, often crass and bordering on contemptuous criticism of his predecessors' foreign policy. The irreverent tone was unprecedented in recent campaign history and was so plain and completely at odds with Hilary's stated positions that it essentially committed him (in my eyes anyway) to following through, or to make all efforts to follow through. If not, he would set one of the worst examples of a duplicitous politician, perhaps ever. The same applies to other bold campaign positions, such as the border wall, for example. ..."
"... Now Judge Emmet Sullivan wants expanded information, and wishes to see the actual notes (FD-302) that were mentioned by Flynn; and Judge Sullivan is directing the special counsel to provide all documents created by the FBI surrounding the Flynn interview: ..."
Dec 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

The person(s) who first published documents of the shady UK organization Integrity Initiative decided that the discussion is about the Initiative is not yet sufficient and published more documents.

The first dump on the Cyberguerilla site happened on November 5. We discussed it here . A smaller dump on November 29 revealed more about the UK government paid Integrity Initiatives influence work in Germany, Spain and Greece. A third dump followed today.

The leaker, who uses the widely abused Anonymous label, promises to publish more:

Well-coordinated efforts of the Anonymous from all over the world have forced the UK politicians to react to the unacceptable and in fact illegal activity of the British government that uses public money to carry out misinformation campaigns not only in the EU, US and Canada but in the UK as well, in particular campaigns against the Labour party.
The Integrity Initiative is now under first official investigation. We promise to give close scrutiny to the investigation that we believe should be conducted honestly, openly and absolutely transparently for the society, rather than become an internal and confidential case of the Foreign Office.

To show our expertise in the investigation as well as to warn the UK government that they must not even try to put it all down to the activity of some charity foundations and public organizations we reveal a part of documents unveiling the true face of The Institute for Statecraft and some information about its leadership.
...
As the scandal in the UK is gaining momentum, it is ever so striking that European leaders and official representatives remain so calm about the Integrity Initiative's activity in their countries. We remind you that covert clusters made up for political and financial manipulation and controlled by the UK secret services are carrying out London's secret missions and interfering in domestic affairs of sovereign states right in front of you.
...
This is another part of documents that we have on the Integrity Initiative. We do not change the goals of this operation. When we return with the next portion of revelations, names and facts depends on how seriously the UK and EU leaders take our intentions this time.

The dump includes invoices, internal analyses of international media responses to the Skripal affair, the Initiative's operations in Scotland, France and Italy, some strategy papers and various other stuff. There are some interesting bits about the cooperation of the Initiative with British Ministry of Defense. It will take me a while to read through all of it.

The most interesting paper I found so far is:

COMBATTING RUSSIAN DISINFORMATION
LAUNCHING AN ONLINE COMMUNICATIONS CAMPAIGN TO INFORM, DEBUNK, AND COMBAT STATE-SPONSORED PROPAGANDA
Comprehensive action proposal
(pdf)

A "strictly confidential" proposal by the French company Lexfo to spread the Integrity Initiative's state-sponsored propaganda through an offensive online influence campaigns for a monthly pay per language of €20-40.000. The proposal also includes an offer for "counter activism" through "negative PR, legal actions, ethical hack back, etc." for €50,000 per month.


bigger

The offer claims that the company can launch hundreds of "news" pieces per day on as many websites. It notably also offers to "edit" Wikipedia articles.

In short: This proposal describes large disinformation operations under the disguise of fighting alleged Russian disinformation.

It is at the core what the Integrity Initiative, which obviously requested the proposal, is about.

But as we saw in the information revealed yesterday there is more to it. The Initiative, which has lots of 'former' military and intelligence people among its staff, is targeting the political left in Britain as well as in other countries. It is there where it becomes a danger to the democratic societies of Europe.


Zanon , Dec 14, 2018 3:12:30 PM | link

Integrity Initiative: Spanish Cluster Misled UK Parliament Over Assange, Russia
https://sputniknews.com/world/201812141070699912-assange-integrity-institute-parliament/

What a bunch of mentalist type of people!

Mark2 , Dec 14, 2018 3:41:18 PM | link
I'd bet a weeks wages on it that this is where Craig Summers came from and what he was ! This blog is the antidote to the official spin! It was good to here from Craig Murray very thought provoking regards tactics.we all need our own method ! But not be gagged. I respect others ways we are on the same side .being united is the defence against devide and rule.

I wonder what the Tory's think of this scandal they must be angry at this attack on democracy, nah only joking! It'l be the dog that did'nt bark ! just like the media oh and the police ! One rule for them 'no rule' opression for us 99%

james , Dec 14, 2018 3:42:42 PM | link
thanks b.... aside from wondering if this is Russia accessing and sharing this, i think the sticking point is in this "Unintegrity initiative" going after the uk political left... that is where i think this is going to get traction as more folks are going to wake up if they see how deep and ugly this goes in targeting their own..

i could be wrong, but if this news catches on, or the uk MP women keeps hammering away on this, i think we will see some results..

i opened the pdf... here is a quick list of their objectives..

maybe the uk folks can tell us how this is going

ashley albanese , Dec 14, 2018 3:42:44 PM | link
In Australia the scale of tendentious anti-Chinese propaganda is absurd . Australia is flailing around trying to cope with changing circumstances . Already at a disadvantage in 'reading ' the world because of her geographical isolation the clear bias of information she now faces from the Anglo/ U S media and government systems puts her at a disadvantage in forming intelligent policies .
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda , Dec 14, 2018 4:38:49 PM | link
Can anyone make a zip with all dumps and files? For sharing and archiving this would be much easier.. As i believe it will not last long till the scribd uploads etc are DMCAed.. My LUKS+Veracrypt secured storage system would be a safe bet for archiving, so i would volunteer..
Much appreciated!
bjd , Dec 14, 2018 4:44:33 PM | link
Buyer beware!

Note that this document --and I've seen more-- presumes there is a large scale Russian disinformation campaign going on. Other documents presume Skripal was poisoned by Russia.

Once you run with these documents, beware that you are making those presumptions yours . That may be the objective here.

In short: all these documents need to be vetted.

Zanon , Dec 14, 2018 4:48:48 PM | link
DontBelieveEitherPropaganda

"Can anyone make "

No. Do it yourself.

No offense but in this age and on this blog, dont ask other people to do what you can do yourself. Make an effort and influence.

Jackrabbit , Dec 14, 2018 5:08:37 PM | link
Integrity Initiative got a lot of scrutiny because they used their Twitter account to attack Corbyn. In it's latest info dump, Anonymous describes additional UK political manipulation, writing that the Director of The Institute for Statecraft Christopher Donnelly:
... lobbied the House of Commons Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee for an inquiry into Russia's interference in the Catalan referendum. He invited members of the Integrity Initiative Spain cluster Francisco de Borja Lasheras and Mira Milosevich-Juaristi. At that moment they were receiving funds from the Foreign Office, i.e. the UK intelligence paid its own agents for fake proof of Russia's interference in the Catalan referendum and later told them to lie to the Parliament to convince it to take anti-Russian steps .
Kit Klarenberg , Dec 14, 2018 5:36:22 PM | link
This dump has plenty on our pal Simon.

His official profile is very telling indeed I think - https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/12/13/the-institute-for-statecraft-expert-team-v-3/the-institute-for-statecraft-expert-team-v-3.pdf:

"Simon Bracey-Lane: Currently runs the IfS "Integrity Initiative" network communications and network development process; deep experience in democratic election campaign processes in UK and especially in USA, viz: Regional Campaign Organiser: John Wisniewski for Governor of New Jersey, USA. January - May 2017; Statewide Campaign Organiser: Bernie Sanders for President 2016, USA. Sept 2015 – May 2016; special study of Russian interference in the US electoral process."

Whatever the truth of the matter, he can definitely multitask. Running the II network communications and development process (cultivating, recruiting, handling?) while also being a research fellow at the II's 'parent organization' Institute for Statecraft? I wonder how many hours he has left in a day to sleep!

Then again he seems to have form in this regard. 'Special study of Russian interference in the election process' simultaneously as being a key organizer in Sanders' campaign. Maybe he did his 'special study' in his free time?

karlof1 , Dec 14, 2018 5:42:04 PM | link
Pure brazen depravity. And how will the average UK citizen become informed of what seems treasonous activity? Seems venders with broadsheets in the style of yesteryear standing on street corners yelling EXTRA! need to return so the public can be informed of its government's activities--Social Media is not sufficient.

Bevin and other UK citizens: What do you call your Swamp?

jayc , Dec 14, 2018 5:46:12 PM | link
Any thoughts as to why exactly Russia became the chief demon? It seems the hysterical propaganda was focused exclusively on ISIS until Putin spoke at the UN announcing Russia's intervention in Syria. Then the propaganda shifted, first directed at Putin, then generally at Russia and Putin together. Is it anger over the prevention of imperialist design in the Middle East?
Koen , Dec 14, 2018 5:49:54 PM | link
Here's a list of about 60 organizations & projects devoted to spreading anti-Russia content in Western media. The Integrity Initiative is just the tip of the iceberg. https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1-wtpA2NomEj35bbVe1-iHX7rt4YzahPINm5w9A-SkcQ/edit?usp=drive_web&ouid=109242632477374337132

And here are 2 great books about the origins and nature of Russophobia

Lastly, I collect examples of anti-Russia content that I come across in the media at www.blameputin.com

ADKC , Dec 14, 2018 6:26:19 PM | link
jayc @15

It seemed to start with Bill Browder being kicked out of Russia. So I would assume that the main reason is that the west became aware that Russia was (had been) taking back control of their economy and resources and kicking out the western carpet-baggers. This belated realisation, that the prize that the west had gained and plundered in the '90s (from the collapse of the Soviet Union) had managed to wriggle free, seems to be something that the west can't accept.

Pft , Dec 14, 2018 6:54:10 PM | link
In June of 2016 a bill named Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 was introduced into the house by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu. H.R. 5181 sought a "whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions" to counter "foreign disinformation and manipulation," which they believe threaten the world's "security and stability." A similar bill was introduced in March in the Senate long before Russia gate. It was passed signed by Obama in December after the Russia Gate was played up following the election.

Like I said US and UK are basically one entity on such matters. Soon after being passed we saw Prop or Not introduce its hit list of alt media sites. Sadly over the last 2 years alt media has been decimated. Engdahl seems to be the latest to fall, helped no doubt by Soros suit for 1 million against him for calling out his daughters NGO. Now he has fallen into line and backing Trump. Maybe next he will support the Climate Change meme.

Oh well, looks like its almost over for Truth, although some truth probably gets allowed if enough of the lies are also presented. So my take is the anti Russia hysteria was just a clever way of getting support for a war on Truth (fake news).

Russia now has a similar initiative said to combat fakes news from US which will likely be used against Putin critics (US agents). The law allows them "to block online content, including social media websites, whose activities are deemed "undesirable" or "extremist." Maybe Putin is part of the Fake Wrestling game. Heel or Face, your choice.

I see the EU has set up a rapid alert system to help EU member states recognize disinformation campaigns, and increase the budget set aside for the detection of disinformation from . It will also press technology companies to play their part in cracking down on fake news. Major social media platforms have already signed up to a code of conduct. One minister said the EU would not stand for "an internet that is the wild west, where anything goes".

Macron introduced a bill recently seeking to get " judges and the media sector's regulator involved in the fight against fake news. A fact-checking state-run website would be created and social media would have to pitch in by warning users when a post is sponsored -- or when someone pays to give it better visibility in a feed."

I suppose the War on Truth has gone global. I wont bother to mention China as they are the role model the West follows.

karlof1 , Dec 14, 2018 7:36:27 PM | link
jayc @15--

As I posted on an earlier thread, the demonization of Russia by Anglos began with the First Afghan War in the late 1830s and has continued at differing degrees of intensity ever since always due to geopolitics.

bevin , Dec 14, 2018 8:08:33 PM | link
@14 What do you call your Swamp? "The Establishment", coined, I believe, by the historian AJP Taylor. The founder of modern journalism William Cobbett used to call it "The Thing"
Don Bacon , Dec 14, 2018 8:35:18 PM | link
The US State Department gives the title "public diplomacy" to its propaganda. Robert Parry wrote about it, and its contrast with truth, a couple years ago.
The idea of questioning the claims by the West's officialdom now brings calumny down upon the heads of those who dare do it. "Truth" is being redefined as whatever the U.S. government, NATO and other Western interests say is true. Disagreement with the West's "group thinks," no matter how fact-based the dissent is, becomes "fake news."

So, we have the case of Washington Post columnist David Ignatius having a starry-eyed interview with Richard Stengel, the State Department's Undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, the principal arm of U.S. government propaganda.

Entitled "The truth is losing," the column laments that the official narratives as deigned by the State Department and The Washington Post are losing traction with Americans and the world's public.

Stengel, a former managing editor at Time magazine, seems to take aim at Russia's RT network's slogan, "question more," as some sinister message seeking to inject cynicism toward the West's official narratives.

"They're not trying to say that their version of events is the true one. They're saying: 'Everybody's lying! Nobody's telling you the truth!'," Stengel said. "They don't have a candidate, per se. But they want to undermine faith in democracy, faith in the West." . . here

Just ask John Kiriakou, a former CIA officer who was sent to prison for telling the truth about US torture.
Blooming Barricade , Dec 14, 2018 8:47:12 PM | link
@15

Thanks, that looks great and should be reposted across alternative media- most of these groups use "anti-Russia" as a front to dismantle dissent and left-wing politics on behalf of the Multinationals and the Neoliberal Establishment- let's call it the "blob," and let's call that list Counter-Propornot.

james , Dec 14, 2018 9:19:09 PM | link
@ 15 jayc, @18 ADKC and @21 karlof1... my impression is the anti russian meme got real traction somewhere about 2014-2015 with the advent of Ukraine dynamics and Russia commitment to going into Syria.. around that time it all really picked up steam.. now you have think tanks and etc. etc. profiting from the sale of anti-russia spin.. there appears to be endless money available for this..
Piotr Berman , Dec 14, 2018 9:49:29 PM | link
... now you have think tanks and etc. etc. profiting from the sale of anti-russia spin.. there appears to be endless money available for this..

Posted by: james | Dec 14, 2018 9:19:09 PM | 26

This is an incomplete narrative, think tanks are basically mercenaries who relieve the population from the need to think about the complicated matters, letting the folks to believe what is either true or should be believed to be true for the "common good". And the "common good" is decided by paymasters. Somewhere in between are mass media populated by folks particularly averse to thinking -- again, they were selected by the employers not to think but to write and talk "correctly". But the press/TV lords will not chisel all details of what is true and important, and what is false, unimportant or both, so journalists can absorb it from think tanks and briefing from government informed sources. There are also astro-turfs and so on.

And indeed, Russian danger was identified ca. 2014 as the major worthy theme in the central parts of that nexus. So who are the paymasters? In part, "capitalists", wealthy individuals with means and motivation to set the course for the West and all forces of good. In part, intelligence agencies. Here Integrity Initiative seems an erratic creature: apparently, run by spooks on military and intelligence payroll, and yet also benefiting from a government grant that makes them a quango, "a semipublic administrative body outside the civil service but receiving financial support from the government, which makes senior appointments to it." In other words, they double dip. The total amount is relatively modest, so rather than getting fat on taxpayer money they merely double or triple they spare official salaries thus reaching "upper middle class" level. Therefore the morale in the outfit was mediocre and we can see one of the more amusing leaks of 2018.

Jackrabbit , Dec 14, 2018 10:41:58 PM | link
james @26:
... my impression is the anti russian meme got real traction somewhere about 2014-2015 with the advent of ukraine dynamics and russias commitment to going into syria..
I think we can surmise that the Russian objection to US bombing Syria in September 2013 was countered with a two-prong strategy:
> doubling down in Syria via ISIS;

> pushing hard for overthrow of Ukrainian government to: a) punish Russia, and b) keep Russia busy so that the Russians refrain from any further support for Syria

It was a superb and well-thought out strategy . . . that failed miserably. The coup in Ukraine succeeded and ISIS came within weeks of defeating Assad BUT Russia managed to secure the best parts of Ukraine -and- intervened in Syria anyway (along with Iran).

The failure to contain Russia was realised by Kissinger when he penned an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal that made a cryptic call for MAGA to counter the Russians/Chinese . After outlining the challenge to the World Order, Kissinger concludes:

Even as the lessons of challenging decades are examined, the affirmation of America's exceptional nature must be sustained. History offers no respite to countries that set aside their sense of identity in favor of a seemingly less arduous course . But nor does it assure success for the most elevated convictions in the absence of a comprehensive geopolitical strategy.
So the strategy changed once again. MAGA was as much a policy change as it was a campaign slogan. Obama's devious faux peacefulness that used covert action and proxy forces could not succeed against determined opposition from Russia/China. To prevail, Empire strategists recognized that USA needed to be able to call on regular troops and a deep sense of patriotism and righteousness that required re-developing nationalism. In short, "MAGA".

<> <> <> <> <> <> <> <> <>

This is what I wrote at nakedcapitalism.com shortly after Kissinger's Op-Ed was published in August 2014 :

My reading is that Kissinger is asserting that the US can and should do whatever it takes to keep the US preeminent – even if that means ignoring allies and/or the post-war international structure (UN, UNSC). That exceptional! message comes through loud and clear despite his 'triage' formalism. And it is a message that is comforting to the elite who read the WSJ (before a holiday weekend), though it should give Joe Sixpack nightmares if fully understood.

There is a lot more there which would take much longer to unpack. But I'll point to one more thing: Note how he forms an equivalence between all the troubles that the 'West' now face, and ignores US/Western actions that have contributed to these conflicts by conflating them. NC readers understand this via Merschemer's (in today's links) work on Ukraine and many links regarding ISIS (like this one).

This comforting message [from Kissinger] is needed because the Ukraine gambit has failed miserably – as many independent obeservers [sic] predicted– and a deeper conflict with Russia (possibly extending to others) is now in the cards. Like the true neocon that he is, Kissinger has doubled down on Nuland's obnoxious and misguided "f*ck the EU" with an exceptional! "f*ck the World".

God help us.

Jackrabbit , Dec 14, 2018 10:51:26 PM | link
Note: Kissinger's WSJ Op-Ed was published on August 29, 2014. Within weeks of its publication, the Obama Administration was in full anti-Russia swing. Trump would enter the race for Republican nomination 9 1/2 months after Kissinger's Op-Ed (June 15, 2015).

Trump was the ONLY populist, out of 19 contenders, in the Republican race. Hillary told Democratic-friendly media to focus on Trump and did things during the Presidential race that call into question her desire to actually win. Trump is a MUCH better choice for a MAGA nationalist than Hillary.

WJ , Dec 14, 2018 11:03:55 PM | link
@Jackrabbit 28,

You were right then, and you are right now. My one beef with your 2016 election analysis is that it seems to me you shortchange slightly the evidence of a real conflict and possibly fissure within the oligarchic elite, only certain segments of which seem convinced that now is the time for MAGA. Others among the actual power brokers would I think have preferred HRC and 4-8 more years of neoliberal internationalist interventionist grift a la Obama before having to finally turn to the MAGA nationalist strategy (which given the resource struggles that will emerge over the next decades was always inevitable once the Project for the New American (Israeli) Century collapsed, as it was bound to once Russia called its bluff in Syria.) But this is a minor point. What is much more important is that behind MAGA is an envisioned world war on the scale of WWI and WWII in which "The West" takes on China-Russia leading to the death of probably everybody.

bevin , Dec 14, 2018 11:33:45 PM | link
"..my impression is the anti russian meme got real traction somewhere about 2014-2015 with the advent of ukraine dynamics and russias commitment to going into syria..."

I think that the proper context begins with the failure of Medvedev's Russia to veto the UNSC motion establishing a No Fly zone over Libya. Inter alia this led to a real reverse for and an humiliation of China which had large financial investments as well as large numbers of personnel involved in Ghadaffi's imaginative schemes.

My guess, and it is not a particularly well informed one, is that after the Libyan disaster-the worst sort of imperialist over reach and brutality not only did China realise that Imperialism was reverting to its nightmarish type, but Russians leaders saw that a permanent alliance-until the defeat of the empire- was the only alternative that it and China had to 'hanging separately'. And that the same went for Iran and Syria-nobody could trust the west any longer and it would be foolish, and dangerous, to continue to do so.

The hate campaign against Russia is just the old campaign, against any country resisting the Empire's hegemony, focused on the one power that had resisted since 1917 and was able to do so, returning to its old role of saying 'Niet' when all the rest of the world said either 'Aye Aye,Sir' "If you insist" or kept quiet and said nothing at all.

Of course, 2011 was the last in a long series of increasingly stupid US aggressions, all of which Russia knew very well were aimed at it as much as the selected sacrificial victim. Those who say that Saddam was about oil could not be more wrong: he was a human sacrifice, slaughtered ritually on the corpses of a million of his fellows, to demonstrate that the USA can do what it chooses when it wishes. Karl Rove was wrong: not even Empires can create their own realities. The extravagant and bloody theatre of decades swaggering around the middle east finds the US not only poorer but weaker than it was in 1980.

V , Dec 14, 2018 11:37:12 PM | link
"It notably also offers to "edit" Wikipedia articles." b

Wikipedia stopped being a reliable source for accurate information a long time ago. Finding reliable alternatives is a bit more effort; but worth it for accurate information.

Piotr Berman , Dec 15, 2018 12:02:03 AM | link
Wikipedia stopped being a reliable source for accurate information a long time ago. Finding reliable alternatives is a bit more effort; but worth it for accurate information.

Posted by: V | Dec 14, 2018 11:37:12 PM | 32

It is more complicated. Wikipedia is sprawling and manipulations happen on entry basis, and it often leaves "controversies". I also discovered that it is worth to brush up on language skills, if there are any. For example, on recent events in Crimea there is an entry "Crimea Crisis" with Russian and Polish versions, and Polish "pro-Westerners" somehow left few traces of activity. I wonder how is it in German and French Wikipedias. In English, think tanks and deep states indeed lack sufficient counter-activity.

b , Dec 15, 2018 12:16:08 AM | link
@DontBelieveEitherPropaganda

Why didn't you make an archive yourself? Meanwhile the leakers account at Scribd has been slashed and all the files with it. Anyway - here is a Mediafire zip created yesterday of (allegedly) all files published so far. IntegrityInitiative.zip . Save it as long as it is available.

Augustin L , Dec 15, 2018 12:47:50 AM | link
@ jackrabbit, I've heard other observers make the link with Kissinger's op-ed, but your demonstration is very convincing. William Engdahl made the same call, Hillary's not a suitable player to pull off MAGA with masses of deplorables. Unfortunately for Anglo-American strategists, Trump with his linear cretinism lacks the necessary wherewithal to implement and execute a comprehensive geopolitical strategy. Kissinger comes from another era, and probably cannot grasp how far devolution has taken American elites in the cesspit of post modern hedonism.
Blooming Barricade , Dec 15, 2018 12:54:41 AM | link
@V

It's illuminating to see this NATO-backed operation looking at a PR firm to edit Wikipedia because this brings to mind the notorious "Philip Cross," which, for those not in the know, was uncovered by Craig Murray and others ( https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/05/the-philip-cross-affair/) as having edited the pages of prominent left wing people and Labour Party people. In Germany, Left Party Bundestag member Diether Dehm has highlighted a similar figure in German language Wikipedia, "Feliks," targeting socialists in that country. The similarities of both to the proposals made by the PR firm above are eerie.

Hmpf , Dec 15, 2018 1:25:47 AM | link
@ Piotr Berman | Dec 15, 2018 12:02:03 AM | 33

Can't speak for the French version of Wikipedia but with the German edition it is as bad as anywhere else when it comes to social and political issues, particularly so if geopolitics (the West, ME, Russia ..) is concerned.

Two people, a biologist and a journalist, independently investigated networks on a senior editor and admin level active within WikipediaG. What they found is rather shocking. One can't just edit a Wikipedia article, no matter how fact-based. It will almost immediately be retracted if it doesn't follow the 'official' narrative. If said person then tries to reestablish that content or tries to engage in a discussion with the admins, in many cases, they simply get banned then.

These guys can also be found on Youtube: Gruppe42 (group42) Unfortunately their main documentaries are only available in German language but there's some other content 'Geschichten aus Wikihausen' - 'The Tales of Wikihausen' with English subtitles.

Try this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xlgGx9LM5cM It's about a former female STASI-employee turned fighter for freedom and democracy. Currently she is the head of the Antonio-Amadeo-Foundation dedicated, to put it bluntly, to doing the bidding for the usual suspects - and to add insult to injury taxpayer funded to a large part.

Mina , Dec 15, 2018 4:16:39 AM | link
The BBC won't taalk about it but when it is in the House of Commons they have to Sole result of a search "Integrity Initiative" on the BBC news website
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0bv9zxj (12/12 when then question was raised in the house of commons)
Zanon , Dec 15, 2018 4:43:24 AM | link
"Anonymous Hackers Expose UK Plans to Mine Sevastopol Days Before Crimea Vote" https://sptnkne.ws/kpWP
Russ , Dec 15, 2018 5:01:57 AM | link
Posted by: Soft Asylum | Dec 15, 2018 4:36:27 AM | 39

Such people might be some of the worst examples of humans, but that doesn't mean they're trolls. In fact, plucking some kind of motivations out of their psychopathic minds might be a good thing for the rest of us. If people such as them are posters here, this would allow an opportunity to study them.

You feel you lack opportunities to study them? Pick up a newspaper, or turn on the cable news.

TJ , Dec 15, 2018 5:03:04 AM | link
The thread over on Craig Murrays site- British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft
William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 6:01:23 AM | link
Integrity Initiative Part 3 https://williambowles.info/2018/12/15/integrity-initiative-part-3/

Combatting Russian Disinformation http://williambowlesnet.files.wordpress.com/2018/12/combatting-russian-disinformation.pdf

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 6:08:03 AM | link
B: this info is astounding! Or perhaps not? Maybe the fact that the spooks are notoriously inept is what's astounding? I mean you would think that what with all dweebs working for the state (eg GCHQ), they would be able to protect their own excreta? The earlier disinfo (it's a Russian plot etc) makes sense but it didn't work!
Old Microbiologist , Dec 15, 2018 7:09:31 AM | link
Jay @15
Sorry, I didn't read any of this until this morning. Russia is the go to enemy when you need to bump up your purchasing of very expensive military equipment and to pour money into various security projects to achieve to goals (1 is to lock down infrastructure etc. but the other is to suppress the US citizens so a two-for).

Asymmetrical wars against tiny nations without air support are hard to justify spending Trillions of dollars forever. That dog just won't hunt after 18 years of a no-win war in Afghanistan (or anywhere else). So, Russia and now just to make it even more critical, China are enemies that demand massive military buildups of equipment that won't ever actually (hopefully) be put to use. This is to fight a two theater war against two nuclear superpowers. Basically, it is insanity but it will make a few people very rich.

The long game plan, which continues unabated regardless of which party or who is in power, is American hegemony of the planet. When you consider the US has military bases in 155 countries (who essentially have become colonies) it seems like the goal is nearly completed unless you consider that major nuclear armed nations are resisting (Russia, China and maybe Pakistan and India as well).

If you take a look at Russia during Yeltsin the US companies nearly bought everything in the country and the raping was in full vigor. Someone at DoS or the CIA very badly miscalculated letting Putin come into power. He was, after all, a minor minion and basically came out of no where. I am assuming they thought he would continue the raping and disarmament of all former Soviet weapons and Russian businesses. Sadly for them he turned out to be a patriot and actively resisted everything the US was trying to do to Russia. I believe the Yukos deal was the final straw which would have given nearly all Russian oil and gas to Exxon/Mobil. So, Putin has been battling the US successfully since and is very slowly eliminating all the oligarchs the US put into power and draining his swamp of Atlantacists and 5th column.

That is the over simplified view but it sums it up enough to explain what we are seeing. It is as always all about money. So, Putin has resisted aggressively all US encroachments into the Russian sphere of influence. The sanctions actually help Russia. A devalued ruble is great for oil exports which are only 12% of Russia's GDP. More self sufficiency is also a huge benefit. A partnership with China ensures the US cannot ever achieve their goals of global domination. The US military has proven for the past 70+ years they are incapable of any meaningful fighting and that the military is woefully incompetent. The ABM test results even when cheating heavily are only roughly a 50% hit rate. That is against "normal" ballistic missiles. Russia's new systems already circumvent this system by mid-flight course corrections.

The biggest problem is the neocon elites really believe all their own propaganda. That is very scary.

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 7:54:52 AM | link
Posted by: jayc | Dec 14, 2018 5:46:12 PM | 15

Jayc: you ask why Russia and specifically Putin? Cast your mind back to 1991 and the fall of the USSR and Yeltsin's coup and the theft of billions of Russia's capital resources by Goldman Sachs et al. The Empire figured what was left of the former USSR was a pushover and its vast natural resources, highly educated population, ripe for plucking and along comes the Tatar Putin, a descendent of Genghis Khan! Whoops!

And only just in time. Then think about the invasion of Iraq in 1991 and later in 2003 and then Libya. The Russians stood by. But Syria was a step too far and too near!

Jayc, it's Western, racist hubris. The Russkies are just a bunch of jumped up peasants (Hitler made the same mistake), so when they asserted their right to resist, and it really started in 2015 with the Western financed 'revolution' against Assad, it came as a real shock to the system to see that Russia actually did have real guns that fired and real jets and satellites to watch it all. After all, it was those peasant Russians who went into space first (Duck agogo Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, the genuine father of space exploration).

It must have rocked the bastards back on their heels. So they hate Putin! He restored Russia's faith in itself and that is simply not permissible! And do it with a military budget a small fraction of the Empire's and one that Putin CUT by 10% this year! Wakey-wakey!

Okay, this is a vastly simplified explanation and I'm not going to deal with the internal contradictions of Russia, that's for the Russians to do. But it seems that once more, the Russkies are saving our tired, sorry Western arses.

Bill

Emmanuel Goldstein , Dec 15, 2018 9:29:46 AM | link
William Bowles @ 57

I commented at the Saker at the time of the first Ukrainian war that it looks like Mother Russia is being set up to defeat fascism for the second time in 100 years. History may not exactly repeat itself but it does rhyme.

If I were the West I would tread very carefully, after the catastrophes of the 1990's the Russians are in no mood to roll over for anyone. The West was surprised at the weapons and operational arts displayed in Syria, and that was just the conventional stuff....

AnneR , Dec 15, 2018 9:30:57 AM | link
karlofi - Britain doesn't have swamps (environmental sort), but it does have lots of Bogs. And Bog is also another term for lavatory/toilet - so one might describe Westminster, the City of London and the rest of the bourgeois British world as one Big Bog (if only someone would flush it).
BM , Dec 15, 2018 10:18:31 AM | link
Well, I was excited about the supposed "lots on Skripal" and thought maybe there would be a smoking gun. Disappointed (mediafire zip linked by b)! All I opened was the files with the word skripal in the name - nothing but ultra-boring newspeak from what seem like spotty adolescents trying their best to feed their paymasters with the propaganda they want. The only one of any interest at all was the one reporting on skripal news coverage in Greece: the author was relatively normal, and coverage in Greece was pretty neutral and sceptical of the UK propaganda.

There were only 100 documents in the zip which was supposed to be everything released so far (i.e. all three dumps).

Is there any evidence to confirm that all three dumps were done by the same person/people? I can't help wondering whether the third dump might have been damage control from the Integrity Initiative themselves, to try to show that there is not much there.

As I said though, I didn't open anything except the files with skripal in the filename, so maybe there is something interesting somewhere else. It may be that by specifically looking for skripal I failed to find any files with policy or analysis. All the files I looked at seemed to be reports from the clusters in various countries (often addressed to Simon), or pure propaganda (spotty teenagers) with no analysis.

psychohistorian , Dec 15, 2018 10:32:15 AM | link
ZH has a posting up about the Integrity Initiative and gives MoA a hat tip for being early onto the issue. This should insure that it won't be buried but I suspect it is time for another big shiny thing to appear to distract the masses
William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 10:52:51 AM | link
Okay! It is/was called Spybase, and created by Daniel Brandt. Foreign Affairs magazine badmouthed it here:

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/reviews/capsule-review/1989-03-01/spybase

And they misidentified it as well!

See also Namebase, the original collection of intelligence agents.

NameBase - Wikipedia
Founder Daniel Brandt began collecting clippings and citations pertaining to influential people and intelligence agents in the 1960s and especially in the 1970s after becoming a member of Students for a Democratic Society, an organization that opposed US foreign policy.
[Search domain en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spybase] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spybase

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 11:16:15 AM | link
Scary but worth a read: What are the Odds of a Shooting War Between NATO and Russia? "70% Chance of Combat" An Interview with George Szamuely https://www.globalresearch.ca/what-are-the-odds-of-a-shooting-war-between-nato-and-russia-70-chance-of-combat/5663011
Russ , Dec 15, 2018 11:44:03 AM | link
Posted by: William Bowles | Dec 15, 2018 11:16:15 AM | 67

That piece sums it up well, especially NATO's increasingly aggressive posture. And how self-righteously stupid the US is being. I think 70% might be optimistic. This situation is even more like 1914 than 1914 was, in that the reallywantingwar-to-bluster ratio looks even worse. Meanwhile Trump, with his self-indulgent saber-rattling, is like a twitter-empowered Kaiser. Imagine that back then.

Another commenter up above says this'll be Russia's second go-round with fascism. Yup, and they can send US/NATO where they sent Hitler, Napoleon, Charles XII.

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 12:15:58 PM | link
Posted by: Russ | Dec 15, 2018 11:44:03 AM | 69

Russ, I wish I could be that optimistic. Yes, madmen they may be but they're madmen with tactical nukes! And judging by another End of Days scenario, they actually seem to be contemplating their use, gambling that the Russians wont call their bluff! More like the Cuban Missile Crisis than Sarevevo. So which side will blink first?

See: Be Afraid Be Very Afraid! By John Rachel

https://williambowles.info/2018/11/23/be-afraid-be-very-afraid-by-john-rachel/

And then of course, we have Global Heating, which the Empire figures will 'take care' of that surplus to requirement population, whilst the 1% wait it out in their bunkers.


I'm glad I'm at the other end of my life, rather than the beginning.

" we have the certainty that matter remains eternally the same in all its transformations, that none of its attributes can ever be lost, and therefore, also, that with the same iron necessity that it will exterminate on the earth its highest creation, the thinking mind, it must somewhere else and at another time again produce it". -- Frederick Engels, from the introduction to 'The Dialectics of Nature', 1883.
james , Dec 15, 2018 12:41:47 PM | link
thanks everyone for giving a response to either my comment, or @jayc's initial comment on what started this russiaphobia... i think many of the answers are relevant and there is no one answer...

i recall how quickly 'cambridge analytica' came and went, in spite of the strength of the data on them manipulating much... i imagine a similar story hee with 'integrity initiative'..

as for wikipedia - everyone knows it's a full on propaganda site masquerading as a neutral info site... the fact that it is mentioned in this integrity initiative data dump shows just how mainstream and 'go to' in the world of propaganda it is viewed by the intel services and anyone else trying to get in on some of the gov't money handouts for this type propaganda.. it would be very cool if the wikipedia site made a statement saying we no longer need donations, as the intel services of the west have been paying us to continue... at what point does wikipedia become an official and open arm of western propaganda?? why continue to try to hide this when it is so apparent??

Russ , Dec 15, 2018 12:47:43 PM | link
Posted by: james | Dec 15, 2018 12:41:47 PM | 71

"at what point does wikipedia become an official and open arm of western propaganda?? why continue to try to hide this when it is so apparent??"

That's one of neoliberalism's refinements over classical fascism: Just as they figured out you don't need to kill dissenters since no one listens to us anyway, so you also don't need formal Gleichshaltung under a de jure Geobbels ministry since the MSM will happily "coordinate" itself and really doesn't need to be told what to do. They already know since theirs is the same ideology.

Russ , Dec 15, 2018 12:51:58 PM | link
@ William Bowles 70

Well, I'm only optimistic about that last part if they really can keep it to just shooting and not let the missiles fly.

On the other hand I'm not at all optimistic about that. Though even then I suspect it'll hit the West worst, precisely because any such leveling is hardest on the most complex, most high maintenance, most just-in-time, least robust, least resilient, most top-heavy Tower of Babel. That would be the US, Europe, and their dependencies.

Noirette , Dec 15, 2018 12:52:52 PM | link
from the link in b's post: As we see it, the main weakness in the Russians' disinformation campaign is their embrace of a quantity - over quality and credibility - strategy as shown by their lack of credible spokespeople, their publication of a high volume of "easily" identifiable propaganda and "fake news", and their heavy reliance on a few biased partisan sites, dubious social media pages and uninspired trolls. Their stories are hard to believe,...

That sounds so much like a self-description of the US-UK MSM it is uncanny. (Bellingcat anyone? for ex.) Which, imho, shows a complete lack of creativity, suppleness, or even a low-level semi-efficient approach to the general problem of information / narrative control. Because that is what it is all about: much of the discourse around it is waffle, which masquerades as 'new' as it invokes 'new info' double-speak: social circuits, fake news, distribution, deep learning, connectivity, targetting, etc. (and other terms that are less readily comprehensible..)

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 1:30:28 PM | link

Posted by: Noirette | Dec 15, 2018 12:52:52 PM | 74

Hah! I think it was Goebbels who said that the biggest mistake a propagandist can make is to believe his own propaganda and I think your quote exemplifies it! But note it always has to contain an element of truth eg, 'as shown by their lack of credible spokespeople'. Yes, the Russians, just like the North Koreans ain't very good at spin and thank goodness. It was a lesson that Nixon never learned, the Emperor really is naked!

james , Dec 15, 2018 1:39:04 PM | link
@72 russ.. okay.. i get that... thanks!

on the newest thread bjd make what i thought was an exceptional comment, which is easy enough to gloss over, but i think worth repeating on this thread... here it is

"...why --if these initiatives are truly meant to save and strengthen democracy-- (aren't they) proudly proclaimed and advertised, in the open, transparent, for everyone one to see and judge, like an adult democracy that they claim to stand for..."
The fact that they aren't, is testimony to the nefarious anti-democratic, authoritarian and totalitarian streak that runs in between every two lines that they put on paper."

Posted by: bjd | Dec 15, 2018 12:46:08 PM | 8"

i modified bjds words in a minor way..

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 2:13:24 PM | link
I'm sure Bernard is going to ban me soon but before he does, you have to read this from Ron Unz on the Huawei debacle:
Although it is far from clear whether the very elderly [Sheldon] Adelson played any direct personal role in Ms. Meng's arrest, he surely must be viewed as the central figure in fostering the political climate that produced the current situation. Perhaps he should not be described as the ultimate puppet-master behind our current clash with China, but any such political puppet-masters who do exist are certainly operating at his immediate beck and call. In very literal terms, I suspect that if Adelson placed a single phone call to the White House, the Trump Administration would order Canada to release Ms. Meng that same day.

Adelson's fortune of $33 billion ranks him as the 15th wealthiest man in America, and the bulk of his fortune is based on his ownership of extremely lucrative gambling casinos in Macau, China. In effect, the Chinese government currently has its hands around the financial windpipe of the man ultimately responsible for Ms. Meng's arrest and whose pro-Israel minions largely control American foreign policy. I very much doubt that they are fully aware of this enormous, untapped source of political leverage.(my emph.

Averting World Conflict With China

The PRC Should Retaliate by Targeting Sheldon Adelson's Chinese Casinos

By Ron Unz

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/50767.htm

Activist Potato , Dec 15, 2018 2:17:05 PM | link
"MAGA was as much a policy change as it was a campaign slogan....To prevail, Empire strategists recognized that USA needed to be able to call on regular troops and a deep sense of patriotism and righteousness that required re-developing nationalism. In short, 'MAGA'."
@28 Jackrabbit

I highlight these lines of your interesting post because, in the context of the Kissinger Op-Ed you refer to, they capture an angle I had not considered and have to a degree nudged my thinking off what had been a steady course of assumptions and beliefs relating to MAGA that go in the opposite direction from your hypothesis.

Trump's invocation of MAGA on the campaign trail was presented in such a way as to seem to overwhelmingly favour a pullback from Imperialism in order to make things right at home. It drew from, and fed on, the angst and diminishing prosperity of the segment of the population that had been hit hardest by Globalization of the economy, to which Imperial adventures can be, and after are, associated. The possibility that MAGA was, in fact, a sly misdirection to co-opt the fervour of re-ignited passions in a disenfranchised segment of the America people - to re-capture the kind of patriotic commitment and ardor that drove the war effort in two world wars - into a renewed Imperial adventure was obviated, in my view, by Trump's loud and overt criticism of past Imperial adventures such as the Iraq war and Obama's inaction regarding ISIS (the accusation that Obama "created" ISIS was a bombshell, in my opinion).

Trump engaged in a bare, pointed, often crass and bordering on contemptuous criticism of his predecessors' foreign policy. The irreverent tone was unprecedented in recent campaign history and was so plain and completely at odds with Hilary's stated positions that it essentially committed him (in my eyes anyway) to following through, or to make all efforts to follow through. If not, he would set one of the worst examples of a duplicitous politician, perhaps ever. The same applies to other bold campaign positions, such as the border wall, for example.

But when viewed in the context of a deep state "policy change," such a clear and utter denunciation and discrediting of the former policy would be necessary to shift the National mindset and would not necessarily preclude Trump from engaging in further Imperial adventures, as long as they were different from the discredited policy.

Doing it smarter and better than Obama did seems to the ticket to legitimacy for whatever Trump does in the foreign policy realm. Replacing ISIS with actual American troops (while protecting a core capacity to revive ISIS if needed) is an example of doing it differently from Obama, but the net result – with parts of Syria denied to the legitimate government – still supports stark Imperialist, interventionists goals in a different way. The Russians and Syrians have free reign to attack ISIS, but do not have the same liberty against American troops. The flip-side is that the American troops do not have the freedom of action of ISIS to attack Syria. This creates a static line that serves the purpose of a partitionist goal. (ISIS is being allowed to survive to enable an element of proxy action, for harassment purposes).

I find I can no longer dismiss Trump's appointments, in particular Pompeo and Bolton to key positions directing and shaping US foreign policy, as some kind of 5-D chess move. They are signs that he is either a hostage President, or he is in on the act. There is so much that remains unknown, but the clear outward indicators are that nothing really has changed when it comes to US foreign policy objectives, only the methods and approaches are different.

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 2:47:47 PM | link
@78

Remember Obama's 'Change' meme? We don't understand that behind all these guys, and they are mostly men, stands industry and its skills; advertising, marketing, statistics, psychology, pr, on and on it goes. And billions, billions, to spend! We are the amateurs! Remember Saatchi & Saatchi's campaign to have Thatcher elected?

Noirette , Dec 15, 2018 3:20:14 PM | link
A new extremely lucrative 'industry' has sprung up.

a) to exploit hugely massive data sets (Facebook's trove and money earner..) and influence ppl => attitudes, behavior, votes, etc. For ex. Cambridge Analytica. Much of this stuff is for now on the level of a scam. E.g. Trump was not elected due to any type of manipulation or meddling by anyone, excepting those who financed him (other story, hard bucks and bribes - not! internet detritus or subliminal messages) and imho the US MSM - TV specially - who care more about ratings and the money it brings than anything else.

These efforts have got a lot of press, imho it is all smoke. If anyone has a good ex. of success ? (The model is built on about 200 years of advertising lore.)

b) Further upstream is to control the information that goes out / the audiences who are allowed to see whatever info, react to it, communicate it - other. With the corollary of repressing dissident, unwelcome, contradictory, info, etc. Been going on since say the Upper Paleolithic.

Today, what has to be managed is the extreme free-flow (internet): the only way this can be done is:

- to limit the channel, block info or some proportion of it, make the channel too expensive / unusable / forbid, repress

- to limit or corral the users (via propaganda / coercion / permission / certification / numbers / privilege / cost, etc.)

- to triage the information, the 'news', the narratives, the opinions, the appeals, etc. which represents the ultimate control and is the choice made by the US-UK to mention only those.

Ex.

https://twitter.com/ERC_Research/status/999632938936479746

or totally 'bogus' 'science' like this:

http://science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6380/1146

William Bowles , Dec 15, 2018 3:34:42 PM | link
Posted by: Noirette | Dec 15, 2018 3:20:14 PM | 80

Noirette, yuo want proof? Check out 'Programming of the President' by Roland Perry, Aurum Books, 1984. It's About Richard Wirthlin and the Mormons. Can a computer be used to elect a president? Wel it elected Ronald Reagan. It's only a coupleof quid on Abe Books. Essential reading IMHOP.

https://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=22859608878&searchurl=tn%3DProgramming%2Bof%2Bthe%2BPresident%26sortby%3D17%26an%3DRoland%2BPerry&cm_sp=snippet-_-srp1-_-image1

pogohere , Dec 15, 2018 5:57:43 PM | link
jackrabbit @ 28

activist potato @ 78

Re: "The possibility that MAGA was, in fact, a sly misdirection to co-opt the fervour of re-ignited passions in a disenfranchised segment of the America people - to re-capture the kind of patriotic commitment and ardor that drove the war effort in two world wars - into a renewed Imperial adventure was obviated, in my view, by Trump's loud and overt criticism of past Imperial adventures such as the Iraq war and Obama's inaction regarding ISIS (the accusation that Obama "created" ISIS was a bombshell, in my opinion).

Trump engaged in a bare, pointed, often crass and bordering on contemptuous criticism of his predecessors' foreign policy. The irreverent tone was unprecedented in recent campaign history and was so plain and completely at odds with Hilary's stated positions that it essentially committed him (in my eyes anyway) to following through, or to make all efforts to follow through. If not, he would set one of the worst examples of a duplicitous politician, perhaps ever. The same applies to other bold campaign positions, such as the border wall, for example.

But when viewed in the context of a deep state "policy change," such a clear and utter denunciation and discrediting of the former policy would be necessary to shift the National mindset and would not necessarily preclude Trump from engaging in further Imperial adventures, as long as they were different from the discredited policy."

So which of Trump's nominees gets kneecapped first? Michael Flynn Former Military Chief: Iraq War Was A 'Failure' That Helped Create ISIS

12-19-16

Retired Lt. General Michael Flynn, the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who came up through intelligence positions in Iraq and Afghanistan, says that the George W. Bush administration's Iraq war was a tremendous blunder that helped to create the self-proclaimed Islamic State, or ISIS.

"It was a huge error," Flynn said about the Iraq war in a detailed interview with German newspaper Der Spiegel published Sunday.

"As brutal as Saddam Hussein was, it was a mistake to just eliminate him," Flynn went on to say. "The same is true for Moammar Gadhafi and for Libya, which is now a failed state. The historic lesson is that it was a strategic failure to go into Iraq. History will not be and should not be kind with that decision."

When told by Der Spiegel reporters Matthias Gebauer and Holger Stark that the Islamic State would not "be where it is now without the fall of Baghdad," Flynn, without reservations, said: "Yes, absolutely."

Read the entire interview here: https://tinyurl.com/zmxd3uf

Flynn, who served in the U.S. Army for more than 30 years, also said that the American military response following 9/11 was not well thought-out at all and based on significant misunderstandings.


BTW:

Hold the Phone on Flynn Sentencing – Judge Emmet Sullivan Has Questions

12-12-18

Interesting, very interesting. As noted in the Flynn sentencing memo last night there were some curiously framed explanations of events surrounding his FBI inquisition.

Now Judge Emmet Sullivan wants expanded information, and wishes to see the actual notes (FD-302) that were mentioned by Flynn; and Judge Sullivan is directing the special counsel to provide all documents created by the FBI surrounding the Flynn interview:

from the comments:

Curt says:
December 12, 2018 at 9:56 pm
This could be big news! Judge Emmet Sullivan was the same judge that had prosecutors investigated for criminal actions they took in the Sen. Ted Stevens FALSE prosecution. Some on Mueller's team, including Weinstein, were held in contempt. One prosecutor committed suicide. Others threatened with disbarment and some were suspended. "A federal judge dismissed the ethics conviction of former Senator Ted Stevens of Alaska on Tuesday after taking the extraordinary step of naming a special prosecutor to investigate whether the government lawyers who ran the Stevens case (2008) should themselves be prosecuted for criminal wrongdoing.

Mueller was also involved in that horrible attempt by prosecutors to frame Sen. Ted Stevens. Judge Sullivan has absolutely no use for this group of prosecutors. He smells a rat here and is asking for all investigative materials, including 302s. This judge will not hesitate to take action against these crooked prosecutors if he finds evidence of ANY wrong doing.


See: Cautionary Tale: The Ted Stevens Prosecution

On April 7, 2009, Judge Emmet G. Sullivan of the United States District Court for the District of Columbia unleashed his fury before a packed courtroom. For 14 minutes, he scolded. He chastised. He fumed. "In nearly 25 years on the bench," he said, "I've never seen anything approaching the mishandling and misconduct that I've seen in this case.

. . .

For months Judge Sullivan had warned U.S. prosecutors about their repeated failure to turn over evidence. Then, after the jury convicted Stevens, the Justice Department discovered previously unrevealed evidence. Meanwhile, a prosecution witness and an agent from the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) came forward alleging prosecutorial misconduct. Finally, newly appointed U.S. Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. announced that he had had enough and recommended that the seven-count conviction against the former Alaska senator be dismissed.

On April 7, Judge Sullivan did just that. But he was far from done.

In an extraordinarily rare move, he ordered an inquiry into the prosecutors' handling of the case. Judge Sullivan insisted that the misconduct allegations were "too serious and too numerous" to be left to an internal Justice Department investigation. He appointed Washington lawyer Henry F. Schuelke III of Janis, Schuelke & Wechsler to investigate whether members of the trial team should be prosecuted for criminal contempt.

Judge sentencing . . . Michael Flynn orders special counsel to hand over all 302s"


12-13-18 Following the allegations, U.S. District Judge Emmet Sullivan yesterday ordered that both the Mueller investigation and the Flynn team turn over all documents [the "302s"] relating to the fateful interview, including all contemporaneous notes, before 3pm Friday.

DiGenova slams Mueller's handling of Flynn FBI meeting

4:04

Rumor has it the next chapter of this story unfolds Monday, 17 Dec '18.

Jackrabbit , Dec 15, 2018 6:58:24 PM | link
Flynn was likely set-up and railroaded because he was a whistle-blower. I wrote about Flynn here.

In recent days we have discovered that Flynn was advised not to have counsel present during his FBI interview and that the FBI is withholding the actual interview notes. The same FBI cabal that has dogged Trump - but AFAIK, Trump has said nothing about the Flynn case.

Yet another reason to believe that Trump is not a "populist" savior but yet another agent of the establishment/Deep State.

Augustin L , Dec 15, 2018 7:48:43 PM | link
New Mueller memo smacks down Flynn's latest legal gambit: Nobody forced him to lie to the FBI. Dead in the water.
https://www.rawstory.com/2018/12/new-mueller-memo-smacks-flynns-latest-legal-gambit-nobody-forced-lie-fbi/

Michael Flynn's a well known islamophobe who'd gladly defend zionist interests to the last american soldier. He'd fit right in with Bolton on the NSC council. Flynn in his own words: "Islam is not a real religion, but a political ideology masked behind a religion," While campaigning for Trump in 2016: ''Islamism a vicious cancer inside the body of 1.7 billion people that has to be excised "

I wonder how he planned on excising the cancer ? Deploying more stormtroopers to the levant to fight Iran ?
As Trump assumed control of the executive in early 2017, it didn't take long for Flynn to push for direct military involvement in Yemen and confrontation with Iran: "Instead of being thankful to the United States for these agreements, Iran is now feeling emboldened... As of today, we are officially putting Iran on notice."

Michael Flynn was also a fellow at the foundation for defence of democracies a well known den of zionists and universal fascists such as Michael Ledeen. In fact they both wrote a book together The Field of Fight: How We Can Win the Global War against Radical Islam and Its Allies, where we find such nuggets as:

"The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Putin has declared the United States (and NATO generally) to be a national security threat to Russia, and "Death to America" is the official chant of the Islamic Republic of Iran. Both the Putinists and the radical Iranian Muslims agree on the identity of their main enemy. Hence, one part of the answer is surely that their alliance is simply the logical outgrowth of their hostility toward America.''

"The Russians and Iranians have more in common than a shared enemy. There is also a shared contempt for democracy and an agreement -- by all members of the enemy alliance -- that dictatorship is a superior way to run a country, an empire, or a caliphate."

Flynn's angle was to exploit any potential fissure to pry Russia away from Iran and China. Presumbably after having dealt with Iran and the middle Kingdom, the hegemon could then strike a final blow to defeat and contain an isolated Russia.
https://www.amazon.com/Field-Fight-Global-Against-Radical/dp/1250131626

Deplorables envisioning multi-dimensional chess moves, fancy Flynn as some sort of superpatriot but like most men surrounding Chump he's nothing but a grifter:
Lobbying for Turkey: https://theintercept.com/2016/11/17/turkish-client-paid-trump-adviser-michael-flynns-company-tens-of-thousands-of-dollars-for-lobbying/

[Dec 14, 2018] Hackers reveal British government s interference in Spanish politics by Alejandro López

Dec 06, 2018 | www.wsws.org

Documents leaked by internet hackers of Anonymous reveal how a supposedly independent think-tank based in the UK is a government funded and controlled operation of misinformation and fake news.

At the same time that the Western powers were accusing Russia of interference in democracy, the UK government and its intelligence services MI5 and MI6 were busily preventing the nomination of a Spanish official to Director of National Security, one of Spain's top advisory roles.

Details of the operation carried out by the Integrity Initiative (II), a project launched in 2015 by the Institute of Statecraft, have been published by the web site CyberGuerilla.org. It is a trove of documents allegedly hacked from II, showing carefully worked out campaigns, costs and internal guidelines, as well as names of individuals cooperating with the network.

Anonymous shows that the network:

1. Is mainly funded by the UK government through the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO).

2. Cost £1,961,000 ($2.5 million) this year.

3. Has received £168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and £250,000 from the US State Department.

4. Is controlled by figures in the UK who manipulate "clusters" of politicians, high-ranking military officials, academics and journalists.

5. Clusters are said to operate in Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, and Montenegro.

6. Its activities are carried under absolute secrecy via named intelligence services operatives in British embassies.

The Integrity Initiative poses as "Defending Democracy against Misinformation," but does exactly the opposite, spreading fake news against Russia in order to defend the national interests of the UK and its imperialist allies, influence Russian speakers in Europe and North America and "change attitudes in Russia itself".

An example of II's activities was the operation launched last June against the nomination of Army reserve colonel Pedro Baños as Spain's Director of National Security. Attached to La Moncloa, the official residence and workplace of the prime minister of Spain, the director's role is to advise the PM on existing and potential threats to the country and possible responses.

II's operation started after it was warned that the new Socialist Party (PSOE) government under Pedro Sánchez, which had just been elected in parliament through a no confidence vote, was considering Baños and was about to confirm his appointment on June 7, 2018.

Immediately, newspapers like El Mundo and El País published articles accusing Baños of "sympathy for Russia." Proof of this for El País was his "regular presence" on Russia Today and Sputnik , media outlets funded by the Putin government. Further "evidence" was his tweet in response to a survey showing a domestic popularity rating of 74 percent for Russian President Vladimir Putin: "Wouldn't we love to have a political leader half as popular right here in the European Union!!!"

Baños was also quoted as saying, "Which country has everything that we lack? Russia does. We will not gain anything by provoking Russia. So Russia wants to have its own sphere of influence? Of course it does, just like the United States or China do. It also wants to have its markets and like-minded countries nearby."

Numerous articles also put in doubt Baños' sanity for his participation in the popular offbeat TV show Cuarto Milenio that often investigates topics such as conspiracy theories, ufology and parapsychology.

Baños reflects a minority realpolitik opinion within the Spanish ruling class which opposes provocative military actions and sanctions against Russia. He sees the need to defend Spain's imperialist interests through a European army and closer relations with Russia -- positions also held by sections of the German and French ruling elite.

The UK-sponsored II, however, saw Baños as a threat to British national interests and an obstacle to its anti-Russia campaign. According to the hacked documents, at midday on June 7, 2018, the Spanish Cluster, obviously through informants at the highest levels of the PSOE, "hear that a well-known pro-Kremlin voice, Pedro Baños, is to be appointed at the weekend (09.06.2018) as the Director of the National Security Department (DSN), which works closely with the Spanish PM's office (La Moncloa) and is very influential in shaping policy."

An action plan is drawn up laying out how Institute of Statecraft Fellow and Spain Cluster leader Nicólas de Pedro will alert "the rest of the cluster members and prepare[s] a dossier to inform the main Spanish media. The cluster starts a Twitter campaign... trying to prevent an appointment."

Spanish Cluster members also include Borja Lasheras and Quique Badia-Masoni, writers and journalists well known for their hysterical anti-Russian positions. They are supported by II Team UK members Chris Hernon, Simon Bracey-Lane and Ben Robinson, and StopFake Spanish Desk members Alina Mosendz and Serbian Cluster member Jelena Milic.

At 15:45, "The head of the Spanish cluster urgently contacts the British cluster, which activates the II network in order to create international support for the Twitter campaign. The British Cluster creates a group in the WhatsApp messenger... to coordinate the reaction on Twitter, gets contacts on Twitter to spread concerns and encourage people to 'retweet' the material. He publishes material written by the head of the Spanish cluster Niko de Pedro on the Spanish version of the StopFake website, which is also 'retweeted' by key influential figures."

The Spanish cluster then sends material to El País and El Mundo to publish. On the same day, El País publishes, "Spanish PM taps Russia supporter for National Security Director."

The documents reveal that by 19:45, barely eight hours after the start of the operation, the "campaign [had] raised significant noise on Twitter Contacts in the Socialist Party confirmed that this information reached the Prime Minister. Some Spanish diplomats also expressed their concern. In the end, both the People's Party and the Civil Party (Ciudadanos) asked the Prime Minister to stop the appointment."

The following day, the government drops Baños and nominates general Miguel Ángel Ballesteros instead.

The operation against Baños is a graphic illustration of the inner workings of the intelligence services in collaboration with alleged "independent" journalists and academics. The same forces that accuse Russia of meddling in European nations' internal affairs are themselves meddling to stop elected governments from nominating officials when it conflicts with their interests. They use social media in the same way they accuse the Kremlin of using it.

By showing the real sources of information on which they rely, newspapers like El País or El Mundo are exposed as conduits of the intelligence services to support the suppression of maverick political viewpoints, in this case, Baños' call for closer relations with Russia.

Last year, El País carried out a frenzied and paranoid campaign claiming that the Catalan crisis was not sparked by the Popular Party government's violent repression of the secessionists, but was the result of Moscow and its "fake news." It quoted experts and specialists working for Spanish think tanks like Instituto Elcano and Barcelona Centre for International Affairs (CIDOB), and the European Council on Foreign Relations.

The leaked documents show that many members of these think tanks are members of the "Spanish Cluster" of the Integrity Initiative. The most notorious is Senior Analyst for Instituto Elcano, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi who testified last year in parliament to claim that Russia was promoting fake news.

The Baños case is just one of the highlighted campaigns of Integrity Initiative, but according to Anonymous, similar operations have been carried out in numerous other EU states.

[Dec 14, 2018] MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam worked like this: ..."
"... They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA court a spying campaign on Trump ..."
"... the Obama regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the record to the right people ..."
"... They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama. ..."
"... The government takes CCTV footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2) laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much worse. ..."
"... And don't forget the Skripals' affair and the relationships (via M16) between Mr. Steele and Mr. Skripal: https://thedeepstate.com/steele-skripal/ ..."
Dec 08, 2018 | www.unz.com

anon [178] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 11:43 am GMT

"You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections."

MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam worked like this:

They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA court a spying campaign on Trump (the FBI illegally withheld the source of the document); they found nothing proving any Russian connection but they kept the spy program going; they tried justifying the spy program with a fake story involving a reliable asset that once passed information from Jimmy Carter's campaign to George H.W. Bush in an effort to help Reagan win the 1980 election; they later paid the asset nearly a quarter million dollars for his efforts using a fake "India-China" grant despite the grant running to 2018, the asset attempted to get a job in the Trump administration so he could act as a mole ; the Obama regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the record to the right people

They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama. They also ran interference through CIA guys like Mark Warner in an effort to cover up the mole they planted; they falsely asserted this was a national security issue when the man's identity was well-known to the press and he was never an undercover spy like Jarret was, at least not in recent history.

To put this all into perspective, imagine the following scenario:

The government takes CCTV footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2) laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much worse.

annamaria , says: December 7, 2018 at 2:45 pm GMT
@anon

"MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. "

And don't forget the Skripals' affair and the relationships (via M16) between Mr. Steele and Mr. Skripal: https://thedeepstate.com/steele-skripal/

[Dec 14, 2018] What percentage of CIA budget goes to the support of free press

Notable quotes:
"... Because once we go from "corruption is getting more and more common; something must be done" to "meh," we are crossing from a flawed democratic republic to outright tyranny and oligarchy with little way back. ..."
"... Why would anyone expect anything different from the Times, or any major U.S. Newspaper or media outlet? They are organs of the intelligence community and have been for many years. ..."
"... I think the ridiculous and pathetic explanations by NYT in this case are, in part, due to the fact that they simply don't care enough to produce better answers. In their view, these CIA connections and those with other Govt. agencies are paramount, and must be maintained at all costs. ..."
"... It is likely that the relationship is a little more formal than mere collusion ..."
"... "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few" [George Bernard Shaw" ..."
"... Has been since Judith Miller told us there were WMD in Iraq in 2003. They don't plan anticipations of crises, but the actual crises themselves. In a moral world, the NYT is as guilty of genocide as Bush and Blair. ..."
Dec 01, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

capatriot , 29 Aug 2012 15:49

Good article. I especially like this:

The more important objection is that the fact that a certain behavior is common does not negate its being corrupt. Indeed, as is true for government abuses generally, those in power rely on the willingness of citizens to be trained to view corrupt acts as so common that they become inured, numb, to its wrongfulness. Once a corrupt practice is sufficiently perceived as commonplace, then it is transformed in people's minds from something objectionable into something acceptable.

Because once we go from "corruption is getting more and more common; something must be done" to "meh," we are crossing from a flawed democratic republic to outright tyranny and oligarchy with little way back.

Besides, they don't all do it ... there are honorable reporters out there, some few of whom work for the Times and the Post.

BradBenson , 29 Aug 2012 15:48
Another great article Glenn. The Guardian will spread your words further and wider. Salon's loss is the world's gain.

Why would anyone expect anything different from the Times, or any major U.S. Newspaper or media outlet? They are organs of the intelligence community and have been for many years. That these email were allowed to get out under FOIA is indicative of the fact that there are some people on the inside who would like to get the truth out. Either that, or the head of some ES-2's Assistant Deputy for Secret Shenanigans and Heinous Drone Murders will roll.

CautiousOptimist , 29 Aug 2012 15:40
Glenn - Any comments on the recently disclosed emails between the CIA and Kathryn Bigelow?
CasualObs , 29 Aug 2012 15:32
Scott Horton quote on closely related Mazzetti reporting (in this case regarding misleading reporting on how important CIA/Bush torture was in tracking down and getting bin Laden, the focus of this movie):

"I'm quite sure that this is precisely the way the folks who provided this info from the agency [to Mazzetti] wanted them to be understood, but there is certainly more than a measure of ambiguity in them, planted with care by the NYT writers or their editors. This episode shows again how easily the Times can be spun by unnamed government sources, the factual premises of whose statements invariably escape any examination."

http://www.hillmanfoundation.org/blog/winners-sinners-mary-murphy-mark-mazzetti

I think the ridiculous and pathetic explanations by NYT in this case are, in part, due to the fact that they simply don't care enough to produce better answers. In their view, these CIA connections and those with other Govt. agencies are paramount, and must be maintained at all costs.

If you don't like their paper-thin answers, tough. In their view (imo) this will blow over and business will resume, with the all-important friends and connections intact. Thus leaving the machinery intact for future uncritical, biased and manipulative "spin" of NYT by any number of unnamed govt. sources/agencies...

Montecarlo2 , 29 Aug 2012 15:29

In what conceivable way is Mazzetti's collusion with the CIA an "intelligence matter" that prevents the NYT's managing editor from explaining what happened here?

That one is easy, as we learned in the Valerie Plame affair. It is likely that the relationship is a little more formal than mere collusion.

hominoid , 29 Aug 2012 15:27
Just another step down the ladder towards despotism. "Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few" [George Bernard Shaw"
LakerFan , 29 Aug 2012 15:13

The relationship between the New York Times and the US government is, as usual, anything but adversarial. Indeed, these emails read like the interactions between a PR representative and his client as they plan in anticipation of a possible crisis.

Has been since Judith Miller told us there were WMD in Iraq in 2003. They don't plan anticipations of crises, but the actual crises themselves. In a moral world, the NYT is as guilty of genocide as Bush and Blair.

The humor seems to go completely out of the issue when 100,000 people are dead and their families and futures changed forever.

Like I said, in a moral world....

[Dec 14, 2018] New York Times aka The Langley Newsletter

"We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few."
Notable quotes:
"... bin laden gave terror a face. how conveeeenient for warmongers everywhere! ..."
"... CIA in collusion with mainstream newspaper NYT. And you call this news ? ..."
"... collusion between the us media and the us government goes back much, much further. Chomsky has plenty of stuff about this... ..."
"... The NYTimes has its own agenda and bends the news that's fit to print. Journalistic integrity? LOL. No one beat the war drums louder for Bush's Neocons before the Iraq war. Draining our nation's resources, getting young Americans killed (they didn't come from the 1%, you see). The cradle of civilization that's the Iraqi landscape wiped out. Worst, 655,000 Iraqis lost their lives, said British medical journal Lancet, creating 2.5mn each internal & external refugees. ..."
"... The NYT never dwelled on the numbers of Iraqis killed. Up to a few weeks ago, its emphasis on the current Syrian tragedy is to inform us on the hundreds or thousands who've lost their lives. ..."
"... World financial meltdown? When Sanford Weill of Citi pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall late 1990's, the FDR era 17-page law separating commercial from investment banks, a measure that's preserved the nation's banking integrity for over half a century, the Nyt added its megaphone to the task, urging Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to comply, editorializing In 1988: "Few economic historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive" . In 1990, that "banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture" "makes little sense now." ..."
"... just off the top of my head I recall the editor of one of a British major was an MI5 agent; this is in the public domain. ..."
"... We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few. ..."
"... The NYT has been infiltrated for decades by CIA agents. Just notice their dogged reporting on the completely debunked "lone-gunman" JFK theory---they will always report that Oswald acted alone---this is the standard CIA story, pushed and maintained by the NYT despite overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy (likely involving the CIA). ..."
Aug 30, 2012 | www.theguardian.com

samesamesame , 1 Sep 2012 13:02

bin laden gave terror a face. how conveeeenient for warmongers everywhere!
loftytom , 1 Sep 2012 10:40

I assume we're going to see a NYT expose on the large scale dodgy dealings of the Guardian Unlimited group then?

They could start with the tax dodging hypocrisy first. http://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/2012/05/16/has-the-guardian-exploited-tax-loopholes-to-save-millions/

kantarakamara , 1 Sep 2012 10:04
"@smartypants54

29 August 2012 9:44PM
Glenn,

I've often wondered what you think of the journalism of someone like Seymour Hirsch. (sic) He broke some very important stories by cozying up to moles in the MIC.

You'e confusing apples with oranges. Hersh seeks information on issues that outrage him. These do not usually include propaganda for the intelligence agencies, but information they would like to suppress. He's given secret information because he appears to his informers as someone who has a long record of integrity.

Therealguyfaux -> Montecarlo2 , 1 Sep 2012 07:48
It's straight outta that old joke about the husband being caught by his wife in flagrante delicto with the pretty young lady neighbour, who then tells his wife that he and his bit on the side weren't doing anything: "And who do you believe-- me, or your lying eyes?"
Haigin88 , 1 Sep 2012 06:58
New York Times a.k.a. The Langley Newsletter
globalsage , 1 Sep 2012 06:32
CIA in collusion with mainstream newspaper NYT. And you call this news ?
snookie -> LakerFan , 1 Sep 2012 05:46
collusion between the us media and the us government goes back much, much further. Chomsky has plenty of stuff about this...
hlkcna , 1 Sep 2012 02:28
The NYTimes has its own agenda and bends the news that's fit to print. Journalistic integrity? LOL. No one beat the war drums louder for Bush's Neocons before the Iraq war. Draining our nation's resources, getting young Americans killed (they didn't come from the 1%, you see). The cradle of civilization that's the Iraqi landscape wiped out. Worst, 655,000 Iraqis lost their lives, said British medical journal Lancet, creating 2.5mn each internal & external refugees.

Following the pre-Iraq embellishment, NYT covered up its deeds by sacrificing Journalist Judith Miller. As Miller answered a post-war court case, none other than Chairman & CEO Arthur Sulzberger jr. locked arms with her as they entered the courtroom.

The NYT never dwelled on the numbers of Iraqis killed. Up to a few weeks ago, its emphasis on the current Syrian tragedy is to inform us on the hundreds or thousands who've lost their lives.

World financial meltdown? When Sanford Weill of Citi pushed for the repeal of Glass-Steagall late 1990's, the FDR era 17-page law separating commercial from investment banks, a measure that's preserved the nation's banking integrity for over half a century, the Nyt added its megaphone to the task, urging Treasury Secretary Bob Rubin to comply, editorializing In 1988: "Few economic historians now find the logic behind Glass-Steagall persuasive" . In 1990, that "banks and stocks were a dangerous mixture" "makes little sense now."

NYT, a liberal icon? In year 2000, when I lived in NYC, New York Daily News columnist A.M. Rosenthal used to regularly demonize China in language surpassing even Rush Limbaugh. I told myself nah, that's not the Rosenthal-former-editor of the NYT. Only when I read his obituary a few years later did I learn that it was indeed the same one.

Grandfield , 1 Sep 2012 00:56
Well of course. And just off the top of my head I recall the editor of one of a British major was an MI5 agent; this is in the public domain.
weallshineon , 1 Sep 2012 00:42
We pledge subservience to the Owners of the United Corporations of America, and to the Oligarchy for which it stands, one Greed under God, indivisible, with power and wealth for few.

NOAM CHOMSKY _MANUFACTURING CONSENT haven't read it? read it. read it? read it again.

thought totalitarianism and the ruling class died in 1945? think again. thought you wouldn't have to fight like grandpa's generation to live in a democratic and just society? think again.

You are not the 1 percent.

JET2023 -> MonaHol , 31 Aug 2012 21:53
Would that we could hold these discussions without reference to personal defamations -- "darkened ignorance" and "educate yourself" which sounds like "f___ yourself". Why can't we just say "I respectfully disagree"? Alas, when discussing political issues with leftists, that seems impossible. Why the vitriol?

Greenwald's more lengthy posts make it clear that he believes that people who differ with him are "lying" and basing their viewpoint upon "a single right wing blogger". He chooses this explanation over the obvious and accurate one -- legal rationales developed by the Office of Legal Counsel during the Bush administration. The date of Greenwald's archive is February 19, 2006. Oddly, he bases all of his contentions upon whatever he could glean up to that date. But the legal rationale for warrantless wiretaps was based upon memos written by John Yoo at the OLC that Greenwald did not have access to in 2006. The memos were not released until after Obama took office in 2009.

Obama released them in a highly publicized press conference staged for maximum political impact. Greenwald could not possibly have understood the legal rationale for the program since he had not been privy to them until March 2009 if, indeed, he has bothered to acquaint himself with them since then. Either way, nobody was "lying" except those who could have understood the full dimension and willfully chose to hide or ignore the truth. It's not exactly like I am new to this subject as you seem to imply. I wrote a 700 page book about Obama administration duplicity in this same vein. An entire chapter is devoted to this very topic.

Warrantless wiretaps were undertaken after a legal ruling from OLC. And after Obama took office, warrantless wiretaps were continued. Obviously since they were based upon OLC rulings, since no prosecutions have ever been suggested and since they have continued uninterrupted after Obama took office, the Justice Department under both administrations agrees with me and disagrees with Greenwald. We arrive at this disagreement respectfully. Despite Obama's voluminous denunciations of the Bush anti-terror approach on the campaign trail, he resurrected nearly every plank of it once he took office.

But this is a subsidiary point to a far larger point that some observers on this discussion to their credit were able to understand. Despite all of these pointless considerations, the larger point of my original post was that Greenwald missed the "real" story here, which was that the collusion between NYT and CIA was not due to institutional considerations as Greenwald seems to allege, but due to purely partisan considerations. That, to me, is the story he missed.

I find that people who are losing debates try to shift the focus to subsidiary points hoping that, like a courtroom lawyer, if they can refute a small and inconsequential detail raised in testimony, they will undercut the larger truth offered by the witness. It won't work. Too much is on the record. And neither point, the ankle-biting non-issue about legality of warrantless wiretaps or the larger, salient point about the overt partisan political dimension of NYT's collusion with a political appointee at CIA who serves on the Obama reelection committee, has been refuted.

Joseph Toomey
Author, "Change You Can REALLY Believe In: The Obama Legacy of Broken Promises and Failed Policies"

JoshuaFlynn , 31 Aug 2012 20:15
Conspiracy theorists, have been, of course, telling you this for years (given media's motive is profit and not honesty). I suppose the exact same conspiracy theorists other guardian authors have been too eager to denounce previously?
MonaHol -> JET2023 , 31 Aug 2012 18:50

The NSA wiretap program revealed by Risen was not illegal as Greenwald wrongly asserts. As long as one end of the intercepted conservation originated on foreign soil as it did, it was perfectly legal and required no FISA court authorization.

Mr. Toomey, in 2006 Greenwald published a compendium of legal arguments defending the Bush Admin's warrantless wiretapping and the (sound) rebuttals of them. It is exhaustive, and covers your easily dispensed with argument. By way of introduction to his many links to his aggregated, rigorous analyses of the legal issues, he wrote this:

I didn't just wake up one day and leap to the conclusion that the Administration broke the law deliberately and that there are no reasonable arguments to defend that law-breaking (as many Bush followers leaped to the conclusion that he did nothing wrong and then began their hunt to find rationale or advocates to support this conclusion). I arrived at the conclusion that Bush clearly broke the law only by spending enormous amounts of time researching these issues and reading and responding to the defenses from the Administration's apologists.

He did spend enormous time dealing with people such as yourself, and all of his work remains available for you to educate yourself with, at the link provided above.

JET2023 -> Franklymydear0 , 31 Aug 2012 18:43
Maybe you'd like to explain that to Samuel Loring Morison who was convicted and spent years in the federal system for passing classified information to Janes Defence Weekly. I'm sure he'd be entertained. Larry Franklin would also like to hear it. He's in prison today for violating the Espionage Act.

Courts have recognized no press privilege exists when publishing classified data. In 1971, the Supreme Court vacated a prior restraint against NYT and The Washington Post allowing them to publish the Pentagon Papers. But the court also observed that prosecutions after-the-fact would be permissible and not involve an abridgement of the free speech clause. It was only the prior restraint that gave the justices heartburn. They had no issue with throwing them in the slammer after the deed was done.

Thomas Drake, a former NSA official, was indicted and convicted after revealing information to reporters in 2010. The statute covers mere possession which even NYT recognized could cover reporters as well. There have been numerous other instances of arrests, indictments and prosecutions for disclosure to reporters. It's only been due to political calculations and not constitutional limitations that have kept Risen and others out of prison.

utkarsh356 , 31 Aug 2012 12:39
Manufacturing Consent: The political economy of mass media by Noam Chomsky can perhaps explain most of the media behaviour.
HiggsBoson1984 , 31 Aug 2012 12:26
The NYT has been infiltrated for decades by CIA agents. Just notice their dogged reporting on the completely debunked "lone-gunman" JFK theory---they will always report that Oswald acted alone---this is the standard CIA story, pushed and maintained by the NYT despite overwhelming evidence that there was a conspiracy (likely involving the CIA).
Leviathan212 , 31 Aug 2012 10:54
What outrages me the most is the NYT's condescending attitude towards its readers when caught in this obvious breach of journalistic ethics.

Both Baquet and Abramson, rather than showing some humility or contrition, are acting as if nothing bad has happened, and that we are stupid to even talk about this.

Leviathan212 -> AnnaMc , 31 Aug 2012 10:28

This article misses the elephant in the room. Namely, that the NYT only plays footsies with Democrats in positions of power. With the 'Pubs, it's open season.

Not true. There are many examples of the NYT colluding with the Bush administration, some of which Glenn has mentioned in this article. Take, for example, the fact that the NYT concealed Bush's wire-tapping program for almost a year, at the request of the White House, and didn't release details until after Bush's re-election.

ranroddeb , 31 Aug 2012 10:10
" The optics aren't what they look like " This phrase brings to mind the old Dem catch phrase " Who you gonna believe me or your lying eyes? " .

[Dec 14, 2018] Operation Mockingbird has never stopped

Notable quotes:
"... The Government leaks classified material at will for propaganda advantage, but hunts Assange and tortures Private Manning for the same. ..."
"... these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them. ..."
"... The issue under discussion here, however, is the extent to which the media is an eager partner in the message-sending, rather than an unwitiing tool. ..."
Aug 30, 2012 | www.theguardian.com
Chris Harlos , 29 Aug 2012 19:01
The New York Crimes. The seamless web of media, government, business: a totalitarian system. Darkly amusing, perhaps, unless one begins to tally the damage.

USA Inc. Viva Death,

Did you hear the one about the investment banker whose very expensive hooker bite off his crank?

rrheard , 29 Aug 2012 18:36
I'm not sure what's scarier--that the CIA is spending taxpayer dollars spending even a split second worrying about what a two bit hack like Maureen Dowd writes, or that the NY Times principals are so institutionally "captured" that they parrot "CIA speak".

Well what's actually scarier is that Operation Mockingbird has never stopped.

Or maybe that our purported public servants in the legislature are bipartisanly and openly attempting to repeal portions of the Smith-Mundt Act of 1948 and Foreign Relations Authorization Act in 1987 banning domestic propaganda.

America is becoming a real sick joke. And the last to know will be about 65% of the populace I like to call Sheeple.

024601 -> SanFranDouglas , 29 Aug 2012 18:32
Very depressing. I thought we would get a smart bunch over here. The major trend I've noticed instead? Blind support for the empire and the apparatus that keeps it thriving. Unable to be good little authoritarians and cheer for the now collapsing British Empire, they have to cheer for it's natural predecessor, the American Empire. This includes attacking all those who might question the absolute infallible of The Empire. Folks like.. Glenn. It is fascinating to watch, if not disheartening.
SanFranDouglas -> smartypants54 , 29 Aug 2012 18:29

So all cozying up to spooks is not always a bad thing, huh?

Just my point.

I see. I thought your point was that there was some sort of equivalence between Hersh's development of sources to reveal truths that their agencies fervently wished to keep secret and Mazzetti's active assistance in protecting an agency's image from sullying by fellow journalists.

I guess I stand corrected. . .

shenebraskan -> Jpolicoff , 29 Aug 2012 18:12
And that ended his career in government service, as it should have...or not:

From Wikipedia: John O. Brennan is chief counterterrorism advisor to U.S. President Barack Obama; officially his title is Deputy National Security Advisor for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant to the President.

Jpolicoff , 29 Aug 2012 18:01
Unfortunately this is nothing new for Mazetti or the New York Times, nor is it the first time Glenn Greenwald has called Mazetti out on his cozy relationship with the CIA:

The CIA and its reporter friends: Anatomy of a backlash
The coordinated, successful effort to implant false story lines about John Brennan illustrates the power the intelligence community wields over political debates.
Glenn Greenwald Dec. 08, 2008 |

...Just marvel at how coordinated (and patently inaccurate) their messaging is, and -- more significantly -- how easily they can implant their message into establishment media outlets far and wide, which uncritically publish what they're told from their cherished "intelligence sources" and without even the pretense of verifying whether any of it is true and/or hearing any divergent views:

Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, New York Times, 12/2/2008:

Last week, John O. Brennan, a C.I.A. veteran who was widely seen as Mr. Obama's likeliest choice to head the intelligence agency, withdrew his name from consideration after liberal critics attacked his alleged role in the agency's detention and interrogation program. Mr. Brennan protested that he had been a "strong opponent" within the agency of harsh interrogation tactics, yet Mr. Obama evidently decided that nominating Mr. Brennan was not worth a battle with some of his most ardent supporters on the left.

Mr. Obama's search for someone else and his future relationship with the agency are complicated by the tension between his apparent desire to make a clean break with Bush administration policies he has condemned and concern about alienating an agency with a central role in the campaign against Al Qaeda.

Mark M. Lowenthal, an intelligence veteran who left a senior post at the C.I.A. in 2005, said Mr. Obama's decision to exclude Mr. Brennan from contention for the top job had sent a message that "if you worked in the C.I.A. during the war on terror, you are now tainted," and had created anxiety in the ranks of the agency's clandestine service.

...The story, by Mark Mazzetti and Scott Shane, noted that John O. Brennan had withdrawn his name from consideration for CIA director after liberal critics attacked his role in the agency's interrogation program, even though Brennan characterized himself as a "strong opponent" within the agency of harsh interrogation techniques. Brennan's characterization was not disputed by anyone else in the story, even though most experts on this subject agree that Brennan acquiesced in everything that the CIA did in this area while he served there.

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/2008/12/08/cia/print.html

CitizenTM , 29 Aug 2012 17:52
The Government leaks classified material at will for propaganda advantage, but hunts Assange and tortures Private Manning for the same.
tballou , 29 Aug 2012 17:51
"these emails reflect the standard full-scale cooperation – a virtual merger – between our the government and the establishment media outlets that claim to act as "watchdogs" over them."

Glenn - the only objection I have to your column and all your previous columns on this matter is that I am not sure the establishment media actually claim to be watchdogs, at least not any more, and certainly not since Sept 11. They really are more like PR reps.

SanFranDouglas -> OneWorldGovernment , 29 Aug 2012 17:51

The media is another tool in the [government, in this case] arsenal to help send a message, as are speeches before think tanks and etc.

Yes. The issue under discussion here, however, is the extent to which the media is an eager partner in the message-sending, rather than an unwitiing tool.

OneWorldGovernment , 29 Aug 2012 17:44
Did everyone forget the Judith Miller article? The usage of Twitter and other social media during the Iranian election of 2009? The leaks about the Iranian nuclear program in the Telegraph? ARDA?

The U.S. government, along with every other government in the world, uses the media to influence public opinion and send geopolitical messages to others that understand the message (normally not the masses). The media is another tool in the arsenal to help send a message, as are speeches before think tanks and etc.

We use social media to create social unrest if it aligns with our interests. We use the media to send political messages and influence public opinion. The vast majority of reporting in the N.Y. Times, WSJ, Guardian, Telegraph, and etc. do not reflect this, but every now and then "unnamed sources" help further a geopolitical message.

In this country, it has been that way since before the founding fathers and the Republic. Remember the Federalist, Anti-Federalist, Sam Adams as Vtndex, and etc.? Newspapers used for "propaganda" purposes.

SanFranDouglas -> smartypants54 , 29 Aug 2012 17:42

Upthread I asked him for his comments on the reporting of Seymour Hirsh. He is someone who cozied up to all kinds of people - and wound up busting some extremely important stories in the process.

I think a modest amount of review of Sy Hersh's work will demonstrate that his "cozying up" hasn't included running interference for the spooks' official PR flacks.

DuErJournalist , 29 Aug 2012 17:42
The New York Times: Burn after reading!

[Dec 14, 2018] The whole austerity crisis thing appears to have been engineered so that a few blinkered and unpatriotic, vulture mafia privateers can make a killing, selling off vital state assets, such as infrastructure and ports, to the Chinese. This is a very suspicious and widespread trend.

Notable quotes:
"... Bob Marley got it right.... the human race is becoming a rat race, and it's a disgrace. ..."
"... The biggest problem is the financialisation of the economy... what is the actual value of things? The market is so manipulated that real price discovery is not possible. ..."
"... We have an over-cooked service-sector economy unsustainably reliant on cheap debt, cheap energy, and cheap manufactured goods to fuel our 'high-end levels of consumption, and mobility or living standards, and an over-heated housing market that is unsustainably run according to the needs of investors and landlords rather than residents or tenants. ..."
"... What we need is a coordinated approach between our nations. Undercutting each other on corporate taxes, writing tax avoidance into law, and continuing to allow multinationals to influence our politicians and play our governments against each other is exactly the game we must end. ..."
"... Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further.... ..."
"... "Ransom". There is no better word to describe it. This (the ransom mentality) is exactly the reactionary, vindictive, doctrinaire psychology that must be extracted like a cancer from our institutional lives and the human species. A monolithic task. But identifying the cause is the first step to cure. ..."
"... these are the new medieval transnational barons ..."
Jun 09, 2013 | theguardian.com
MysticFish -> Crackerpot , 8 Jun 2013 14:43
@Crackerpot - The whole austerity crisis thing appears to have been engineered so that a few blinkered and unpatriotic, vulture mafia privateers can make a killing, selling off vital state assets, such as infrastructure and ports, to the Chinese. This is a very suspicious and widespread trend.
artheart , 8 Jun 2013 14:38

Bob Marley got it right.... the human race is becoming a rat race, and it's a disgrace.

I see it every day from the window of my flat, on a main road, in Bethnal Green. There's a 'mentally unstable' Rastafarian who stands by the overground station, and shouts things out to people like "You're living in babylon".

I do sometimes think he's not the mental one.

artheart -> HolyInsurgent , 8 Jun 2013 14:32
@HolyInsurgent

The biggest problem is the financialisation of the economy... what is the actual value of things? The market is so manipulated that real price discovery is not possible.

We have an over-cooked service-sector economy unsustainably reliant on cheap debt, cheap energy, and cheap manufactured goods to fuel our 'high-end levels of consumption, and mobility or living standards, and an over-heated housing market that is unsustainably run according to the needs of investors and landlords rather than residents or tenants.

The whole thing is going to blow apart. Our 'aspirations' are slowly killing us - they're destroying the social fabric.

MikeInCanada , 8 Jun 2013 14:28
What we need is a coordinated approach between our nations. Undercutting each other on corporate taxes, writing tax avoidance into law, and continuing to allow multinationals to influence our politicians and play our governments against each other is exactly the game we must end.
HolyInsurgent , 8 Jun 2013 14:08

Deborah Orr: Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further....

I never thought I would live long enough to see this level of honesty ATL. It should have been published long ago, but at least the discussion now begins.

"Ransom". There is no better word to describe it. This (the ransom mentality) is exactly the reactionary, vindictive, doctrinaire psychology that must be extracted like a cancer from our institutional lives and the human species. A monolithic task. But identifying the cause is the first step to cure.

peterpuffin -> PointOfYou , 8 Jun 2013 14:03
@PointOfYou - these are the new medieval transnational barons

[Dec 14, 2018] Here's the funny thing about those who cheer the broken neoliberal model. They promise we will get to those "sunny uplands" with exactly the same fervor as old Marxists.

Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far. ..."
"... The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. ..."
"... the UK government did intervene in the economy when it bailed out the banks to the tune of many billions of pounds underwritten by the taxpayer. The markets should always be regulated sufficiently (light touch is absolutely useless) to prevent the problems currently being experienced from ever happening again. ..."
"... Traditional liberalism had died decades before WWII and was replaced by finance capitalism. What happened after WW II was that capitalism had to make various concessions to avoid a socialist revolution: social and political freedoms indeed darted ahead. ..."
"... No chance mate, at least not all the time greasy spiv and shyster outfits like hedge funds are funding Puffin face and the Vermin Party. They are never going to bite the hand that feeds them ..."
"... And in case we get uppity and endeavour to challenge the economic paradigm and the rule of these neoliberal elites, there's the surveillance state panopticon to track our movements and keep us in check. ..."
"... There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice. In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism. ..."
"... She, knowingly, let neo-liberal economic philosophy come trumpeting through the door of No10 and it's been there ever since; it has guided our politicians for the past 30 odd years. Hence, it is Thatcher's fault. She did this and another bad thing: the woman who glorified household economics pissed away billions of pounds of North Sea Oil. ..."
"... Bailouts have been a constant feature of neoliberalism. In fact the role of the state is simply reduced to a merely commissioning agent to private parasitical corporations. History has shown the state playing this role since neoliberalism became embedded in policy since the 1970s - Long Term Capital Management, Savings and Loans, The Brady Plan, numerous PFI bailouts and those of the Western banking system during the 1982 South American, 1997 Asian and 2010 European debt crises. ..."
Jun 08, 2013 | discussion.theguardian.com

Jenny340 -> EllisWyatt, 8 Jun 2013 13:37

@EllisWyatt - Here's the funny thing about those who cheer the broken neoliberal model. They promise we will get to those "sunny uplands" with exactly the same fervor as old Marxists.
PointOfYou , 8 Jun 2013 13:37

Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom

Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far.

The same names come up time and time again. One of them being, father of propaganda, Edward Bernays.

Bernays wrote what can be seen as a virtual Mission Statement for anyone wishing to bring about a "counterculture." In the opening paragraph of his book Propaganda he wrote:

"..The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organised. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind..."[28]

Bernays' family background made him well suited to "control the public mind." He was the double nephew of psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud. His mother was Freud's sister Anna, and his father was Ely Bernays, brother of Freud's wife Martha Bernays.

Snookerboy -> OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 13:17
@OneCommentator - the UK government did intervene in the economy when it bailed out the banks to the tune of many billions of pounds underwritten by the taxpayer. The markets should always be regulated sufficiently (light touch is absolutely useless) to prevent the problems currently being experienced from ever happening again.

Those at the bottom of society and those in the public sector are the ones paying the price for this intervention in the UK. If you truly believe in the 'free' market then all of these failing organisations (banks, etc) should have been allowed to fail. The problem is that the wealth created under the current system is virtually all going to those at the top of the income scale and this needs to change and is one of the main reasons that neo liberalism should be binned!

ATrueFinn -> OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 13:09
@ OneCommentator 08 June 2013 5:21pm

No, it was as recently as ww2 more or less

Traditional liberalism had died decades before WWII and was replaced by finance capitalism. What happened after WW II was that capitalism had to make various concessions to avoid a socialist revolution: social and political freedoms indeed darted ahead.

Do read a book about history!

clairesdad -> brighton2 , 8 Jun 2013 13:06
@brighton2 - No chance mate, at least not all the time greasy spiv and shyster outfits like hedge funds are funding Puffin face and the Vermin Party. They are never going to bite the hand that feeds them.
NotWithoutMyMonkey , 8 Jun 2013 13:01
And in case we get uppity and endeavour to challenge the economic paradigm and the rule of these neoliberal elites, there's the surveillance state panopticon to track our movements and keep us in check.
TedStewart , 8 Jun 2013 12:51
Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom

Are you saying neoliberalism is a great big useless pile of shit? Then you are absolutely right!

kingcreosote -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 12:47
@ MickGJ 08 June 2013 1:08pm . Get cifFix for Firefox .

I know what you are saying it's just sooner or later as those at the bottom continue to be squeezed the wealthy will sow their own seeds of destruction. I think we are witnessing the end game which is reflected in the desperation of the coalition to flog everything regardless of the efficacy of such behavior, they feel time is running out and they would be right.

taxhaven , 8 Jun 2013 12:44
Call it what you will - "neoliberalism", "neoconservatism", "socialism" or whatever it is...

This debate is not even really solely about money: this is about liberty , about free choice, about being permitted to engage in voluntary exchange of goods and services with others, unmolested. About the users of services becoming the ones paying for those services.

Ultimately the real effect will be to remove power from governments and hand it back to where it belongs - the free market.

dmckm -> OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 12:43
@ OneCommentator 08 June 2013 5:04pm . Get cifFix for Firefox .

voluntary transactions among free agents. That's called a free market and it is by far the most efficient way to produce wealth humanity has ever known.

Could you explain how someone bound by a contract of employment, with the alternative, destitution, is a 'free agent'?

jazzdrum -> SpinningHugo , 8 Jun 2013 12:25
@SpinningHugo - Nothing comes out of nothing and i well remember black Monday in the City. That was the start of the spivs running the economy as if it were a casino. If you think its only on CiF that Thatcher gets the blame, think on this, Scotland, a whole nation blames her too.
TedSmithAndSon -> theguardianisrubbish , 8 Jun 2013 12:24
@theguardianisrubbish -

Unless you are completely confused by what neoliberalism is there is not a shred of logical sense in this.

There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice. In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism.

Savers in a neoliberal society are lambs to the slaughter. Thatcher "revitalised" banking, while everything else withered and died.

Neoliberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom, communism is definitely not. Neoliberalist policies have lifted millions of people out of poverty in Asia and South America.

Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else. In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility down, just like it does here.

I find it ironic that it now has 5 year plans that absolutely must not be deviated from, massive state intervention in markets (QE, housing policy, tax credits... insert where applicable), and advocates large scale central planning even as it denies reality, and makes the announcement from a tractor factory.

Neoliberalism is a blight... a cancer on humanity... a massive lie told by rich people and believed only by peasants happy to be thrown a turnip. In theory it's one thing, the reality is entirely different. Until we're rid of it, we're all it's slaves. It's an abhorrent cult that comes up with purest bilge like expansionary fiscal contraction to keep all the money in the hands of the rich.

outragedofacton -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 12:02
@MickGJ - You are wrong about the first 2 of course. Banksters get others to do their shit.

But unfortunately the poor sods who went down on D Day were in their way fighting for Wall Street as much as anything else. It's just that they weren't told about it by the Allies massive propaganda machine. So partly right

5/10

LetsGetCynical , 8 Jun 2013 11:57

The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe

Which would be what? State planning? Communism? Totally free market capitalism? Oh wait, we already have the best of a bad bunch, a mixed capitalist economy with democracy. That really is the crux of it, our system isn't perfect, never will be, but nobody has come up with a better solution.

outragedofacton -> artheart , 8 Jun 2013 11:55
@artheart - Thank goodness for RT.

Learn also about the West's nefarious activities in the Middle East.

ATrueFinn -> fr0mn0where , 8 Jun 2013 11:51
@ fr0mn0where 08 June 2013 4:29pm

Barclays bank "only" paid out £660m in dividends to the bearers of risk capital, while its bonus pot for a very select number of its staff was £1.5bn.

Fascinating! Now, one could infer that Barclays represent "beneficial capitalism", rewarding its hard-working employees, but maybe we won't.

This is not the traditional capitalist style

The Traditional capitalist is not an extinct species but under threat. For the time being the population is stagnant in some countries and even increasing in some others. However, due to the foraging capacity of Neoliberal creature , competing in the same economical niche, the size and life expectation of it are diminishing.

dmckm -> SpinningHugo , 8 Jun 2013 11:50
@ SpinningHugo 08 June 2013 10:59am . Get cifFix for Firefox .

She, knowingly, let neo-liberal economic philosophy come trumpeting through the door of No10 and it's been there ever since; it has guided our politicians for the past 30 odd years. Hence, it is Thatcher's fault. She did this and another bad thing: the woman who glorified household economics pissed away billions of pounds of North Sea Oil.

szwalby -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 11:30
@MickGJ - No, you're right. Why let yesterdays experience feed into what you expect of the future? Lets go forwards goldfish like, every minute a brand new one, with no baggage!
And by the way, who saved the hide of the very much private sector banks and financial institutions? The hated STATE, us tax payers!
fr0mn0where -> ATrueFinn , 8 Jun 2013 11:29
@ATrueFinn -

I think I agree with everything that you say here? The people at the top these days aren't really of much use for anything, including capitalism. The only thing that they do excel at is lining their own pockets and securing their privileged position in society.

They have become quite up front about it. There was a bit of a fuss last year when Barclays bank "only" paid out £660m in dividends to the bearers of risk capital, while its bonus pot for a very select number of its staff was £1.5bn. Barclays released a statement before their AGM explaining:

"Barclays is fully committed to ensuring that a greater proportion of income and profits flow to shareholders notwithstanding that it operates within the constraints of a competitive market."

This is not the traditional capitalist style competition that they are talking about where companies competed as to who can return the biggest profit for their shareholders this now comes secondary to the real competition which is for which company can return the biggest bonuses for a small group of employees.

theonionmurders -> theguardianisrubbish , 8 Jun 2013 11:05
@theguardianisrubbish

Bailouts have been a constant feature of neoliberalism. In fact the role of the state is simply reduced to a merely commissioning agent to private parasitical corporations. History has shown the state playing this role since neoliberalism became embedded in policy since the 1970s - Long Term Capital Management, Savings and Loans, The Brady Plan, numerous PFI bailouts and those of the Western banking system during the 1982 South American, 1997 Asian and 2010 European debt crises.

No wonder you're so ignorant of the basics of economic policy if you won't flick through a book - fear of accepting that you're simply wrong is a sure sign of either pig ignorance or denial, and is as I said embarrassing so its not really much point in wasting anymore time engaging with you.

petercs , 8 Jun 2013 10:44

The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda.

..."neoliberal", concept behind the word, has nothing to do with liberal or liberty or freedom...it is a PR spin concept that names slavery with a a word that sounds like the opposite...if "they" called it neoslavery it just wouldn't sell in the market for political concepts.

..."austerity" is the financial sectors' solution to its survival after it sucked most the value out of the economy and broke it. To mend it was a case of preservation of the elite and the devil take the hindmost, that's most of us.

...and even Labour, the party of trade unionism, has adopted austerity to drive its policy.

...we need a Peoples' Party to stand for the revaluation of labour so we get paid for our effort rather than the distortion, the rich xxx poor divide, of neoslavery austerity.

Crackerpot , 8 Jun 2013 10:43
When the IMF 'admitted' that the first bail out of Greece was 'bungled' are they trying to imply that the subsequent bail outs have been a success....
artheart , 8 Jun 2013 10:34
People need to start watching The Keiser Report to hear the truth, if they can handle the truth. Link here: http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/

I simply cannot recommend it enough.

MickGJ -> bluebirds , 8 Jun 2013 10:30

@bluebirds - deregulated capitalism has failed

Of course it has. And it will continue to "fail", while provide us with all sorts of goodies, for the foreseeable future. Capitalism's endless "failure" is of no more concern than human mortality. Ever tried, ever failed, try again, fail better.
epinoa -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 10:25
@CaptainGrey -

Except it's not. It is still very much alive and growing.

In as much as a zombie is.

The "alternatives" have crashed and burned save Cuba and North Korea.

I'd say the current oligarchical form of capitalism has crashed quite spectacularly. I say this as a free market capitalist too.

[Dec 14, 2018] Noam Chomsky pointed this out aeons ago though-that the American model is to use tax money to benefit private interests through technological infrastructure

Notable quotes:
"... Now we see moneyed entities with vested interests, carpet bagging and flogging off the NHS and an unelected fossil fuel mandarin, at the heart of government decision making, appointing corporate yea-sayers, to the key government departments, with environmental responsibilities. Corporations capturing the state apparatus for their own ends, is 'corporatism.' ..."
"... "Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the benefits." ..."
"... The bailout is simply actual neoliberalism as opposed to the theory inside tiny right wing minds. The system depends on the wealthy not being allowed to suffer the consequences of their own greed, or it would represent revolution and still not work. ..."
"... Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the benefits. It always amusing to see neoliberal morons shout about the red menace when they're two sides of the same coin. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is nothing if not the opposite extreme of the communist planned economy. Like the communist planned economy, neoliberalism is doomed to failure. I think we've all been sold a lie. ..."
Jun 08, 2013 | discussion.theguardian.com

epinoa -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 10:19

@Fachan -

Just as democracy is the worst system of government except for all other, so capitalism is the worst economic model except for all other.

Shame we only have bastardized forms of them.
bridkid5 -> NotAgainAgain , 8 Jun 2013 10:18
@NotAgainAgain - this is very true, it reminds me of an engineering company I worked for in Nottingham (since gone under). The production manger was a corrupt thief. He gradually sub-contracted the production work out to other companies in the area, taking backhanders for his troubles.

Once all the production was farmed out, he somehow got himself promoted to director level, where he and a sycophant subbed all the design work out. So all the production and design was done out of house, standards dropped and the company closed, leaving him with a nice payoff, just prior to retirement.

Some would say he played a blinder, my interpretation is he ruined a perfectly viable company, making a very good product, and over the course of about 5 years put over 30 people out of work.

In a just world he would be spending his retirement in prison.

ATrueFinn -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 10:13
@ MickGJ 08 June 2013 2:16pm

ext year's harvest (possibly of GM food which makes better use of scarce resources)

Indeed. Wheat will grow as flour and fly to our cupboards.

ATrueFinn -> fr0mn0where , 8 Jun 2013 10:10
@ fr0mn0where 08 June 2013 1:53pm

Income distribution and a happy workforce is actually very good for business as well as society!

Of course it is, but the capitalists do not know it. In many countries, including Finland, the "condition of the working classes", ie. working conditions, have been in rapid decline for the last 20 years.

Permanent salaried jobs have been replaced with temps from agencies, unpaid overtime is becoming the norm, burnouts are commonplace and so on.

If in your country things are different, no mass lay-outs and outsourcing to China, count yourself lucky!

crinklyoldgit , 8 Jun 2013 10:04
On form, Debs. Here is something I like.

But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments

Noam Chomsky pointed this out aeons ago though-that the American model is to use tax money to benefit private interests through technological infrastructure.

It was ever thus, if in slightly different forms. Still it is surprising that they have gone so quickly from their stated position at the start of the republic of a rejection of kings and emperors to their position now of corruption so ingrained it is impossible to make distinctions. Proxy emperors are emperors all the same, no matter the rhetoric that promotes them.

One senses that there is very little 'going back' possible. Besides, the great Neoliberal scam is predicated upon the qualities of the 'governments' we have and the capacity of those 'rhetoricians' with the capacity to say anything or play any role, to lick any arse, to get elected. Such apparent strength is weakness. In this world that now exists here, we have now entered the same world as the USSR in the eighties, where the announcement of bumper harvests of wheat, made everyone with a brain cell groan and think 'Oh fuck! no bread this winter-quick, run to the shops now, and buy up all the flour there'.

But there is now no way to declare that without being seen as beyond the pale-a bug eyed conspiracist.

Still, I am a believer in the connectedness of this world. The economic system and its mythologies are just weird and distorted canaries in the coalmine of the wider environment. It is indicating that there is a misalignment between the way we think and what is possible in this world. Austerity promoters and 'Keynsian' Ballsites are one and the same thing-both pretenders that the key to the problems is within their narrow gifts

Hubris is followed by nemesis. In a wider sense what we seen now is a complete failure of the capacity to educate and to learn,and moderate behaviour, and find some way of caring for our 'others', beyond the core of 'self'. nationalism is essentially an extension of 'self'. We now shall see the failure of a retraction of thought into nationalism and scapegoating.

I predict that the population of the world will decline over the next century-quite markedly.
The only solace is that at the end of the process, the pain will be forgotten. It always is.

MysticFish -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 09:57
@MickGJ - Cameron said 'We will cut the deficit, not the NHS,' and promised to be the 'greenest government ever,' saying that you could 'go green,' if you voted 'blue.'

Now we see moneyed entities with vested interests, carpet bagging and flogging off the NHS and an unelected fossil fuel mandarin, at the heart of government decision making, appointing corporate yea-sayers, to the key government departments, with environmental responsibilities. Corporations capturing the state apparatus for their own ends, is 'corporatism.'

Spoutwell , 8 Jun 2013 09:53

Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many aspects of financial services – that Britain enjoyed during the second half of the 20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce.

There was very little 'healthy economic growth' in Britain in the second half of the 20th century. Britain was bankrupt after WW2 with its people dependent on Marshall Aid and food contributions from its former 'colonies'.

Whatever 'growth' occured after Marshall Aid arrived was scuppered by a class system where company managers were more concerned with walking on the workers than with keeping their businesses afloat while such discrimination provoked hard left trade union policies which left british industry uncompetitive and ultimately non-existent.

If that wasn't enough, Thatcherism arrived to re-inforce class discrimination, sell off national services and assets and replace social policy with neo-liberal consumerism. Whether the workforce was swollen by women or anyone else is immaterial.

The anti-democratic incestuous class conflict latent in British society continues to ensure that the UK will remain a mere vassal state of foot-soldiers and consumers for international neo-liberal capitalism.

MurchuantEacnamai -> DasInternaut , 8 Jun 2013 09:49
@DasInternaut - Completely agree. The performance has been poor to absymal. But this is a failure of democratic governance because the collective interests of citizens as consumers and service users are not being represented and enforced by the elected politicians since they have been suborned by the capitalists elites and their fellow-travellers.

The people, indeed, have been sold a lie, but, unfortunately, it is only UKIP which is making the political waves by revealing selected aspects of this lie. The three established parties have been 'bought' to varying extents. But more and more citizens are beginning to realise the extent to which they have been bought.

Itsrainingtin , 8 Jun 2013 09:44
There is an upside to all of this, maybe I wont get modded so much from now on for being so angry at the ideological criminals . Hopefully the middle classes will cotton on to the fact that all this is not a mad hatters tinfoil hobby, we need more of them to be grumpy.
szwalby -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 09:43
@MickGJ - We've already seen it. Not great so far. GS4, Winterbourne view, southern cross, trains...............Welfare to work companies, delivering no better results than people left to their own devices. Energy companies.

We'll see if the new wave of free schools, academy schools, and all the service outsourced by the council perform any better.

Doubtful, as to make a profit, they have to employ poorer paid people, less well qualified, and once they've got a contract, they've got very little competition, as when the second round of bidding comes around, as the firms having got the first contract are the only one with relevant experience, they are assured of renewal, the money machine will keep going!

MurchuantEacnamai -> TedSmithAndSon , 8 Jun 2013 09:39
@TedSmithAndSon - There's a huge difference between meddling and ensuring effective governance. But I expect in your omniscence you know that.
theguardianisrubbish -> theonionmurders , 8 Jun 2013 09:38
@theonionmurders - I am not going to read a book.

Neoliberalism are policies that are influenced by neo classical economics. If you are suggesting that the neoliberal school of thought would advocate any kind of a bailout then you are mistaken. Where else have I "apparently" embarrassed myself?

theguardianisrubbish -> TedSmithAndSon , 8 Jun 2013 09:28
@TedSmithAndSon - This is just an inaccurate rant not a reply.

"The system depends on the wealthy not being allowed to suffer the consequences.."

Unless you are completely confused by what neolibralism is there is not a shred of logical sense in this.

"The debt industry are the lenders who take advantage of a financial system..."

Which is what savers are. They come in the form of individuals businesses and governments. This encompasses everyone.

"whilst paying the lowest possible rate. Wonga, for instance."

If you are a lender you do not pay anything, you receive.

"Thatchers revolution was to take our citizenship and give it a value, whilst making everyone else a consumer, all for a handful of magic beans in the shape of British Gas shares."

...not forgetting that she revitalised the economy and got everyone back to work again.

"Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the benefits."

Neoliberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom, communism is definitely not. Neoliberalist policies have lifted millions of people out of poverty in Asia and South America. Communism has no benefits for society open your eyes!

theonionmurders -> theguardianisrubbish , 8 Jun 2013 09:24

@theguardianisrubbish - Does this author not realise that a government bailout goes against the whole neoliberal school of thought?

No it isn't. You're confusing neoliberalism with neo classical economics. The level of knowledge on economic theory here is sometimes embarrassing.

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/rsw/research_centres/theory/conf/rg/harvey_a_brief_history_of_neoliberalism.pdf

MickGJ -> ATrueFinn , 8 Jun 2013 09:16

@ATrueFinn - After they are finished, what do Singaporeans eat?

Next year's harvest (possibly of GM food which makes better use of scarce resources). I imagine the sun will eventually stop bombarding us with the energy that powers photosynthesis but I'm not losing any sleep over it.
richmanchester -> MurchuantEacnamai , 8 Jun 2013 09:13
@MurchuantEacnamai - I think the point is this, Amazon make money by selling books, they avoid paying taxes, yet expect an educated, literate population to be provided for them, on the grounds that illiterate people don't buy books, and expect roads to move the books around on.

So who will pay for this?

TedSmithAndSon -> theguardianisrubbish , 8 Jun 2013 09:12
@theguardianisrubbish - No! The bailout is simply actual neoliberalism as opposed to the theory inside tiny right wing minds. The system depends on the wealthy not being allowed to suffer the consequences of their own greed, or it would represent revolution and still not work.

The debt industry are the lenders who take advantage of a financial system designed to push profits upwards (neoliberalism in practice), whilst paying the lowest possible rate. Wonga, for instance.

Thatchers revolution was to take our citizenship and give it a value, whilst making everyone else a consumer, all for a handful of magic beans in the shape of British Gas shares.

Neoliberalism in practice is every bit as bad as Communism in practice, with none of the benefits. It always amusing to see neoliberal morons shout about the red menace when they're two sides of the same coin.

szwalby -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 09:04
@MickGJ -

.and provides them at a massively inflated cost accompanied by unforgivable waste and inefficiency, appalling service and life-threatening incompetence.

as opposed to the private sector, who always does what it says it will do, at reasonable cost, for the benefit of their customers, and with due regards to ethics? Like the Banks, the financial sector, who will never sell you a product that isn't the best for you, regardless of their interest? the private companies like Southern Cross, GS4?

The private insurance who refuse to take you on the minute you've got some illness or disability? Get off it! The state isn't perfect, the services it provides are not perfect, but replacing them with private provision isn't the answer!

DasInternaut -> MurchuantEacnamai , 8 Jun 2013 08:59
@MurchuantEacnamai - How would you rate how well British government has done in ensuring markets are genuinely competitive. How well has British government done in ensuring our energy market is competitive, for example. Does the competitiveness we observe in the energy market give customers better or worse value than they had before deregulation? How do you rate the British government's performance in rail and public transport, with respect to competitiveness?

Personally, and notwithstanding the notable exception of telecoms, I rate the British (and US) government's performance in deregulating state entities, creating new markets and ensuring competition, as poor.

Neoliberalism is nothing if not the opposite extreme of the communist planned economy. Like the communist planned economy, neoliberalism is doomed to failure. I think we've all been sold a lie.

[Dec 14, 2018] Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the law

Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom ..."
"... Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the law. ..."
"... So it seems that your suggestion is for a return to western capitalism post-war style - would that be right? (b.t.w. if I bring up the whole Soviet Union thing, it is partly because quite a few commentators in this debate come across as if they wish for something much more leftist than that). ..."
"... What you have missed, is that the lions share of the proceeds of that growth are not going to ordinary people but to a tiny minority of super rich. It is not working for the majority. ..."
"... The taxpayers are left to pick up the tab, nations are divided against immigrants and scroungers and then unfettered evangelists like you can spout as pompously as you like about how much big business would like to remove the state from corporate affairs. ..."
"... Without the state there wouldn't be neo-Liberalism, it took state regulated capitalism to build what unfettered purists insist on tearing apart for short term greed. ..."
"... The trouble is Neo-Liberals do not want to remove the state at all, they want to BE the state and in the process rendering democracy pretty much meaningless. And they've succeeded. ..."
"... The biggest swindle ever pulled was turning the most glaring and crushing failure of unfettered corporatism into the biggest and most crushing power grab implemented in order to suppress the will of the people ..."
"... Nobody hates a market more than a monopoly and capitalism must inevitably end in monopoly as it has. For the profiteering monopolies investment especially via taxation is insane as it can only undermine their monopoly. ..."
"... The bankers have always known that the austerity caused by having to pay off un-payable loans, that increase every year, will eventually produce countries very similar to the "Weimar Days" in pre-Hitler Germany. ..."
"... They also know that drastic conditions such as these often lead to a collapse of democracy and a resurgence of Fascism. ..."
"... Neoliberalism could not exist without massive state support. So the term is meaningless. There is nothing "liberal" about having a huge state funded military industrial complex that acts a Trojan horse for global corporations, invading other countries for resources. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a branch of economic ideology which espouses the value of the free-market, and removing all protective legislation, so that large companies are free to do what they want, where-ever they want, with no impediments from social or environmental considerations, or a nation's democratic preferences. ..."
"... Business-friendly to who exactly: the nation or hostile overseas speculators? ..."
"... The golden age of 1945 - 1975 or so witnessed huge rises in standards of living so your point linking neo-liberalism to rising standards of living is literally meaningless. There was an explosive growth in economic activity during the three or four post war decades ..."
"... The assumption shared by many round here that the young are some untapped resource of revolutionary energy is deeply mistaken ..."
Jun 10, 2013 | www.theguardian.com

WyldeWolfe , 10 Jun 2013 19:42

Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom

So it's been a success then.

disorderedworld , 10 Jun 2013 17:21
A wonderful article that names the central issue. Neoliberal ideology acted as a smokescreen that enabled the financially powerful to rewrite the rules and place themselves beyond the law. The resultant rise of financial capitalism, which now eclipses the productive manufacturing-based capitalism that was the engine of world growth since the industrial revolution, has propelled a dangerous self-serving elite to the centre of world power. It's not just inequality that matters, but the character of the global elite.
MatthewBall -> murielbelcher , 10 Jun 2013 16:23
@murielbelcher -

The neo-liberal order commenced only in the late 1970s - there was a very different order prior to this which was not "soviet socialism" as you term it.

So it seems that your suggestion is for a return to western capitalism post-war style - would that be right? (b.t.w. if I bring up the whole Soviet Union thing, it is partly because quite a few commentators in this debate come across as if they wish for something much more leftist than that).

Anyway, my worry with this idea is that I am just not convinced that life in "The West 1945-80" was better on the whole than in "The West 1980-present". It's true that unemployment is higher these days, but a lot of work in the post-war years was boring and physically exhausting; in factories and mines where conditions were degrading and bad for health; and where industrial relations were simply terrible. I think as well that the higher unemployment is a localized phenomenon that many developing countries are not experiencing (this is relevant because Deborah Orr proposes change for the whole world, not merely the West).

There were also frequent recessions and booms - in fact, more frequent (albeit shorter) than now. What seems to have changed in this respect is that, whereas we used to alternate regularly between 2-3 years of boom and 1-2 years of bust, we now have 15 years of continuous boom followed by a (maybe?) 10 year bust (this pattern began around 1980). If you asked me which of these two patterns I preferred, then I think I'd go for the pre-1980 pattern, but its not clear to me that the post-1980 pattern is so much worse as to underwrite a savage indictment of the whole system.

As for Casino banking: they should reform that. Britain's Coalition Government has done something in that respect, although its not very radical - I am hoping Labour can do more. There is certainly a lot to be said for banks going back to a pre-"Big Bang" sense of tradition and prudence.

Buts let's not also forget the plus sides in the ledger for post-1980 capitalism: hundreds of millions in the former third world lifted out of poverty; unprecedented technological innovation (e.g. the internet, which makes access to knowledge more equal even as income inequality grows); and the accomodation (at least in the West) of progressive social change, such as the empowerment of ethnic minorities, LGBT people and women.

Change, yes - but lets be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater.

MatthewBall -> Grich , 10 Jun 2013 15:40
@Grich -

What you have missed, is that the lions share of the proceeds of that growth are not going to ordinary people but to a tiny minority of super rich. It is not working for the majority. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/07/58-of-real-income-growth-since-1976-went-to-top-1-and-why-that-matters.html

OK, but both the claim and the link cited in support talk only about a problem in the US. This can't really answer my point, which was that the rest of the world should not be expected to support a change to the economic system of the whole world just because of problems that are mostly localised to North America and Europe. People in developing countries might like the fact that they are, at last, catching "the West" up, and might well not care much about widening inequality of incomes in Western societies.

If you are going to propose changes that you want the whole world to adopt, as Deborah Orr does, then you should be careful to avoid casually assuming that Africa, India, China, et al, feel the same way about the world's recent history as we do. It seems to me that not enough care has been demonstrated in this regard.

MarkHH -> MickGJ , 10 Jun 2013 13:34

@MickGJ - Left to their own devices the most extreme neo-liberals would remove the state almost completely from corporate life.

Except when the State has to step in to prop up an unsustainable ideology. Then it's all meek murmurings and pleas for forgiveness and a timid "we'll be better from now" concessions and the Government obliges the public with the farce that they actually intend to do anything at all but make the public pay for the financial sector's state subsidized profligacy.

Once the begging bowl is re-filled of course then the pretense of "business as usual" profligacy rises to the fore.

The taxpayers are left to pick up the tab, nations are divided against immigrants and scroungers and then unfettered evangelists like you can spout as pompously as you like about how much big business would like to remove the state from corporate affairs.

When you well know that is the last thing big business would like to do. More of the state owned pie is always the most urgent of priorities. Poorer services at inflated costs equates as 'efficiency' until the taxpayer is again left to step in and pick up the bill.

Without the state there wouldn't be neo-Liberalism, it took state regulated capitalism to build what unfettered purists insist on tearing apart for short term greed.

The trouble is Neo-Liberals do not want to remove the state at all, they want to BE the state and in the process rendering democracy pretty much meaningless. And they've succeeded.

The biggest swindle ever pulled was turning the most glaring and crushing failure of unfettered corporatism into the biggest and most crushing power grab implemented in order to suppress the will of the people.

Just as IMF loans come with 'obligations' the principle of democracy itself was sold as part of 'the solution'.

The unsustainable, sustained. By slavery to debt, removal of society's safety net and an economy barely maintained by industries that serve the rich, vultures that prey on the weak and rising living costs and the drudgery of a life compounded by a relentless bombardment of everything in life that is unattainable.

Toeparty , 10 Jun 2013 05:28
Nobody hates a market more than a monopoly and capitalism must inevitably end in monopoly as it has. For the profiteering monopolies investment especially via taxation is insane as it can only undermine their monopoly. With the economy now globalised not even a world war could sweep away the current ossified political economy and give capitalism a new lease on life. It's socialism or monopoly capitalist barbarism. Make your choice.
DracoTBastard , 10 Jun 2013 05:26

The IMF exists to lend money to governments,

Money that the governments don't actually need as they can print their own money and spend it to use their countries own resources and then raise taxes to offset the extra spending and thus maintaining monetary value. The reality is that a government should never, ever borrow money.
Malakia123 , 10 Jun 2013 03:35
The beginning period between the two world wars (1919-33) in Germany called the Weimar Republic shows us exactly what severe austerity imposed by the Treaty of Versailles caused. Because the German economy contracted severely due to reparations payments, steady inflation and severe unemployment ensued. Of course the FED having started the Great Depression in America had not helped matters much anywhere in the world. The bankers have always known that the austerity caused by having to pay off un-payable loans, that increase every year, will eventually produce countries very similar to the "Weimar Days" in pre-Hitler Germany.

They also know that drastic conditions such as these often lead to a collapse of democracy and a resurgence of Fascism.

What causes inflation is uncontrolled speculation of the kind we have seen fed by private banking at various crucial points in history, such as the Weimar Republic. When speculation is coupled with debt (owed to private banking cartels) such as we are seeing in America and Europe now, the result is disaster. On the other hand, when a government issues its own "good faith" commerce-related currency in carefully measured ways as we saw in Roman times or Colonial America, it causes supply and demand to increase together, leaving prices unaffected. Hence there is no inflation, no debt, no unemployment, and no need for income taxes.

In reality, the Weimar financial crisis began with the impossible reparations payments imposed at the Treaty of Versailles. It is very similar to the austerity being imposed on European Nations and America as we speak – regardless of the fact that the IMF is trying to pose as "the Good Cop" at the moment! The damage has been done to nations like Greece, and others are soon to follow. The uncontrollable greed of banks and corporations is leading to an implosion of severe magnitude! It's time to open their books and put a stop to these private banks right now!

brucefiiona -> MysticFish , 9 Jun 2013 20:36
@MysticFish - So the US who has a greater spend on the military than communist China is neoliberal?

Neoliberalism could not exist without massive state support. So the term is meaningless. There is nothing "liberal" about having a huge state funded military industrial complex that acts a Trojan horse for global corporations, invading other countries for resources.

The term neoliberal is not only meaningless but misleading as it implies a connection with true liberalism, of which it has no meaningful connection.

brucefiiona , 9 Jun 2013 20:28
Do away with deceptive terms like neoliberalism, capitalism, socialism, left wing and right wing and things become clearer.

At root a lot of the people who get involved in all of the above have very similar character traits - love of power, greed, deceitful, ruthlessness. Most start out with these character traits, and others gain them as a result of power.

Anyone high up in politics or business is unhinged. You have to be. The organizational structures in these things are so synthetic, the beliefs so artificial, rigid, dogmatic and inhuman that only a unhinged person could prosper in this climate.

Most reasonable people admit doubt, are willing to accept compromise, are willing to make the occasional sacrifice for the greater good. All these things are what make us human, however all these things are seen as weaknesses in the inverted world of business and politics.

Business and politics creates an environment where the must inhuman traits prosper.

fr0mn0where -> murielbelcher , 9 Jun 2013 14:42
@murielbelcher -

"no but the highly placed banking and financial class are along with their venal political mates"

For sure but are they capitalists? Although they may well own capital does their power derive from the ownership of capital? You may, or may not be interested in this lecture on the future of capitalism by John Kay.

MysticFish -> AssistantCook , 9 Jun 2013 14:28
@AssistantCook - Neoliberalism is a branch of economic ideology which espouses the value of the free-market, and removing all protective legislation, so that large companies are free to do what they want, where-ever they want, with no impediments from social or environmental considerations, or a nation's democratic preferences. Von Hayek was a major influence and Thatcher was a loyal disciple, as was the notorious dictator, Pinochet. It is economic theory, designed for vulture capitalists, and unpopular industries like fossil fuel or tobacco, and usually the 'freedom' is all one-sided.
MysticFish -> DavidPavett , 9 Jun 2013 14:12
@DavidPavett - If states are too big, then what about multinational banks and corporations? I wonder why Neoliberal ideology does not try to limit the size of these. They are cumbersome and destructive, predatory dinosaurs and yet our politicians seem mesmerised to the point of allowing them special favours, tax incentives and the ability to determine our nation's policies in matters such as energy and health. Why not 'Small is Beautiful,' when it comes to companies? It doesn't make sense to shrink the state but then let non-transparent and unaccountable, multinational companies become too powerful. One gets the feeling the country is being invaded by the interests of hostile nations, using all-too-convenient Neoliberal ideology and hidden behind a corporate mask.
Jesús Rodriguez , 9 Jun 2013 12:46
Is the IMF ever stop evading its responsibility and blaming others for the worldwide financial tragedy it has provoked? Is it ever stop hurting the working class?
theguardianisrubbish -> murielbelcher , 9 Jun 2013 07:28
@murielbelcher -

"Neo-liberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom for the rich and powerful elites is all."

No it is not that is what you want to believe. There is nothing in this statement other than an opinion based on nothing.

"Many people across the globe were lifted out of poverty between 1945-1980 so what does your statement about neo-liberalism prove"

Which countries during this period saw massive sustainable reductions in poverty without some free market model in place?

"It is you who should open your eyes and stop expecting people on here to accept your ideological beliefs and statements as facts."

I don't expect people to accept my beliefs I am just pointing out why I think their beliefs are wrong. This is a comment section the whole idea of it is to comment on different views and articles. How can you ever benefit or make an accurate decision or belief if you do not try to understand what the opposite belief is? I think nearly everything I have said has been somewhat backed up by logic or a fact, I have not said wishy washy statements like:

"Neo-liberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom for the rich and powerful elites is all."

Unless you can expand on this and give evidence or some form of an example why you think its true then it makes no sense. You are not the only commentor on this article to make a similar statement and the way people have attempted to justify it is due to bailouts but as I have said a bailout is not part of the neoliberal school of thought so if you have a problem with bailouts you don't have a problem with neoliberalism.

theguardianisrubbish -> murielbelcher , 9 Jun 2013 07:10
@murielbelcher - I don't want to go to far into Thatcherism because it is slightly off topic. The early 80s recession was a global recession and yes during the first few years unemployment soared. Why was that because the trade unions were running amok the UK was losing millions of days of work per month.

Inflation was getting out of control and the only way to solve it was a self induced recession. You cannot seriously believe that without the reforms that she implemented we would not have recovered as quick as we did nor can you argue that it was possible for her or anyone else to turn around such an inefficient industry. Don't forget the problems of the manufacturing industry go back way before Thatcher's time.

theguardianisrubbish -> someoneionceknew , 9 Jun 2013 06:34
@someoneionceknew -

"Here's your problem. You believe that banks lend savings. They don't. Loans create deposits create reserves."

I am not claiming to be an expert on this if you are then let me know and please do correct me. I agree banks do not lend deposits but they do lend savings. There is a difference putting money on deposit is different to say putting money into an ISA. I don't agree though that deposits create reserves I believe that they come from the central bank otherwise banks would be constrained by the amount of deposits in the system which is not true and something you have said is not true.

Nevertheless, the majority of liquidity in the bond markets (like most other markets) comes from institutional investors, i.e pension funds, unit trusts, insurance companies, etc. They get their money from savings by consumers as well as sometimes companies. Ok we don't always give our money to insurance companies when we save but via premiums is another way the ordinary consumer contributes to this so called "debt industry". I also said that foreign and local governments buy debt and companies invest directly into the debt market.

MysticFish -> MickGJ , 9 Jun 2013 06:17
@MickGJ - Business-friendly to who exactly: the nation or hostile overseas speculators?
theguardianisrubbish -> TedSmithAndSon , 9 Jun 2013 06:14
"In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). "

Iceland would disagree.

"The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism."

Why have only the rich benefited from the bailout? You are not making any sense.

"The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism."

Why? You cannot just say a statement like that and not expand, it makes no sense.

"Thatcher "revitalised" banking, while everything else withered and died."

...but also revitalised the economy and got everyone back to work.

"Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else."

Again you have to expand on this because it makes no sense.

"In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility down, just like it does here."

Don't think that is true in most cases nor would it make sense. Why would a dictator who wants as much power as possible operate a laissez-faire economy? You cannot have personal freedom without having economic freedom, it is a necessary not sufficient condition. Tell me a case where these is a large degree of political freedom but little to no economic freedom. Moreover look at the countries in Asia and South America that have adopted a neoliberal agenda and notice their how poverty as reduced significantly.

"I find it ironic that it now has 5 year plans that absolutely must not be deviated from, massive state intervention in markets (QE, housing policy, tax credits... insert where applicable), and advocates large scale central planning even as it denies reality, and makes the announcement from a tractor factory."

Who has 5 year plans?

"In theory it's one thing, the reality is entirely different."

If the reality is different to the theory then it is not neoliberalism that is being implemented therefore it makes no sense to dispute the theory. Look at where it has been implemented, the best case in the world at the moment is Hong Kong look at how well that country has performed.

"a massive lie told by rich people "

I can assure you I am not rich.

"Until we're rid of it, we're all it's slaves."

Neoliberalism is based on personal freedom. If you believe this about neoliberalism in your opinion give me one economic school of thought where this does not apply.

theguardianisrubbish -> theonionmurders , 9 Jun 2013 05:35
@theonionmurders -

"Bailouts have been a constant feature of neoliberalism."

What you are saying does not make sense. Whatever you say about that there was no where else to turn the government had to bailout out the banks a neolibralist would disagree.

"In fact the role of the state is simply reduced to a merely commissioning agent to private parasitical corporations. "

That's corporatism which so far you have described pretty well.

"History has shown the state playing this role since neoliberalism became embedded in policy since the 1970s - Long Term Capital Management, Savings and Loans, The Brady Plan, numerous PFI bailouts and those of the Western banking system during the 1982 South American, 1997 Asian and 2010 European debt crises."

What?! Bailouts have been occurring before the industrial revolution. Deregulation in the UK occurred mainly during the 80s not 70's. Furthermore financial deregulation occurred in the UK in 1986. In the USA the major piece of financial deregulation was the Gramm Leach Bliley Act which was passed in 1999. So you have just undercut your own point with the examples you gave above. You could argue Argentina and we could argue all day about the causes of that, but I would say that any government that pursues an expansionary monetary policy under a fixed ER is never going to end well.

"...policy if you won't flick through a book."

My point was that when people quote a source they tend to either quote the page that the point comes from. To be honest if this book is telling you that neoliberalism and neoclassical are significantly different (which you seemed to suggest in you earlier post) then I would suggest put the book down.

ATrueFinn -> fireman36 , 9 Jun 2013 04:17
@ fireman36 09 June 2013 1:32am

Don't like it? Change the rules.

Exactly! However:

"Google, Amazon and Apple... avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments."

Yes to the first, no to the second. Corporations with revenues exceeding the GDP of a small nation have quite a lot of power: Exxon's revenue is between the GDP of Norway and Austria. In Finland Nokia generated 3 4 % of the GDP for a decade and the government bent backwards to accommodate its polite requests, including a specific law reducing the privacy of employees' emails.

Grich -> MatthewBall , 8 Jun 2013 22:29
@MatthewBall -

I am not sure if this is true. We have the same economic system (broadly speaking, capitalism) as nearly every country in the world, and the world economy is growing at a reasonable rate, at around 3-4% for 2013-14 (see http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/c1.pdf for more details).

We percieve a problem in (most of) Europe and North America because our economies are growing more slowly than this, and in some cases not at all. The global growth figure comes out healthy because of strong growth in the emerging countries, like China, Brazil and India, who are narrowing the gap between their living standards and ours. So, the world as a whole isn't broken, even if our bit of it is going through a rough patch.

What you have missed, is that the lions share of the proceeds of that growth are not going to ordinary people but to a tiny minority of super rich. It is not working for the majority. http://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2010/07/58-of-real-income-growth-since-1976-went-to-top-1-and-why-that-matters.html

oriel46 -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 22:08
@Fachan - Except that it isn't capitalism that was being criticized here, but neoliberalism: a distinction that's often lost on neoliberals themselves, ironically.
TomorrowsWorld , 8 Jun 2013 19:58
I'm sure that Denis Healy and any number of African economists would confirm that the IMF is quite simply a refuge of absolutely last resort, when investor confidence in your economy is so shattered that the only way ahead is to open the shark gates and allow big money to plunder whatever value remains there, without the benefit of any noticeable return for your people. Greece is but one more victim of a syndrome that encompasses all the science and forensic analysis of ritual sacrifice.
murielbelcher -> OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 19:10
@OneCommentator - don't confuse economic deregulation which acted as handmaiden to global finance and multinationals as economic freedoms for population

China's govt was doing what china's govt had decided to do from 1978 BEFORE the election of Thatcher in 1979 or Reagan in 1980 (office from Jan 1981), so very little correlation there I think

The GATT rounds whether you agree with their aims or not were the products of the post war decades, again before Thatcher and Reagan came to power

The golden age of 1945 - 1975 or so witnessed huge rises in standards of living so your point linking neo-liberalism to rising standards of living is literally meaningless. There was an explosive growth in economic activity during the three or four post war decades

murielbelcher -> theguardianisrubbish , 8 Jun 2013 19:04
@theguardianisrubbish - you can't get away with this

She DID not get everyone back to work again. There were two recessions at either end of the 1980s. She TRIPLED unemployment during the first half of the 1980s and introduced the phenomenon of high structural unemployment and placing people on invalidity benefits to massage the headline unemployment count. Give us the figures to back up your assertion that she "got everyone back to work again." I suspect that you cannot and your statement stands for the utter nonsense that it is in any kind of reality.

A few months after she was forced out Tory Chancellor Norman Lamont in 1991 during yet another recession declared that "unemployment was a price worth paying"!!!

Neo-liberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom for the rich and powerful elites is all. Many people across the globe were lifted out of poverty between 1945-1980 so what does your statement about neo-liberalism prove

It is you who should open your eyes and stop expecting people on here to accept your ideological beliefs and statements as facts.

Because they are not: in no shape, way or form

fireman36 , 8 Jun 2013 19:03
Not very impressed to be honest. For starters:

"The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State."

That's glib and inaccurate. A better read about the IMF from an insider: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2009/05/the-quiet-coup/307364/ Digest: the biggest problem the IMF have to deal with in bailouts is always the politics of cronyism; free-market oligarchs and government in cahoots.

"Many IMF programs "go off track" (a euphemism) precisely because the government can't stay tough on erstwhile cronies, and the consequences are massive inflation or other disasters. A program "goes back on track" once the government prevails or powerful oligarchs sort out among themselves who will govern -- and thus win or lose -- under the IMF-supported plan. The real fight in Thailand and Indonesia in 1997 was about which powerful families would lose their banks. In Thailand, it was handled relatively smoothly. In Indonesia, it led to the fall of President Suharto and economic chaos."

MickGJ -> JohnBroggio , 8 Jun 2013 18:42

@JohnBroggio - who caters for the idealist vote?

Generally whoever happens to be in opposition at the time. This made the LibDems the ideal (sorry) choice for a long time but then they broke a long-standing if unspoken promise that they would never actually be in government.

Last weekś Economist has some very interesting stuff from the British Social Attitudes survey which shows the increasing drift away from collectivist ideals towards liberalism over each succeeding generation.

The assumption shared by many round here that the young are some untapped resource of revolutionary energy is deeply mistaken

[Dec 14, 2018] Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom by Deborah Orr

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe ..."
"... The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask. ..."
"... Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. ..."
"... Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments. ..."
"... The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised. ..."
"... Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. ..."
Jun 08, 2013 | www.theguardian.com

The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe

Sat 8 Jun 2013 02.59 EDT First published on Sat 8 Jun 2013 02.59 EDT

The IMF's limited admission of guilt over the Greek bailout is a start, but they still can't see the global financial system's fundamental flaws, writes Deborah Orr. Photograph: Boris Roessler/DPA FILE T he International Monetary Fund has admitted that some of the decisions it made in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were wrong, and that the €130bn first bailout of Greece was "bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived happily ever after.

Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that it went along with its partners in "the Troika" – the European Commission and the European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF, put the interests of the eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch their pearls and splutter with horror that they could be accused of something so petty as self-preservation.

The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask.

Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher John Gray has said all along.

The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State. Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralised and faceless, to be efficient and responsive. I agree. The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further – some setting about the task with greater relish than others. Now the task, supposedly, is to get the free market up and running again.

But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people – people who expect to be well paid themselves, having been brought up believing in material aspiration, as consumers need to be.

So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"? The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda. But how can the privatisation of societal welfare possibly happen when unemployment is already high, working people are turning to food banks to survive and the debt industry, far from being sorry that it brought the global economy to its knees, is snapping up bargains in the form of busted high-street businesses to establish shops with nothing to sell but high-interest debt? Why, you have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?

Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments.

And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to encourage private profit and shareholder value, then lend governments the money they need to create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them for their profligacy as they do so. It's all utterly, completely, crazy.

The other day a health minister, Anna Soubry , suggested that female GPs who worked part-time so that they could bring up families were putting the NHS under strain. The compartmentalised thinking is quite breathtaking. What on earth does she imagine? That it would be better for the economy if they all left school at 16? On the contrary, the more people who are earning good money while working part-time – thus having the leisure to consume – the better. No doubt these female GPs are sustaining both the pharmaceutical industry and the arts and media, both sectors that Britain does well in.

As for their prioritising of family life over career – that's just another of the myriad ways in which Conservative neoliberalism is entirely without logic. Its prophets and its disciples will happily – ecstatically – tell you that there's nothing more important than family, unless you're a family doctor spending some of your time caring for your own. You couldn't make these characters up. It is certainly true that women with children find it more easy to find part-time employment in the public sector. But that's a prima facie example of how unresponsive the private sector is to human and societal need, not – as it is so often presented – evidence that the public sector is congenitally disabled.

Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many aspects of financial services – that Britain enjoyed during the second half of the 20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce. Soubry and her ilk, above all else, forget that people have multiple roles, as consumers, as producers, as citizens and as family members. All of those things have to be nurtured and invested in to make a market.

The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised.

Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. And even as the results of their folly become ever more plain to see, they are grudging in their admittance of the slightest blame, bickering with their allies instead of waking up, smelling the coffee and realizing that far too much of it is sold through Starbucks.

[Dec 14, 2018] The era of neoliberalism has seen a massive increase in government, not a shrinkage. The biggest change is the role of governments - to protect markets rather than to protect the rights and dignities of its citizens

Notable quotes:
"... The era of neoliberalism has seen a massive increase in government, not a shrinkage. The biggest change is the role of governments - to protect markets rather than to protect the rights and dignities of its citizens. When viewed by outcome rather than ideological rhetoric, it becomes increasingly clear that neoliberalism has nothing to do with shrinking the state, freeing markets, or freeing the individual, and everything to do with a massive power grab by a global elite. ..."
"... What was the billions of pounds in bank bailout welfare and recession on costs all about? You tell me. All the result of the application of your extremist free market ideology? Let the banks run wild, they mess up and the taxpayer has to step in with bailout welfare and pay to clear up the recession debris ..."
"... Market participants and their venal political friends have during the past 30 years of extremist neo-liberal ideology rigged, abused, distorted and subverted their market and elite power to tilt the economic and social balance massively in their favour ..."
"... Neo liberalism = the favoured ideology of the very rich and powerful elite ..."
"... at last somebody is looking at globalisation and asking whose interests is it designed to serve? It certainly ain't for the people. ..."
"... the highly placed banking and financial class are along with their venal political mates ..."
"... We've had three decades of asset stripping in favor of the rich elites and look at the mess we're in now. ..."
"... I strongly believe that people are not being told the full story. Like the NSA surveillance revelation, the effects will not be pretty when the facts are known. No country needs the IMF. ..."
"... The mythology surrounding deficits and national debt is a religion that the world is in desperate need of debunking. Like religion, the mythology is used as a means of power and entrenchment of privilege for the Ruling Caste, not the plebs (lesser mortals). ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
justamug , 8 Jun 2013 18:09
This article is a testament to our ignorance. Orr is no intellectual slouch, but somehow, like many in the mainstream, she still fails to address some fundamental assumptions and thus ends up with a muddled argument.

"What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return;"

Lending has not stopped - it's just moved out of one market into another. Banks are making profits, and banks profit are made by expanding credit.

Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralised and faceless, to be efficient and responsive.

Yes and no. There is a difference between what is preached and what happens in practice. The era of neoliberalism has seen a massive increase in government, not a shrinkage. The biggest change is the role of governments - to protect markets rather than to protect the rights and dignities of its citizens. When viewed by outcome rather than ideological rhetoric, it becomes increasingly clear that neoliberalism has nothing to do with shrinking the state, freeing markets, or freeing the individual, and everything to do with a massive power grab by a global elite.
murielbelcher -> MurchuantEacnamai , 8 Jun 2013 18:06
@MurchuantEacnamai - well righty ideologues such as yourself and your venal political acolytes have utterly failed to support the case or institute measures that: "apply effective democratic governance to ensure market

What was the billions of pounds in bank bailout welfare and recession on costs all about? You tell me. All the result of the application of your extremist free market ideology? Let the banks run wild, they mess up and the taxpayer has to step in with bailout welfare and pay to clear up the recession debris

Market participants and their venal political friends have during the past 30 years of extremist neo-liberal ideology rigged, abused, distorted and subverted their market and elite power to tilt the economic and social balance massively in their favour

You the taxpayer are good enough to bail us out when we mess up but then we demand that your services are cut in return and that your employment is ever more precarious and wages depressed (at the lower end of the scale - never ever the higher of course!! That's the neo-liberal deal isn't it

Neo liberalism = the favoured ideology of the very rich and powerful elite and boy don't they know how to work its levers

freedomrespect , 8 Jun 2013 18:00
Very insightful commentary and at last somebody is looking at globalisation and asking whose interests is it designed to serve? It certainly ain't for the people. Amazing it's been approved on a UK liberal newspaper as well!
Boguille -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 17:57
@Fachan - There was nothing in the article about envy. It was an exposition of the failure of our present system which allows the rich to get ever richer. That would be fine if it weren't for the fact that the increasing disparity in wealth is bringing down the economy and making it less productive while leaving a large part of the population in, or on the verge of, poverty.
murielbelcher -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 17:41
@CaptainGrey - but we're not talking about that form of capitalism are we?

Surely you must realise that there are very very different forms of capitalism. The capitalism that reigns now would not have permitted the creation of the NHS had it not been devised in the1940s when a very different type of capitalism reigned. Its political acolytes and its cheerleader press would have denounced the NHS as an extremist commie idea!!

murielbelcher -> fr0mn0where , 8 Jun 2013 17:39
@fr0mn0where - it was crumbling in the 1980s

The Chicago boys swarmed into eastern Europe after 1989 to introduce a form of gangster unbridled capitalism. The very Chicago boys led by Milton Friedman who used the dictator Pinochet's Chile as test bed for their ideology from September 1973 after the coup that overthrew Allende

murielbelcher -> fr0mn0where , 8 Jun 2013 17:35
@fr0mn0where - no but the highly placed banking and financial class are along with their venal political mates

We've had three decades of asset stripping in favor of the rich elites and look at the mess we're in now.

murielbelcher -> MatthewBall , 8 Jun 2013 17:33
@MatthewBall - social democracy

The neo-liberal order commenced only in the late 1970s - there was a very different order prior to this which was not "Soviet Socialism" as you term it.

As such this extremist rich man's ideological experiment has had a long innings and has failed as the events of 2008 laid bare for all to see - it has been tried out disastrously on live human beings for 34 years and has now been thoroughly discredited with the huge bank bailouts and financial crash and ensuing and enduring recession It was scarcely succeeding prior to this with high entrenched rates of unemployment, frequent recessions/booms and busts and unsustainable property bubbles and deregulated unstable speculative aka casino banking activity

Time for a change

RidiculousPseudonym , 8 Jun 2013 17:26
This is basically right, but a few comments.

1. Neoliberalism cannot be pinned on one party alone. It was accepted by the Thatcher government, but no Prime Minister since has seriously challenged it.

2. Neoliberalism is logically contrary to conservative values. Either there are certain moral imperatives so important that it is worth wasting money over them, or there are not. No wonder that Tories are torn in two, not to mention Labour politicians who also try to combine neoliberalism and moral principle.

3. Saying "even Adam Smith" is understandable but unfair. His work was rather enlightened in the context of mercantilism, and of course the Wealth of Nations was not his only book. Others will know his work better than me, but I think he dwells rather strongly on problems of persistent poverty.

4. The political and redistributive functions of nations are indeed damaged by neolib, but I don't think there is any realistic way of getting that power back without applying capital controls. If we apply capital controls, all hell breaks loose.

5. Ergo, we are stuck with a situation where neolib is killing democracy, distributive justice and conservative moral values, but there is nothing we can do about it without pulling the plug altogether and unleashing a sharp drop in wealth and 1930s nationalistic havoc. A bit of a tragedy, indeed.

HolyInsurgent , 8 Jun 2013 17:22

Deborah Orr: The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt.

I strongly believe that people are not being told the full story. Like the NSA surveillance revelation, the effects will not be pretty when the facts are known. No country needs the IMF. Any national government with its own national currency sovereignty can pay its own debts within its own country with its own currency. International borrowing in foreign markets is the biggest myth since religion. But since neoliberalism and its inherent myths have been swallowed whole for so long, we are still at the stage where the child points and laughs at the nude emperor. The fallout from the revelation and remedy is to follow.

The problem with the Eurozone is not that the Euro is the "national" currency. Control of the Euro resides with the European Central Bank, not the Troika (European Commission, European Central Bank, IMF). The European Central Bank, as sole controller of the Euro (the "national" currency), can issue funds to constituent Eurozone states to the extent necessary. I challenge anyone to demonstrate how any central bank does not have power over its own currency!

The mythology surrounding deficits and national debt is a religion that the world is in desperate need of debunking. Like religion, the mythology is used as a means of power and entrenchment of privilege for the Ruling Caste, not the plebs (lesser mortals).

someoneionceknew -> colonelraeburn , 8 Jun 2013 17:18
@colonelraeburn - Excuse me? Private bank credit caused the housing price inflation.

Politicians were complicit in deregulating and appointing non-regulators but they didn't make the loans.

MickGJ -> DavidPavett , 8 Jun 2013 17:16

@DavidPavett - Does anyone have any idea what this is supposed to mean? There are certainly no leads on this in the link given to "the philosopher" John Gray

Gray wrote this in the Guardian in 2007:

Whether in Africa, Asia, Latin America or post-communist Europe, policies of wholesale privatisation and structural adjustment have led to declining economic activity and social dislocation on a massive scale

This doesn't seem to support Orrś assertion that he is calling for a structural adjustment, rather the opposite. I'ḿ not really familiar with Grayś work but he seems to be rather against the universal imposition of any system, new or old.
katiewm -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 16:46
@CaptainGrey - Capitalism is not an undifferentiated mass. Late-stage neoliberal hypercapitalism as practiced in the US and increasingly in the UK is a very different beast than the traditional European capitalist social democracy or the Nordic model, which have been shown to work relatively well over time. In fact, neoliberal capitalism - the sort Orr is talking about here - is marked by increasing decline both in the state and in the economy, as inequality in wealth distribution creates a society of beggars and kings instead of spenders and savers. The gains achieved through carefully regulated capitalism won't stick around in the free-for-all conditions preferred by those whose ideology demands the sell-off of the state.
jazzdrum -> PeterWoking , 8 Jun 2013 16:16
@PeterWoking - For some parts of the world , yes they are more affluent now , but a huge part of the globe is still without food and water .

I think de regulation of the financial sector has caused a huge amount of damage to the world all round and to be honest, i expect more of the same as the Bankers are still in control.

[Dec 09, 2018] The blatant, dangerous gambits to wreck Russuans relations with the USA and Europe by MI6 and British goverment: more staged confrontations, lies and subversion.

Notable quotes:
"... This is the context in which to see the blatant, dangerous gambits to wreck the Buenos Aires gathering of leaders, and any other such future opportunity, coming from the British Empire crowd, in the form of staged confrontations, lies and subversion. ..."
"... Look at recent destabilizing events: the Nov. 24 chemical weapons attack on Syrians in Aleppo; the stoking of suffering and strife at the Mexico-U.S. border; and on Nov. 25, Ukraine's naval provocation against Russia in the Black Sea. The British government asset, the "Integrity Initiative" is fully deployed to goad the U.S. and Western Europe to launch an offensive against Russia over the Ukraine incident, blaming Russia for "aggression" against Ukraine. The British imperialists are making a habit of exposing their own role in demanding world war! ..."
"... These provocations are not a sign of power, but of desperation, desperation to stop the spreading success of the New Paradigm of collaborative development expressed in the Belt and Road Initiative, and what lies ahead if the U.S. joins up. Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche today emphasized that each time the British Imperialist apparatus steps forward in its own name to sabotage world peace, it works to the detriment of their dying system. The Empire is dangerous, but all the easier to crush. ..."
"... Zepp-LaRouche nailed the Integrity Initiative in a Sputnik interview published yesterday, now being run in media internationally. She said that the group's activity displays the " modus operandi of British intelligence operations, and it very well may turn out, that it is this network, which is deeply involved in 'Russiagate' and the entire coup against President Trump." ..."
Nov 28, 2018 | larouchepac.com
We are in a showdown moment. At this week's Group of 20 Summit -- only three days away, in Buenos Aires, there is the potential for Great Power diplomacy in the direction of a New Paradigm of foreign relations, as an outcome of the sideline meetings of heads of state and government of the United States, China, Russia, India and others.

The growing momentum for New Paradigm economic development is seen in high-level events this month in six Western European nations: in Germany, the "Hamburg Summit: China Meets Europe" (Nov. 26-27); in France, the Lyon "Franco-Chinese Forum" (Nov. 26-28); in Spain, President Xi Jinping's state visit (Nov. 27-29); in Portugal, Xi's visit (Dec. 4-5); in Italy, a new Xinhua-associated Italian financial media service will be set up (Nov. 6 agreement); in Norway, the first Polar Route icebreaker delivery of Yamal LNG, for transshipment from the northern port of Honnigsvag.

This is the context in which to see the blatant, dangerous gambits to wreck the Buenos Aires gathering of leaders, and any other such future opportunity, coming from the British Empire crowd, in the form of staged confrontations, lies and subversion.

Look at recent destabilizing events: the Nov. 24 chemical weapons attack on Syrians in Aleppo; the stoking of suffering and strife at the Mexico-U.S. border; and on Nov. 25, Ukraine's naval provocation against Russia in the Black Sea. The British government asset, the "Integrity Initiative" is fully deployed to goad the U.S. and Western Europe to launch an offensive against Russia over the Ukraine incident, blaming Russia for "aggression" against Ukraine. The British imperialists are making a habit of exposing their own role in demanding world war!

These provocations are not a sign of power, but of desperation, desperation to stop the spreading success of the New Paradigm of collaborative development expressed in the Belt and Road Initiative, and what lies ahead if the U.S. joins up. Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche today emphasized that each time the British Imperialist apparatus steps forward in its own name to sabotage world peace, it works to the detriment of their dying system. The Empire is dangerous, but all the easier to crush.

The Nov. 25 Ukrainian naval breach of Russian territorial waters was long pre-planned. As the Italian military journal Difesa Online wrote on Nov. 25, "it was evident to all those who follow local events that for some days already, the Poroshenko government in Ukraine was trying to provoke an armed confrontation with Moscow in the Crimean waters." Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, said the same yesterday, adding a warning. "We are talking about a pre-planned, deliberate, and now realized large-scale provocation.... I think everybody should be careful next time. I think there will be a next time, considering what is happening now."

President Donald Trump's first response to the Ukraine incident, Nov. 26, was to express concern, and hopes for settlement. "We do not like what's happening, either way; ... hopefully, it will get straightened out." President Vladimir Putin will issue his statement on this incident in a few days.

From London, however, comes a raving "script" of what Trump and the West must do against Russia. It is the featured item on the website of the Integrity Initiative, which is a British intelligence black war propaganda operation. Its funding is from the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Its Nov. 26 posting is titled, "West Is Once Again Failing Test Set by Russian Aggression," by Edward Lucas, formerly of The Economist , and a longtime Russia-hater, who wrote such books as Deception: Spies, Lies and How Russia Dupes the West (2012) and The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West (2nd ed., 2014). Lucas calls for "kinetic, symbolic, and financial measures" against Russia. This is to include, the West sending military aid to Ukraine, running a NATO flotilla to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, putting sanctions on Russian officials and businessmen present in the West, and cutting Russia off from Western finance. Lucas says that the West didn't act against Nazi Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland, but they must act now against Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Lucas is part of the British "cluster" of Integrity Initiative's operatives, which also includes former British Ambassador to Russia Sir Andrew Wood of Orbis Business Intelligence, the firm of "former" MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who fabricated the infamous anti-Trump dossier. These figures are at the heart of the coup operations against Trump, and before that, the Obama Administration election subversion.

Zepp-LaRouche nailed the Integrity Initiative in a Sputnik interview published yesterday, now being run in media internationally. She said that the group's activity displays the " modus operandi of British intelligence operations, and it very well may turn out, that it is this network, which is deeply involved in 'Russiagate' and the entire coup against President Trump."

It is now urgent for all the documents bearing on these criminal, treasonous operations to be de-classified, and the full story revealed. Every hour counts.

[Dec 09, 2018] CyberGuerrilla soApboX " Operation 'Integrity Initiative'. British informational war against all

Dec 09, 2018 | www.cyberguerrilla.org
Greetings. We are Anonymous.

We have obtained a large number of documents relating to the activities of the 'Integrity Initiative' project that was launched back in the fall of 2015 and funded by the British government. The declared goal of the project is to counteract Russian propaganda and the hybrid warfare of Moscow. Hiding behind benevolent intentions, Britain has in fact created a large-scale information secret service in Europe, the United States and Canada, which consists of representatives of political, military, academic and journalistic communities with the think tank in London at the head of it.

As part of the project Britain has time and again intervened into domestic affairs of independent European states. A most demonstrative example is operation 'Moncloa' in Spain. Britain set to prevent Pedro Baños from appointment to the post of Director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took the Spanish cluster of the Integrity Initiative only a few hours to accomplish the task.

https://www.scribd.com/document/392195691/Moncloa-Campaign-6-AttTwitter-08-06-18

For now, Britain is capable of conducting such operations in the following states:

Spain https://www.scribd.com/document/392195775/Spain-Cluster

France https://www.scribd.com/document/392195457/France-Cluster

Germany https://www.scribd.com/document/392195486/Germany-Cluster

Italy https://www.scribd.com/document/392195660/Italy-Cluster

Greece https://www.scribd.com/document/392195527/Greece-Cluster

The Netherlands https://www.scribd.com/document/392195718/Netherlands-Cluster

Lithuania https://www.scribd.com/document/392195170/Baltics-Cluster

Norway https://www.scribd.com/document/392195748/Nordic-Clusters

Serbia and Montenegro https://www.scribd.com/document/392195208/Central-Eastern-Cluster

London's near-term plans to create similar clusters include Latvia, Estonia, Portugal, Sweden, Belgium, Canada, Armenia, Ukraine, Moldova, Malta, Czechia, countries of the Middle East and North Africa, Poland, Slovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, Georgia, Hungary, Cyprus, Austria, Switzerland, Turkey, Finland, Iceland, Denmark, and the USA.

https://www.scribd.com/document/392195321/Cluster-Roundup-Jul18

All the work is done under absolute secrecy via concealed contacts in British embassies, which gives rise to more suspicion that Britain uses plausible excuse to create a global system of information influence and political interference into affairs of other countries.

Covert structures for political and financial manipulative activities under control of British secret services are created not only in the EU countries but also on other continents. In point of fact, quiet colonization of both former British neighbors in the EU and NATO allies is taking place.

The government of Great Britain has to come out of the dark and declare straight its intentions and unveil the results of the Integrity Initiative activities! Otherwise, we will do it!

Today, we make public a part of the documents we have available. In case London gives no response to our demands during the following week, we will reveal the rest of the documents that contain many more secrets of the United Kingdom.

Integrity Initiative Handbook. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195560/II-Handbook-v2

Integrity Initiative Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation May 2018. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195802/The-Integrity-Initiative-Guide-to-Countering-Russian-Disinformation-May-2018-v1

Austria Cluster. https://www.scribd.com/document/392194912/Austria-Cluster

Cluster leaders. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195250/Cluster-Leaders

Cluster participants. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195286/Cluster-Participants

UK Cluster. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195849/UK-Cluster

USA and Canada Cluster. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195882/USA-Canada-Cluster

xCountry. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195906/x-Country

xOutreach. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195933/x-Outreach

FCO application form 2017-18. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195350/FCO-Application-Form-2017-18

FCO application form 2018v2. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195390/FCO-Application-Form-2018-v2

FCO proposal Integrity budget 2017-18. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195430/FCO-Proposal-Integrity-Budget-2017-18

Integrity 2018 Activity Budget v3. https://www.scribd.com/document/392195593/Integrity-2018-Activity-Budget-v3

Top 3 deliverables (for FCO). https://www.scribd.com/document/392195825/Top-3-Deliverables-for-FCO

We are Anonymous.

We are Legion.

We do not forgive.

We do not forget.

Expect us.

Backup copies of the documents:

Moncloa campaign https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/moncloa-campaign-6-atttwitter080618/moncloa-campaign-6-atttwitter080618.pdf

Spain https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/spain-cluster/spain-cluster.pdf

France https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/france-cluster/france-cluster.pdf

Germany https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/germany-cluster/germany-cluster.pdf

Italy https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/italy-cluster/italy-cluster.pdf

Greece https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/greece-cluster/greece-cluster.pdf

The Netherlands https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/netherlands-cluster/netherlands-cluster.pdf

Lithuania https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/baltics-cluster/baltics-cluster.pdf

Norway https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/nordic-clusters/nordic-clusters.pdf

Serbia and Montenegro https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/central-eastern-cluster/central-eastern-cluster.pdf

Cluster roundup https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/clusterroundupjul18/clusterroundupjul18.pdf

Integrity Initiative Handbook. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/iihandbookv2/iihandbookv2.pdf

Integrity Initiative Guide to Countering Russian Disinformation May 2018. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/untitled-pdf-document-1/untitled-pdf-document.pdf

Austria Cluster. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/austria-cluster/austria-cluster.pdf

Cluster leaders. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/cluster-leaders/cluster-leaders.pdf

Cluster participants. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/cluster-participants/cluster-participants.pdf

UK Cluster. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/uk-cluster/uk-cluster.pdf

USA and Canada Cluster. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/usacanada-cluster/usacanada-cluster.pdf

xCountry. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/xcountry/xcountry.pdf

xOutreach. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/xoutreach/xoutreach.pdf

FCO application form 2017-18. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/fco-application-form-2017-18/fco-application-form-2017-18.pdf

FCO application form 2018v2. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/fco-application-form-2018-v2/fco-application-form-2018-v2.pdf

FCO proposal Integrity budget 2017-18. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/fco-proposal-integrity-budget-2017-18/fco-proposal-integrity-budget-2017-18.pdf

Integrity 2018 Activity Budget v3. https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/integrity2018activitybudgetv3/integrity2018activitybudgetv3.pdf

Top 3 deliverables (for FCO). https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/top-3-deliverables-for-fco/top-3-deliverables-for-fco.pdf


[Dec 09, 2018] Psyops oops UK-funded 'anti-Russian' programme outed in leak

Nov 28, 2018 | www.blogger.com
Isn't this interesting? A UK program to propagandize US and European audiences is set up to demonize Russia around the same time GCHQ and MI6 are busy spying on US presidential candidates and then ultimately doing their best to throw an election over here... while trying to frame Russia... for trying to throw an election over here. Cute right?

https://youtu.be/f0PY2M1r6Rc

Integrity Initiative , Russian hacking psyop

[Dec 09, 2018] 'Perpetual confrontation' MI6 chief lures young Brits into espionage with Russia-bashing

Dec 09, 2018 | eptoday.com

The head of MI6, the UK's intelligence service, hopes to recruit a new generation of tech-savvy spies, with a passionate speech urging graduates to protect the homeland against the arch nemesis who subverts the UK way of life.
"The era of the fourth industrial revolution calls for a fourth generation of espionage," Alex Younger will say at St. Andrews University on 3rd December.

To lure young Brits into the spy agency who otherwise might not have seen themselves in MI6, Younger paints an image of a clever arch nemesis –Russia– which can only be stopped with the help of brilliant young minds from all sorts of backgrounds, not just by the snobbish Oxbridge graduates typically associated with the service.

Fresh blood is needed to defend UK web domains against cyber-attacks, the spread of fake news and interference in domestic politics, Alex Younger will say, at the same time praising the old guard for "exposing" Russia in the highly-controversial Salisbury attack.

Russia, or any other UK adversary, better "not underestimate our determination and our capabilities, or those of our allies," Younger's speech warns.

Hardly historic friends and bitter Cold War rivals, the UK and Russia have seen their relations slip to new lows in March, following the poisoning of ex-Russian double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia. London immediately pinned the blame for the Salisbury incident directly on the Kremlin, and rejected any idea of an open joint investigation with Russia, insisting its own probe would suffice to make the case and then punishing Moscow with sanctions.

Moscow is also perpetually facing accusations of cyberwarfare against other states and attempts to undermine democracy and to influence the political process within those countries. And despite multiple reassurances that Moscow could not care less about the internal political struggles in foreign states, London and British mass media continue to vilify Russia with bizarre reports, like half of London's Russian community are spies for the Kremlin.

Claims of 'Russian meddling' look particularly hypocritical in the wake of a leak that exposed the Integrity Initiative – a group that claims to be fighting back against 'Russian misinformation' – being a clandestine network of influencers that manipulate European politics with the British government's backing.

The anti-Russia paranoia in the UK arguably reached its peak over the weekend, when military bases across the nation issued security alerts after a Russian TV crew was accused of spying outside the army's secret cyber warfare headquarters.

Credit : https://www.rt.com/uk/445410-mi6-spies-russia-confrontation/

[Dec 09, 2018] Hackers Leak More Details on UK's Info War in Europe

Dec 09, 2018 | sputniknews.com

International hacker group Anonymous went ahead with its efforts to counter what it calls Britain's interference with the domestic affairs of sovereign states. In a second dump of secret documents within two weeks, the hacktivists disclose more details on the ongoing UK-funded, anti-Russia information campaign spreading across Europe. The second batch of documents leaked by Anonymous unravels more information on the activities of the Integrity Initiative (II), a UK-based NGO ostensibly founded to counter disinformation and defend democratic processes from malign influence. According to the first documents leaked by the hacktivist organization last month, the project was in fact a "large-scale information secret service" sponsored and created by London to tackle 'Russian propaganda.'

However, the latest leak suggests that "the British government goes far beyond and exploits the Integrity Initiative to solve its domestic problems inside the United Kingdom by defaming the opposition."

Discrediting UK Opposition

Anonymous refers to a "scorching" article that surfaced in The Times on November 25 and was dedicated to Seumas Milne, director of strategy and communications under Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Times' official Twitter account promoted the piece three times within 24 hours on social media -- the only case for all of its articles, Anonymous says. The hacktivists add that the Integrity Initiative retweeted the "defamatory" article right after its publication (the post is now unavailable, but Anonymous provided a screengrab of the retweet).

Screenshot © Photo : Screenshot Screenshot

The group announced in November that the II constituted a network of clusters across Europe, which sought to tamper with domestic affairs of several European countries such as France, Germany, Italy, Greece, the Netherlands, Lithuania, Norway, Serbia, Spain, and Montenegro.

Countering Russia on German Soil

Another part of the leak is an interim report on the establishment of a German cluster, which was purportedly written by Hannes Adomeit, a German political expert specialising in Russian foreign policy. According to the uncovered documents, the German cluster is coordinated by suspected MI6 agent Harold Elletson.

The report focuses mainly on research of Germans' attitudes toward Russia. Adomeit says that the so-called "Russian narrative" on the origins of the crisis in Moscow's relations with the West is "widely accepted by German public opinion." He adds that further research would be carried out to examine "the reasons for the great receptivity of the Russia narrative" in Germany.

READ MORE: Switzerland Follows Russophobic Narrative by Pressuring Diplomats -- Scholars

He also addresses the case of Andrei Kovalchuk, a Russian arrested in Germany on suspicion of smuggling cocaine to Moscow from Argentina. Kovalchuk was extradited to Russia in late July -- much to the dissatisfaction of Adomeit, who suggests that German prosecutors could have "made an effort" to question him and dig up some dirt on Russia.

Watching Russia's Reaction to Catalan Events

The activities of the Integrity Initiative's Spanish cluster were partly revealed by Anonymous in the first leak on the project. However, a newly unveiled document titled "Cluster Breakdown" identifies people associated with the Spanish chapter.

The list includes territorial minister Jose Ignacio Sanchez Amor, MEP Fernando Maura, head of Spain's peacekeeping mission in Central African Republic Dionisio Urteaga Todo, European Commission Speaker Dimitri Barua, State Secretary for Foreign Affairs Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, head of Spanish delegation to NATO PA Ricardo Blanco Torno, former defence minister Eduardo Serra Rexach. Other affiliates include foreign affairs reporters and pundits from Spanish think tanks: the Barcelona Centre for International Affairs, the European Council on Foreign Relations, and the Elcano Royal Institute.

Screenshot © Photo : Screenshot Screenshot

The Spanish cluster was apparently closely watching Russia's reaction to the movement in support of Catalan independence in 2016. According to another leaked interim report , the project's members were disappointed with Russia's moderate position on the situation in Spain. However, they claimed, while Vladimir Putin insisted that the issue of Catalan sovereignty was Spain's internal affair, he was happy to watch Europe "take its own medicine" (a reference to the 2008 Kosovo declaration of independence).

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov © Sputnik / Vitaly Belousov UK Integrity Initiative Project Aims to Damage Russia's Public Image - Lavrov

This is why, they said, the Russian media took advantage of the 2016 developments in Catalonia to portray the European Union as "declining, undemocratic and troubled". They went on to link the media coverage of the Catalan events in Russia to Russia's alleged disinformation campaign against the West.

The authors contend that given that Catalonia has become part of Russia's "big narrative about the West," Russian meddling has also become part of the debates in Spain. "This represents a clear window of opportunity" for promoting anti-Russia sentiment, they conclude.

Skripal Case Coverage in Greece

The Integrity Initiative's Greek cluster was keeping a close eye on the media coverage of the Salisbury poisoning in local newspapers. They went to considerable lengths, studying 193 articles across six major media outlets. It seems, however, that the result of all the hard work was rather unsatisfactory: the authors confess that the majority of Greek newspapers adopted a neutral stance towards the Skripal case.

They claim that the Greek media were influenced into not taking sides and remaining unbiased. "The strong pro-Russian sentiment in the Greek public opinion seems to have influenced the Greek newspapers not to emphasize Russia's involvement."

The Integrity Initiative has yet to comment on this information dump. Anonymous claimed that it released the second batch of documents after the EU leaders and international organisations had ignored its first disclosure. The group accused the II and its sponsors of failing to "give assurances that the network of clusters will only be used to counter Russia's disinformation policy."

[Dec 09, 2018] Britain on the Leash with the United States but at Which End by James George Jatras

Oct 13, 2018 | off-guardian.org

The "special relationship" between the United States and the United Kingdom is often assumed to be one where the once-great, sophisticated Brits are subordinate to the upstart, uncouth Yanks.

Iconic of this assumption is the mocking of former prime minister Tony Blair as George W. Bush's "poodle" for his riding shotgun on the ill-advised American stagecoach blundering into Iraq in 2003. Blair was in good practice, having served as Bill Clinton's dogsbody in the no less criminal NATO aggression against Serbia over Kosovo in 1999.

On the surface, the UK may seem just one more vassal state on par with Germany, Japan, South Korea, and so many other useless so-called allies . We control their intelligence services, their military commands, their think tanks, and much of their media. We can sink their financial systems and economies at will. Emblematic is German Chancellor Angela Merkel's impotent ire at discovering the Obama administration had listened in on her cell phone, about which she – did precisely nothing. Global hegemony means never having to say you're sorry.

These countries know on which end of the leash they are: the one attached to the collar around their necks. The hand unmistakably is in Washington. These semi-sovereign countries answer to the US with the same servility as member states of the Warsaw Pact once heeded the USSR's Politburo. (Sometimes more. Communist Romania, though then a member of the Warsaw Pact refused to participate in the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia or even allow Soviet or other Pact forces to cross its territory.

By contrast, during NATO's 1999 assault on Serbia, Bucharest allowed NATO military aircraft access to its airspace, even though not yet a member of that alliance and despite most Romanians' opposition to the campaign.)

But the widespread perception of Britain as just another satellite may be misleading.

To start with, there are some relationships where it seems the US is the vassal dancing to the tune of the foreign capital, not the other way around. Israel is the unchallenged champion in this weight class, with Saudi Arabia a runner up. The alliance between Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman (MbS) – the ultimate Washington "power couple" – to get the Trump administration to destroy Iran for them has American politicos listening for instructions with all the rapt attention of the terrier Nipper on the RCA Victor logo . (Or did, until the recent disappearance of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Whether this portends a real shift in American attitudes toward Riyadh remains questionable . Saudi cash still speaks loudly and will continue to do so whether or not MbS stays in charge.)

Specifics of the peculiar US-UK relationship stem from the period of flux at the end of World War II. The United States emerged from the war in a commanding position economically and financially, eclipsing Britannia's declining empire that simply no longer had the resources to play the leading role. That didn't mean, however, that London trusted the Americans' ability to manage things without their astute guidance. As Tony Judt describes in Postwar , the British attitude of " superiority towards the country that had displaced them at the imperial apex " was "nicely captured" in a scribble during negotiations regarding the UK's postwar loan:

In Washington Lord Halifax
Once whispered to Lord Keynes:
"It's true they have the moneybags
But we have all the brains."

Even in its diminished condition London found it could punch well above its weight by exerting its influence on its stronger but (it was confident) dumber cousins across the Pond. It helped that as the Cold War unfolded following former Prime Minister Winston Churchill's 1946 Iron Curtain speech there were very close ties between sister agencies like MI6 (founded 1909) and the newer wartime OSS (1942), then the CIA (1947); likewise the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ, 1919) and the National Security Administration (NSA, 1952). Comparable sister agencies – perhaps more properly termed daughters of their UK mothers – were set up in Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. This became the so-called "Five Eyes" of the tight Anglosphere spook community, infamous for spying on each others' citizens to avoid pesky legal prohibitions on domestic surveillance .

Despite not having two farthings to rub together, impoverished Britain – where wartime rationing wasn't fully ended until 1954 – had a prime seat at the table fashioning the world's postwar financial structure. The 1944 Bretton Woods conference was largely an Anglo-American affair , of which the aforementioned Lord John Maynard Keynes was a prominent architect along with Harry Dexter White, Special Assistant to the US Secretary of the Treasury and Soviet agent.

American and British agendas also dovetailed in the Middle East. While the US didn't have much of a presence in the region before the 1945 meeting between US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Saudi King ibn Saud, founder of the third and current ( and hopefully last ) Saudi state – and didn't assume a dominant role until the humiliation inflicted on Britain, France, and Israel by President Dwight Eisenhower during the 1956 Suez Crisis – London has long considered much of the region within its sphere of influence. After World War I under the Sykes-Picot agreement with France , the UK had expanded her holdings on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, including taking a decisive role in consolidating Saudi Arabia under ibn Saud. While in the 1950s the US largely stepped into Britain's role managing the "East of Suez," the former suzerain was by no means dealt out. The UK was a founding member with the US of the now-defunct Central Treaty Organization (CENTO) in 1955.

CENTO – like NATO and their one-time eastern counterpart, the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization (SEATO) – was designed as a counter to the USSR. But in the case of Britain, the history of hostility to Russia under tsar or commissar alike has much deeper and longer roots, going back at least to the Crimean War in the 1850s . The reasons for the longstanding British vendetta against Russia are not entirely clear and seem to have disparate roots: the desire to ensure that no one power is dominant on the European mainland (directed first against France, then Russia, then Germany, then the USSR and again Russia); maintaining supremacy on the seas by denying Russia warm-waters ports, above all the Dardanelles; and making sure territories of a dissolving Ottoman empire would be taken under the wing of London, not Saint Petersburg. As described by Andrew Lambert , professor of naval history at King's College London, the Crimean War still echoes today :

"In the 1840s, 1850s, Britain and America are not the chief rivals; it's Britain and Russia. Britain and Russia are rivals for world power, and Turkey, the Ottoman Empire, which is much larger than modern Turkey -- it includes modern Romania, Bulgaria, parts of Serbia, and also Egypt and Arabia -- is a declining empire. But it's the bulwark between Russia, which is advancing south and west, and Britain, which is advancing east and is looking to open its connections up through the Mediterranean into its empire in India and the Pacific. And it's really about who is running Turkey. Is it going to be a Russian satellite, a bit like the Eastern Bloc was in the Cold War, or is it going to be a British satellite, really run by British capital, a market for British goods? And the Crimean War is going to be the fulcrum for this cold war to actually go hot for a couple of years, and Sevastopol is going to be the fulcrum for that fighting."

Control of the Middle East – and opposing the Russians – became a British obsession, first to sustain the lifeline to India, the Jewel in the Crown of the empire, then for control of petroleum, the life's blood of modern economies. In the context of the 19th and early 20th century Great Game of empire, that was understandable. Much later, similar considerations might even support Jimmy Carter's taking up much the same position, declaring in 1980 that "outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force." The USSR was then a superpower and we were dependent on energy from the Gulf region.

But what's our reason for maintaining that posture almost four decades later when the Soviet Union is gone and the US doesn't need Middle Eastern oil? There are no reasonable national interests, only corporate interests and those of the Arab monarchies we laughably claim as allies. Add to that the bureaucracies and habits of mind that link the US and UK establishments, including their intelligence and financial components.

In view of all the foregoing, what then would policymakers in the United Kingdom think about an aspirant to the American presidency who not only disparages the value of existing alliances – without which Britain is a bit player – but openly pledges to improve relations with Moscow ? To what lengths would they go to stop him?

Say 'hello' to Russiagate!

One can argue whether or not the phony claim of the Trump campaign's "collusion" with Moscow was hatched in London or whether the British just lent some " hands across the water " to an effort concocted by the Democratic National Committee, the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, the Clinton Foundation, and their collaborators at Fusion GPS and inside the Obama administration. Either way, it's clear that while evidence of Russian connection is nonexistent that of British agencies is unmistakable, as is the UK's hand in a sustained campaign of demonization and isolation to sink any possible rapprochement between the US and Russia .

As for Russiagate itself, just try to find anyone involved who's actually Russian. The only basis for the widespread assumption that any material in the Dirty Dossier that underlies the whole operation originated with Russia is the claim of Christopher Steele , the British "ex" spy who wrote it, evidently in collaboration with people at the US State Department and Fusion GPS. (The notion that Steele, who hadn't been in Russia for years, would have Kremlin personal contacts is absurd. How chummy are the heads of the American section of Chinese or Russian intelligence with White House staff?)

While there are no obvious Russians in Russiagate, there's no shortage of Brits. These include (details at the link) :

Andrew Wood , a former British ambassador to Russia Stefan Halper , a dual US-UK citizen. Ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove . Robert Hannigan , former director of GCHQ; there is reason to think surveillance of Trump was conducted by GCHQ as well as by US agencies under FISA warrants. Hannigan abruptly resigned from GCHQ soon after the British government denied the agency had engaged in such spying. Alexander Downer , Australian diplomat (well, not British but remember the Five Eyes!). Joseph Mifsud , Maltese academic and suspected British agent.

At present, the full role played by those listed above is not known. Release of unredacted FISA warrant requests by the Justice Department, which President Trump ordered weeks ago, would shed light on a number of details. Implementation of that order was derailed after a request by – no surprise – British Prime Minister Theresa May . Was she seeking to conceal Russian perfidy, or her own underlings'?

It would be bad enough if Russiagate were the sum of British meddling in American affairs with the aim of torpedoing relations with Moscow. (And to be fair, it wasn't just the UK and Australia. Also implicated are Estonia, Israel, and Ukraine .) But there is also reason to suspect the same motive in false accusations against Russia with respect to the supposed Novichok poisonings in England has a connection to Russiagate via a business associate of Steele's, one Pablo Miller , Sergei Skripal's MI6 recruiter . (So if it turns out there is any Russian connection to the dossier, it could be from Skripal or another dubious expat source, not from the Russian government.) Skripal and his daughter Yulia have disappeared in British custody. Moscow flatly accuses MI6 of poisoning them as a false flag to blame it on Russia.

A similar pattern can be seen with claims of chemical weapons use in Syria : "We have irrefutable evidence that the special services of a state which is in the forefront of the Russophobic campaign had a hand in the staging" of a faked chemical weapons attack in Douma in April 2018. Ambassador Aleksandr Yakovenko pointed to the so-called White Helmets, which is closely associated with al-Qaeda elements and considered by some their PR arm: "I am naming them because they have done things like this before. They are famous for staging attacks in Syria and they receive UK money." Moscow warned for weeks before the now-postponed Syrian government offensive in Idlib that the same ruse was being prepared again with direct British intelligence involvement, even having prepared in advance a video showing victims of an attack that had not yet occurred.

The campaign to demonize Russia shifted into high gear recently with the UK, together with the US and the Netherlands, accusing Russian military intelligence of a smorgasbord of cyberattacks against the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and other sports organizations, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the Dutch investigation into the downing of MH-17 over Ukraine, and a Swiss lab involved with the Skripal case, plus assorted election interference. In case anyone didn't get the point, British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson declared : "This is not the actions of a great power. This is the actions of a pariah state, and we will continue working with allies to isolate them."

To the extent that the goal of Williamson and his ilk is to ensure isolation and further threats against Russia, it's been a smashing success. More sanctions are on the way . The UK is sending additional troops to the Arctic to counter Russian "aggression." The US threatens to use naval power to block Russian energy exports and to strike Russian weapons disputed under a treaty governing intermediate range nuclear forces. What could possibly go wrong?

In sum, we are seeing a massive, coordinated hybrid campaign of psy-ops and political warfare conducted not by Russia but against Russia, concocted by the UK and its Deep State collaborators in the United States. But it's not only aimed at Russia, it's an attack on the United States by the government of a foreign country that's supposed to be one of our closest allies, a country with which we share many venerable traditions of language, law, and culture.

But for far too long, largely for reasons of historical inertia and elite corruption, we've allowed that government to exercise undue influence on our global policies in a manner not conducive to our own national interests. Now that government, employing every foul deception that earned it the moniker Perfidious Albion , seeks to embroil us in a quarrel with the only country on the planet that can destroy us if things get out of control.

This must stop. A thorough reappraisal of our "special relationship" with the United Kingdom and exposure of its activities to the detriment of the US is imperative.

James George Jatras is an analyst, former U.S. diplomat and foreign policy adviser to the Senate GOP leadership.

[Dec 09, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

Dec 09, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream.

We have already seen many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be part of a different project.

The ' Integrity Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.

On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media smear campaign (pdf) against him.


bigger

The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .
---
Update - The Integrity Initiative confirms the release of its documents. - End Update
---

The Initiative is nominally run under the (government financed) non-government-organisation The Institute For Statecraft . Its internal handbook (pdf) describes its purpose:

The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.

It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and promises that:

Cont. reading: British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

[Dec 09, 2018] Integrity Initiative: Country list of MI6 agents of influence according to the leak

Dec 09, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:12:45 PM | link

Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:

Germany

Harold Elletson ,Klaus NaumannWolf-Ruediger Bengs, Ex Amb Killian, Gebhardt v Moltke, Roland Freudenstein, Hubertus Hoffmann, Bertil Wenger, Beate Wedekind, Klaus Wittmann, Florian Schmidt, Norris v Schirach

Sweden, Norway, Finland

Martin Kragh , Jardar Ostbo, Chris Prebensen, Kate Hansen Bundt, Tor Bukkvoll, Henning-Andre Sogaard, Kristen Ven Bruusgard, Henrik O Breitenbauch, Niels Poulsen, Jeppe Plenge, Claus Mathiesen, Katri Pynnoniemi, Ian Robertson, Pauli Jarvenpaa, Andras Racz

Netherlands

Dr Sijbren de Jong, Ida Eklund-Lindwall, Yevhen Fedchenko, Rianne Siebenga, Jerry Sullivan, Hunter B Treseder, Chris Quick

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:13:28 PM | link
Spain

Nico de Pedro, Ricardo Blanco Tarno, Eduardo Serra Rexach, Dionisio Urteaga Todo, Dimitri Barua, Fernando Valenzuela Marzo, Marta Garcia, Abraham Sanz, Fernando Maura, Jose Ignacio Sanchez Amor, Jesus Ramon-Laca Clausen, Frances Ghiles, Carmen Claudin, Nika Prislan, Luis Simon, Charles Powell, Mira Milosevich, Daniel Iriarte, Anna Bosch, Mira Milosevich-Juaristi, Tito, Frances Ghiles, Borja Lasheras, Jordi Bacaria, Alvaro Imbernon-Sainz, Nacho Samor

US, Canada

Mary Ellen Connell, Anders Aslund, Elizabeth Braw, Paul Goble, David Ziegler, Evelyn Farkas, Glen Howard, Stephen Blank, Ian Brzezinski, Thomas Mahnken, John Nevado, Robert Nurick, Jeff McCausland, Todd Leventhal

UK

Chris Donnelly, Amalyah Hart, William Browder, John Ardis, Roderick Collins, Patrick Mileham, Deborah Haynes, Dan Lafayeedney Chris Hernon, Mungo Melvin, Rob Dover Julian Moore, Agnes Josa, David Aaronovitch, Stephen Dalziel, Raheem Shapi, Ben Nimmo, Robert Hall Alexander Hoare Steve Jermy Dominic Kennedy
Victor Madeira Ed Lucas Dr David Ryall
Graham Geale Steve Tatham Natalie Nougayrede
Alan Riley [email protected] Anne Applebaum Neil Logan Brown James Wilson Primavera Quantrill
Bruce Jones David Clark Charles Dick
Ahmed Dassu Sir Adam Thompson Lorna Fitzsimons Neil Buckley Richard Titley Euan Grant
Alastair Aitken Yusuf Desai Bobo Lo Duncan Allen Chris Bell
Peter Mason John Lough Catherine Crozier
Robin Ashcroft Johanna Moehring Vadim Kleiner David Fields Alistair Wood Ben Robinson Drew Foxall Alex Finnen
Orsyia Lutsevych Charlie Hatton Vladimir Ashurkov
Giles Harris Ben Bradshaw
Chris Scheurweghs James Nixey
Charlie Hornick Baiba Braze J Lindley-French
Craig Oliphant Paul Kitching Nick Childs Celia Szusterman
James Sherr Alan Parfitt Alzbeta Chmelarova Keir Giles
Andy Pryce Zach Harkenrider
Kadri Liik Arron Rahaman David Nicholas Igor Sutyagin Rob Sandford Maya Parmar Andrew Wood Richard Slack Ellie Scarnell
Nick Smith Asta Skaigiryte Ian Bond Joanna Szostek Gintaras Stonys Nina Jancowicz
Nick Washer Ian Williams Joe Green Carl Miller Adrian Bradshaw
Clement Daudy Jeremy Blackham Gabriel Daudy Andrew Lucy Stafford Diane Allen Alexandros Papaioannou
Paddy Nicoll

Jen , Nov 24, 2018 2:25:43 PM | link
I see that the cluster of UK journalists to receive propaganda from the Integrity Initiative includes Guardian writer and former Le Monde chief editor (run out by her senior editors for her "Putinesque" leadership style) Natalie Nougayrede. As if The Guardian needs any more persuasion or encouragement to recede deeper into its labyrinthine network of rabbit-holes. Jonathan Freedland must be jumping up and down in an infantile tantrum that Nugget-head got such privileged access.
Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:30:45 PM | link
Agents of influence in Italy according to the leak:

Italy
Fabrizio Luciolli Vittorfranco Pisano Jason Wiseman Beppe Severigni Jacopo Iacoboni Alvise Armellini

erichwwk , Nov 24, 2018 2:32:15 PM | link
@ #2 pretzelattack Thanks for the Robert Mueller Guardian article link.

Am I the only one not to know that "As acting deputy attorney general, he [Robert Mueller] was in charge of the investigation and indictment of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the Libyan convicted of the terrorist attack that brought down Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie in Scotland just before Christmas 1988.

Seems every new article I read on Robert Mueller, he was carrying out another CIA covert plan.


The Framing of al-Megrahi by Gareth Peirce London Review of Books 24 Sept 2019

Laguerre , Nov 24, 2018 2:32:37 PM | link
Britain has been a US dog for years, most overtly in Blair's time over Iraq and Afghanistan, but things haven't really changed. Britain's military has become more and more dependent on the US. There is no longer an independent nuclear deterrent - the weapons are rented from the US, and I'm certain that they couldn't be used without US approval (sure to be a backdoor somewhere in the electronics which would enable the US to turn them off, if the US disagreed). The F35s they've insisted on buying are probably in the same situation.

They're not slaves, or rather 'vassals' - the current word of sensitivity about the EU. More active collaborators, which implies initiatives also stemming from Britain.

One should also recall Britain's function as US agent in the European Union. They were opposed to many EU proposals, obviously to fit in with US desires. The most recent example is the Galileo GPS system - they were opposed to it for years, but as Ivan Rogers told us (former Brit ambassador to the EU), the opposition he was instructed to make failed.

It's all gone off a bit recently though. Trump is not interested in Britain in the way Obama was. Brexit is a nativist movement, not what America wants. If Brexit goes through finally, the interest of the US will be even less, as we can no longer intervene on the US's behalf in Europe.

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:35:35 PM | link
French agents of inluence according to leak:
France
Francoise Thom Jusin Vaisse Thomas Bertin Caroline Gondaud Guillaume Schlumberger Raphael de Lagarde Roland Galharague
Martin Briens Jean-Christophe Noel Laurent Rucker Alexandre Escorcia Nikola Guljevatej David Behar Claire le Flecher Remy Bouallegue Paul Zajac Nicolas Roche Manuel Lafont Rapnouil Laurent Rucker Patrick Hardouin Etienne de Durand
Janaina Herrera
Bart Hansen , Nov 24, 2018 2:41:35 PM | link
I just knew if I scrolled down far enough the name Anne Applebaum would appear - Queen of the Dual-Loyalists; but Wm. Browder!?

From her Wikipedia page: "She is a visiting Professor of Practice at the London School of Economics, where she runs Arena, a project on propaganda and disinformation." I reckon she "Practices" at the Post.

steve , Nov 24, 2018 2:43:03 PM | link
Of course none of this will be reported in the "real" news outlets.
dh , Nov 24, 2018 2:43:03 PM | link
@7 "...things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as they'd intended..."

Crimea is the one that really hurts. NATO was all set to build a shiny new base.

james , Nov 24, 2018 2:50:46 PM | link
@18 russ... yes - that pretty well sums it up... as for putin falling into the neoliberal order - at this point it does look that way.. i am curious how russia could move forward at this moment in some alternative way? what would the alternative way look like?

@zanon... thanks, but the list given for usa/canada has only one person on it that appears to be a canuck - glen howard.. and unless it is a different glen howard, the guy is some curling wiz, but no mention of his anti-russian credentials... his e mail address is given as jamestown.org which is connected to the jamestown foundation.. turns out, he is not a canuck either - "Glen Howard President

Mr. Howard is fluent in Russian and proficient in Azerbaijani and Arabic, and is a regional expert on the Caucasus and Central Asia. He was formerly an Analyst at the Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) Strategic Assessment Center. His articles have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Central Asia-Caucasus Analyst, and Jane's Defense Weekly. Mr. Howard has served as a consultant to private sector and governmental agencies, including the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Intelligence Council and major oil companies operating in Central Asia and the Middle East."


one of the people on the usa-can list - john nevado appears to be an equadorian...

bottom line - as a sensitive canuck, i think someone needs to change the list to say usa and remove canada, as no canucks are on the list from the small research i did...

that is the sad thing about canada - it gets lumped in with the usa for good and bad on a regular basis... maybe they could put crystia freelands name on this list... i think she would qualify as a rabid anti-russia canuck...

james , Nov 24, 2018 2:51:44 PM | link
@31 dh.. i think you are right about that.. annie applepants is still aching over that... her and crystia freeland..
frances , Nov 24, 2018 2:55:24 PM | link
reply to Plantman 13
re:
"Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow."
I don't think it was the Republican party that was the source of the deadlock.
I think it may have been Tillerson. He had close ties to Russia and in March 2018, he was forced out of State and Pompeo came in.
"President Donald Trump nominated Pompeo as Secretary of State in March 2018, with Pompeo succeeding Rex Tillerson after his dismissal."
jayc , Nov 24, 2018 3:00:23 PM | link
"The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who receives (pdf) £8,100 per month ..."

That's a decent salary. He probably can work from home too - like Bellingcat. A fake NGO operating with fake "integrity" to identify "fake news". Everything is rather upside-down these days. Good to have all those names attached. Where's C Summers on the list? - maybe he never realized till now the monthly salaries available.

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 3:21:34 PM | link
Agents from:

Central Europe
Anne Bader Eduard Abrahayman Mitar Kuyundzic Plamen Pantev Solomon Passy Jaroslav Hajecek Jakub Janda Frantisek Vrabel Peter Kreko Jan Strzelecki Mario Nicolini
Austria
Harold Elletson Susan Stewart

Yul , Nov 24, 2018 3:23:47 PM | link
@ Zanon #28
All the French clique works for the government, especially Foreign affairs @ Quai d'Orsay.
Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 3:25:10 PM | link
Baltic section according to the leak:
Tomas Tauginas Asta Skaisgiryte Saulius Guzevicius Eitvydas BAJARŪNAS Renatas Norkus
Vytautas Bakas Laurynas Kasciunas Dr Povilas Malakauskas Ainis Razma Mantas Martisius Linas Kojala
Major Jane Witt Claire Lawrence James Rogers Andriy Tyushka Viktorija Urbonaviciute
frances , Nov 24, 2018 3:27:18 PM | link
reply to dh 31
"Crimea is the one that really hurts. NATO was all set to build a shiny new base."
True that!
I was blown away by their arrogance when I saw the US had bids out to remodel the existing Russian buildings in the Crimean port to for a school, housing.
It clearly never occurred to them that they could/would lose, nor did they even bother to think that Russia may keep an eye out for such mind blowing acts of stupidity such as these bids?
Jackrabbit , Nov 24, 2018 3:31:44 PM | link
Where's C Summers on the list?

There's only one "Craig" for all countries.

Perhaps Craig Oliphant is our resident troll? He was just talking trash about Russia on the Thanksgiving Open Thread .

ICRA Think tank bio


Craig Oliphant is Senior Advisor, Peaceful Change Initiative (PCI), based in London, and Senior Research Associate at the Foreign Policy Centre. Until the end of 2010, he worked in the diplomatic service and was Head of the Eastern Research Group in the Foreign Office, dealing with Russia and Eastern Europe.

In the first half of the 1990s, Craig held posts in Brussels at NATO as an advisor on Russia/Eastern Europe and was then at the OSCE in The Hague, as a regional advisor to the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities. Before that he was at the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), as a senior lecturer at the Conflict Studies Research Centre at RMA Sandhurst; he also worked for several years in the 1980s at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Munich, Germany. Craig has published widely on Russia/FSU affairs. He is a member of IISS; RUSI; a Fellow of Royal Society of Arts; and is a Vice Chairman of the British Georgian Society.


Independent Conflict Research & Analysis (ICRA) was founded in May 2010 as a not-for-profit organisation providing objective conflict analysis and training. It is led by Christopher Langton OBE, who spent 32 years in the British Army. During this time he served in Northern Ireland, Russia, the South Caucasus where he was Deputy Chief of UNOMIG and held defence attaché appointments in Russia, the South Caucasus, and Central Asia. Subsequently he worked at the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) for 9 years where he was the focus on Afghanistan. At IISS he held appointments as the Head of Defence Analysis, Editor of "The Military Balance" and Research Fellow for Russia before being appointed Senior Fellow for Conflict & Defence Diplomacy.

He has worked as an independent expert on the international investigation into the Russia-Georgia conflict of August 2008 and on the Kyrgyzstan Inquiry Commission investigating the violence that occurred in Southern Kyrgyzstan in 2010. Christopher was Advisor to the UK-China Conflict Prevention Working Group 2014-2015 under the aegis of Saferworld and supported by DFID.

He is also on the Board of a nonprofit that is active in Russia and other countries .
His photo is there.

Jackrabbit , Nov 24, 2018 3:33:25 PM | link
@craigsummers

Are you Craig Oliphant?

frances , Nov 24, 2018 3:36:33 PM | link
reply to:
This cureemt state of affairs cannot last longer. Right?
Posted by: PacoRepublicano | Nov 24, 2018 3:02:15 PM | 37
That may be why the globalists seem to be a bit off the rails.
I read in an article on the present French fuel tax protests/riots that a recent poll of world millennials found that 50 percent would go along with a change of govt, it was 75 percent in France. Concurrent with these riots the French govt is trying to bring back mandatory military service for those in the 3rd year of high school.
Indoctrination camps ala China is my guess.
craigsummers , Nov 24, 2018 4:01:51 PM | link
No Jackrabbit. That isn't me. I am far less important than you want to make me. Nor do I work for ORB International.
Bob , Nov 24, 2018 4:05:47 PM | link
Can we call 'Craig' Summers 'Anne' Summers?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ann_Summers

james , Nov 24, 2018 4:10:18 PM | link
i do think it is better to ignore the local shill... they say the same stupid shit on a regular basis.. out of the kindness of b, it is unlikely to stop... quoting jamestown.org is more of the same stupidity that i have come to expect from our resident shill..
Anta , Nov 24, 2018 4:27:51 PM | link
Craigsummers, | 36 |: "According to Bellingcat..."

Craig, you should see a neuropsychologists to check your sensory systems as well as basic cognitive abilities.

bevin , Nov 24, 2018 4:34:08 PM | link
Two more links
https://twitter.com/ShoebridgeC/status/1066080476404822017

https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all/
New I hope, from Murray's blog.
Note that Ben Bradshaw a Labour MP, famous forbeing the first MP who married a man, a fellow BBC reporter, and a Blairite is one of the scum on the UK list. So is 'Prof' Alan Riley, a lawyer with extensive interests in oil.
These people are constantly being wheeled out in the media as independent experts.
Talking of Murray's blog the latest piece laments the death of the Al Nusra spokesman who was killed yesterday, by fellow salafists, as a democrat, secular etc etc.

Jackrabbit , Nov 24, 2018 4:58:18 PM | link
Well Craig, the blatent disinfo that you write @36 is so godawful that I actually believe that you are nobody. Just another pathetic paid jerk-off.

But the embarrassment of Cold Warriors destroying democracy in order to save it is so consistent with your own goofball antics that I had to ask.

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 4:59:26 PM | link
Check the propaganda organization's twitter account: https://twitter.com/initintegrity
They have been in a retweeting spam mode since they got exposed. Quite hilarious.
Entropy Wins , Nov 24, 2018 5:08:57 PM | link
"The Initiatives Guide to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation"."

This following document explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a Dirty Trick operation against Russia. It also mentions the use of aspects of Russian culture to be used as a weapon against it (eg the church)

https://www.pdf-archive.com/2018/11/02/iihandbookv2/iihandbookv2.pdf

It lists tream members, funding for specificic tasks and this statement:

"Code of Conduct (Greg to commence with internet etiquette)
Anonymity of the team remains paramount. As our activity increases we will, no doubt, attract unwanted attention."

That directly contradicts the official UK government statement to the Russians that the Integrity Initiative is a public domain program.

spike , Nov 24, 2018 5:17:57 PM | link
the secret to all good propaganda: accuse the other side of doing what you're guilty of

so people believe that anonymous collective managed to gain access, via 'hacking'to the FCO computer system? really? seriously? you think that the second, or third most critical/secure UK govt. system can be either 'spearfished' or accessed by some other means?

have a word with yourself

uncle tungsten , Nov 24, 2018 5:29:17 PM | link
Feeding trolls is pointless they are forever ravenous. That is until the willow finds its mark.

Thank you b and zanon and sam @8. You make a magnificent day for our world.

Harry , Nov 24, 2018 5:35:36 PM | link
Do we know this is "genuine"?

I will say this. I had always assumed Ed Lucas was ex -UK intel. He worked at the Moscow embassy for the FCO and has stuck to the "save the baltics from the evil empire" line ever since. There is a surprisingly tight network of folk (Yes Ann Applebaum) who have been together hating the commies and now the non-commie Russians since the 90s. Some of them are very prominent now (Yes Chrystia) despite having backgrounds which might suggest an irrational agenda driven outlook (Nazis?). They meet up at conferences discussing the Soviet/Russian menace and never mention that on raw spend, Nato outspends their hated Russia by 10x or 20x.

Still, for some reason these people are considered angels of light and the rest of us need to follow their barely literate lead (actually Ed Lucas is very literate, as is Peter Pomerantsev). Anders Aslund a lot less so.

Ghost Ship , Nov 24, 2018 5:36:57 PM | link
>>>>: Forthestate | Nov 24, 2018 12:26:09 PM | 10
"A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?

Luke "The Plagiarist" Harding and the other Guardian hacks must be really pissed off that they weren't considered to be worthy of even a sub-cluster.

Ghost Ship , Nov 24, 2018 5:41:16 PM | link
>>>>: Anya | Nov 24, 2018 11:57:00 AM | 4
For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.

No, not really. MI6 have demonstrated even greater levels of stupidity in the past. For example, supporting the salafist Libyan Islamic Fighting Group and then being surprised at the blowback that was the Manchester Arena suicide bombing by one of its followers

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 6:23:51 PM | link
Ghost Ship

Now you are being too kind:
Manchester Arena suicide bomber rescued from Libya by Royal Navy
https://www.rt.com/uk/434701-manchester-bomber-royal-navy

-

Greek group according to leak: Despina afentouli ELIAMEP Thanos Dokos Ioannis Armakolas George Tzogopoulos Dimitris Xenakis Katerina Oikonomakou Ioannis Goranitis Tasos Telloglou Katerina Chryssanthopoulou Sissy Alonistiotou

uncle tungsten , Nov 24, 2018 6:30:36 PM | link
I would include Russia Insider on the list of fake news fronts that they support.
simjam , Nov 24, 2018 6:40:48 PM | link
This is the most explosive piece you have ever published. Another indication that the West is in a "panic" stage of its demise.
Willie Wobblestick , Nov 24, 2018 7:06:22 PM | link
Hastily Written Job Application

Dear Department of Integrity
I'd like to apply for a job.
I'm short of work at the moment
And could do with an extra few bob.

I don't have a problem lying
And am prepared to work scruple-free.
I will smear anyone you want
In return for an appropriate fee.

I've established a reputation
As a bit of an internet bard,
So talking some utter bollocks
Wouldn't be particularly hard.

I've studied your regular output
Viz the work of Bellingcat
And know I can do a lot better
Than that useless speccy twat.

Vladimir Putin eats babies
And Lavrov tortures rabbits.
Bashar Assad wears make-up
And Rouhani has disgusting habits

The above is a free sample
Of my slimy slanderous verse,
And as long as the money's right
I know I could a lot worse.

I'm not a very nice person
With terrible self-esteem,
So I'm sure I'll fit in swimmingly
With your personality-disordered team.

I know I'll just be perfect
So why not take the chance?
For a mere eight grand a month
I'll happily dance the Devil's dance.


wendy davis , Nov 24, 2018 7:06:24 PM | link
i remain agnostic for now on the authenticity of the 'integrity initiative, but is has a definite Gladio/NATO feel to it, so it's entirely plausible.

but as i was pasting together a new diary on the ever-increasing increased jeopardy to julian assange by way the Wikileaks account on twitter, they had these tweets up:


https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1066266619863855105

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1066357360153821189

but the breaking story, two days after this:

'Ecuador's president has signed a decree terminating the ambassador to the United Kingdom, Carlos Abad. All diplomats known to Assange have now been terminated to transferred away from the embassy.'

was this:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1066370157826777091

psychohistorian , Nov 24, 2018 7:29:48 PM | link
@ Willie Wobblestick with the righteous poem....very nice, may it go viral with b's piece

@ wendy davis with the status of julian assange...thanks
I think these actions reek of desperation and lack of understanding of what exposure may ensue from julian going down in some way. Julian may be holding old news but I expect that there are depths of it that will be new to many.

The circus tent is starting to burn and the animals are freaking out, ready to stampede.

Can we evolve away from the private finance motivated world soon, please and thank you?

wendy davis , Nov 24, 2018 8:00:42 PM | link
@psychohistorian # 65

the first wikitweet was to the anon 'operation integrity initiative'; the second one says: "We have analyzed these documents and assess that a portion of them show hallmarks of being fabrications."

assange attorney hannah jonnason (@AssangeLegal) had been looking carefully at them, parsing them in belief, but finally had re-tweeted wikileaks take. the 'portion' as i took it by way of the subtweets was 'fabricated emails'. she's gret, plus brilliant, but on one thread i'd posted she'd called marcy wheeler 'fbi informant MW', lol.

karlof1 , Nov 24, 2018 8:17:14 PM | link
Golly gee-whiz! Why am I not surprised? Gotta have complementary sources of disinformation operating in tandem with BigLie Media! Indeed, the synchronicity of so much fairly well proves BigLie Media is part of this system. The Tower of Immorality being built primarily by the Outlaw US Empire and its UK sidekick is like a Ponzi Scheme in that for it not to fall it must have ever more lies continually added where eventually everything said by them will be 100% false.
psychohistorian , Nov 24, 2018 8:18:16 PM | link
It is getting tedious to have to type my personal information in every time I want to comment. B has written that he is working on issues but I may forgo the web site link if this continues....lazy as I am

@ wendy davis with the marcy wheeler as fbi informant claim....marcy seems well intentioned but seems to have some way weird bias blinders in her thinking. I have stopped following her because her signal to noise ratio got too bad. There are lots of folks like her I am sorry to write. Well intentioned but drinking some koolaid that has them mixed up in strategic ways.....almost like it was planned.....maybe more lists will come out now of other organizations that are paying folk to build and/or maintain certain narratives like GWOT, etc.


And yes, we can take the truth. It will set many free.

karlof1 , Nov 24, 2018 8:33:59 PM | link
To further my @67--

The chemical attack on Aleppo earlier today wasn't accompanied by immediate synchronized media and NATO political leader accusations against the terrorists like we've seen associated with the FFs. I've yet to see any, nor have any been reported on Twitter.

james , Nov 24, 2018 8:40:28 PM | link
@ 68 pscychohistorian.. ditto your comments on marcy wheeler... all the folks at emptywheel have gone off the rails, led by lead bozo - bmaz... i used to enjoy reading her, but the hate russia memo they all swallowed is tedious slogging and i am not up for it..
psychohistorian , Nov 24, 2018 8:56:04 PM | link
@ karlof1 with the reference to chemical attack on Aleppo today

I just posted a link from Xinhuanet on the thanksgiving open thread about it.

Roy G , Nov 24, 2018 9:11:53 PM | link
James @70 i'm right there with ya. Watching how the Russian Derangement Syndrome has afflicted otherwise sane and smart people has been disillusioning to say the least.
juliania , Nov 24, 2018 9:15:46 PM | link
Blessings, b and comment support on this - it takes me back to the days when Five Eyes was unravelling, and I can't but think that dastardly plot to surveil and snoop by means of developing technology was going to be a worldwide instrument of torture and oneupmanship that many thought would make that consortium top dog for all time.

So, they smashed the Guardian's computers, and they co-opted or blackmailed where they could, but the genie was out. And out for good. It would make a good spy novel if it weren't for the very real deaths and destruction that have happened in the wake of the revelations. And that will happen before this sorry historical episode is over. I simply believe, however, that thanks to nearly everyone contributing to this forum, such possibilities are diminishing. Thank you,b and everyone.

wendy davis , Nov 24, 2018 9:33:57 PM | link
@ psychohistorian #68

well, never mind.

Uncle $cam , Nov 24, 2018 9:35:33 PM | link

Wikileaks: "British Army creates a 1,500 strong team of Facebook psychological operations warriors...3 years ago."


on a different note... Hope -if he isn't dead,-Assange, makes it through the weekend...

Uncle $cam , Nov 24, 2018 9:41:12 PM | link
Wikileaks: "British Army creates a 1,500 strong team of Facebook psychological operations warriors...3 years ago." grrr. sorry...
V , Nov 24, 2018 10:42:02 PM | link
b's article is a sad, sad, commentary on today's reality.
But in fact, there is nothing shocking or even unexpected; just sad...
Geo , Nov 24, 2018 10:45:06 PM | link
Curious if and how this recent push against Zuckerberg by the UK government plays into this.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers?CMP=share_btn_tw

I'm not well versed enough myself but I am baffled by this whole mess. All sides of this are entities I don't trust at all: Intelligence agencies, Facebook, Trump and his crooked playmates... seems there are no sides to trust or root for in this whole game of espionage.

Jen , Nov 24, 2018 10:54:06 PM | link
Ghost Ship @ 58: There is a Guardian writer in that UK journalist sub-cluster list and that is Natalie Nougayrede. No surprise there ... over at Off-Guardian.org, commenters have their own unprintable names for her. And you thought the bar at Integrity Initiative wasn't low enough for Fraudian hacks.
SayLess , Nov 25, 2018 12:16:03 AM | link
It is important to note that Wikileaks questioned the authenticity of these documents. We should be cautious before drawing any conclusions and wait for more information.

"We have analyzed these documents and assess that a portion of them show hallmarks of being fabrications."

https://web.archive.org/web/20181125051405/https:/twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1066357360153821189

iv> Jelena Milić is actually doing very good job of making people sick of NATO and the UKUS governments. She's a laughing stock in Serbia. Idk why are they paying her in the first place. She could easily be Kremlin lobbyist the way how she's doing her job :) If they are all incapable like her I wouldn't be worried too much about this

Posted by: Б , Nov 25, 2018 12:41:26 AM | link

Jelena Milić is actually doing very good job of making people sick of NATO and the UKUS governments. She's a laughing stock in Serbia. Idk why are they paying her in the first place. She could easily be Kremlin lobbyist the way how she's doing her job :) If they are all incapable like her I wouldn't be worried too much about this

Posted by: Б | Nov 25, 2018 12:41:26 AM | link

Brian , Nov 25, 2018 1:06:56 AM | link
So Facebook is s co sponsor ? Social media not just about bringing people together but manipulator and subversion .
If they were targeting Jews this would be called antisemitism , as iybisvtheytecyargetumg russians ,
What role did they play In the novichok hoax ?
Brian , Nov 25, 2018 1:09:15 AM | link
'Making people see we arecinder attack by russia ' !
Could war paranoia . Do the British people want their funds to be used to manipulate them ?
Brian , Nov 25, 2018 1:26:23 AM | link
'Clusters established in each country' reads an awful lot like subversion and treachery
Should this be a matter for country police and national security ?
Quentin , Nov 25, 2018 1:54:01 AM | link
Brian @ 84

Right. Like sleeper cells ready at a moment's notice to spread terrifying disinformation and propaganda.

alain , Nov 25, 2018 2:06:13 AM | link
@Zanon 28
Même pour les Français, l'information est aujourd'hui en anglais... Ceci dit, l'hystérie et l'"activité" anti-russe n'est pas très effective en France... Trop d'Histoire et d'histoires partagées pour adhérer à cette soupe servie pour les peuples anglo-saxons... Mais enfin, pas besoin d'avoir lu Hegel pour comprendre que toute cette agitation-propagande sert in fine l'ennemi désigné, la Russie; et précipite encore un peu plus, si c'est possible, la fin de l'empire.
alain , Nov 25, 2018 2:10:11 AM | link
Oops... And by the way, thanks again b. for being :-)
b , Nov 25, 2018 2:25:31 AM | link
Hmmm -
WikiLeaks @wikileaks - 10:45am · 24 Nov 2018

Purported internal documents, from a UK government "counter-Russia" influence network targeting mostly Europe and US, appear on site often alleged to be used by Russian state hackers. cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation

We have analyzed these documents and assess that a portion of them show hallmarks of being fabrications.

I have no idea what the Wikileaks folks mean. I did not notice any signs of fakery in the stash. There are some small but explainable inconsistencies (i.e. between budget plan and approved budget?) and the whole stash is likely bigger than the published one. But all the details I could check seem to fit.

b , Nov 25, 2018 3:17:29 AM | link
This seems to confirm that the papers are real:
Jakub Janda @_JakubJanda - 8:58pm · 23 Nov 2018

So the Russians hacked Institute for Statecraft (@InitIntegrity).

I am one of many people mentioned in here, as part of wide movement of folks trying to push hard aganist Kremlin influence operations.

It is a badge of honor to be among people who are together standing up!


Russ , Nov 25, 2018 3:37:33 AM | link
Posted by: b | Nov 25, 2018 2:25:31 AM | 88

"I have no idea what the Wikileaks folks mean. I did not notice any signs of fakery in the stash."

Who's running the show at Wikileaks by now? (I assume Assange can't do so from his hideout.) My memory's hazy, but I recall there being some kind of internal struggle there, and that a pro-Wall Street faction opposed the release of the Bank of America files and destroyed them.

Are they now trying to turn and appease their system enemies? Wouldn't be the first such sell-out. Maybe they're jealous of the prestige, lucre, and system respectability of the Snowden/Greenwald/Intercept industrial complex.

Emmanuel Goldstein , Nov 25, 2018 4:01:51 AM | link
This has everything...right down to FCO email addresses. For FCO read MI6. Either this is colossal disinfo from Anonymous or a significant operation is truly blown. To resort to something like this, on this scale, showa that they are worried about something. Perhaps RT is getting wore viewing and hits in the UK and Europe than their outlets are. Once the internet was invented this was bound to happen. In some societies this would be regarded as espionage and subversion and these shills would be rounded up for a little chat. Great journalism b, stay safe......at least we now know who the provocateurs for the next false flag are....
donkeytale , Nov 25, 2018 4:12:41 AM | link
Zero Hedge also striking similar skeptical notes. They retweet Assange from 2016 stating anonymous to be an FBI cutout organisation. These anti-Russian organisations are real and their aim is to fight Russian propaganda, they will say by publishing truth while Russia says with lies. Of course they are funded. So is Russian propaganda. What the Russians are doing is classic "Spy vs Spy" and Barflies of course lap up the kool-aid just as easily as every kool-aid drinker we deride. The constant state of confirmation bias and psychological projection on the internets isn't even newsworthy but it's interesting sociology. Wash. Rinse. Repeat. Same as it ever was. Whatever gets us through the night. It's alright. But is Assange only speaking truth when he confirms our biases? I have more respect for him.


Thanks b for posting Wikileak's skeptical take even as you wish to believe otherwise. That's integrity. And to those who say Assange is only doing so to suck up belatedly to the US as a possible defense strategy I can only SMH. More projection. This is what you might do maybe if you were in his shoes.

Felipe , Nov 25, 2018 4:25:10 AM | link
This is so big of a news but the western media do not say a word about it!
This screams subversion, Gladio from the very top/deep state of western society.
Russ , Nov 25, 2018 4:30:24 AM | link
Posted by: donkeytale | Nov 25, 2018 4:12:41 AM | 92

"And to those who say Assange is only doing so to suck up belatedly to the US as a possible defense strategy I can only SMH. More projection. This is what you might do maybe if you were in his shoes."

Who said that, donkeydumbass? Learn to read. I asked if the post-Assange Wikileaks might be trying to do that. Of course I don't know what Assange himself might or might not do, any more than you do.

Peter AU 1 , Nov 25, 2018 4:32:15 AM | link
b 88

Perhaps a little bit of appeasement.. unless something changes, the brits will be sending Assange off to yankee land soon.

Horse's mouth , Nov 25, 2018 5:57:04 AM | link
https://apnews.com/fc570e4b400f4c7db3b0d739e9dc5d4d

The head of the French government's cyber security agency, which investigated leaks from President Emmanuel Macron's election campaign, says they found no trace of a notorious Russian hacking group behind the attack.

In an interview in his office Thursday with The Associated Press, Guillaume Poupard said the Macron campaign hack "was so generic and simple that it could have been practically anyone."

He said they found no trace that the Russian hacking group known as APT28, blamed for other attacks including on the U.S. presidential campaign, was responsible.

Poupard is director general of the government cyber-defense agency known in France by its acronym, ANSSI. Its experts were immediately dispatched when documents stolen from the Macron campaign leaked online on May 5 in the closing hours of the presidential race.

Poupard says the attack's simplicity "means that we can imagine that it was a person who did this alone. They could be in any country."

___

b , Nov 25, 2018 5:58:16 AM | link
@all

Some commentators claim that 'Anonymous' is an FBI operations and that lets them doubt this issue.

Actually 'Anonymous' has been used as a cover by various shady agencies and individuals. Everybody can publish whatever they want under the 'Anonymous' moniker. The moniker has no credibility or meaning.

As always one has to distinguish between the source of information and the actual content of the information.
Here the source is obviously shady. But the content, as far as I can tell, seems to be real.
---

Also - don't feed the house troll. Craigsummers is allowed to comment here solely for our amusement. There is no need to discuss whatever he posts.

john stack , Nov 25, 2018 6:12:18 AM | link
I cannot get into the list of agents. Who is listed for Ireland ?
blues , Nov 25, 2018 6:28:41 AM | link
My comments have been getting short of late.

It's crystal clear to me that the so-called "British" anti-Russia project is really sponsored by the CIA. Most everything is. I think. How else are they keep their VERY lucrative racket going?

BM , Nov 25, 2018 6:51:59 AM | link
In countries that may be hostile to this programme (Serbia, Spain, Italy for example), the exposed cluster members should be immediately arrested as foreign spies and tried for treason, and the exposed British Embassy contacts should be immediately expelled.
Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow.

Interesting isn't it, that from March 2018 the Trump Administration is no longer blocking this programme! When was Trump's first meeting with President Putin, wasn't that in March? Immediately afterwards of course he was lambasted. Was he turned at that point?

S , Nov 25, 2018 7:22:21 AM | link
@BM: The meeting was in summer. Early March was when the Skripal saga started.
William Bowles , Nov 25, 2018 7:57:23 AM | link
@15 Re Analytica:

It's owned by a US firm, or at least it was, until they wound it up.

Anya , Nov 25, 2018 8:48:43 AM | link
"Edward Snowden accused an Israeli cybersecurity firm of developing and selling surveillance software to Saudi Arabia, enabling the murder of dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=25&v=_LeOt4HCI-M

So humanitarian of Israeli!

Ghost Ship , Nov 25, 2018 8:52:17 AM | link
>>>> blues | Nov 25, 2018 6:28:41 AM | 98
It's crystal clear to me that the so-called "British" anti-Russia project is really sponsored by the CIA. Most everything is. I think. How else are they keep their VERY lucrative racket going?

Nah. like Skripal this is a home grown effort. After backing that loser Clinton with the Steele file, the British Conservative government which likes to have its head even further up Washington's arse than Tony Blair's is scared shitless that Trump will shit on them from a great height for backing his rival. I suspect he will wait for Brexit to go through and then take a dump on them when they turn up with their begging bowl in Washington looking for a "free trade deal". They're hoping that with these attacks on Russia they will ingratiate themselves with the Washington foreign policy establishment (Pat Lang's Borg) enough to reduce the incredible volumes of shit Trump would dump on them. It looks like it's working at the moment, but then Trump is known to be capricious so its anybody's guess what happens later. Bear in mind that if the Conservative government make enough mistakes, it's that socialist Corbyn who replaces it which is its Worst. Nightmare. Evah.

steve , Nov 25, 2018 9:01:14 AM | link
The bottom line as Al Gore said is there is no overriding authority. Sites like Above Top Secrect are obviously run by people who want things kept top secrect. Snopes revealed itself with its take on the White Helmets in Syria. Remember when the Greenpeace guy turned out to be a shill for Nuclear Energy.
alaff , Nov 25, 2018 9:08:00 AM | link
Thank you. Very good covering of the 'event', written in clear accessible language.
I am afraid that what was discovered is only a small part of the ocean of lies in which they are trying to force us to swim.
I am amazed how these people can sleep well. Rotten and lying through and through...

In fact, nothing "surprising" or "unbelievable" was found. Specialists, experts, as well as ordinary people, who have been interested in the topic, have long understood that it is about a targeted propaganda, which operates according to its laws. This propaganda calls truth a lie, and a lie truth, it calls white black and black it calls white. The work of this propaganda is also clearly visible, for example, when, on the eve of some important event, the "world community" suddenly (mean, "suddenly") finds out something "sensational", while MSM all start writing the same thing with a certain bias (often anti-Russian). The Russian Foreign Ministry has repeatedly pointed out the obvious coordination of the work of the Western media when it comes to 'anti-Russian news'. All these info are in briefings and statements of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, which are publicly available on the Ministry's website.

Especially clearly a targeted coordinated work of propaganda was visible during the events in Syria, in particular, during the liberation of Aleppo. Remember all these "the last hospitals". Even high-ranking representatives of the UN, many of whom are essentially Western protégés, were also participating in this propaganda. For those who are interested in how this worked during the liberation of Aleppo, I recommend reading this in full. A lot of interesting details.

One thing is good - that such info become publicly known. Maybe more people will wake up and think about what is going on.

Ghost Ship , Nov 25, 2018 9:13:38 AM | link
We have analyzed these documents and assess that a portion of them show hallmarks of being fabrications.

This particular story might originate within MI6. If MI6 knew that the Russians had gathered compromising information on this operation, MI6 would put out a story favourable to them to capture the narrative before the Russians could. Like all black propaganda, they would have to include some of the real truth to make the fake "truth" appear reliable. It also allows the supposedly devious twats at MI6 to demonstrate their steadfastness in "fighting" the Russians.

BTW, it's entirely possible that the Skripal incident was by the Russians but only designed to incapacitate Skripal pere as a warning to him or MI6 to behave themselves and not do stupid things in future but the Conservative government rather stupidly decided to put out a bullshit narrative about what happened. Furthermore, don't forget that Churchill, the hero of the Conservative Party used chemical weapons against the Russians/Soviets. Most Brit's probably never knew or have forgotten but I doubt the Russians have or ever will.

donkeytale , Nov 25, 2018 9:14:41 AM | link
Here is the link to the Zero Hedge commentary , which was posted on Friday, including the Assange tweet from 2016.
WikiLeaks ‏ Verified account @wikileaks

Replying to @MashiRafael
"Anonymous" has been controlled by FBI agent "Sabu" and other agencies, including the CIA. Likely an attempt to manipulate.

6:28 PM - 24 Oct 2016

BM , Nov 25, 2018 9:32:22 AM | link
We have analyzed these documents and assess that a portion of them show hallmarks of being fabrications.

I have no idea what the Wikileaks folks mean. I did not notice any signs of fakery in the stash.
Posted by: b | Nov 25, 2018 2:25:31 AM | 87

The best way the elite can undermine wikileaks is to infiltrate it and undermine it from within, as they did to Amnesty International, and later Human Rights Watch, both of which are completely controlled by US and UK intelligence services. I think it is a given that they will have successfully infiltrated wikileaks - because I think it is impossible that wikileaks could have avoided it completely, but lets hope that wikileaks keep up sufficient defences to isolate the infiltration and limit its damage. With the current threats to Assange that will be a big challenge!

If, as I suspect, this claim that the documents were fake was being pushed by an infiltrator, then that infiltrator is raising flags to himself, so it is a high risk action and emphasises the desperation the elite are in, that they are willing to burn a key asset.

William Bowles , Nov 25, 2018 9:57:25 AM | link
The docs are fakes? I don't think so, there's just too much detail and the names it exposes, Aaronovich, Marcus (BBC), the financing. It's an awful lot of exposing in order to mislead us don't you think? And if it was, it was one, gigantic failure!

The best way is to see how the MSM deal with it, if at all, so today for example, there's been no mention on the BBC's RSS feed and there was none yesterday. I'd say that judging by the nature and structure of the 'Institute of Statecraft', it's straight out of Whitehall.

wendy davis , Nov 25, 2018 10:05:18 AM | link
@ psychohistorian #68

my apologies for my truncated response. what i'd meant to say is that we're talking past one another. my fault entirely, as i never should have brought wheeler into the discussion, and derailed my larger point. but i got in a hurry, and that was that.

but to those wondering why 'assange' would have noted that 'some portions have been fabricated', asange notably has been incommunicado for the past seven months, and any 'visitors' (really just his legal team) are forced to surrender all their communication device before entering the embassy. so who on the Wikileaks team had decided that is unknowable, of course. but on one of the subtweets where b had noted jakub janda's pride in being part of the organization (nice catch, by the way, b) one idiot linked to his home website noting that assange is a Mossad operative.

when i'd been contemplating writing some of up, i will say that my favorite part was the handbook, most especially this great psyop:

"What funding do they have/have access to/need? Caution! This is always a very sensitive issue. NB 1 If asked about money for funding activities of a cluster, always be firmly vague and helpfully uninformative and at all costs avoid making any funding commitments until we have discussed it! NB 2 When talking about the Institute, be sure you can explain clearly what we are and what we do. NB 3 if asked about our funding, be very clear: the Integrity Initiative is funded by the Institute for Statecraft. The IfS gets its funding from multiple sources to ensure its independence. These include: private individuals; charitable foundations; international organisations (EU, NATO); UK Govt (FCO, MOD"

one commenter on the cyber guerilla doc dump page had noted: 'Propagandist Stephen Dalziel is a given a regular platform by Monocle 24 in the UK and rebroadcast around the world. Dalziel shills for the fraud "Bellingcat".'


Anya , Nov 25, 2018 10:13:53 AM | link
And what is the difference between the MbS treatment of "unpleasant" Khashoggi and the US/UK treatment of "unpleasant" Assange?

The absolute majority of the "progressives" and "liberals" in both the US and the UK are sheepishly quiet when the most important journalist of our times, Julian Assange, has been smeared and his life endangered by the kangaroo courts of the western corrupt judiciary.

https://consortiumnews.com/2018/11/24/the-fate-of-julian-assange-chris-hedges-interviews-consortium-news-editor-in-chief-joe-lauria/

mike k: "The US Mafia Government kangaroo court gathers it's phony "legal" forces, salivating in anticipation of Assange as a choice morsel for it's evil appetite. Their "logic" goes like this, "if we say you are guilty, then you are guilty".

And where is the zionized MSM? -- With the kangaroo courts, of course, working in a accord with the mega war profiteers and other big-time criminals.

Noirette , Nov 25, 2018 10:27:10 AM | link
In France, last Pres. election, the favored candidate from the right (Républicains) was Alain Juppé. As the F establishment likes to mimic the US in all ways, they instored 'primaires' - primaries, to 'elect' 'the most popular candidate' from the two main parties. As the French don't glom the depth of corruption of the US system and how to do that, and just love - for all kinds of reasons - such gadgets, the vote at the Républicain table (even the name is a tribute) turned out surprise to be for Francois Fillon - who was (is) Catholic, pro-Russia, while your standard right-wing F-flavored stooge.

He was brought down speedily in a corruption scandal, for hiring his wife and children amongst others to do no work or symbolic stuff. One third of F Parliament members do this (off the cuff nos., but attested to ..), it is completely accepted. An allowed 'perk' - a way to spend the budgets > 'favored' 'loyal' ppl.

The effiency and speed of this attack surprised me. Fillon - no fool - 'withdrew' so to speak and made no waves beyond the acceptable i.e. stalwart opposition / defense at first, then went to work for a Financial Co. All the hype about suing the wife, about getting money back, whatever, died pronto.

I have no idea how this was organised. (The left was conveniently split.. between the entrenched "Socialists" and "Mélenchon," France Insoumise ) and so the end-run was between the vilified National Front (renamed now) Marine Le Pen, party which survives only as they play their puppet role to guarantee they collect low-class opposition to then always lose facing either the Socialists or the Républicains.

Piotr Berman , Nov 25, 2018 10:44:22 AM | link
NYT today:

Syria Urges U.N. to Condemn Rebels After Apparent Chemical Attack
Syria accused rebel forces of launching an attack in Aleppo that sent scores of choking victims to hospitals. Medical officials suspected chlorine had been used.

Characteristically, the attack is "apparent", but almost strangely, NYT reported Reuters news providing an inconvenient story rather fast.

lysias , Nov 25, 2018 10:44:25 AM | link
If some at least of the documents are fabrications, the plan of the Western intelligence agencies may be to expose some false details in the documents to discredit the whole story.
donkeytale , Nov 25, 2018 10:49:04 AM | link
So, what several posters here are now stating or at least implying is the @wikileaks account is basically the same as "Anonymous"? That is, it is merely a cover used by shadowy individuals and therefore no longer possesses any credibility unless it posts something with which we can all agree?

And the thoughts it expressed do not necessarily bear any relationship to Julian Assange?

Unless, of course, we agree with those thoughts?

Blooming Barricade , Nov 25, 2018 10:50:38 AM | link
The Integrity Initiative is now trying to smear and attack Seumas Milne, Jeremy Corbyn's communications director and a key voice on the anti-war, anti-capitalist left, tweeting a Times article that appears to have been contributed to by them. They also retweeted Michael Weiss on Milne, who they appear to want to remove from a future Corbyn government in the vein of that Spanish minister This should be a HUGE scandal given that this is funded by the UK government and thus the Tory administration and is thus GOVERNMENT PROPAGANDA against the leader of the opposition, paid for by the taxpayer and in line with big business/military Euro-Atlanticist lobby. Thanks to the digital urban guerrilla site for exposing this assault on socialism and the public. https://twitter.com/InitIntegrity/status/1066691553350086656
AntiSpin , Nov 25, 2018 11:21:03 AM | link
Best MoA blockbuster yet!!! Somewhere down there Joseph Goebbels is gazing upward at all this exposed chicanery, eyes shining with delight, and also green with envy.
Ghost Ship , Nov 25, 2018 11:58:48 AM | link
>>>>: AntiSpin | Nov 25, 2018 11:21:03 AM | 117
down there Joseph Goebbels is gazing upward

Goebbels was a rank amateur and grossly overrated - he could do white propaganda when things were going well for the Nazis which wasn't difficult, otherwise he was useless. When things started to go bad for the Nazis, the British, particularly Sefton Delmer, started running rings around him. The Americans really never understood black propaganda but why should they, and the British are still trying to fight World War 11 with their black propaganda and are still losing.

Jackrabbit , Nov 25, 2018 12:20:47 PM | link
donkeytale

Donkeys don't read too good.

Reread b's comment @96.

And 'echo chamber' allegations are laughable coming from a Kool-Aid drinker/pusher.

Trailer Trash , Nov 25, 2018 12:49:07 PM | link
These kind of propaganda campaigns end up as own goals for the establishment. Peons and serfs don't need to know what is going on, but the Dear Leaders' functionaries do need accurate info in order to make correct decisions that further establishment goals. With all the smoke and chaos of conflicting stories, can bureaucrats keep their lies straight? I think not.

As I understand it, glowing but inaccurate fabricated reports submitted to the former German Democratic Republic (East Germany) Dear Leaders left them unable to comprehend just how unhappy the GDR citizens actually were, so the collapse came as a surprise. [1] We can see this happening in Afghanistan today. The Pentagon insists they are "winning" while the Taliban-controlled territory continues to increase. When Uncle Sam is finally driven out, it will come as a complete surprise to the DC Dunces who believe their own phony reports.

[1] Fulbrook, Mary; Anatomy of a Dictatorship: Inside the GDR 1949-1989; Oxford University Books; 1995

Zanon , Nov 25, 2018 1:00:36 PM | link
Just imagine the response and publicity if this was a Russian government funded organization, having a network of agents of influence groups of people in western europe...
frances , Nov 25, 2018 2:25:27 PM | link
reply to Russ 89
"Who's running the show at Wikileaks by now?"

Good question. Do you recall when Assange's attorney was killed when pushed in front of a train at the time the Wikileaks founder Gavin Macfadyen died?

The staff roster at Wikileaks then went through an almost total turnover and there were reports that someone was escorted from the building with a bag over their head and there were reports that Assange's deadman switch was activated but stopped. All this occurred back in 2016.
The reason no one who knows Assange is being allowed physical contact may be because someone else is in his place.I have a sad feeling that he is in a Langley basement.

wendy davis , Nov 25, 2018 5:44:38 PM | link
on sept. 26, 2018 julian assange had named Kristinn Hrafnsson of iceland as the new editor-in-chief of wikileaks. at that time julian had been cut off from communicating for six months.

an hour ago wikileaks had tweeted:

@wikileaks: WikiLeaks Retweeted Integrity Initiative 'UK government backed anti-Russian influence network account for "Integrity Initiative" confirms release of documents.'

@InitIntegrity 'Here is our statement on the recent publication by Russian media of hacked Integrity Initiative documents.'

they offered some caveats, among them:

"We have not yet had the chance to analyse all of the documents, so cannot say with confidence whether they are all genuine or whether they include doctored or false material. Although it is clear that much of the material was indeed on the Integrity Initiative or Institute systems, much of it is dated and was never used. In particular, many of the names published were on an internal list of experts in this field who had been considered as potential invitees to future cooperation. In the event, many were never contacted by the Integrity Initiative and did not contribute to it. Nor were these documents therefore included in any funding proposals. Not only did these individuals have nothing to do with the programme – they may not even have heard of us. We are of course trying to contact all named individuals for whom we have contact details to ensure that they are aware of what has happened."

now my guess, fwiw, is that the WL knows chapter and verse how the CIA vault 7 revelations can be used to create false email addresses, etc., so perhaps they'd spotted some.

but assange's attorney jennifer robinson did get to see him on nov. 16.

https://on.msnbc.com/2zm3Eg8

wendy davis , Nov 25, 2018 5:47:36 PM | link
oh, fie; i'd forgotten the Tweet's url:

https://twitter.com/wikileaks/status/1066804727973855233

arby , Nov 25, 2018 6:25:40 PM | link
Russia seizes Ukraine naval ships


https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-46338671

Mr Reynard , Nov 25, 2018 10:00:42 PM | link
British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns ??
Secret ??? Is that an OXYMORON ??
Col. B. Bunny , Nov 26, 2018 3:00:33 AM | link
Thus is an extraordinary article. It describes distilled hypocrisy on the part of the U.S. and U.K. who have conniptions over Russian "meddling," that has proved to be thin gruel indeed, but who organize a vast, expensive enterprise of their own to implement disinformation and smear campaigns to influence the internal affairs of other countries and friendly ones at that. Russia purchases a modest message on Twitter (?) and that is an attack on "our democracy."The attack on the now oddly-sequestered Skripals is an epic East Asian fire drill with Theresa May written all over it and it sure as hell has nothing "made in Moscow" about it.

Anne Appelebaum and the other "journalists" have some 'splainin' to do about what independent, unbiased journalists are doing as players in government propaganda organizations.

Brian , Nov 26, 2018 11:42:00 AM | link
Is the Sea of Azov incident a ploy to put off presidential elections in Ukraine ?
https://mobile.twitter.com/I_Katchanovski/status/1067050340623630337
Zanon , Nov 26, 2018 1:07:20 PM | link
'Anti-Russian psy-ops' program confirms UK govt funding, Anonymous denies leak
https://www.rt.com/news/444899-uk-psyop-leak-reaction/
kula , Nov 26, 2018 2:32:19 PM | link
Look y'all, @craigsummers is a paid troll. So all your responses are earning him or her income. Trolling is an art form. b, you could regularly remined new readers to ignore mwn.
Anton from Russia , Nov 27, 2018 5:14:22 AM | link
I am Russian, live in Russia.
This is the most interesting journalistic investigation I've read in the last six months.
Thanks.
Most of all I am surprised, the whole world is in economic crisis, people in developed countries are becoming poorer. Britain has an external debt of 7.5 trillion-314% of GDP. But all useless garbage the money is. And most importantly, Why?
We all (USA, Russia, Britain, EU) are just village losers who fight in a roadside ditch, proving that "I am good, they are bad".
And at this time past us at full speed is a huge Chinese train.
Anton from Russia , Nov 27, 2018 5:42:03 AM | link
And the destruction of the MH-17 Boeing by the Russians is also disinformation.
Do you know what the official version of the investigation is?
"Once upon a time. One air defense "Buk" secretly arrived from Russia, shot once, one rocket, in one civil plane, and left back to Russia" (facepalm). Seriously, I'm not kidding, this nonsense is the official version.
The involvement of several dozen Ukrainian air defense " Buk " located in the area of the disaster, not even considered.
No one knows what they were doing.
All photos of "wandering, mad Russian "Buk" were false.

But sanctions imposed by the EU after the disaster, no one is going to cancel. And to assume aloud "that" new authorities" of Ukraine at which hands on an elbow in blood " can be guilty of accident, it is impossible, taboo.

Emmanuel Goldstein , Nov 27, 2018 5:45:32 AM | link
Neatly observed Anton, neatly observed....;-)
Zanon , Nov 27, 2018 5:51:24 AM | link
Just been some days and this big news is already dead. Really scary how big of a impact the western MSM really have in silencing topics.
Russ , Nov 27, 2018 6:52:49 AM | link
@ 134

I bet if I surveyed my acquaintances (American middle class, NYT-reader types) few if any would even have heard of this potential Sarajevo flashpoint.

b , Dec 2, 2018 10:19:08 AM | link
Derelict Scottish mill is shadowy hub in UK's fight against Putin's propaganda machine

Gateside Mills in rural Fife is the official headquarters of the controversial Institute for Statecraft (IFS) – a "think tank" set up to combat Russian disinformation.

For the tiny number of people aware of its existence, Gateside Mills is a derelict building in rural Fife without any obvious signs of life.

Anyone curious enough to carry out further investigation might find a seemingly small Scottish charity is registered there.

But the Sunday Mail can reveal the crumbling Victorian mill is actually the official headquarters of the controversial Institute for Statecraft (IFS) – a shadowy "think tank" whose Integrity Initiative programme has been set up to combat Russian propaganda.

Leaked documents prove the organisation received hundreds of thousands of pounds of funding from the British Government via the Foreign Office.
...
The manager of the Integrity Initiative appears to be Christopher Donnelly.

A website biography states he is a graduate of Manchester University and reserve officer in the British Army Intelligence Corps who previously headed the British Army's Soviet Studies Research Centre at Sandhurst.

Between 1989 and 2003, he was a special adviser to Nato Secretaries General and was involved in dealing with the disintegration of the Soviet Union and reform of newly emerging democracies in Central and Eastern Europe.

He left NATO in 2003 to set up and run the UK Defence Academy's Advanced Research and Assessment Group. In 2010, he became a director of IFS.

[Dec 09, 2018] NATO's Clandestine Bureau UK 'Integrity Initiative' Spreading Anti-Russian Propaganda - 21st Century Wire

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John C Carleton 2 days ago ,

"UK 'Integrity "

Thanks!

Needed a good laugh!

Rollo10 3 days ago ,

Russia are the problem along with China, because they both oppose their NWO agenda! This agenda has been getting pushed from UK for decades now. It first started back in 1800's, but now is world wide. The Corporate & Bankers want complete control of all economies & jobs.
This way they control everything, where and who manufactures what and how much, all controlled by Corporations. Governments become non existent, as do the Electorate. This would have been obvious IF all TPP-TTIP-CETA Treaties had been signed. We'd have had one huge Single Market that excluded BRICS, who'd have been forced in by war!
To their end, 'deep state; then attacked Rouseff in Brazil, had her 'impeached' and placed their puppet Temer in charge, as an 'anchor' to BRICS, as well as creating problems in ME, where China's One Belt One Road [New Silk Road] crosses continents.
The more people become aware of their intentions, the harder it becomes for them to win, as they are now losing ground all round the world. The last two, Israel & UK are about to fall. Netinyahoo has been charged with Corruption and May in UK, is on the verge of being brought down, after being the first PM to be charged and found guilty of Contempt for Parliament! Next to fall, the corrupt EU.

verner 3 days ago ,

CIA they are everywhere!

Rollo10 verner 3 days ago ,

I think you'll find it's Secular Zionists!
https://www.ukcolumn.org/ar...

John2o2o2o Rollo10 3 days ago ,

No, no, no! CIA in the US, MI6 in the UK, Secular Zionists in Cloud Cuckoo Land.

imbroglio verner 2 days ago ,

Pro-Israel lobby Influence on US congress. --- http://www.informationclear...

[Dec 09, 2018] Showdown Moment -- British Enemy Apparatus Very Exposed, Very Ready for Termination LaRouchePAC

Notable quotes:
"... This is the context in which to see the blatant, dangerous gambits to wreck the Buenos Aires gathering of leaders, and any other such future opportunity, coming from the British Empire crowd, in the form of staged confrontations, lies and subversion. ..."
"... Look at recent destabilizing events: the Nov. 24 chemical weapons attack on Syrians in Aleppo; the stoking of suffering and strife at the Mexico-U.S. border; and on Nov. 25, Ukraine's naval provocation against Russia in the Black Sea. The British government asset, the "Integrity Initiative" is fully deployed to goad the U.S. and Western Europe to launch an offensive against Russia over the Ukraine incident, blaming Russia for "aggression" against Ukraine. The British imperialists are making a habit of exposing their own role in demanding world war! ..."
"... These provocations are not a sign of power, but of desperation, desperation to stop the spreading success of the New Paradigm of collaborative development expressed in the Belt and Road Initiative, and what lies ahead if the U.S. joins up. Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche today emphasized that each time the British Imperialist apparatus steps forward in its own name to sabotage world peace, it works to the detriment of their dying system. The Empire is dangerous, but all the easier to crush. ..."
Nov 28, 2018 | larouchepac.com
We are in a showdown moment. At this week's Group of 20 Summit -- only three days away, in Buenos Aires, there is the potential for Great Power diplomacy in the direction of a New Paradigm of foreign relations, as an outcome of the sideline meetings of heads of state and government of the United States, China, Russia, India and others.

The growing momentum for New Paradigm economic development is seen in high-level events this month in six Western European nations: in Germany, the "Hamburg Summit: China Meets Europe" (Nov. 26-27); in France, the Lyon "Franco-Chinese Forum" (Nov. 26-28); in Spain, President Xi Jinping's state visit (Nov. 27-29); in Portugal, Xi's visit (Dec. 4-5); in Italy, a new Xinhua-associated Italian financial media service will be set up (Nov. 6 agreement); in Norway, the first Polar Route icebreaker delivery of Yamal LNG, for transshipment from the northern port of Honnigsvag.

This is the context in which to see the blatant, dangerous gambits to wreck the Buenos Aires gathering of leaders, and any other such future opportunity, coming from the British Empire crowd, in the form of staged confrontations, lies and subversion.

Look at recent destabilizing events: the Nov. 24 chemical weapons attack on Syrians in Aleppo; the stoking of suffering and strife at the Mexico-U.S. border; and on Nov. 25, Ukraine's naval provocation against Russia in the Black Sea. The British government asset, the "Integrity Initiative" is fully deployed to goad the U.S. and Western Europe to launch an offensive against Russia over the Ukraine incident, blaming Russia for "aggression" against Ukraine. The British imperialists are making a habit of exposing their own role in demanding world war!

These provocations are not a sign of power, but of desperation, desperation to stop the spreading success of the New Paradigm of collaborative development expressed in the Belt and Road Initiative, and what lies ahead if the U.S. joins up. Schiller Institute Chairwoman Helga Zepp-LaRouche today emphasized that each time the British Imperialist apparatus steps forward in its own name to sabotage world peace, it works to the detriment of their dying system. The Empire is dangerous, but all the easier to crush.

The Nov. 25 Ukrainian naval breach of Russian territorial waters was long pre-planned. As the Italian military journal Difesa Online wrote on Nov. 25, "it was evident to all those who follow local events that for some days already, the Poroshenko government in Ukraine was trying to provoke an armed confrontation with Moscow in the Crimean waters." Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, said the same yesterday, adding a warning. "We are talking about a pre-planned, deliberate, and now realized large-scale provocation.... I think everybody should be careful next time. I think there will be a next time, considering what is happening now."

President Donald Trump's first response to the Ukraine incident, Nov. 26, was to express concern, and hopes for settlement. "We do not like what's happening, either way; ... hopefully, it will get straightened out." President Vladimir Putin will issue his statement on this incident in a few days.

From London, however, comes a raving "script" of what Trump and the West must do against Russia. It is the featured item on the website of the Integrity Initiative, which is a British intelligence black war propaganda operation. Its funding is from the U.K. Foreign and Commonwealth Office. Its Nov. 26 posting is titled, "West Is Once Again Failing Test Set by Russian Aggression," by Edward Lucas, formerly of The Economist , and a longtime Russia-hater, who wrote such books as Deception: Spies, Lies and How Russia Dupes the West (2012) and The New Cold War: Putin's Russia and the Threat to the West (2nd ed., 2014). Lucas calls for "kinetic, symbolic, and financial measures" against Russia. This is to include, the West sending military aid to Ukraine, running a NATO flotilla to the Ukrainian port of Mariupol on the Sea of Azov, putting sanctions on Russian officials and businessmen present in the West, and cutting Russia off from Western finance. Lucas says that the West didn't act against Nazi Germany's 1939 invasion of Poland, but they must act now against Russia's aggression against Ukraine.

Lucas is part of the British "cluster" of Integrity Initiative's operatives, which also includes former British Ambassador to Russia Sir Andrew Wood of Orbis Business Intelligence, the firm of "former" MI6 agent Christopher Steele, who fabricated the infamous anti-Trump dossier. These figures are at the heart of the coup operations against Trump, and before that, the Obama Administration election subversion.

Zepp-LaRouche nailed the Integrity Initiative in a Sputnik interview published yesterday, now being run in media internationally. She said that the group's activity displays the " modus operandi of British intelligence operations, and it very well may turn out, that it is this network, which is deeply involved in 'Russiagate' and the entire coup against President Trump."

It is now urgent for all the documents bearing on these criminal, treasonous operations to be de-classified, and the full story revealed. Every hour counts.

[Dec 09, 2018] NYT and CIA have had relationship with, and was caught having planted CIA workers as NYT writers

Notable quotes:
"... Non-elite members of the Party -- functionaries -- mistake their "secret" knowledge as professional courtesy rather than as perquisite and status marker. (I don't suppose it's a secret to anyone that the US CIA regularly plants stories in the NYTimes and elsewhere... unless you weren't paying attention in the strident disinfo campaign prior to the Iraq invasion.) ..."
Aug 30, 2012 | www.theguardian.com
sanda1scuptorNYC , 30 Aug 2012 07:36
Howard Zinn said, in a speech given shortly after the 2008 Presidential election, "If you don't know history, it's like you were born yesterday. The government can tell you anything." (Speech was played on DemocracyNow www.democracynow.org about Jan. 4, 2009 and is archived, free on the website.)

Being older (18 on my last Leap Year birthday - 72), I recall the NYTimes and CIA have had relationship with, and was caught having "planted CIA workers" as NYTimes writers. Within my adult lifetime, in fact.

sigil , 30 Aug 2012 05:49

This is what the CIA reflexively does: insists that [...] it is an "intelligence matter".

In a sense the CIA is always going to be right on this one - "Central Intelligence Agency" - but only as a matter of nomenclature, rather than of any other dictionary definition of the word "intelligence".

Brusselsexpats , 30 Aug 2012 05:49
Actually the collusion between the CIA and big business is far more damaging. The first US company I worked for in Brussels (it was my first job) was constantly being targeted by the US media for having connections to corrupt South American and Third World regimes. On what seemed like an almost monthly basis our personnel department would send round memos saying that we were strictly forbidden to talk to journalists about the latest exposé.

It was great fun - even the telex operators knew who the spies were.

kcameron , 30 Aug 2012 05:26
The line "'The optics aren't what they look like,' is truly an instant classic. It reminds me of one of my favorite Yogi Berra quotes (which, unlike many attributed to him, is real, I think). Yogi once said about a restaurant in New York "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." Perhaps Yogi should become an editor for the Times.
AmityAmity , 30 Aug 2012 04:55
British readers will no doubt be shocked -- shocked! -- to learn of cozy relations between a major news organization and a national intelligence agency.

... ... ...

MiltonWiltmellow , 30 Aug 2012 02:40

"'I know the circumstances, and if you knew everything that's going on, you'd know it's much ado about nothing,' Baquet said. 'I can't go into in detail. But I'm confident after talking to Mark that it's much ado about nothing.'

"'The optics aren't what they look like,' he went on. 'I've talked to Mark, I know the circumstance, and given what I know, it's much ado about nothing.'"

How can you have a Party if you don't have Party elites?

And how can a self-respecting member of the Party claim their individual status within the Party without secret knowledge designed to identify one another as members of the Party elite?

[Proles are] natural inferiors who must be kept in subjection, like animals ... Life, if you looked about you, bore no resemblance not only to the lies that streamed out of the telescreens, but even to the ideals the Party was trying to achieve. ... The ideal set up by the Party was something huge, terrible, and glittering -- a world of of steel and concrete, of monstrous machines and terrifying weapons -- a nation of warriors and fanatics, marching forward in perfect unity, all thinking the same thoughts and shouting the same slogans, perpetually working, fighting, triumphing, persecuting -- 300 million people all with the same face. The reality was decaying, dingy cities, where underfed people shuffled to and fro in leaky shoes... [ 1984 ,pp 73-74]

It makes no difference if an imagined socialist England, a collapsing Roman city-state empire, an actual Soviet Union, or a modern American oligarchy.

Party members thrive while those wretched proles flail in confused and hungry desperation for something authentic (like a George Bush) or even simply reassuring (like a Barack Obama.)

Non-elite members of the Party -- functionaries -- mistake their "secret" knowledge as professional courtesy rather than as perquisite and status marker. (I don't suppose it's a secret to anyone that the US CIA regularly plants stories in the NYTimes and elsewhere... unless you weren't paying attention in the strident disinfo campaign prior to the Iraq invasion.)

Manzetti has "no bad intent" because he is loyal to the Party.

Like all loyal (and very well compensated) Party members, he would never do anything as subversive as reveal Party secrets.

People can be detained for almost any reason these days!

After all, what's the future of a Party that lacks effective enforcement?

[Dec 09, 2018] The fatal flaw of neoliberalism: it s bad economics: Neoliberalism and its usual prescriptions – always more markets, always less government – are in fact a perversion of mainstream economics by Dani Rodrik

Notable quotes:
"... The term is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation or fiscal austerity. Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality, led to the loss of our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash ..."
"... The use of the term "neoliberal" exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated with two developments, neither of which Peters's article had mentioned. One of these was financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008 financial crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle . The second was economic globalisation, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to a new, more ambitious type of trade agreement. Financialisation and globalisation have become the most overt manifestations of neoliberalism in today's world. ..."
"... That neoliberalism is a slippery, shifting concept, with no explicit lobby of defenders, does not mean that it is irrelevant or unreal. ..."
"... homo economicus ..."
"... A version of this article first appeared in Boston Review ..."
"... Main illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare ..."
Nov 14, 2017 | www.theguardian.com
As even its harshest critics concede, neoliberalism is hard to pin down. In broad terms, it denotes a preference for markets over government, economic incentives over cultural norms, and private entrepreneurship over collective action. It has been used to describe a wide range of phenomena – from Augusto Pinochet to Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, from the Clinton Democrats and the UK's New Labour to the economic opening in China and the reform of the welfare state in Sweden.

The term is used as a catchall for anything that smacks of deregulation, liberalisation, privatisation or fiscal austerity. Today it is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas and practices that have produced growing economic insecurity and inequality, led to the loss of our political values and ideals, and even precipitated our current populist backlash .

We live in the age of neoliberalism, apparently. But who are neoliberalism's adherents and disseminators – the neoliberals themselves? Oddly, you have to go back a long time to find anyone explicitly embracing neoliberalism. In 1982, Charles Peters, the longtime editor of the political magazine Washington Monthly, published an essay titled A Neo-Liberal's Manifesto . It makes for interesting reading 35 years later, since the neoliberalism it describes bears little resemblance to today's target of derision. The politicians Peters names as exemplifying the movement are not the likes of Thatcher and Reagan, but rather liberals – in the US sense of the word – who have become disillusioned with unions and big government and dropped their prejudices against markets and the military.

The use of the term "neoliberal" exploded in the 1990s, when it became closely associated with two developments, neither of which Peters's article had mentioned. One of these was financial deregulation, which would culminate in the 2008 financial crash and in the still-lingering euro debacle . The second was economic globalisation, which accelerated thanks to free flows of finance and to a new, more ambitious type of trade agreement. Financialisation and globalisation have become the most overt manifestations of neoliberalism in today's world.

That neoliberalism is a slippery, shifting concept, with no explicit lobby of defenders, does not mean that it is irrelevant or unreal. Who can deny that the world has experienced a decisive shift toward markets from the 1980s on? Or that centre-left politicians – Democrats in the US, socialists and social democrats in Europe – enthusiastically adopted some of the central creeds of Thatcherism and Reaganism, such as deregulation, privatisation, financial liberalisation and individual enterprise? Much of our contemporary policy discussion remains infused with principles supposedly grounded in the concept of homo economicus , the perfectly rational human being, found in many economic theories, who always pursues his own self-interest.

But the looseness of the term neoliberalism also means that criticism of it often misses the mark. There is nothing wrong with markets, private entrepreneurship or incentives – when deployed appropriately. Their creative use lies behind the most significant economic achievements of our time. As we heap scorn on neoliberalism, we risk throwing out some of neoliberalism's useful ideas.

The real trouble is that mainstream economics shades too easily into ideology, constraining the choices that we appear to have and providing cookie-cutter solutions. A proper understanding of the economics that lie behind neoliberalism would allow us to identify – and to reject – ideology when it masquerades as economic science. Most importantly, it would help us to develop the institutional imagination we badly need to redesign capitalism for the 21st century.


N eoliberalism is typically understood as being based on key tenets of mainstream economic science. To see those tenets without the ideology, consider this thought experiment. A well-known and highly regarded economist lands in a country he has never visited and knows nothing about. He is brought to a meeting with the country's leading policymakers. "Our country is in trouble," they tell him. "The economy is stagnant, investment is low, and there is no growth in sight." They turn to him expectantly: "Please tell us what we should do to make our economy grow."

The economist pleads ignorance and explains that he knows too little about the country to make any recommendations. He would need to study the history of the economy, to analyse the statistics, and to travel around the country before he could say anything.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tony Blair and Bill Clinton: centre-left politicians who enthusiastically adopted some of the central creeds of Thatcherism and Reaganism. Photograph: Reuters

But his hosts are insistent. "We understand your reticence, and we wish you had the time for all that," they tell him. "But isn't economics a science, and aren't you one of its most distinguished practitioners? Even though you do not know much about our economy, surely there are some general theories and prescriptions you can share with us to guide our economic policies and reforms."

The economist is now in a bind. He does not want to emulate those economic gurus he has long criticised for peddling their favourite policy advice. But he feels challenged by the question. Are there universal truths in economics? Can he say anything valid or useful?

So he begins. The efficiency with which an economy's resources are allocated is a critical determinant of the economy's performance, he says. Efficiency, in turn, requires aligning the incentives of households and businesses with social costs and benefits. The incentives faced by entrepreneurs, investors and producers are particularly important when it comes to economic growth. Growth needs a system of property rights and contract enforcement that will ensure those who invest can retain the returns on their investments. And the economy must be open to ideas and innovations from the rest of the world.

But economies can be derailed by macroeconomic instability, he goes on. Governments must therefore pursue a sound monetary policy , which means restricting the growth of liquidity to the increase in nominal money demand at reasonable inflation. They must ensure fiscal sustainability, so that the increase in public debt does not outpace national income. And they must carry out prudential regulation of banks and other financial institutions to prevent the financial system from taking excessive risk.

Now he is warming to his task. Economics is not just about efficiency and growth, he adds. Economic principles also carry over to equity and social policy. Economics has little to say about how much redistribution a society should seek. But it does tell us that the tax base should be as broad as possible, and that social programmes should be designed in a way that does not encourage workers to drop out of the labour market.

By the time the economist stops, it appears as if he has laid out a fully fledged neoliberal agenda. A critic in the audience will have heard all the code words: efficiency, incentives, property rights, sound money, fiscal prudence. And yet the universal principles that the economist describes are in fact quite open-ended. They presume a capitalist economy – one in which investment decisions are made by private individuals and firms – but not much beyond that. They allow for – indeed, they require – a surprising variety of institutional arrangements.

So has the economist just delivered a neoliberal screed? We would be mistaken to think so, and our mistake would consist of associating each abstract term – incentives, property rights, sound money – with a particular institutional counterpart. And therein lies the central conceit, and the fatal flaw, of neoliberalism: the belief that first-order economic principles map on to a unique set of policies, approximated by a Thatcher/Reagan-style agenda.

Consider property rights. They matter insofar as they allocate returns on investments. An optimal system would distribute property rights to those who would make the best use of an asset, and afford protection against those most likely to expropriate the returns. Property rights are good when they protect innovators from free riders, but they are bad when they protect them from competition. Depending on the context, a legal regime that provides the appropriate incentives can look quite different from the standard US-style regime of private property rights.

This may seem like a semantic point with little practical import; but China's phenomenal economic success is largely due to its orthodoxy-defying institutional tinkering. China turned to markets, but did not copy western practices in property rights. Its reforms produced market-based incentives through a series of unusual institutional arrangements that were better adapted to the local context. Rather than move directly from state to private ownership, for example, which would have been stymied by the weakness of the prevailing legal structures, the country relied on mixed forms of ownership that provided more effective property rights for entrepreneurs in practice. Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs), which spearheaded Chinese economic growth during the 1980s, were collectives owned and controlled by local governments. Even though TVEs were publicly owned, entrepreneurs received the protection they needed against expropriation. Local governments had a direct stake in the profits of the firms, and hence did not want to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs.

China relied on a range of such innovations, each delivering the economist's higher-order economic principles in unfamiliar institutional arrangements. For instance, it shielded its large state sector from global competition, establishing special economic zones where foreign firms could operate with different rules than in the rest of the economy. In view of such departures from orthodox blueprints, describing China's economic reforms as neoliberal – as critics are inclined to do – distorts more than it reveals. If we are to call this neoliberalism, we must surely look more kindly on the ideas behind the most dramatic poverty reduction in history.

One might protest that China's institutional innovations were purely transitional. Perhaps it will have to converge on western-style institutions to sustain its economic progress. But this common line of thinking overlooks the diversity of capitalist arrangements that still prevails among advanced economies, despite the considerable homogenisation of our policy discourse.

What, after all, are western institutions? The size of the public sector in OECD countries varies, from a third of the economy in Korea to nearly 60% in Finland. In Iceland, 86% of workers are members of a trade union; the comparable number in Switzerland is just 16%. In the US, firms can fire workers almost at will; French labour laws have historically required employers to jump through many hoops first. Stock markets have grown to a total value of nearly one-and-a-half times GDP in the US; in Germany, they are only a third as large, equivalent to just 50% of GDP.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'China turned to markets, but did not copy western practices ... ' Photograph: AFP/Getty

The idea that any one of these models of taxation, labour relations or financial organisation is inherently superior to the others is belied by the varying economic fortunes that each of these economies have experienced over recent decades. The US has gone through successive periods of angst in which its economic institutions were judged inferior to those in Germany, Japan, China, and now possibly Germany again. Certainly, comparable levels of wealth and productivity can be produced under very different models of capitalism. We might even go a step further: today's prevailing models probably come nowhere near exhausting the range of what might be possible, and desirable, in the future.

The visiting economist in our thought experiment knows all this, and recognises that the principles he has enunciated need to be filled in with institutional detail before they become operational. Property rights? Yes, but how? Sound money? Of course, but how? It would perhaps be easier to criticise his list of principles for being vacuous than to denounce it as a neoliberal screed.

Still, these principles are not entirely content-free. China, and indeed all countries that managed to develop rapidly, demonstrate the utility of those principles once they are properly adapted to local context. Conversely, too many economies have been driven to ruin courtesy of political leaders who chose to violate them. We need look no further than Latin American populists or eastern European communist regimes to appreciate the practical significance of sound money, fiscal sustainability and private incentives.


O f course, economics goes beyond a list of abstract, largely common-sense principles. Much of the work of economists consists of developing stylised models of how economies work and then confronting those models with evidence. Economists tend to think of what they do as progressively refining their understanding of the world: their models are supposed to get better and better as they are tested and revised over time. But progress in economics happens differently.

Economists study a social reality that is unlike the physical universe. It is completely manmade, highly malleable and operates according to different rules across time and space. Economics advances not by settling on the right model or theory to answer such questions, but by improving our understanding of the diversity of causal relationships. Neoliberalism and its customary remedies – always more markets, always less government – are in fact a perversion of mainstream economics. Good economists know that the correct answer to any question in economics is: it depends.

Does an increase in the minimum wage depress employment? Yes, if the labour market is really competitive and employers have no control over the wage they must pay to attract workers; but not necessarily otherwise. Does trade liberalisation increase economic growth? Yes, if it increases the profitability of industries where the bulk of investment and innovation takes place; but not otherwise. Does more government spending increase employment? Yes, if there is slack in the economy and wages do not rise; but not otherwise. Does monopoly harm innovation? Yes and no, depending on a whole host of market circumstances.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest 'Today [neoliberalism] is routinely reviled as a shorthand for the ideas that have produced growing economic inequality and precipitated our current populist backlash' Trump signing an order to take the US out of the TPP trade pact. Photograph: AFP/Getty

In economics, new models rarely supplant older models. The basic competitive-markets model dating back to Adam Smith has been modified over time by the inclusion, in rough historical order, of monopoly, externalities, scale economies, incomplete and asymmetric information, irrational behaviour and many other real-world features. But the older models remain as useful as ever. Understanding how real markets operate necessitates using different lenses at different times.

Perhaps maps offer the best analogy. Just like economic models, maps are highly stylised representations of reality . They are useful precisely because they abstract from many real-world details that would get in the way. But abstraction also implies that we need a different map depending on the nature of our journey. If we are travelling by bike, we need a map of bike trails. If we are to go on foot, we need a map of footpaths. If a new subway is constructed, we will need a subway map – but we wouldn't throw out the older maps.

Economists tend to be very good at making maps, but not good enough at choosing the one most suited to the task at hand. When confronted with policy questions of the type our visiting economist faces, too many of them resort to "benchmark" models that favour the laissez-faire approach. Kneejerk solutions and hubris replace the richness and humility of the discussion in the seminar room. John Maynard Keynes once defined economics as the "science of thinking in terms of models, joined to the art of choosing models which are relevant". Economists typically have trouble with the "art" part.

This, too, can be illustrated with a parable. A journalist calls an economics professor for his view on whether free trade is a good idea. The professor responds enthusiastically in the affirmative. The journalist then goes undercover as a student in the professor's advanced graduate seminar on international trade. He poses the same question: is free trade good? This time the professor is stymied. "What do you mean by 'good'?" he responds. "And good for whom?" The professor then launches into an extensive exegesis that will ultimately culminate in a heavily hedged statement: "So if the long list of conditions I have just described are satisfied, and assuming we can tax the beneficiaries to compensate the losers, freer trade has the potential to increase everyone's wellbeing." If he is in an expansive mood, the professor might add that the effect of free trade on an economy's longterm growth rate is not clear either, and would depend on an altogether different set of requirements.

This professor is rather different from the one the journalist encountered previously. On the record, he exudes self-confidence, not reticence, about the appropriate policy. There is one and only one model, at least as far as the public conversation is concerned, and there is a single correct answer, regardless of context. Strangely, the professor deems the knowledge that he imparts to his advanced students to be inappropriate (or dangerous) for the general public. Why?

The roots of such behaviour lie deep in the culture of the economics profession. But one important motive is the zeal to display the profession's crown jewels – market efficiency, the invisible hand, comparative advantage – in untarnished form, and to shield them from attack by self-interested barbarians, namely the protectionists . Unfortunately, these economists typically ignore the barbarians on the other side of the issue – financiers and multinational corporations whose motives are no purer and who are all too ready to hijack these ideas for their own benefit.

As a result, economists' contributions to public debate are often biased in one direction, in favour of more trade, more finance and less government. That is why economists have developed a reputation as cheerleaders for neoliberalism, even if mainstream economics is very far from a paean to laissez-faire. The economists who let their enthusiasm for free markets run wild are in fact not being true to their own discipline.


H ow then should we think about globalisation in order to liberate it from the grip of neoliberal practices? We must begin by understanding the positive potential of global markets. Access to world markets in goods, technologies and capital has played an important role in virtually all of the economic miracles of our time. China is the most recent and powerful reminder of this historical truth, but it is not the only case. Before China, similar miracles were performed by South Korea, Taiwan, Japan and a few non-Asian countries such as Mauritius . All of these countries embraced globalisation rather than turn their backs on it, and they benefited handsomely.

Defenders of the existing economic order will quickly point to these examples when globalisation comes into question. What they will fail to say is that almost all of these countries joined the world economy by violating neoliberal strictures. South Korea and Taiwan, for instance, heavily subsidised their exporters, the former through the financial system and the latter through tax incentives. All of them eventually removed most of their import restrictions, long after economic growth had taken off.

But none, with the sole exception of Chile in the 1980s under Pinochet, followed the neoliberal recommendation of a rapid opening-up to imports. Chile's neoliberal experiment eventually produced the worst economic crisis in all of Latin America. While the details differ across countries, in all cases governments played an active role in restructuring the economy and buffering it against a volatile external environment. Industrial policies, restrictions on capital flows and currency controls – all prohibited in the neoliberal playbook – were rampant.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Protest against Nafta in Mexico City in 2008: since the reforms of the mid-90s, the country's economy has underperformed. Photograph: EPA

By contrast, countries that stuck closest to the neoliberal model of globalisation were sorely disappointed. Mexico provides a particularly sad example. Following a series of macroeconomic crises in the mid-1990s, Mexico embraced macroeconomic orthodoxy, extensively liberalised its economy, freed up the financial system, sharply reduced import restrictions and signed the North American Free Trade Agreement (Nafta). These policies did produce macroeconomic stability and a significant rise in foreign trade and internal investment. But where it counts – in overall productivity and economic growth – the experiment failed . Since undertaking the reforms, overall productivity in Mexico has stagnated, and the economy has underperformed even by the undemanding standards of Latin America.

These outcomes are not a surprise from the perspective of sound economics. They are yet another manifestation of the need for economic policies to be attuned to the failures to which markets are prone, and to be tailored to the specific circumstances of each country. No single blueprint fits all.


A s Peters's 1982 manifesto attests, the meaning of neoliberalism has changed considerably over time as the label has acquired harder-line connotations with respect to deregulation, financialisation and globalisation. But there is one thread that connects all versions of neoliberalism, and that is the emphasis on economic growth . Peters wrote in 1982 that the emphasis was warranted because growth is essential to all our social and political ends – community, democracy, prosperity. Entrepreneurship, private investment and removing obstacles that stand in the way (such as excessive regulation) were all instruments for achieving economic growth. If a similar neoliberal manifesto were penned today, it would no doubt make the same point.

ss="rich-link"> Globalisation: the rise and fall of an idea that swept the world Read more

Critics often point out that this emphasis on economics debases and sacrifices other important values such as equality, social inclusion, democratic deliberation and justice. Those political and social objectives obviously matter enormously, and in some contexts they matter the most. They cannot always, or even often, be achieved by means of technocratic economic policies; politics must play a central role.

Still, neoliberals are not wrong when they argue that our most cherished ideals are more likely to be attained when our economy is vibrant, strong and growing. Where they are wrong is in believing that there is a unique and universal recipe for improving economic performance, to which they have access. The fatal flaw of neoliberalism is that it does not even get the economics right. It must be rejected on its own terms for the simple reason that it is bad economics.

A version of this article first appeared in Boston Review

Main illustration by Eleanor Shakespeare

[Dec 09, 2018] MI6's Spymaster Revealed How The UK Is Conducting Fourth Generation Espionage by Andrew Korybko

Recently MI6 were implicated in Steel report, Skripals poisonings, Browder machinations, and creation of the Integrity Initiative. Nice "non-interference" mode...
Notable quotes:
"... The UK's top spy spent some of his time blaming Russia for trying to, as he put it, "subvert the UK way of life" by supposedly poisoning the Skripals and through other mischievous but ultimately never verified actions, though moving beyond the infowar aspect of his speech and into its actual professional substance, he nevertheless touched on some interesting themes ..."
"... In other words, it's all about applying what he calls the "Fusion Doctrine" for building the right domestic and international teams across skillsets in order to best leverage new technologies for accomplishing his agency's eternal mission, which is "to understand the motivations, intentions and aspirations of people in other countries." ..."
"... "being able to take steps to change [targets'] behavior", this has actually been part and parcel of the intelligence profession since time immemorial, albeit nowadays facilitated by social media and other technological platforms that allow shadowy actors such as the UK's own "77th Brigade" to carry out psychological, influence, and informational operations. ..."
"... Considering Russia to be a country that "regards [itself] as being in a state of perpetual confrontation with [the West]", Younger believes that unacceptably high costs must be imposed upon it every time it's accused of some wrongdoing, forgetting that the exact same principle could more applicably be applied against the West by Russia for the same reasons. ..."
"... If read from a cynical standpoint by anyone who's aware of the true nature of contemporary geopolitics, Younger's speech is actually quite informative because it inadvertently reveals what the West itself is doing to Russia by means of projecting its own actions onto its opponent . ..."
"... That in and of itself is actually the very essence of Hybrid War , which is commonly understood to largely include blatantly deceptive techniques such as the one that the UK's top spy is unabashedly attempting to pull off. ..."
"... Accusing one's adversaries of the exact same thing that you yourself are doing is a classic method of deflecting attention from one's own actions by pretending that you're being victimized by the selfsame, which therefore "justifies" escalating tensions by portraying all hostile acts as "proactive defensive responses to aggression". ..."
"... Basically, the British spymaster just sloppily revealed his hand to Russia while attempting to implicate it for allegedly conducting "fourth generation espionage" against the UK. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

The head of the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI6) Alex Younger briefed the public about the challenges of so-called " fourth generation espionage ".

The UK's top spy spent some of his time blaming Russia for trying to, as he put it, "subvert the UK way of life" by supposedly poisoning the Skripals and through other mischievous but ultimately never verified actions, though moving beyond the infowar aspect of his speech and into its actual professional substance, he nevertheless touched on some interesting themes.

According to him, "fourth generation espionage" involves "deepening our partnerships to counter hybrid threats, mastering covert action in the data age, attaching a cost to malign activity by adversaries and innovating to ensure that technology works to our advantage."

In other words, it's all about applying what he calls the "Fusion Doctrine" for building the right domestic and international teams across skillsets in order to best leverage new technologies for accomplishing his agency's eternal mission, which is "to understand the motivations, intentions and aspirations of people in other countries."

While he remarked that the so-called "hybrid threats" associated with "fourth generation espionage" necessitate "being able to take steps to change [targets'] behavior", this has actually been part and parcel of the intelligence profession since time immemorial, albeit nowadays facilitated by social media and other technological platforms that allow shadowy actors such as the UK's own "77th Brigade" to carry out psychological, influence, and informational operations.

Younger warned that "bulk data combined with modern analytics" could be "a serious challenge" if used against his country , obviously alluding to Cambridge Analytica's purported weaponization of these cutting-edge technological processes to supposedly "hack" elections, though neglecting to draw any attention to the fact that his intelligence agency and its allies could conceivably do the same in advance of their own interests, something that everyone who uses Western-based social media platforms is theoretically at risk of having happen to them.

What Younger is most concerned about, however, are what he describes as the "eroded boundaries" that characterize so-called "hybrid threats" lying between war and peace, which he fears could undermine NATO's Article 5 obligation for all of the military alliance's members to support one another during times of conflict. Considering Russia to be a country that "regards [itself] as being in a state of perpetual confrontation with [the West]", Younger believes that unacceptably high costs must be imposed upon it every time it's accused of some wrongdoing, forgetting that the exact same principle could more applicably be applied against the West by Russia for the same reasons.

He claims that it's the UK that will never respond in kind by destabilizing Russia like Moscow's accused of doing to the UK, but in reality, it's President Putin's so-called "judo moves" which prove that it's Russia who has mastered asymmetrical responses instead. If read from a cynical standpoint by anyone who's aware of the true nature of contemporary geopolitics, Younger's speech is actually quite informative because it inadvertently reveals what the West itself is doing to Russia by means of projecting its own actions onto its opponent .

That in and of itself is actually the very essence of Hybrid War , which is commonly understood to largely include blatantly deceptive techniques such as the one that the UK's top spy is unabashedly attempting to pull off.

Accusing one's adversaries of the exact same thing that you yourself are doing is a classic method of deflecting attention from one's own actions by pretending that you're being victimized by the selfsame, which therefore "justifies" escalating tensions by portraying all hostile acts as "proactive defensive responses to aggression".

Basically, the British spymaster just sloppily revealed his hand to Russia while attempting to implicate it for allegedly conducting "fourth generation espionage" against the UK.

[Dec 09, 2018] Proportional representation is definitely the way to go. I am sick to death of the born-to-rule mentality of the major parties, and how they change the rules to benefit themselves and to exclude others

Notable quotes:
"... Yes, its far better than the "first past the post" systems of the UK and the US where the number of votes split between two almost identical candidates can lead to a far different candidate winning with only a little over a third of the total vote. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

MikeSw , 30 Oct 2018 22:36

Proportional representation is definitely the way to go. I am sick to death of the born-to-rule mentality of the major parties, and how they change the rules to benefit themselves and to exclude others.

Minority government? There is no such thing - there is only 'government', and it is supposed to involve all members of parliament in the decision-making process. 'Majority' governments are an anathema to good governance. Every time I hear the likes of Tony Abbott claim they have a mandate to implement ALL their policies, even though they only receive around 35% of the primary vote, I want to throw something at the TV.

Bugger them! Make them work for a living - and make them consider ALL views, not just the ones from their own party.

Bradtheunveiler -> BrianLC , 30 Oct 2018 22:36
Win the ALP will next election. By a huge majority too. Looking forward to neg gearing and CGT discount reform in particular.
Onesimus_Tim -> StuartJJ , 30 Oct 2018 22:35

Preferences are an extremely good feature of our voting system

Yes, its far better than the "first past the post" systems of the UK and the US where the number of votes split between two almost identical candidates can lead to a far different candidate winning with only a little over a third of the total vote.

Preferential voting also makes it more possible for the major party duopoly being overturned, allowing people to vote for a good independent without taking the risk of helping a despised major party candidate from winning by default.

[Dec 09, 2018] The problem with representative democracy is that it represents the special interest groups far more than it represents the citizenry

Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Territorian -> Hoskins50 , 30 Oct 2018 23:49

"The problem with representative democracy is that it represents the special interest groups far more than it represents the citizenry." You are spot on.

Nigel Scullion: Minister for Handing out buckets of money to NT Country Liberal Party supporters. Scullion just happened to be a professional fisher before entering parliament.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/31/indigenous-advancement-funding-redirected-to-cattlemen-and-fishing-groups

Barnaby Joyce: Minister for Agriculture while his Department was too scared to report disgusting conditions in the live sheep export trade.
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2018/oct/31/agriculture-minister-promises-to-fix-live-export-regulation-after-damning-report

DukeofWoyWoy , 30 Oct 2018 23:48
What a logical and stirring argument you put forward Richard Denniss, and a large majority of the electorate would have to agree.
However there is also a large number of people in the electorate that cannot appear to rise from their nightly slumber without wearing their Blue, Red, Green or Orange tinted glasses before facing the new day.
And because of this, and preferential voting, sneaking in the background is a plethora of the wild mindless sub creatures called politicians who demand their rights to sit in the big white building on Canberra;s Capital Hill, just waiting to spoil not only the electorate's party but also known to prostitute the country's governance to their own advantage.
Richard, we desperately need a follow up stirring article on how to overcome this black menace to our country, for the sake of our country.
Hoskins50 , 30 Oct 2018 23:38
If you think the public has an appetite for more bureaucrats, more rules and regulations to micromanage people's lives and even more political wheeling and dealing in Canberra, you should get out more.

That the coalition government is on the slide is of no long term consequence. We'll get a Labor government next year and in a few years another coalition government and so on.

What is of long term significance is the loss of public trust in pretty much all of the institutions - including goverment and the various government agencies that would be more powerful under your scenario.

The problem with representative democracy is that it represents the special interest groups far more than it represents the citizenry. Perhaps the solution lies in more direct democracy.

The same sex marriage plebiscite demonstrated that we commoners can deliberate on a sensitive issue, and in doing so behave far better than our elected representatives in Parliament. And can make a sensible and progressive decision that our elected representatives could not - both coalition and Labor MPs had opposed same sex marriage when it was raised in th e Parliament.

The internet provides a platform for direct decision making by the citizenry. Perhaps we should try that instead of what you are suggesting.

diggerdigger , 30 Oct 2018 22:12
It's been clear for years that proportional representation has progressively meant death to effective government, and that it forces major parties policy development further to the political fringes to appeal to the fruit loops on the periphery of their respective demographics. Time for a return to simple preferential voting (a-la-house of Reps) in the senate, and an overhaul of what's considered a valid ballot - if you want to only rank 1, 2, 3 or all candidates it should be entirely your choice.

Hung parliaments, with diametrically opposed clumps of "independents" jointly holding the balance of power can only ever deliver legislative stasis and constant political turmoil (as we have experienced since 2010 and Europe and the US have suffered for the last decade).

Oh for the good old days when one or the other of the major parties held a working majority in both houses, and policy was targeted at the 'sensible centre" of the Australian electorate. At worst, they only had to deal with a couple of sensible Democrats, and the odd lunatic fringe-ist like Harradine.

[Dec 09, 2018] People who vote but really don't get represented. All those votes just get mopped up by two major parties who represent thatsame neooliberal sharks who want to devour the voters

Notable quotes:
"... I find the Australian electoral system very mediocre. All those people who vote but really don't get represented. All those votes that just get mopped up by the major parties. I really can't understand why Australians have put up with such a poor system for so long. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

RonGlaeston , 31 Oct 2018 04:56

Yes, yes! MMP!!

Having spent many years in a New Zealand under a First Past the Post system and then Mixed Member Proportional, I am an enthusiastic supporter of proportional systems.

I find the Australian electoral system very mediocre. All those people who vote but really don't get represented. All those votes that just get mopped up by the major parties. I really can't understand why Australians have put up with such a poor system for so long.

Hettie7-> melbournesam 31 Oct 2018 00:45

Proportional representation makes the most sense. Each party gets the same percentage of seats in the parliament as it received votes in the election. That really is fair.

[Dec 09, 2018] Nationalisation of essential services is required to put this country back on an even keel. It was a stupid idea by governments (of all persuasions) to sell off monopoly essential service assets. The neoliberal experiment has failed.

Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

RonRabbit99 , 31 Oct 2018 01:17

Nationalisation of essential services is required to put this country back on an even keel. It was a stupid idea by governments (of all persuasions) to sell off monopoly essential service assets. The neoliberal experiment has failed.
Carlosthepossum , 31 Oct 2018 01:15
'Neoliberalism is dead.'
However, we cannot rest until it is buried and cremated.
economicalternative -> Bewareofnazihippies , 31 Oct 2018 01:03
Beware: Just build a HUGE worker owned, democratically run (by workers) sector to compete against privately owned concerns. If workers are (democratically) involved in running and managing their own workplaces that will give plenty of competition for private concerns. Workers will be involved in the 'politics' and economics of their local area as part of work. They'll have more control over the technologies they want to use, how much profit they want to make or not, wages, investment, working conditions and all aspects of their concern. Workers would 'participate' more and be more involved in thinking about larger concerns. This would make a nation/region more democratic on the 'ground'. Not just reliant on 'representative' democracy/voting. You'd still need over-arching government(s) but people would have more direct control over their livelihoods and work conditions. Such a BIG sector would give (I'm talking about Health, Education, manufacturing etc - not 'bread shop', basket-weaving coops/social enterprises) private enterprise some REAL competition on prices and services. It would deliver democracy to masses of people, some control over wealth generation/economy and on a large enough scale CHANGE society in terms of social justice and politics.

You don't need to go to State control or Private control of 'the economy'. Just the right kinds of structures.

Nintiblue , 31 Oct 2018 01:03
Its not dead yet.

Neoliberalism is like a cancer on a health democracy. If we'd treated it in its early magnifications (when the Librerals and far right old version of Labor), first started selling off public assets (that are then charged back to citizens to use at increasing price rates etc), we would have been fine.

But now the cancer is deep in democracy's lymph glads ( in many of our public services) and so needs radical prolonged treatment and some surgery to assure the country's thriving democracy survives.

First surgically remove the source: cease (vote out always) all right wing conservative nutters from ever gaining power, or media mogul influence of government. Most but not all hide in the Coalition.

Then, begin the reconstruction surgery to re-assert public assets and services. This is a temporary but life saving cost.

Then, monitor and manage, (educate) the citizens about this scourge on democracy.

Dunkey2830 , 31 Oct 2018 01:00

The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build.

Neoliberalism is far from dead Richard - neoliberalism is deeply entrenched in mainstream thinking its corporate enriching magic works insidiously - mostly subliminally under cover of 'sensible' free market self clearing 'orthodox' economics.
You and many others from 'progressive' TAI almost daily, unwittingly play a role in reinforcing and entrenching neoliberal ideology in the community by framing macroeconomic analysis/commentary in neoliberal terms.
Your oft repeated call for 'budget balance' over the business cycle is such an example. Only fiscal deficits can build a prosperous productive nation in the absence of consistent external surpluses - no government can ever build and expand a nation without permanently injecting more funds into the non government sector than (through taxation etc) it withdraws.

Both our major parties of government espouse neoliberal economic orthodoxy as if there is no alternative - and no one calls them out - not even the quasi progressive TAI.

DSGE based 'orthodox' economics provides the lifeblood to neoliberalism - the myth of tax collections funding expenditure provides plausible cover to constrain spending on citizen/social services - but when it comes to war/corporate subsidy spending, such constraints are immediately abandoned.
Hetereodox MMT exposes the lie of such DSGE myths - but faithful Ptolemaic 'progressives' refuse to investigate or debate such Copernican macroeconomic sacrilege.

The recent TAI 'outlook' economic conference (proudly sponsored by 'The Australian'!! ) was a classic progressive 'fail'; loaded with orthodox 'experts' like Bowen and Keating spouting austerity inducing neoliberal orthodoxy - not one heterodox economist was invited to present the unwelcome, uncomfortable truth of sovereign nation macroeconomic reality.
Prof Bill Mitchell is Australia's most widely & internationally respected REAL progressive heterodox academic - yet the TAI ignores him.

Neoliberalism won't die until it extracts the last breath of available wealth from Australia's citizenry. It will die a savage death with the onset of the impending depression 'to end all depressions' when the collapsing housing bubble leaves citizens with a 'decades long' bubble of unpayable private debt.

Only then will people realise they have been elaborately 'conned' - too late.

P.S. For all TRUE progressives:
Some brilliant short videos here and here by Parody Project.

CaligulaMcNutt -> CaptnGster , 31 Oct 2018 00:54
That's really the point, much as you might expect government like the Howard and Abbott ones to have stuck to their claimed neo-liberal principles, neither substantially altered the compulsory nature of the scheme, despite the fact that it ran more or less completely contrary to Chicago School principles. Howard might have been fond of shouting "socialism" or "nanny state" when he felt the need to criticise something, but deeds speak stronger than words, and for all his p!ssing and moaning he was never going to do anything that stopped all those truckloads of money finding their way to his friends in the banking industry.
Alltherage -> elliot2511 , 31 Oct 2018 00:51
Yes historically high mass immigration in Australia has been used as a trojan horse by the adherents of neo-liberalism - to break down the pay and conditions of Australian workers and their rights and entitlements.
By importing "ready made" skilled workers, neither the Government or the private sector have had to go to the trouble of training their workforce nor bear any of the costs of educating and training them.
As to the lower skilled imported workers, in the main, this is a crude device to cut out the locals so that accepted or legislated pay and conditions can be lowered. Most of those imported workers don't know their rights and are ripe for exploitation.
The shonks, rip off and quick buck merchants love neo-liberalism for the what it has done to the Australian labour market.
And the Labor party has been complicit in all this - when it should have been protecting Australians and Australian workers present and future from the ravaging impacts of neo-liberalism.
Ozperson , 31 Oct 2018 00:48
For something that's supposedly dead, it still looks like neoliberalism is in charge to me. The relentless commodification of every aspect of life continues apace. Money is still the measure of everything and takes precedence over the environment, ethics, community, creativity, discovery, and virtually everything else you care to name. When water thiefs, big bankers, corrupt politicians, environmental despoilers, and those that start pointless wars are IN GAOL, then I'll start to believe things are changing.
Saint-Just -> FelixKruell , 31 Oct 2018 00:47
Neoliberalism is not simply an economic agenda. From the beginning it was conceived as and then constructed to be much more than that - it was in fact as much a pedagogical cum psychological operation to change minds across generations with regard to free-market capitalism and thus to orient all thinking to that, than it was a matter of simple monetary or trade policy. Of course, this had to be done with a good deal of repression and oppression backing it up, here and there - Chile e.g. Thus electing neoliberalism is an effect of this pedagogy over time - we are all schooled in its 'normality - and not a reflection of either some natural desire for it or an educated choice.
Nicholas Haines , 31 Oct 2018 00:40
I agree that we should be discussing fiscal policy but I suspect that Richard Denniss is using a false frame for this topic. He probably adheres to the claim made by the macroeconomic equivalent of pre-Copernican physics that a government that issues its own currency, enforces taxes in that currency, and allows the currency to float in foreign exchange markets can run out of its currency.

The fiscal policy of the federal government should be to employ all available labour in socially useful and environmental sustainable productive activity, maintain price stability, minimize inequality of income and wealth, and fund public services and infrastructure to the maximum extent permitted by the resources that are available for sale in the government's currency.

If you think that the government's fiscal policy should be to reduce a fiscal deficit or deliver a fiscal surplus, you are a dill.

It makes no sense to target a particular fiscal balance because the outcome is driven largely by the aggregated spending and saving decisions of the domestic non-government sector and the external sector. The federal government does not control those variables.

The federal government needs to target economically, socially, and environmentally desirable goals and allow the fiscal balance to reach whatever level is needed at any given time to achieve those goals.

economicalternative -> BlueThird , 31 Oct 2018 00:39
'Democracy' needs to be structural as well as a moral idea. Workers have been disempowered and impoverished and disenfranchished by neoliberalism. An answer to structurally improve the wealth AND democratic power of the workers is to build a HUGE co operative sector in each economy: worker owned workplaces/businesses/concerns AND democratically run. THAT will improve the situation for workers/punters: democracy where they live and work. Democracy rooted not in fine ideas only about rights but bedded down in economic livelihoods. People will take an interest in their local 'politics' and also understand more of the politics of the nation. You don't have to get rid of 'capitalism' just give it a 'good run' for it's money - some real COMPETITION. Cooperatively run Hospitals, owned by doctors and nurses and other stakeholders - not for profit - that'll soon see the 'private' for profit' health providers/rorters wind their prices and necks in. Socially owned, worker-owned, government/taxpayer supported enterprise, work places, democratically run will boot up the level of 'democracy' in our societies. We can still have voter style over-arching national government of course. If you don't root democracy where people actually can participate and which gives them a lot of control over their workplaces/livelihood, then it can all be hijacked by the greedy and cunning (see neoliberalism). OH, a large cooperative sector in the economy democratically run by workers won't deliver 'heaven on earth' - it'll still be run by people!
slorter -> HauptmannGurski , 31 Oct 2018 00:37
It is also a tool of the neoliberals along with the whole neoliberal trend in macroeconomic policy. The essential thing underlying this, is to try to reduce the power of government and social forces that might exercise some power within the political economy -- workers and others -- and put the power primarily in the hands of those dominating in the markets. That's often the financial system, the banks, but also other elites. The idea of neoliberal economists and policymakers being that you don't want the government getting too involved in macroeconomic policy. You don't want them promoting too much employment because that might lead to a raise in wages and, in turn, to a reduction in the profit share of the national income.

Austerity fits into the mix very well Keeping wages low, or debt pressure high, means workers will be less likely to complain or make demands. As workers struggle to provide their families with all the temptations that a capitalist society offers, they become far less likely to risk their employment, and less able to improve their situation.

At bottom, conservatives believe in a social hierarchy of "haves" and "have nots". They have taken this corrosive social vision and dressed it up with a "respectable" sounding ideology which all boils down to the cheap labour they depend on to make their fortunes.

Alltherage -> misterwildcard , 31 Oct 2018 00:29
It shows a great sense of inferiority and knowing our "proper"place, that the populace apparently accepted the colloquial term for neo-liberalism or economic rationalism, as being "trickle down economics" and that all that the populace deserved and was going to get was a trickle of the alleged wealth and benefits created.
Why were most people so compliant and accepting of something that as a concept, from the outset, was clearly signalling it would economically completely discriminate against the 99% and was intended to provide such a meager share of the wealth and economic benefits generated?
eerstehondopdemaan -> MikeSw , 31 Oct 2018 00:23
Excellent statement Mike.

A quick look around the world provides clear evidence that there really are a lot of alternatives.

That's the crux: many (western, developed) countries before us have proven over and over again that the best type of democratic government is one in which consensus is the basis for long-term decisions to the benefit of all. Is it tedious? Yes. Frustrating at times? You bet. Slow? Indeed, quite often so. But the point is, consensus-based decision making works and eventually is in everyone's interest (left, right and centre), resulting in better long-term outcomes. With the added benefit that new "majority" Governments won't throw out the children with the bathwater all the time.

I'd add one aspect to the article though, and that is to combine a form of proportional representation with longer terms of Government. You won't get much meaningful done in 3 years, whatever form of representation you choose. 4 years, 5 years... whatever strikes the best balance between governments getting some runs on the board and voters feeling empowered to change government coalitions in the ballot box when they stuff up.

[Dec 09, 2018] Neoliberalism clearly works for the interests of the minority and against the interests of the majority. Households are now worse off than they were 6 years ago and large businesses are enjoying record profits.

But what economic system worked in the interests of majority of population. There was only one such system -- USA in 1935-1970th and it was the result of WWII and record profits of the US corporation after the war, when both Europe and Japan were devastated.
In no way the USSR was social system that worked for the majority of population. It worked for the Nomenklatura -- a pretty narrow caste, similar to current top 1% under neoliberalism.
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

regoblivion , 31 Oct 2018 00:08

I like Prof.Bill Mitchell's saying that most Progressives are Neo liberals in disguise. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOMo3xuSyWM&t=66s

Until we ditch the Neo Liberal garbage about Deficits, Debt and their confusion about Monetary and Fiscal Policy, nothing can change.

meanwhile Tick Tock goes the Carbon Clock.

ianwford , 31 Oct 2018 00:02
Neoliberalism clearly works for the interests of the minority and against the interests of the majority. Households are now worse off than they were 6 years ago and large businesses are enjoying record profits. It feels as if the australian economy is being run for the benefit of a small percentage of wealthy shareholders.

[Dec 09, 2018] Neoliberalism contains policies that the right have embraced with open arms, like compulsory retirement savings (which have enriched the private sector, especially banks and their shareholders), would have caused sharp intakes of breath from the steely-eyed theorists who came up with the concept

While a purported devotion to the principles and precepts of neo-liberalism has been claimed by decades of right-wing politicians, businesses and bankers, drilling down deeper often reveals that what is really happening in favoring the economic interests of the few at the expense of the many, and very often involving compulsorily actions like switch to 401K accounts. Which was stoke of genius for neoliberals to fleeces common people. acquired
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

CaligulaMcNutt , 30 Oct 2018 23:45

Speaking as no fan of neo-liberalism, but there is a risk that the term gets overused. Things that the right have embraced with open arms, like compulsory retirement savings (which have enriched the private sector, especially banks and their shareholders), would have caused sharp intakes of breath from the steely-eyed theorists who came up with the concept. While a purported devotion to the principles and precepts of neo-liberalism has been claimed by decades of right-wing politicians, businesses and bankers, drilling down deeper often reveals that what is really happening in favouring the economic interests of the few at the expense of the many, and very often involving compulsorily acquired public resources being re-directed to business, with barely even the thinnest veneer of genuine theoretical observance to the neo-liberal model. Both neo-liberalism itself, and bogus claims of its practical use and benefits, need to be dead and buried.
LovelyDaffodils -> misterwildcard , 30 Oct 2018 23:45
I really would love the rich and powerful who basically prey on the average person/worker/mums and dads, to be held accountable and penalised properly in relation to their deeds. These bastards destroy families in their grab for greed, and almost every time they are excused by their cohorts, and even go on to bigger and better opportunities to keep feeding their voracious greedy appetites. Basically they steal, so why isn't their proceeds of crime taken back by government; and why do they not do any jail time?
GreyBags , 30 Oct 2018 23:36
Natural monopolies like water and power, roads and public transport should be in public hands. All call centres dealing with government issues should be done by public servants, not outsourced to foreign corporations.

I'd start with a bank. Give people a non-greed infested alternative.

Under neo-liberalism we have gone from 1 person, 1 vote to $1, one vote. The con job that is 'small government and little or no regulations' is bad for society and the environment. Greed over need.

slorter -> MachiavellisCat , 30 Oct 2018 23:20
https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/10/30/why-a-neoliberal-society-cant-survive /

Dr. T. J. Coles is director of the Plymouth Institute for Peace Research and the author of several books, including Voices for Peace (with Noam Chomsky and others) and the forthcoming Fire and Fury: How the US Isolates North Korea, Encircles China and Risks Nuclear War in Asia (both Clairview Books).

Jakartaboy , 30 Oct 2018 22:42
The current economic model being used by capitalist countries across the world is failing most of the people in these countries while enriching tiny elites. Unfortunately, politicians in these countries are often in the pockets of the elite or are themselves members of the elite.

We need a new economic narrative which better reconciles the needs of the population with the directives of the market.

[Dec 09, 2018] China version of neoliberalism is not without huge problems

Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

diggerdigger -> everywhereman , 30 Oct 2018 23:41

Why not? Profits to the nation, not greedy corporates and their shareholders.

I think you will find there were no profits made that could be put "to the nation." When the wall came down, the USSR and the entire eastern bloc were completely bankrupt.

As was Mao's China prior to the emergence of Deng and his "to get rich is glorious" mantra, that set China on its current path. Of course his generally market-oriented approach has since been bastardised to one of One Party State-capitalism dominated by cronyism, corruption, and a perverted justice system.

Yes it has generated vast wealth, but it is an empire built on sand. As any analysis of its shadow banking system will show.

And while the legions of newly minted millionaires of party benevolence celebrate, the hundreds of millions stuck in poverty are left to fend for themselves.

[Dec 09, 2018] The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build

Neoliberalism is a secular religion, so it doe need to be rational, to remains influential or even dominant, much like Bolshevism or Trotskyism (actually neoliberalism should be viewed as a perverted mutation of Trotskyism -- Trotskyism for irch) . It took 70 years for Bolshevism to became discredited and collapse (under the attack from neoliberalism).
In the absence of alternatives neoliberalism might continues to exist in zombie state for a very long time.
Notable quotes:
"... Poverty rate in the USA has been increasing since about the year 2000. ..."
"... Why do you think that all around the world voters are going hard against Neoliberalism and why do you think that Neoliberals are desperately trying to save their bankrupt philosophy by hiding behind Nationalism and Racism? ..."
"... While I would very much like to agree with the notion that neo-liberalism is dead, there's rather too much evidence that its pernicious influence lingers ghost-like and ghastly, having suffused far too many politicians of an ultra-conservative ilk ..."
"... The true believers in the neo-liberal faith, as it was never other than a creed espoused by Thatcher and Pinochet among others, are like those in the catholic church who continued to advocate an earth centric universe long after science proved them wrong. ..."
"... It will be a long wait until these myopic adherents to the gospel of Hayek, Friedman and Buchanan, are consigned to the waste bin of history where they belong. Until then, it will remain a struggle to right the many wrongs of this mis-guided and shallow populism. ..."
"... The neocons have had their day, though it'll no doubt take one hell of an effort to drag them out of their crony-capitalist, snouts-in-the-trough ways. The profit motive in the provision of essential services should be confined to covering costs, maintenance and associated investment. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

GreenExerciseAddict , 30 Oct 2018 23:29

The death of neoliberalism means we can finally have a national debate about the size and role of government, and the shape of the economy and society we want to build.

Unfortunately, I see lots of deaths but none of them is neoliberalism. I can see death of a decent safety net in Australia. Death of biodiversity. Death of ecosystems. Death of intelligent debate. Death of science.

Alpo88 -> Fred1 , 30 Oct 2018 23:26
You are completely delusional Freddie.

Poverty rate in the USA has been increasing since about the year 2000. The international poverty trend has been decreasing over time only because the definition of poverty is to earn less than $1.25 per day..... So, if you earn $10/day you are well above the poverty line: Good luck living on that income in any OECD country!

Standards of living are decreasing in Australia... ever heard of the housing crisis? The household debt crisis?.... Paying for hospital and medicines, education, electricity and other services.... should I go on?.... ACOSS found that "there are just over 3 million people (13.2%) living below the poverty line of 50% of median income – including 739,000 children (17.3%)".

"The evil neo-liberalism" has delivered poverty, massive inequality, dissatisfaction, unemployment/sub-employment and casualization, collapse of public services, high costs of living.... and deterioration of the environment...

Why do you think that all around the world voters are going hard against Neoliberalism and why do you think that Neoliberals are desperately trying to save their bankrupt philosophy by hiding behind Nationalism and Racism?

Revenant13 , 30 Oct 2018 23:24
While I would very much like to agree with the notion that neo-liberalism is dead, there's rather too much evidence that its pernicious influence lingers ghost-like and ghastly, having suffused far too many politicians of an ultra-conservative ilk.

The true believers in the neo-liberal faith, as it was never other than a creed espoused by Thatcher and Pinochet among others, are like those in the catholic church who continued to advocate an earth centric universe long after science proved them wrong.

It will be a long wait until these myopic adherents to the gospel of Hayek, Friedman and Buchanan, are consigned to the waste bin of history where they belong. Until then, it will remain a struggle to right the many wrongs of this mis-guided and shallow populism.

David Smith -> adamhumph , 30 Oct 2018 23:21
Abso-bloody-lutely! The neocons have had their day, though it'll no doubt take one hell of an effort to drag them out of their crony-capitalist, snouts-in-the-trough ways. The profit motive in the provision of essential services should be confined to covering costs, maintenance and associated investment. It's so painfully obvious that the market has not met the needs of the average citizen without absurd cost. Bring on the revolution!

[Dec 09, 2018] What made anyone think neo-liberalism was going to work? Why was this even tried or got past a focus group?

Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

misterwildcard , 30 Oct 2018 22:12

What made anyone think neo-liberalism was going to work? Why was this even tried or got past a focus group?
Only the Murdoch press ever dreamed this could have any merit and a few totally selfish and controlling wealthy people. 2008 and the GFC should have killed this idea instead it gained traction as the perpetrators not only were not prosecuted but were subsidised to create more havoc. Find the culprits and jail them ... it is not too late.

[Dec 09, 2018] All essential infrastructure should be Nationalised. Water electricity supply and generation, ports and railways, educational facilities, one major bank, one country wide telco and mail delivery.

Notable quotes:
"... What about "competition", the God of Neoliberals?.... Competition can have some positive role in society only in an environment of Regulation. That's why the future is neither Neoliberal nor Socialist, but a Mixed Economy Social Democracy. ..."
"... Bring back a Commonwealth Bank! In fact bring back State run Electricity, Gas and Water utilities... ..."
"... The Coalition these days proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

adamhumph , 30 Oct 2018 22:14

All essential infrastructure should be Nationalised. Water electricity supply and generation, ports and railways, educational facilities, one major bank, one country wide telco and mail delivery. Remove the for profit aspect, and they become assets. In at least a few of these they also provide training opportunities across a wide spectrum of careers
Joshua Tree , 30 Oct 2018 22:13
Nationalise the banks and the Mining Industry . Take back control of outrageous wages in both these sectors and return profits to the taxpayer .

Nationalise the State Governments in other words get rid of them and appoint federal controlled administrators same with local councils, sack the lot of them and appoint administrators.

Alpo88 , 30 Oct 2018 22:08
Just like the AFP is "nationalised", or education is also to a big extent "nationalised", alongside a big chunk of the health system.... so we can nationalise other things, such as the modes of production and distribution of energy, major mineral resources, etc.

What about "competition", the God of Neoliberals?.... Competition can have some positive role in society only in an environment of Regulation. That's why the future is neither Neoliberal nor Socialist, but a Mixed Economy Social Democracy.

Which party is for a Mixed Economy Social Democracy?.... Labor and to some extent the Greens. A bunch of independents are also happy with the concept.... Together they are currently a majority, only waiting for a Federal election.

JAKLAUGHING , 30 Oct 2018 22:08
Bring back a Commonwealth Bank! In fact bring back State run Electricity, Gas and Water utilities...
Joey Rocca , 30 Oct 2018 22:01

The Coalition these days proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form.

Spot on Richard, excellent article. A Federal ICAC is a must.

[Dec 09, 2018] Neoliberalism is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I don't like using the term "neo-liberalism" that much because there is nothing "new" or "liberal" about it, the term itself just helps hide the fact that it's a political project more about power than profit and the end result is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector. ..."
"... Since the word "privatisation" is clearly no longer popular, the latest buzzword from this project is "outsourcing". ..."
"... As far as I can see "neo-liberalism", or what I prefer to call managerial and financialised feudalism is not dead, it's still out and about looking around for the next rent-seeking opportunity. ..."
"... In the political arena, is enabling porkies facilitate each other in every lunatic pronouncement about "Budget repair" and "on track for a surplus". And its spotty, textbook-spouting clones ("all debt is debt! Shriek, gasp, hyperventilate!") fall off the conveyor belts of tertiary education Australia-wide, then turn up on The Drum as IPA 'Research Fellows' to spout their evidence-free assertions. ..."
"... And don't forget the handmaiden of neoliberalism is their macroeconomic mythology about government "debt and borrowing" which will condemn our grandchildren to poverty - inter-generational theft! It also allows them to continue dismantling government social programs by giving tax-cuts to reduce "revenue" and then claiming there is no money to fund those programs. ..."
"... "Competition" as the cornerstone of neoliberal economics was always a lie. Corporations do their best to get rid of competitors by unfair pricing tactics or by takeovers. And even where some competitors hang in there by some means (banks, petrol companies) the competition that occurs is not for price but for profit. ..."
"... We find a shift away from democratic processes and the rise of the "all new adulation of the so-called tough leader" factor, aka Nazism/Fascism. From Trump to Turkey, Netanyahu to Putin, Brazil to China, the rise of the "right" in Europe, the South Americas, where the leader is "our great and "good" Teacher", knows best, and thus infantalises the knowledge and awareness of the rest of the population. Who needs scientists, when the "leader" knows everything? ..."
"... There are indeed alternatives to neoliberalism, most of which have been shown to lead back to neoliberalism. Appeals for fiscal and monetary relief/stimulus can only ever paper over the worst aspects of it's relentless 'progress', between wars, it seems. ..."
"... Neoliberalism seems vastly, catastrophically misunderstood. Widely perceived as the latest abomination to spring from the eternal battle 'twixt Labour and Capital, it's actual origins are somewhat more recent. Neoliberalism really, really is not just "Capitalism gone wrong". It goes much deeper, to a fundamental flaw buried( more accurately 'planted') deep in the heart of economics. ..."
"... In 1879 an obscure journalist from then-remote San Francisco, Henry George, took the world by storm with his extraordinary bestseller Progress and Poverty . Still the only published work to outsell the Bible in a single year, it did so for over twenty years, yet few social justice advocates have heard of it. ..."
"... George gravely threatened privileged global power-elites , so they erased him from academic history. A mind compared, in his time with Plato, Copernicus and Adam Smith wiped from living memory, by the modern aristocracy. ..."
"... In the process of doing so, they emasculated the discipline of economics, stripped dignity from labour, and set in motion a world-destroying doctrine. Neo-Classical Economics(aka neoliberalism) was born , to the detriment of the working-citizen and the living world on which s/he depends. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

ElectricJolt , 31 Oct 2018 04:38

I don't like using the term "neo-liberalism" that much because there is nothing "new" or "liberal" about it, the term itself just helps hide the fact that it's a political project more about power than profit and the end result is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector.

Since the word "privatisation" is clearly no longer popular, the latest buzzword from this project is "outsourcing". If you've had a look at The Canberra Times over the last couple of weeks there have been quite a few articles about outsourcing parts of Medicare and Centrelink, using labour hire companies and so on – is this part of a current LNP plan to "sell off" parts of the government before Labour takes the reins in May?

As far as I can see "neo-liberalism", or what I prefer to call managerial and financialised feudalism is not dead, it's still out and about looking around for the next rent-seeking opportunity.

Friarbird , 31 Oct 2018 04:02
Neoliberalism "dead"? I think not. It is riveted on the country like a straitjacket.

Which is exactly what it was always intended to be, a system gamed and rigged to ensure the wage-earning scum obtain progressively less and less of the country's productive wealth, however much they contributed to it. The wage theft and exploitation Neoliberalism fosters has become the new norm. Neoliberal idealogues thickly infest Federal and State Treasuries.

In the political arena, is enabling porkies facilitate each other in every lunatic pronouncement about "Budget repair" and "on track for a surplus". And its spotty, textbook-spouting clones ("all debt is debt! Shriek, gasp, hyperventilate!") fall off the conveyor belts of tertiary education Australia-wide, then turn up on The Drum as IPA 'Research Fellows' to spout their evidence-free assertions.

The IPA itself has moles in govt at every level--even in your local Council. Certainly in ours.

Neoliberalism is "dead"? Correction. Neoliberalism is alive, thriving---and quick to ensure its glaring deficiencies and inequities are solely attributable to its opponents. Now THERE'S a surprise.....

totaram -> JohnArmour , 31 Oct 2018 03:01
Agree! And don't forget the handmaiden of neoliberalism is their macroeconomic mythology about government "debt and borrowing" which will condemn our grandchildren to poverty - inter-generational theft! It also allows them to continue dismantling government social programs by giving tax-cuts to reduce "revenue" and then claiming there is no money to fund those programs.
exTen , 31 Oct 2018 02:30
Neoliberalism will not be dead until the underpinning of neoliberalism is abandoned by ALP and Greens. That underpinning is their mindless attachment to "budget repair" and "return to surplus". The federal government's "budget" is nothing like a currency user's budget. Currency users collect in order to spend whereas every dollar spent by the federal government is a new dollar and every dollar taxed by the federal government is an ex-dollar. A currency cannot sensibly have "debt" in the currency that it issues and no amount of surplus or deficit now will enhance or impair its capacity to spend in future. A currency issuer does not need an electronic piggybank, or a Future Fund, or a Drought Relief Fund. It can't max out an imaginary credit card. It's "borrowing" is just an exchange of its termless no-coupon liabilities (currency) for term-limited coupon-bearing liabilities (bonds). The federal budget balance is no rational indicator of any need for austerity or for stimulus. The rational indicators are unemployment (too small a "deficit"/too large a surplus) and inflation (too large a "deficit"/too small a "surplus"). Federal taxation is where dollars go to die. It doesn't "fund" a currency issuer's spending - it is there to stop the dollars it issues from piling up and causing inflation and to make room for spending by democratically elected federal parliament. The name of the game is to balance the economy, not the entirely notional and fundamentally irrelevant "budget".
Copperfield , 31 Oct 2018 01:51
"Competition" as the cornerstone of neoliberal economics was always a lie. Corporations do their best to get rid of competitors by unfair pricing tactics or by takeovers. And even where some competitors hang in there by some means (banks, petrol companies) the competition that occurs is not for price but for profit.

And changing the electoral system? Yes indeed. After years of observation it seems to me that the problem with our politics is not individual politicians (although there are notable exceptions) but political parties. Rigid control of policies and voting on party instruction (even by the Greens) makes the proceedings of parliament a complete waste of time. If every policy had to run the gauntlet of 150 people all voting by their conscience we would have better policy. The executive functions could be carried out by a cabinet also elected from those members. But not going to happen - too many vested interests in the parties and their corporate sponsors.

gidrys , 31 Oct 2018 01:34
With the election of Bolsonaro in Brazil (even though nearly 30% of electors refused to vote) it may be a little presumptuous to dissect the dead corpse of neoliberalism, as Richard Denniss' hopes that we can.

What is absolutely gob-smacking is that Brazilians voted for him; a man that Glenn Greenwald describes as "far more dangerous than Trump" , that Bolsonaro envisages military dictatorships as "being a far more superior form of government" advocating a civil war in order to dispose of the left.

Furthermore, the election of this far-right neoliberal extremist also threatens the Amazon forest and its indigenous people; with a global impact that will render combatting climate change even more difficult.

Locally, recent Liberal Party battles over leadership have included the neolib factor, as the lunatic right in that party - who I suspect would all love to be a Bolsonaro themselves - aggressively activate their grumblings and dissension.

Oh, Richard how I wish you were right; but in the Victorian election campaign - currently underway - I have seen Socialist candidates behaving in a manner that doesn't garner hope in a different way of doing politics.

The fact that 'our' democracy is based on an adversarial, partisan system leaves me with little hope. Alain Badiou wrote that "ours is not a world of democracy but a world of imperial conservatism using democratic phraseology" ; and until that imposition is discarded 'our' democracy will remain whatever we are told it is, and neolibs will continue to shove their bullshit down our throats as much as they can.

beeden , 31 Oct 2018 01:33
There is no abatement to the wealthiest in the global communities seeking greater wealth and thus increasing inequality.

Taking a local example,

We find a shift away from democratic processes and the rise of the "all new adulation of the so-called tough leader" factor, aka Nazism/Fascism. From Trump to Turkey, Netanyahu to Putin, Brazil to China, the rise of the "right" in Europe, the South Americas, where the leader is "our great and "good" Teacher", knows best, and thus infantalises the knowledge and awareness of the rest of the population. Who needs scientists, when the "leader" knows everything?

Have the people of the world abrogated their democratic responsibility?

Or is it the gerrymandering chicanery of US Republican backers/politicians( so long as you control the voting machines ) that have sent the ugly message to the world, Power is yours for the making and taking by any means that ignores the public's rights in the decision making process. Has the "neo-liberal" world delivered a corrupted system of democracy that has deliberately alienated the world's population from actively participating fully in the full awareness that their vote counts and will be counted?

Do we need to take back the controls of democracy to ensure that it is the will of the people and not a manipulation by vested interest groups/individuals? You're darn tootin'!!!

Matt Quinn , 31 Oct 2018 01:32
A thoughtful piece. Thanks. There are indeed alternatives to neoliberalism, most of which have been shown to lead back to neoliberalism. Appeals for fiscal and monetary relief/stimulus can only ever paper over the worst aspects of it's relentless 'progress', between wars, it seems.

Neoliberalism seems vastly, catastrophically misunderstood. Widely perceived as the latest abomination to spring from the eternal battle 'twixt Labour and Capital, it's actual origins are somewhat more recent. Neoliberalism really, really is not just "Capitalism gone wrong". It goes much deeper, to a fundamental flaw buried( more accurately 'planted') deep in the heart of economics.

Instead of trying to understand Neo-Classical Economics it is perhaps more instructive to understand what it was built, layer by layer, to obscure. First the Land system, then the Wealth system, and finally the Money system (hived off into a compartment - 'macroeconomics'). Importantly, three entirely different categories of "thing" .

In 1879 an obscure journalist from then-remote San Francisco, Henry George, took the world by storm with his extraordinary bestseller Progress and Poverty . Still the only published work to outsell the Bible in a single year, it did so for over twenty years, yet few social justice advocates have heard of it.

George set out to discover why the worst poverty always seemed to accompany the most progress. By chasing down the production process to its ends, and tracing where the proceeds were going, he succeeded spectacularly. From Progress and Poverty , Chapter 17 - "The Problem Explained" :

Three things unite in production: land, labor, and capital. Three parties divide the output: landowner, laborer, and capitalist. If the laborer and capitalist get no more as production increases, it is a necessary inference that the landowner takes the gain.

George gravely threatened privileged global power-elites , so they erased him from academic history. A mind compared, in his time with Plato, Copernicus and Adam Smith wiped from living memory, by the modern aristocracy.

In the process of doing so, they emasculated the discipline of economics, stripped dignity from labour, and set in motion a world-destroying doctrine. Neo-Classical Economics(aka neoliberalism) was born , to the detriment of the working-citizen and the living world on which s/he depends.

Einstein was a fan of George, and used his methods of thought-experiment and powerful inductive reasoning to discover Relativity, twenty years later. Henry Georges brilliant insights into Land (aka nature), Wealth (what you want, need), and Money (sharing mechanism) are as relevant as ever, and until they are rediscovered, we are likely to re-run the 1900's over and over, with fewer and fewer resources.

~ How Land Barons, Industrialists and Bankers Corrupted Economics .

[Dec 09, 2018] Neoliberalism us the economic stablemate of big religion's Prosperity Evangelism cult

Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Alan Ritchie , 31 Oct 2018 22:24

Neoliberalism, the economic stablemate of big religion's Prosperity Evangelism cult. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prosperity_theology . Dual streams of bull shit to confuse the citizens while the Country's immense wealth is stolen.

[Dec 09, 2018] The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational vulture corporations

Notable quotes:
"... Apologies, but Neoliberalism is far from 'dead'. But of course it should never have given 'life'. However, if it were 'dead' why did Labor vote with the Coalition to ratify the ultra-Neoliberal TPP??? The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational vulture corporations. Why???? Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Under these rules, foreign investors can legally challenge host state regulations outside that country's courts. A wide range of policies can be challenged. ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

MobyAhab , 31 Oct 2018 00:09

Apologies, but Neoliberalism is far from 'dead'. But of course it should never have given 'life'. However, if it were 'dead' why did Labor vote with the Coalition to ratify the ultra-Neoliberal TPP??? The TPP is the penultimate wet dream of all neoliberal multinational vulture corporations. Why???? Investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS) Under these rules, foreign investors can legally challenge host state regulations outside that country's courts. A wide range of policies can be challenged.

Yeah! Philip Morris comes to mind. "The cost to taxpayers of the Australian government's six-year legal battle with the tobacco giant Philip Morris over plain packaging laws can finally be revealed, despite the government's efforts to keep the cost secret.

The commonwealth government spent nearly $40m defending its world-first plain packaging laws against Philip Morris Asia, a tobacco multinational, according to freedom of information documents.

Documents say the total figure is $38,984,942.97."

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jul/02/revealed-39m-cost-of-defending-australias-tobacco-plain-packaging-laws

[Dec 09, 2018] Neo- liberalism is not dead its only just started. We are not in an era of democracy and freedom but of Oligarchy and governmental servitude. In the era of legalised privateering.

Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Moron_Strictos_freed , 31 Oct 2018 00:00

Neo- liberalism is not dead its only just started. We are not in an era of democracy and freedom but of Oligarchy and governmental servitude.
Less restrictions doesn't mean freedom it mean free booters, privateers , and plunderers are given government support and handouts the only thing free is their right to take.

The pirates who plunder the most are given Hero status and those plundered are laughed at as losers.

Looks around you governments are becoming agents of theft find ways to channel money to those who don't need it . They say its right wing fascism but its not for all their evil the fascists were determined to improve the lot of the people, however perversely they went about it.

What we have today is legalised privateering.

None of the political parties today have the least intention to change a system that works for them.

Bewareofnazihippies -> Fred1 , 30 Oct 2018 23:58
Fred, I can't remember who said it, but an observer of human systems and institutions made the observation that unless the prevalent social, economic or political structures of the day was not either changed or renewed, then those within the system would 'game' it; corrupting it from within for personal benefit to the detriment of society as a whole.
This perfectly sums up neo-liberalism.
Whatever positive virtues were extolled when this ideology was adopted wholesale by so many governments and societies (and please spare me the '-we delivered billions out of poverty!' line, that was a positive byproduct, never the objective of neo-liberalism), it has since become thoroughly corrupted, serving an ever shrinking percentage of society - entrenching a super-wealthy 'ruling class' that makes a mockery of the idea of democracy.
It's time to ditch this 21st Century feudalistic construct, and replace it with something that serves the whole of society with more justice than this current gravy train for the one percenters.
Bluetwo , 30 Oct 2018 23:54
Fully agree with the things being said here. The privatisation of essential services has been a bloody disaster. Telecommunications, health, education energy production/distribution. Look at what the NSW conservatives are doing the the public transport or the feds have done to our communications, including Telstra the ABC and SBS.

But the issue is that this will just turn into an ongoing political football with each successive conservative government trying to sell off the farm again.

These critical public services and infrastructure must be protected in law needing a referendum to make major changes. Also their funding must be guaranteed and they must be run at arms length from the government to reduce political interference and ensure they are delivering the best possible service and are competitive with the huge private sector operators.

There charter of operation and obligation to the public must be extremely robust and clearly outline their duties of care to operate in a transparent and open fashion putting the public interest as a priority.

FelixKruell , 30 Oct 2018 23:50

The opposite of a neoliberal economic agenda isn't a progressive economic agenda, but democratic re-engagement.

You can have democratic engagement voting for a 'neo-liberal economic agenda'. In fact we've had it for decades.

But of course not even the Coalition believes that any more. These days they proudly subsidise their friends and regulate their enemies in order to reshape Australia in their preferred form.

They're politicians - they've never applied their ideological views in a pure way. This is nothing new.

Ironically, one of the major objections to proportional representation in Australia has been that it tends to deliver minority government, a situation that the major parties prefer to avoid.

There's a big difference between minority government by a major party + a handful of votes, versus a minority government by a handful of minority parties, or a major party + a minor party. They tend to lead to the kind of instability we'd prefer to avoid.

The death of neoliberalism means

I think you've called it a bit prematurely. Both major parties here are still peddling neo-liberalism, with policies which only differ on the margins.

[Dec 09, 2018] Never forget that fascism is the natural defence mechanism of capital. After it is accrued, it must be defended

Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberal doctrine leads to skyrocketing inequality, a swelling in the desperate and forgotten poor who are vulnerable to populist messaging and the idea of a strongman peddling easy answers to keep people safe as civil unrest increases. Fascism seeks power for power's sake and total control over the populace, and always cruelty to the marginalised, the 'others'. How all the right wingers hand-wringing over the idea of 'socialist communisms!!1!' can't see that, I don't know. ..."
"... All over the world, failed neoliberalism is being replaced by right-wing populist nationalism & I don't think "repairing democratic institutions" is at the top of their to-do list. ..."
"... I'm certainly in favour of greater nationalisation, especially of essential services. But around the world, neo-liberalism has morphed into neo-fascism and this is where the next fight must be. ..."
"... In social systems, natural selection favours cooperation. In addition, we are biased toward ethical behaviours, so cooperation and sharing are valued in human societies. ..."
"... The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts. ..."
"... No wonder you get fascist right wing insurgence in this climate! ..."
Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

CatPerson420 , 30 Oct 2018 23:18

Never forget that fascism is the natural defence mechanism of capital. After it is accrued, it must be defended. The current trend in global politics is not an anomaly but an entirely predictable outcome.

Neoliberal doctrine leads to skyrocketing inequality, a swelling in the desperate and forgotten poor who are vulnerable to populist messaging and the idea of a strongman peddling easy answers to keep people safe as civil unrest increases. Fascism seeks power for power's sake and total control over the populace, and always cruelty to the marginalised, the 'others'. How all the right wingers hand-wringing over the idea of 'socialist communisms!!1!' can't see that, I don't know.

It's too late for the US I fear, and time is rapidly running out for the UK if they don't pull their finger out and have another referendum before the self immolation of Brexit.

Rikyboy , 30 Oct 2018 23:07
All over the world, failed neoliberalism is being replaced by right-wing populist nationalism & I don't think "repairing democratic institutions" is at the top of their to-do list.

If Australia does swing the pendulum to the left, it, along with NZ, will be one of the few countries to do so. De-privatising will not be easy & will be met with a huge reactionary backlash. They'll need to tread very carefully if they want to stay in government.

jclucas , 30 Oct 2018 23:02
Neoliberalism may be dead but the neoliberals in the government will never admit it as they seamlessly transition to authoritarian nationalism with populist promises - and failure to deliver on them.

The neoliberal project was always a philosophical cover for crony capitalism that betrayed the public interest by rewarding vested interests for their patronage, perverted democracy, and served as a mechanism for perverting the natural function of an economy - to fairly distribute goods, resources, and services throughout society - to favor the welfare of the few over the many.

The self-interested culture of neoliberalism - the cult of the individual that denies the common good - pervades every aspect of Australia's life as a nation - business, politics, sport, education, and health - denying and crowding out public spirit, selfless service, and societal wellbeing.

For meaningful change to occur there must be a rebirth of the conception of the public good, and the virtue and necessity of acting to realise it.

However at this stage there is not a communal recognition of what the problem is let alone how to go about repairing it. For that to happen there must be a widely accepted narrative that naturally leads to the obvious actions that must be take to redress the damage done by the neoliberal con job: decreasing economic inequality, restoring democracy, and rebuilding a sense of common cause.

Piecemeal change will not be sufficient to enact the the sweeping transformation that has to occur in every department of life. It is not enough to tax multinationals, to have a federal integrity commission, to build a renewable future, or to move to proportional representation.

Someone, some party, some coherent philosophical perspective has to explain why it must be done.

BlueThird , 30 Oct 2018 22:57
It's certainly the case that the Liberal party, in particular, are now using ideas that fall outside and to the right of neo-liberalism, but it's also obviously the case that neo-liberalism and current Liberal thinking share the same underlying goal. Namely, the transfer of wealth and power towards a narrower and narrower group of people and corporations.

That suggests the death of neo-liberalism is coming about because – having done so much damage already – it's no longer capable of delivering the required results, and that we're moving into a new phase of the death spiral. I think that can also be seen in both the US (where Trump is using the identified problems of neo-liberalism to further the same basic agenda, but with less decorum and a larger cadre of useful idiots) and the UK (where there's still a very strong possibility that Brexit will be used as an excuse to roll back great swathes of social and democratic safeguards).

Perhaps even more worrying – given the latest reports on how we're destroying habitat as well as the climate, and how much of our biodiversity is in South America, particularly the Amazon – is that Brazil is how on a similar path.

The likelihood is that the Liberal party won't get away with what they have planned, but they – and the forces behind them – certainly won't stop trying. And unfortunately it's far from obvious that the Labor party will repudiate neo-liberalism anytime soon. That they signed up for the latest iteration of TPP is hardly a good omen.

Democratic re-engagement is the better way forward from neo-liberalism, but unfortunately I think it's unlikely to be the one that we end up taking.

All of that said, the deepest problem of all is the way in which democracy and government have been corrupted, often via the media, but typically at the behest of corporations, and if there is a way forward it has to be found in addressing those interactions

tolpuddler , 30 Oct 2018 22:28
I'm certainly in favour of greater nationalisation, especially of essential services. But around the world, neo-liberalism has morphed into neo-fascism and this is where the next fight must be.
slorter , 30 Oct 2018 22:19
Well we have had 3+ decades of the dogma!

In social systems, natural selection favours cooperation. In addition, we are biased toward ethical behaviours, so cooperation and sharing are valued in human societies.

But what happens when we are forced into an economic system that makes us compete at every level? The logical outcome is societal decline or collapse.

Perhaps the worst aspect of neoliberalism was its infection of the Labor party. This has left our social infrastructure alarmingly exposed.

The consequences of four decades of financialized neoliberal trade policies were by no means equally shared. Internal and external class relations were made evident through narrowly distributed booms followed by widely distributed busts.

Globally, debt has forced policy convergence between political parties of differing ideologies. European center-left parties have pushed austerity even when ideology would suggest the opposite.

No wonder you get fascist right wing insurgence in this climate!

Thank you Richard Denniss we need to highlight this more and more and start educating the dumbed down population saturated with neoliberal snake oil!

[Dec 08, 2018] One fatal flaw of WASPs on both sides of the pond is that the upper crust ones don't seem to have much empathy for the less fortunate of their own kind

Notable quotes:
"... It's the intense indoctrination of Anglos since 1945 along the lines that Nationalism is bad and Racial Identity is bad. Hence the frantic virtue signaling of open frontiers and multiculturalism among the educated (indoctrinated). ..."
"... It will eventually be resolved by the people who don't care (the working class), who will toss out their elite and their "educated" middle class collaborators – in fact it's already happening with Brexit – check out the Daily Mail comments section. ..."
Dec 08, 2018 | www.unz.com
Miro23 , says: December 7, 2018 at 3:45 am GMT
@JLK

One fatal flaw of WASPs on both sides of the pond is that the upper crust ones don't seem to have much empathy for the less fortunate of their own kind.

It's the intense indoctrination of Anglos since 1945 along the lines that Nationalism is bad and Racial Identity is bad. Hence the frantic virtue signaling of open frontiers and multiculturalism among the educated (indoctrinated).

For example, it's still completely unacceptable in middle class British society to support Nationalism (you're a Nazi) or Anglo racial identity (other races are welcome to their identities – but if you're and Anglo you're a racist).

It will eventually be resolved by the people who don't care (the working class), who will toss out their elite and their "educated" middle class collaborators – in fact it's already happening with Brexit – check out the Daily Mail comments section.

[Dec 07, 2018] Theresa May's Husband's Capital Group Is Largest Shareholder in BAE

Dec 07, 2018 | www.unz.com

Anon [144] Disclaimer , says: December 7, 2018 at 3:23 am GMT

Theresa May's Husband's Capital Group Is Largest Shareholder in BAE

Philip May's Capital Group owned around 7.09% of Lockheed Martin

Theresa May's Husband's Investment Firm Made a "Financial Killing" from the Bombing of Syria

https://www.globalresearch.ca/disgusting-conflict-of-interest-theresa-mays-husbands-investment-firm-made-a-financial-killing-from-the-bombing-of-syria/5636632


The Brits recently landed in Mexico. Will they use the Mercosur-EU FTAS to secretly continue to hold the grip on Europe?
Will they install additional military bases in MAKEDONIA, ALBANIA, KOSOVA the heroin-smuggling human trafficking FAKE US state, BULGARIA, to finish the AMBO pipeline from IRAQ to GREECE?

City of London
Parasites' Paradise (Or the Best Criminal Sanctuary Money Can Buy)

From: Newsbud.com

"with multi-billion pound drug, arms, people smuggling and sex-slave cartels. The "Brits" specialize in laundering funds from the Mexican, Colombian, Peruvian, Russian, Polish, Czech, Nigerian narco-kings. Albanian white slavers have their 'private bankers' at prestigious City banks with a preference for graduates of the London School of Economics. Bi-lingual Greek kleptocrats, lifelong billion dollar tax evaders, fleeing from their pillaged homeland have their favorite real estate brokers, who never engage in any sort of naughty 'due diligence' which might uncover improper tax returns. The City Boys with verve and positive initiative, aided and abetted by the hyper-kinetic "Tony" Blair's open door policy to swindlers and saints of all colors and creeds, welcomed each and every Russian gangster-oligarch-democrat, especially those who paid cash for multi-pound 'Olde English' landmark estates'.

MONSTERS:

Miro23 , says: December 7, 2018 at 3:45 am GMT
@JLK naling of open frontiers and multiculturalism among the educated (indoctrinated).

For example, it's still completely unacceptable in middle class British society to support Nationalism (you're a Nazi) or Anglo racial identity (other races are welcome to their identities – but if you're and Anglo you're a racist).

It will eventually be resolved by the people who don't care (the working class), who will toss out their elite and their "educated" middle class collaborators – in fact it's already happening with Brexit – check out the Daily Mail comments section.

[Dec 05, 2018] Integrity Initiative Organizing Neo-macarthyism and the new Cold War

Notable quotes:
"... 26 November 2018 ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | Defend Democracy Press
Greetings. We are Anonymous. We have obtained a large number of documents relating to the activities of the 'Integrity Initiative' project that was launched back in the fall of 2015 and funded by the British government.

The declared goal of the project is to counteract Russian propaganda and the hybrid warfare of Moscow. Hiding behind benevolent intentions, Britain has in fact created a large-scale information secret service in Europe, the United States and Canada, which consists of representatives of political, military, academic and journalistic communities with the think tank in London at the head of it.

Read more at https://www.cyberguerrilla.org/blog/operation-integrity-initiative-british-informational-war-against-all/

'UK Integrity Initiative is Meddling in The Affairs of Other Nations' 26.11.2018

A leaked hybrid warfare plan of the British government, known as the "Integrity Initiative," published by the hacker group Anonymous, has become a theme of discussion among scholars in Europe. Sputnik spoke to Professor David Miller of the University of Bristol on a plan allegedly adopted by London to counter "Russian propaganda." Sputnik: It [Integrity Initiative] states that its main aim is to counter Russian disinformation, however, what was happening with the Moncloa Campaign' in Spain suggests other motives does it not? Read more at https://sputniknews.com/analysis/201811261070148913-uk-integrity-russia-propaganda/

Statement on Russian media publication of hacked II documents 26 November 2018

"The Integrity Initiative is a partnership of several independent institutions led by The Institute for Statecraft. This international public programme was set up in 2015 to counter disinformation and other forms of malign influence being conducted by states and sub-state actors seeking to interfere in democratic processes and to undermine public confidence in national political institutions. You will find details on the website ( https://www.integrityinitiative.net/ ), and you can follow the programme on its Twitter account or on Facebook (both @InitIntegrity). Read more at https://www.integrityinitiative.net/articles/statement-russian-media-publication-hacked-ii-documents Read also: In Defence of Democratic Rights in Catalonia

EU-wide 'anti-Russian psy-ops' program confirms UK govt funding, Anonymous denies leak 26 Nov, 2018

A network exposed by leaked documents as a Europe-wide PR operation aimed at curbing "Russian propaganda" has confirmed receiving money from the British government, while Anonymous has denied on Twitter that it's behind the leak. The Integrity Initiative (II) is a network claiming to fight disinformation that threatens democracy. A trove of alleged II documents, which purports to show costs and internal guidelines as well as names of individuals cooperating with it, has been published by people claiming to be part of the Anonymous collective. A major Anonymous-linked Twitter account has denied it was linked to the leak. Read more at https://www.rt.com/news/444899-uk-psyop-leak-reaction/

Moncloa Campaign 6 AttTwitter Read more at https://www.scribd.com/document/392195691/Moncloa-Campaign-6-AttTwitter-08-06-18 Also read

A MUST SEE: Gladio or Undermining Democracy "to Fight the Soviets"
Dec 05, 2018 | www.defenddemocracy.press

[Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Rather, they seem to appear to reveal a plot by the British intelligence and security services working in collusion with then CIA Director John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out? ..."
Dec 05, 2018 | www.unz.com
121 Comments Reply

And there are other friends in unlikely places. Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate. The real problem is that the documents apparently don't expose anything done by the Russians.

Rather, they seem to appear to reveal a plot by the British intelligence and security services working in collusion with then CIA Director John Brennan to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out?

So how about it? Teenagers who get in trouble often have to ditch their bad friends to turn their lives around. There is still a chance for the United States if we keep our distance from the bad friends we have been nurturing all around the world, friends who have been convincing us to make poor choices. Get rid of the ties the bind to the Saudis, Israelis, Ukrainians, Poles, and yes, even the British. Deal fairly with all nations and treat everyone the same, but bear in mind that there are only two relationships that really matter – Russia and China. Make a serious effort to avoid a war by learning how to get along with those two nations and America might actually survive to celebrate a tricentennial in 2076.

The Alarmist , says: December 4, 2018 at 10:39 am GMT
You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections. Why, if the beneficiary was anyone other than a Democrat, much less one named Clinton, someone might actually appoint a Special Counsel to look into it, not to mention the misdeeds of the various agencies and departments who aided and abetted it.
anon [178] Disclaimer , says: December 4, 2018 at 11:43 am GMT
"You don't say; British Collusion to influence the 2016 US Presidential elections."

MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given. They later put Michael Steele onto the project; he was a guy with credible Russian contacts. Basically, the scam worked like this:

They funneled an MI6 intelligence file to Michael Steele (governments routinely keep such files on influential foreigners and what they are up to) so he could use his contacts to launder the information and make it appear that it came from sources within Russia; they then funneled the report back to elements of the FBI so they could use it to justify to the FISA court a spying campaign on Trump (the FBI illegally withheld the source of the document); they found nothing proving any Russian connection but they kept the spy program going; they tried justifying the spy program with a fake story involving a reliable asset that once passed information from Jimmy Carter's campaign to George H.W. Bush in an effort to help Reagan win the 1980 election; they later paid the asset nearly a quarter million dollars for his efforts using a fake "India-China" grant despite the grant running to 2018, the asset attempted to get a job in the Trump administration so he could act as a mole ; the Obama regime purposely mishandled information in regards to the spying program (ex: Michael Steele leaked his document to various news sources before the election and later lied to congress about it), ensuring it would leak to the press; the Obama regime illegally unmasked elements of Trump's personal contacts so they could clandestinely leak suggested targets off the record to the right people

They lost the election anyway, so they then planted dirt and negative press to make the document look legit – lies about Manafort meeting Assange (Guardian is funded by the British government to police the left), WaPo lies claiming a vast Russian conspiracy just as Trump came into office (it was an effort to delegitimize him and create calls for Hillary to take his place), leaking bank records, the special counsel .and leaking information on Trump policies to the media using a secret security clearance credentials program enacted by Obama. They also ran interference through CIA guys like Mark Warner in an effort to cover up the mole they planted; they falsely asserted this was a national security issue when the man's identity was well-known to the press and he was never an undercover spy like Jarret was, at least not in recent history.

To put this all into perspective, imagine the following scenario:

The government takes cctv footage of you at a grocery store; in the background there is an attractive woman. The woman then goes missing. The government illegally reads your emails and finds that you like sexual jokes. The government then interviews a friend of yours who claims that you once made a risque rape joke back in college. They also plant a mole in your workplace who befriends you and reports back all of your politically incorrect humor. Then the cops find the woman's body and the government claims that you killed her because you were in the area at the time and you make bad jokes, which has been confirmed by multiple credible people. You look guilty, don't you? The government 1) took information out of context 2) laundered circumstantial evidence through a credible witness when they originally obtained it elsewhere using nefarious sources. That's what they did to Trump, but much much much worse.

Johnny Walker Read , says: December 4, 2018 at 1:38 pm GMT
Like a friends divorce lawyer told him: You go to bed with a nasty bitch, you wake up with a nasty bitch.
Johnny Rottenborough , says: Website December 4, 2018 at 1:46 pm GMT
a plot by the British intelligence and security services to subvert the course of the 2016 election in favor of the Deep State and Establishment favorite Hillary Clinton. How did that one work out?

Deep State and Establishment stooge Donald Trump.

There is still a chance for the United States if we

declare independence from the Jewish Empire.

[Dec 05, 2018] Manufacturing Official Narrative by C.J. Hopkins

Guardian is just a propaganda outlet. That sad fact does not exclude the possibility of publishing really good articles, thouth. That still happens occasionally.
The fact that they follow MI6 and Foreign Office talking points in all foreign events coverage a is just a testament the GB is a "national security state". Nothing more, nothing less.
Notable quotes:
"... I'm not going to debunk the Guardian article here. It has been debunked by better debunkers than I (e.g., Jonathan Cook , Craig Murray , Glenn Greenwald , Moon of Alabama , and many others). ..."
"... The short version is, The Guardian 's Luke Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well, absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece ( employing the subjunctive mood rather liberally ), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended like they had never published it. ..."
"... By that time, of course, its purpose had been served. The story had been picked up and disseminated by other "respectable," "authoritative" outlets, and it was making the rounds on social media. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, in an attempt to counter the above-mentioned debunkers (and dispel the doubts of anyone else still capable of any kind of critical thinking), Politico posted this ass-covering piece speculating that, if it somehow turned out The Guardian 's story was just propaganda designed to tarnish Assange and Trump well, probably, it had been planted by the Russians to make Luke Harding look like a moron. This ass-covering piece of speculative fiction, which was written by a former CIA agent, was immediately disseminated by liberals and "leftists" who are eagerly looking forward to the arrest, rendition, and public crucifixion of Assange. ..."
"... And this is why The Guardian will not be punished for publishing a blatantly fabricated story. Nor will Luke Harding be penalized for writing it. Luke Harding will be rewarded for writing it, as he has been handsomely rewarded throughout his career for loyally serving the ruling classes. Greenwald, on the other hand, is on thin ice. It will be instructive to see how far he pushes his confrontation with The Guardian regarding this story. ..."
"... It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it. ..."
"... Those who are conforming to [official truth] are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so. ..."
"... The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative. ..."
"... It is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution." ..."
"... The distinction is simple. We can't know the truth about distant and complex events like 9/11 or JFK unless we were directly involved, and those people are all dead. For big events we have to rely on, or ignore, the official accounts. ..."
"... Given all this, still, we can approach an approximation of truth that some can agree on. Here is where the trouble starts . ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | www.unz.com

...First, let's look at a concrete example of our system manufacturing official narrative (aka "official truth" or "truth" -- note quotes ). I'm going to use The Guardian 's most recent blatantly fabricated article (" Manafort held secret talks with Assange in Ecuadorian embassy ") as an example, but I could just as well have chosen any of a host of other fabricated stories disseminated by "respectable" outlets over the course of the last two years. The " Russian Propaganda Peddlers " story. The " Russia Might Have Poisoned Hillary Clinton " story. The " Russians Hacked the Vermont Power Grid " story. The " Golden Showers Russian Pee-Tape " story. The " Novichok Assassins " story. The " Bana Alabed Speaks Out " story. The " Trump's Secret Russian Server " story. The " Labour Anti-Semitism Crisis " story. The " Russians Orchestrated Brexit " story. The " Russia is Going to Hack the Midterms " story. The " Twitter Bots " story. And the list goes on.

I'm not going to debunk the Guardian article here. It has been debunked by better debunkers than I (e.g., Jonathan Cook , Craig Murray , Glenn Greenwald , Moon of Alabama , and many others).

The short version is, The Guardian 's Luke Harding, a shameless hack who will affix his name to any propaganda an intelligence agency feeds him, alleged that Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign manager, secretly met with Julian Assange (and unnamed "Russians") on numerous occasions from 2013 to 2016, presumably to conspire to collude to brainwash Americans into not voting for Clinton. Harding's earth-shaking allegations, which The Guardian prominently featured and flogged, were based on well, absolutely nothing, except the usual anonymous "intelligence sources." After actual journalists pointed this out, The Guardian quietly revised the piece ( employing the subjunctive mood rather liberally ), buried it in the back pages of its website, and otherwise pretended like they had never published it.

By that time, of course, its purpose had been served. The story had been picked up and disseminated by other "respectable," "authoritative" outlets, and it was making the rounds on social media. Nonetheless, out of an abundance of caution, in an attempt to counter the above-mentioned debunkers (and dispel the doubts of anyone else still capable of any kind of critical thinking), Politico posted this ass-covering piece speculating that, if it somehow turned out The Guardian 's story was just propaganda designed to tarnish Assange and Trump well, probably, it had been planted by the Russians to make Luke Harding look like a moron. This ass-covering piece of speculative fiction, which was written by a former CIA agent, was immediately disseminated by liberals and "leftists" who are eagerly looking forward to the arrest, rendition, and public crucifixion of Assange.

At this point, I imagine you're probably wondering what this has to do with manufacturing "truth." Because, clearly, this Guardian story was a lie a lie The Guardian got caught telling. I wish the "truth" thing was as simple as that (i.e., exposing and debunking the ruling classes' lies). Unfortunately, it isn't. Here is why.

Much as most people would like there to be one (and behave and speak as if there were one), there is no Transcendental Arbiter of Truth. The truth is what whoever has the power to say it is says it is. If we do not agree that that "truth" is the truth, there is no higher court to appeal to. We can argue until we are blue in the face. It will not make the slightest difference. No evidence we produce will make the slightest difference. The truth will remain whatever those with the power to say it is say it is.

Nor are there many "truths" (i.e., your truth and my truth). There is only one "truth" the "official truth". The "truth" according to those in power. This is the whole purpose of the concept of truth. It is the reason the concept of "truth" was invented (i.e., to render any other "truths" lies). It is how those in power control reality and impose their ideology on the masses (or their employees, or their students, or their children). Yes, I know, we very badly want there to be some "objective truth" (i.e., what actually happened, when whatever happened, JFK, 9-11, the resurrection of Jesus Christ, Schrödinger's dead cat, the Big Bang, or whatever). There isn't. The truth is just a story a story that is never our story.

The "truth" is a story that power gets to tell, and that the powerless do not get to tell, unless they tell the story of those in power, which is always someone else's story. The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative. They either parrot the "truth" of the ruling classes or they utter heresies of one type or another. Naturally, the powerless do not regard themselves as heretics. They do not regard their "truth" as heresy. They regard their "truth" as the truth, which is heresy. The truth of the powerless is always heresy.

For example, while it may be personally comforting for some of us to tell ourselves that we know the truth about certain subjects (e.g., Russiagate, 9-11, et cetera), and to share our knowledge with others who agree with us, and even to expose the lies of the corporate media on Twitter, Facebook, and our blogs, or in some leftist webzine (or "fearless adversarial" outlet bankrolled by a beneficent oligarch), the ruling classes do not give a shit, because ours is merely the raving of heretics, and does not warrant a serious response.

Or all right, they give a bit of a shit, enough to try to cover their asses when a journalist of the stature of Glenn Greenwald (who won a Pulitzer and is frequently on television) very carefully and very respectfully almost directly accuses them of lying. But they give enough of a shit to do this because Greenwald has the power to hurt them, not because of any regard for the truth. This is also why Greenwald has to be so careful and respectful when directly confronting The Guardian , or any other corporate media outlet, and state that their blatantly fabricated stories could, theoretically, turn out to be true. He can't afford to cross the line and end up getting branded a heretic and consigned to Outer Mainstream Darkness, like Robert Fisk, Sy Hersh, Jonathan Cook, John Pilger, Assange, and other such heretics.

Look, I'm not trying to argue that it isn't important to expose the fabrications of the corporate media and the ruling classes. It is terribly important. It is mostly what I do (albeit usually in a more satirical fashion). At the same time, it is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution." People already know the truth the official truth, which is the only truth there is. Those who are conforming to it are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so.

And this is why The Guardian will not be punished for publishing a blatantly fabricated story. Nor will Luke Harding be penalized for writing it. Luke Harding will be rewarded for writing it, as he has been handsomely rewarded throughout his career for loyally serving the ruling classes. Greenwald, on the other hand, is on thin ice. It will be instructive to see how far he pushes his confrontation with The Guardian regarding this story.

As for Julian Assange, I'm afraid he is done for. The ruling classes really have no choice but to go ahead and do him at this point. He hasn't left them any other option. Much as they are loathe to create another martyr, they can't have heretics of Assange's notoriety running around punching holes in their "truth" and brazenly defying their authority. That kind of stuff unsettles the normals, and it sets a bad example for the rest of us heretics.

#

C. J. Hopkins is an award-winning American playwright, novelist and political satirist based in Berlin. His plays are published by Bloomsbury Publishing (UK) and Broadway Play Publishing (USA). His debut novel, ZONE 23 , is published by Snoggsworthy, Swaine & Cormorant. He can be reached at cjhopkins.com or consentfactory.org .

Manufacturing Truth

James Forrestal , says: December 3, 2018 at 6:26 pm GMT

Good piece. I think there's another layer, though.

The truth or falsehood of individual facts about the physical world can often be determined with near-certainty. But when it comes to history, or "news" about current events/ politics, reality is much too complex to address directly. Too many individual facts to be comprehensible, let alone useful.

We must pick, choose, emphasize, or ignore particular elements, and arrange them into some kind of structure, in order to form a useful narrative. Or in the case of "news," the legacy media oligarchy largely performs this function for us -- we simply passively accept/ adopt their narrative. Or, in many cases, "choose" between the closely-related variants of that narrative offered by the "liberal" vs. "conservative" press.

This process of abstraction, simplification, and organization inevitably involves data loss. So no narrative is "true" in the same sense that individual facts about the real world are true. But some narratives incorporate large amounts of "facts" that are demonstrably false, and some are more useful/ descriptive/ predictive than others. No one engaged in this process is "objective." They -- or we -- are all in some way part of the story. It should be self-evident that some narratives are more useful to the perceived interests of owners of major media outlets than others, and that these will assume a much more prominent place in their coverage than ones that are deleterious to those interests.

Ideally, most people would take these factors into account when evaluating the "news," and maintain a much more skeptical attitude than they typically do. But there are several factors that prevent this.

One is simply time/ efficiency. These individual narratives, taken together, support -- and are supported by -- our overall worldview. There aren't enough hours in the day to be constantly skeptical about everything, especially since the major tools of distortion involved in constructing mainstream narratives tend to be selection bias/ memory-holing, with obvious lies about known facts (like the Guardian story referenced here) used only sparingly. It's simply not practical to to constantly consider potentially "better" narratives, and to reevaluate one's worldview based on these.

And which narrative we believe often has more to do with perceived social pressure/ social acceptability than with "truth." As you put it,

Those who are conforming to it are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so.

Mass media pushing a common narrative creates an artificial perception of social consensus. Creating, or even finding, alternative narratives means fighting the inertia of this perceived consensus, and potentially suffering social costs for believing in the "wrong" one. The social role of narratives is largely independent of their "truth" -- if what you're "supposed" to believe is highly implausible, that actually gives it higher value as a signal of loyalty to the establishment.

It's probably best to maintain a resolutely agnostic attitude toward most "news" items, unless one is particularly interested in that particular event. " Why are they pushing this particular story?" "Why now ?" and " What are they trying to accomplish here?" are often more useful questions than "Is it true?"

It's not a new issue -- only exacerbated by the advent of mass visual media:
"Propaganda" -- Edward Bernays (1928)
"The Free Press"– Hilaire Belloc (1918)

Kratoklastes , says: December 3, 2018 at 11:17 pm GMT
I get what Hopkins is trying to do here, but redefining terms (i.e., "truth") doesn't do what he thinks it does.

The truth is not ' what most people think '; it's not ' what we are told to believe '; it's not ' the official narrative '.

There is a useful cautionary tale embedded in Hopkins' piece, but he doesn't tease it out properly.

Take this excerpt:

The truth is what whoever has the power to say it is says it is. If we do not agree that that "truth" is the truth, there is no higher court to appeal to. We can argue until we are blue in the face. It will not make the slightest difference. No evidence we produce will make the slightest difference. The truth will remain whatever those with the power to say it is say it is.

With significant caveats, it is a reasonable description of the way the political world works: if the political class decides that its interests are best served by declaring that a specific narrative X is 'true', it will obtain immediate compliance from about half the livestock, and can then rely on force (peer pressure; subsidy or taxation; state coercion) to get an absolute majority of the herd to declare that they accept the 'truth' of X .

If X is objectively false, too bad.

Try to run a legal argument based on the objective falsity of a thing that the political class has deemed to be true: you'll be shit outta luck.

This is highly relevant where I am sitting: here are two examples – one really obvious, one a bit less so (but far more important because of its radical implications).

Obvious Example: Drug Dogs

Recent research has shown that drug sniffing dogs give false positive signals between 60% and 80% of the time – i.e., in terms of identifying people who are in actual physical possession of drugs at any point in time, drug sniffing dogs perform worse than a coin toss.

Note that this is before considering that the dog's handler is often pointing the dog at a target that the handler thinks is likely to be carrying drugs. (Although in reality, drug dogs are paraded around at concerts and in public spaces, sniffing every passer-by).

However there is an Act of Parliament (capitalise all the magic words) that asserts that a signal from a drug sniffing dog is sufficient to qualify as what Americans call "probable cause" – i.e., reasonable suspicion for a search.

Does anyone think that evidence should be admissible if it results from a search conducted based on 'probable cause' derived from a method that produces worse outcomes than tossing a coin?

Judges will tie themselves into absolute epistemological knots to get that evidence admitted – and they will refuse to permit defence Counsel from adducing evidence about drug dog inaccuracy because since the defendant actually did have drugs in their possession, the dog didn't signal falsely.

In other words, the judge conflates posterior probability with prior probability; the prior probability that the dog is correct, is 10%-40%; this should not suffice to generate probable cause (or 'reasonable suspicion).

More Interesting Example: 'Representative' Democracy

In general, Western governments assert that their legitimacy stems from two primary sources: some founding set of principles (usually a constitution – written or otherwise), and 'representativeness' (including ratification of the constitution by a representative mechanism, for those places with written foundational documents).

The Arrow Impossibility Theorem [1,2] and the Gibbard-Satterthwaite Theorem [3,4], both show that there is no way of accurately determining group preferences using an ordinal voting mechanism.

What this boils down to, is that representativeness is a lie – and it's a lie before any consideration of voting outcomes ; it's a meta -problem (the problem that ordinal voting cannot do what it is claimed to do – viz ., accurately identify the 'will of the people'/'social preferences'/'what the people want').

Beyond the meta-problem, there is also the actual counting problem: no government has ever been elected having obtained the votes of an outright bare majority, i.e., 50%-plus-1 of the entire eligible franchise. (It's more like 25-35% for most parliamentary systems – for US presidential elections in the full-franchise period, the winner is voted for by 29% of the eligible population; you would be horrified to look at US Senate results).

So when the new unhappy lords (and their Little Eichmann bureaucrat enablers) promulgate laws based on assertions of legitimacy because of a constitutional Grundnorm and/or the representative nature of government both of those things are pretty obvious furphies; they are objectively not 'truth' and no amount of heel-clicking and wishing will make it so.

Which brings us to a key legal aphorism that has a jurisprudential history going back four centuries: Ratio legis est anima legis, et mutata legis ratione, mutatur ex lex – which dates from Milborn's case ( Coke 7a KB [1609]).

The reason for a law is the soul of the law, and if the reason for a law has changed, the law is changed .

What this means – explicitly – is that " no law can survive the [extinction of the] reasons on which it is founded ".

American courts re-expressed this as " cessante ratione legis, cessat ipsa lex " (the reason for a law having ceased, the law itself ceases) – e.g., in Funk v. United States , 290 US 371 (1933) in which Justice Sutherland opined –

This means that no law can survive the reasons on which it is founded. It needs no statute to change it; it abrogates itself . If the reasons on which a law rests are overborne by opposing reasons, which in the progress of society gain a controlling force, the old law, though still good as an abstract principle, and good in its application to some circumstances, must cease to apply as a controlling principle to the new circumstances.

(Emphasis mine)

Again: try running this argument in a court: " The asserted basis for all laws promulgated by the government, is provably false. Under a doctrine with a 4-century jurisprudential provenance, the law itself is void ."

See how far you get.

So Hopkins makes a good-but-obvious point – power does not respect either rights or truth; as such it does you no good whatsoever to have the actual truth on your side. He should have made the point better.

References (links are to PDFs of each paper)

[1] Arrow (1950). " A Difficulty in the Concept of Social Welfare " Journal of Political Economy 58 (4): 328–346

[2] Geanakoplos, John (2005). " Three Brief Proofs of Arrow's Impossibility Theorem " Economic Theory 26 (1): 211–215

[3] Gibbard (1973). " Manipulation of voting schemes: a general result " Econometrica 41 (4): 587–601.

[4] Satterthwaite (April 1975). " Strategy-proofness and Arrow's Conditions: Existence and Correspondence Theorems for Voting Procedures and Social Welfare Functions " Journal of Economic Theory 10: 187–217.

Brabantian , says: December 3, 2018 at 11:18 pm GMT
C J Hopkins, despite some good quotes and insights above, regrettably falls into the trap of peddling Derrida-tier relativistic nonsense, playing a word game about 'truth', as if 'truth' was not real merely because most people have strong incentives to avoid being devoted to it

Where you stand depends upon where you sit, etc., Karl Marx's dictums about economic and power positions shaping consciousness, and of course the century-old classic:

It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.

from Upton Sinclair (1878-1968). Hopkins more or less repeats Sinclair when he says

Those who are conforming to [official truth] are doing so, not because they are deceived, but because it is safer and more rewarding to do so.

Despite selling-out truth to the relativism devil in some passages, Hopkins nevertheless creates some quotable, including the particularly insightful:

The powerless are either servants of power or they are heretics. There is no third alternative.

The following notion of Hopkins is seen now and then in the alt-sphere, but always bears repeating

It is important to realize that "the truth" is not going to "rouse the masses from their slumber" and inspire them to throw off their chains. People are not going to suddenly "wake up," "see the truth" and start "the revolution."

... ... ...

Kratoklastes , says: December 3, 2018 at 11:28 pm GMT
@Tulip

The coin of truth is iron and blood.

That's absolutely, 100% wrong.

Iron and blood are the tools used to force people to accept what isn't true. (Another way to tell: it was uttered by a fucking politician – a cunt who wanted to live in palaces paid for by the sweat of other people's brows).

Truth does not need violence to propagate itself: in a completely-peaceful system of free exchange, bad ideas (of which lies are a subset) will get driven out of the market place because they will fail to conform to ground truth.

Falsehood requires violence (arguably it is a form of violence: fraud is 'violent' because it causes its victims to misallocate their resources or to deform their preferences and expectations).

In a very real sense, truth does not need friends: all it requires is an absence of powerful enemies.

RobinG , says: December 4, 2018 at 12:21 am GMT
@James Forrestal

Occupation of the American Mind: Israel's Public Relations War in the United States

https://www.occupationmovie.org/

This film shows a great example of propaganda in action. Free to watch now and this link also includes a short version and a trailer.

Jett Rucker , says: Website December 4, 2018 at 3:04 am GMT
When I tell any Truth, it is not for the sake of Convincing those who do not know it, but for the sake of defending those who Do.

~ William Blake, 1810

polistra , says: December 4, 2018 at 7:33 am GMT
The distinction is simple. We can't know the truth about distant and complex events like 9/11 or JFK unless we were directly involved, and those people are all dead. For big events we have to rely on, or ignore, the official accounts.

But we CAN know the truth about our own situation, our own neighborhood, and our own families. The current riots in France are a concrete ASSERTION of local truth against the blatant and condescending official lies. The majority of France is getting poorer and suffering more from migrant crime. Macron insists that starvation is necessary to serve Gaia, and crime is necessary to serve Juncker. The people would prefer to have a leader that serves France.

The scalpel , says: Website December 4, 2018 at 1:07 pm GMT
@FB Scientific truth is limited by two factors – assumptions, and hidden variables. For example, we might drop a brick in a vacuum and believe that it falls at 9.8 m/s squared. Here, we make the assumption that the force of gravity is constant. And for most of history we were unaware of the hidden variable of relativity to the speed of light.

So, assuming (LOL) that we are able to eliminate all assumptions and account for all hidden variables, there is a scientific truth. That is ASSUMING we are not just a simulation in someone elses computer!

Given all this, still, we can approach an approximation of truth that some can agree on. Here is where the trouble starts .

DFH , says: December 4, 2018 at 4:05 pm GMT
What is truth? – John 18:38
FB , says: December 4, 2018 at 4:26 pm GMT
@The scalpel LOL and then there is the 'observer effect' also especially in good old quantum mechanics in the end scientific truth does boil down to what 'some can agree on'
Tulip , says: December 4, 2018 at 5:40 pm GMT
@Kratoklastes Strength is the production of force over distance. That is to say, force is a quantifiable, physical phenomenon that, deconstruct it as much as you want, will hit you like a tsunami whether you believe it or not.

Force only works because there is a real world that transcends philosophical bullshit and marketing.

The subjective piece is will: victory is attained when the enemies will to resist is crushed. Through the repeated use of physical force, eventually any enemy can be worn down and vanquished.

The world is finite, desire is infinite, and for every desire and appetite, there is a will. As multiple wills will that they attain their infinite desires in a finite world, there will always be a conflict of will, which will always ultimately be resolved by force. Which means ultimately, despite the rich imaginations and appetites of humans, and their related striving, physical force will ultimately rule the day, and conquer, condition, and constrain the mental life of mankind.

Of course, desire and appetite will not take no for an answer, and in their frustration, they will imagine, fantasize, and conceptualize rationales for why this is not so. This is the nature of our desires, and in good times of prosperity and peace, they may even bend our reason in the direction of these appetites and fantasies, until the instincts for self preservation and endurance rust, and are even forgotten. But like the moon revealed by a passing cloud, the perpetual war of human existence will inevitably reassert itself, and those that have prepared for the inevitable will vanquish those who were content to daydream when they should have been preparing.

TimothyPMadden , says: December 4, 2018 at 8:52 pm GMT
What is truth ?

Truth is a word .

After reading the article and the aggregate comments, I am strengthened in my belief that the physics analogy of Schrödinger's cat is among the most useful (and notwithstanding the otherwise valid criticism of it in the comments). In the same way that the Oxford English Dictionary, for example, does not purport to define a given word, per se , but rather gives a detailed description of how the word has in fact been used over the years and centuries.

I refer to my version of Schrödinger's cat as counter-sense words or oscillating-contradictions .

Oscillating contradictions and cogno-linguistic manipulation

The primary means by which corporate supremacy, for example, is achieved and maintained in practice is via the maintenance and use of a small arsenal of about two dozen critical counter-sense or yo-yo -like words/terms that are asserted or claimed to mean either "X" or "Minus-X" at the option of the decision-maker.

Among the most important and sui generis (in a class of its own) is the word person which is held to mean a living, breathing being of conscience (literally a being of equity) with the rights, powers and privileges of such being ("X"), or else it can mean a corporate entity which is a notional/inanimate item of property to be bought and sold and otherwise traded for profit in the stock and financial markets ("Minus-X").

By way of example/demonstration of the ongoing cognitive manipulation process, if someone had managed to hit the judges of the U.S. Supreme Court with a blast of truth-ray just before they announced their decision in Citizens United, here is what we may have got instead:

[MORE]

We here at the Supreme Court are part of what can be fairly and broadly referred to as an arm of the entrenched-money-power.

At certain times and under certain circumstances it is to our enormous advantage over you the masses that corporations be natural-persons-in-law with the rights, powers and privileges of a natural person or living being of conscience.

At other times and other circumstances it is to our enormous advantage over you the masses that corporations be items of property that can be actively bought and sold and traded for profit in the stock and financial markets.

Your laughable naiveté is manifest in your expectation that you are going to receive a definitive answer from this Court, or even that it is possible for us to give you one. Among the foundational purposes of this Court is to actively prevent that question from being answered definitively at all. The instant we give a definitive answer, the game is over.

Whatever answer we give you must perpetuate the systematized delusion that the same concept (corporate personhood) can mean either X (a living being of conscience), or minus-X (an item of property), depending on the ever-changing needs of the decider.

So our current answer is that a corporation is a natural-person-in-law with the rights, powers and privileges of a natural person, except when it isn't. We'll let you know next time whether that situation has changed in the meantime.

Essentially all counter-sense words/terms follow that same template .

Notwithstanding that the respective concepts are logically and objectively mutually exclusive , the judges of the Courts (and the broadly-defined financial-world/social-control-structure) maintain that it can be either or both , and we'll let you know if and when it becomes important.

So a corporate person has a right of free speech when giving money to influence political parties, but not to object to itself being sold as a piece of property in the stock and financial markets or when it is acquired in a merger or takeover financed by its own assets. If a corporation has the legal capacity and rights of a natural person, then how can it be owned as the legal property of another? The purpose of the Courts is to ensure that that question is never presented in that way.

After person , the remaining most significant counter-sense or yo-yo -like words are (surprise surprise) essentially all money-and-finance-based, and the most important among these is the word principal and its role in facilitating illegal front-loading or ex-temporal fraud (interest illegally and unlawfully compounded in advance).

Is the amount of principal the actual or net amount advanced by the creditor and received by the debtor for their own use and control?

Or is it the amount that the debtor agrees that they owe regardless of the amount received?

Is the amount of principal a question of fact ? Or of the agreement of parties ?

[Here is the premise / offer that is referenced immediately below:]

Lender (e.g., typical second-mortgage lender): "I will loan you $10,000 at 20% per annum provided that you sign and give to me a marketable security that claims or otherwise purports to evidence that I have loaned you $15,000 at 10% per annum, plus an undisclosed and unregistered side-agreement and cheque (check) back to me for a bonus or loan fee of $5,000 as a payment from the nominal proceeds."

In the process example used above, what is the principal amount of the loan? Is it $10,000 because that is the factual net amount invested by the creditor and received by the debtor for their own use? Or is it $15,000 because that is the amount that the debtor is required to falsely agree that they have received and owe as a condition of the loan? Or is it $20,000 because that is the total cash-equivalent/money assets ($15,000 mortgage + $5,000 cheque) that the debtor has to give to the creditor?

Is it a noun/fact ? Or is it an adjective/opinion merely pretending to be a noun? All debt and therefore money in the world today depends on the answer to that question that theoretically cannot exist.

Principal is a special type (and most significant form) of counter-sense word or oscillating contradiction where dictionaries normally only give one sense, while commercial practice defines the contrary. It would be very difficult to put the Whatever-the-debtor-agrees-that-they-owe sense into a dictionary, because the fraud against meaning (as well as the criminal law) is manifest in spelling it out, and ever more so in more specialized financial dictionaries.

So virtually every legal, financial, accounting, and ordinary English dictionary and/or regulation defines it to the effect "The actual amount invested, loaned or advanced to the debtor/borrower net of any interest, discount, premium or fees", while virtually every financial security in the real world at least implicitly incorporates the fraudulent alternative/contrary meaning.

This in turn allows the academic world to function on the rational/factual definition, while the markets maintain a wholly contradictory deemed or pretended reality, while both remain oblivious to the contradiction.

Thus principal means the nominal creditor's actual and net investment, unless it doesn't .

With this class of counter-sense word where there is a necessary and definitive answer, the real job of the judges of the Courts becomes to make certain that the question is never officially asked, and under no circumstances is it to be definitively answered.

With just one of these words you can theoretically steal the Earth . With a financial system that is relatively saturated with them, such becomes child's play . With these rules a group of competently-trained chimpanzees otherwise pulling levers at random could do as well as the so-called wizards of Wall Street .

And significantly, these oscillating contradictions enable the judges to be self-righteous in the extreme on behalf of the entrenched-money-power, while looting the little people of the product of their labour.

As in: You have received the principal amount ($10,000) and you are going to pay back the principal amount ($15,000) plus the ever-accumulating (and super-leveraged) interest upon it according to your contract, while the meaning of the word oscillates between fact and opinion – between a noun and an adjective – according to what the judge needs it to mean (or accommodate) at any given instant in time.

It seems impossibly obvious in this simple example, but with several of them orchestrated simultaneously or sequentially, anything can truly be made to mean anything .

A partial list of the most critical oscillating-contradicitions includes: loan, credit, discount, interest, rate-of-interest, agreement, contract, security, repay, restitution, etc., all of which mean either "X" or its conceptual opposite "Minus-X" at the option of the entrenched-money-power whose vast financial fortunes are founded on such cogno-linguistic arbitrage .

Here are what I believe to be four essential tools needed to triangulate reality via congo-linguistic parallax . The first two are mine, and the last two are from the American and English Courts, respectively.

1. Humans are highly cogno-linguistic . We perceive reality very largely as a function of the language that we use to describe it. Most everyone inherently believes and presumes that you have to be able to think something before you can say it. The greater reality is that, above a certain base level of perception and communication, you have to have the words and language by which to say something before you can think it .

2. The world is ever-increasingly controlled and administered by people who genuinely believe whatever is necessary for the answer they need. Administrative agents of the entrenched-money-power have solved the criminal-law enigma of mens rea or guilty mind by evolving or devolving (take your pick) into professional schizophrenics who genuinely believe whatever they need to believe for the answer they need, and who communicate among themselves subconsciously by how they name things. They suffer a cogno-linguistically-induced diminished capacity that renders them incapable of perceiving reality beyond labels .

3. Their core business model or modus operandi is the systematized delusion :

"A "systematized delusion" is one based on a false premise, pursued by a logical process of reasoning to an insane conclusion ; there being one central delusion, around which other aberrations of the mind converge." Taylor v. McClintock, 112 S.W. 405, 412, 87 Ark. 243. (West's Judicial Words and Phrases (1914)).

4.

One must not confuse the object of a conspiracy [to defraud] with the means by which it is intended to be carried out. Scott v. Metropolitan Police Commissioner [1974] 60 Cr. App. R. 124 H.L.

I have long since abandoned my search for truth, per se, since I came to realize that the best I can ever do is to constantly strive to move closer to it. With apologies to the physicists, Truth is the Limit of Infinite Good Faith .

The Scalpel , says: Website December 5, 2018 at 12:34 am GMT
@Tulip " which will always ultimately be resolved by force."

Right there is where you lost the plot. That statement is just your opinion and it cannot be proven true. The rest of your argument falls victim to this logical error.

" and those that have prepared for the inevitable will vanquish those who were content to daydream when they should have been preparing."

Also, just your opinion. For example, the "dreamer" might die still comforted by his/her dreams, while the "prepper" might waste his life witing for the "inevitable' that never arrives.

redmudhooch , says: December 5, 2018 at 2:15 am GMT
Truth shall set you free.

For the First Time Since 9/11, Federal Gov't Takes Steps to Prosecute the Use of Explosives to Destroy WTCs

https://thefreethoughtproject.com/911-lawyers-petition-grand-jury-explosives/

In what can be described as a monumental step forward in the relentless pursuit of 9/11 truth, a United States Attorney has agreed to comply with federal law requiring submission to a Special Grand Jury of evidence that explosives were used to bring down the World Trade Centers.

The Lawyers' Committee for 9/11 Inquiry successfully submitted a petition to the federal government demanding that the U.S. Attorney present to a Special Grand Jury extensive evidence of yet-to-be-prosecuted federal crimes relating to the destruction of three World Trade Center Towers on 9/11 (WTC1, WTC2 and WTC7).

After waiting months for the reply, the U.S. Attorney responded in a letter, noting that they will comply with the law.

Some good documentary films here to watch for free:

http://metanoia-films.org/psywar/

Heres a couple more. Occupation of the American Mind is very good. All of John Pilgers films are great.

James Forrestal , says: December 5, 2018 at 3:58 am GMT

@Wizard of Oz

My question/quibble relates to your objection to the use of sniffer dogs to establish probable cause for search because it is no better than a coin toss. That seems fallacious if, according to your figures, the dogs sniff 500 people and get excited by 10 of them of which 3 are correctly identified and 7 are false positives.

Yeah. The concepts of sensitivity, specificity, positive predictive value, and negative predictive value might be very helpful in assessing this.

[Dec 04, 2018] Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom by Deborah Orr

Notable quotes:
"... The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State. ..."
"... Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralized and faceless, to be efficient and responsive ..."
"... The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about ..."
"... Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments. ..."
"... The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised. ..."
Jun 08, 2013 | www.theguardian.com

The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe

he IMF's limited admission of guilt over the Greek bailout is a start, but they still can't see the global financial system's fundamental flaws, writes Deborah Orr.

The International Monetary Fund has admitted that some of the decisions it made in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were wrong, and that the €130bn first bailout of Greece was "bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived happily ever after.

Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that it went along with its partners in "the Troika" – the European Commission and the European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF, put the interests of the Eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch their pearls and splutter with horror that they could be accused of something so petty as self-preservation.

The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask.

Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher John Gray has said all along.

The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State.

Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralized and faceless, to be efficient and responsive. I agree.

The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further – some setting about the task with greater relish than others. Now the task, supposedly, is to get the free market up and running again.

But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people – people who expect to be well paid themselves, having been brought up believing in material aspiration, as consumers need to be.

So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"? The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda. But how can the privatization of societal welfare possibly happen when unemployment is already high, working people are turning to food banks to survive and the debt industry, far from being sorry that it brought the global economy to its knees, is snapping up bargains in the form of busted high-street businesses to establish shops with nothing to sell but high-interest debt? Why, you have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer un-sustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?

Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments.

And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to encourage private profit and shareholder value, then lend governments the money they need to create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them for their profligacy as they do so. It's all utterly, completely, crazy.

The other day a health minister, Anna Soubry , suggested that female GPs who worked part-time so that they could bring up families were putting the NHS under strain. The compartmentalised thinking is quite breathtaking. What on earth does she imagine? That it would be better for the economy if they all left school at 16? On the contrary, the more people who are earning good money while working part-time – thus having the leisure to consume – the better. No doubt these female GPs are sustaining both the pharmaceutical industry and the arts and media, both sectors that Britain does well in.

As for their prioritising of family life over career – that's just another of the myriad ways in which Conservative neoliberalism is entirely without logic. Its prophets and its disciples will happily – ecstatically – tell you that there's nothing more important than family, unless you're a family doctor spending some of your time caring for your own. You couldn't make these characters up. It is certainly true that women with children find it more easy to find part-time employment in the public sector. But that's a prima facie example of how unresponsive the private sector is to human and societal need, not – as it is so often presented – evidence that the public sector is congenitally disabled.

Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many aspects of financial services – that Britain enjoyed during the second half of the 20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce. Soubry and her ilk, above all else, forget that people have multiple roles, as consumers, as producers, as citizens and as family members. All of those things have to be nurtured and invested in to make a market.

The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised.

Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. And even as the results of their folly become ever more plain to see, they are grudging in their admittance of the slightest blame, bickering with their allies instead of waking up, smelling the coffee and realising that far too much of it is sold through Starbucks.

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberalism is just a sanitised-sounding expression, to cover-up the fact that what we are really seeing here is re-branded, far-right corporatist ideology

Notable quotes:
"... 'Neoliberalism' is just a sanitised-sounding expression, to cover-up the fact that what we are really seeing here is re-branded, far-right, corporatist ideology. ..."
"... There is a major dividing line. There are those who recognise the abuses of the system and lobby for changes and there are those who lobby for further exploitation. ..."
"... The West became over-indebted when it embraced globalisation which necessarily impoverishes the Middle and Working Classes of the developed nations. A chap called Jimmy Goldsmith warned of this and was widely condemned for it. There is another issue Guardianistas would rather not confront : you can a welfare state or you can have open borders. But you can't have both. ..."
"... Private enterprise is inefficient because at it's heart it rules out cooperation. Being happiest if it's a monopoly, there's nothing a business would like better than wipe out all competition. ..."
"... Right now, the neoliberals think that those in the Far East are the workers and those in the West are the consumers, until the Far East becomes the market and wages so low in the West that they become the workers, unless of course some kind souls decide to invest money in Education, Health and infrastructure in Africa on a huge scale, so we then have Africa as the workers and the far East as the market, and the West, apart from those who own large numbers of shares or business outright, presumably either starve to death or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and start all over again, inventing and setting up completely new industries, providing the newly universally educated and healthy Chinese and Africans and South Americans haven't done it first. ..."
"... The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes ..."
"... Except it's not. It is still very much alive and growing. ..."
"... deregulated capitalism has failed. That is the product of the last 20 years. The pure market is a fantasy just as communism is or any other ideology. In a pure capitalist economy all the banks of the western world would have bust and indeed the false value "earned" in the preceding 20 years would have been destroyed. ..."
"... "Multinationals need to recognise that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate." However, the gains for the transnational rich are immediate and enormous, while the failure of their markets is slow and, so far, almost entirely painless. ..."
"... Accountants now hold the whip hand in government and business. They know the price of everything but the value of nothing. They advocate selling off industries, outsourcing to low wage economies, zero hours contracts and deregulation (under the bogus campaign line of cutting red tape). ..."
"... Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can , because they are more powerful than governments. ..."
"... If you invent a set of rules that says a country that deficit spends above an arbitrary percentage of its GDP is horribly inefficient and far too high then it should not be a surprise that when that happens, it is described as such. ..."
"... But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people ..."
"... The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes is gobbling up the last scintilla of surplus that can be extracted from the poor ( anyone not independently wealthy). ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

MysticFish , 8 Jun 2013 04:29

'Neoliberalism' is just a sanitised-sounding expression, to cover-up the fact that what we are really seeing here is re-branded, far-right, corporatist ideology.

"Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power."
- Benito Mussolini

NotAgainAgain -> EllisWyatt , 8 Jun 2013 04:15
@EllisWyatt -

There is a major dividing line. There are those who recognise the abuses of the system and lobby for changes and there are those who lobby for further exploitation.

So on the one hand there are relatively rich philanthropists who are quietly supporting campaigns to redistribute wealth and our abstaining, and on the other you have people arguing for repealing employment legislation.Worst of the lot are people who pretend to care about the poor but then proceed to fill their own boots.

As consequence people like Warren Buffet should perhaps be among the good guys, whilst people like Tony Blair are the worst of lot.

Uncertainty -> RedHectorReborn , 8 Jun 2013 04:09
@RedHectorReborn - The rich have extracted all of the wealth from the wells and is now turning to fracking, regardless of the cost to us all.
thenardiers , 8 Jun 2013 04:08
All very true. The failures of markets are well documented in economics: the tendency towards monopoly, the failure to value social goods etc.

In addition, it is ironic that the arch advocates of the 'free market' came begging ( read lobbying) to their governments insisting upon public financial bailouts for themselves or their counter parties. It was the 'free markets' failure to correctly price 'risk' that was the route of the economic collapse.

As regards access to 'free markets' it seems patently obvious that if you extract the most money from that market (Amazon et al), you should contribute a fair share towards the infrastructure of that market: roads, educations, health care etc.

1nn1t -> EllisWyatt , 8 Jun 2013 04:06

@EllisWyatt - ... we have a real problem with corporations that have a default setting of minimize taxes through ever more complex structures. It can't be beyond the wit of HMRC to reduce the complexity of the tax legislation and make it harder to avoid? The prize is continued access to the UK market

We also have the problem that for half the households in the land the level of welfare and benfits rather than wages is the major determinant of their disposable income and general prosperity.

The welfare code is now comparable in size to the tax code. The tax-benefit affairs of the working poor in the UK are now becoming as complex as those of the companies that employ them.

The welfare rights industry, which is essentially tax-benefit-lawyering for claimants, is now as large and complex as the tax-lawyering industry for companies.

It really is insane that we set the minimum wage so low that it attracts income tax, and then attempt to collect tax from the employing company to fund a tax credit to top up the same low wages that the same company is paying.

marienkaefer , 8 Jun 2013 04:00
The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market

Does it? where does it say that? An article which as usual blanket condemns "financial institutions" but actually means banks.

gyges1 , 8 Jun 2013 03:59
The West became over-indebted when it embraced globalisation which necessarily impoverishes the Middle and Working Classes of the developed nations. A chap called Jimmy Goldsmith warned of this and was widely condemned for it. There is another issue Guardianistas would rather not confront : you can a welfare state or you can have open borders. But you can't have both.
JamesValencia , 8 Jun 2013 03:59
Most interesting.

Though I'd say private enterprise is capable of building markets - but not of sustaining them. Take books: If few people know how to read, someone will start a fee paying school to teach those who can pay for it. Then books will take off. And that will generate money for some, who'll send their kids to school.

However it will always, inevitably, crash at some point: Business can build up, but will always do it in destructuve cycles - exactly like the brush fires that destroy and regenerate the savannas. As somebright spark once said: Capitalism contains the seeds of it's own destruction, or something along those lines.

And we don't want to live like that - so we have regulation, and the state.And the state fertilises, and safeguards, by cutting the grass, making mulch, and spreading the rich gooey muck all over the nice, green, verdant, state controlled pampa.

The cowboys, now, they prefer no cutting of grass, and letting their cattle chomp away undistrurbed. And now my analogy is starting to wear thin.

The bottom line: Private enterprise is inefficient because at it's heart it rules out cooperation. Being happiest if it's a monopoly, there's nothing a business would like better than wipe out all competition.

Hence, the necessity for state spending, and state regulation, which the private sector is blind to, because it can't look ahead.

Rochdalelass , 8 Jun 2013 03:57
Well said Deborah!

People are members of families, and are employers and workers, who are customers or clients, and part of their local communities and professions and trades and hobbyists/clubs who are large scale wholesale consumers who create the markets that provides employment and income to individuals who are workers. And, and, one big circle.

Right now, the neoliberals think that those in the Far East are the workers and those in the West are the consumers, until the Far East becomes the market and wages so low in the West that they become the workers, unless of course some kind souls decide to invest money in Education, Health and infrastructure in Africa on a huge scale, so we then have Africa as the workers and the far East as the market, and the West, apart from those who own large numbers of shares or business outright, presumably either starve to death or pull themselves up by their bootstraps, and start all over again, inventing and setting up completely new industries, providing the newly universally educated and healthy Chinese and Africans and South Americans haven't done it first.

OK. I was against it for a long time, but go ahead. There's no way of avoiding it. Eat the Rich. Apart from the fact that ultra thin is fashionable, and with all that dieting and exercising, they are the only people who actually get the time for lots of exercise these days, and they'll taste incredibly tough and stringy.

EllisWyatt -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 03:56
@CaptainGrey - Ssshhh not on CiF, we all know that capitalism has failed its just that we can't point to a successful alternative model because such a thing has never existed, its just that this time its different and the model I advocate will lead us all to the sunny uplands of utopia.

Obviously there will be a little bit of coercion and oppression to get us to those sunny uplands, but you can't make an omlette etc. plus don't worry that stuff will only happen to "bad people"

CaptainGrey -> emkayoh , 8 Jun 2013 03:55
@emkayoh -

The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes

Except it's not. It is still very much alive and growing. The "alternatives" have crashed and burned save Cuba and North Korea. Capitalism, especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won and countless people have gained as a result.
bluebirds -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 03:55
@CaptainGrey - deregulated capitalism has failed. That is the product of the last 20 years. The pure market is a fantasy just as communism is or any other ideology. In a pure capitalist economy all the banks of the western world would have bust and indeed the false value "earned" in the preceding 20 years would have been destroyed.
MylesMackie , 8 Jun 2013 03:55
In the 19th century based on experience the public services became part of the public sector to avoid corruption and corporate blackmail. The neoclassical revolution of the late 20th century has pushed us back to days when elites regarded the state as their property. Democracy was a threat which won out either through the British model or violent revolution. A small elite cannot endure if the majority feel exploited.

The Bilderberg Conference should look to the past and learn from the mistakes committed. Neoclassicism will eventually impoverish them

1nn1t -> UnevenSurface , 8 Jun 2013 03:53

@UnevenSurface - Multinationals need to recognise that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate.

"Multinationals need to recognise that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate." However, the gains for the transnational rich are immediate and enormous, while the failure of their markets is slow and, so far, almost entirely painless.
EllisWyatt -> UnevenSurface , 8 Jun 2013 03:52
@UnevenSurface - I think corporation tax is becoming obsolete given globalization and the increasing dominance of online / global distribution.

Amazon, Starbucks (and to a lesser extent Google) need to have people on the ground in their market, for customer service, distribution, warehouse staff, baristas etc. So they'll pay employer taxes etc.

The question is is that enough? I think we are missing a trick with the UK market due to outdated tax legislation that hasn't really changed in 30 years.

After the US the UK is arguably the most attractive market in the world. Large, homogenous, wealthy with a low propensity to save and a rapid rate of adoption of new technology / products. We need to think about how we can exploit this in relation to corporate taxes because even though I am far from left wing, we have a real problem with corporations that have a default setting of minimise taxes through ever more complex structures.

It can't be beyond the wit of HMRC to reduce the complexity of the tax legislation and make it harder to avoid? The prize is continued access to the UK market

bluebirds , 8 Jun 2013 03:42
Accountants now hold the whip hand in government and business. They know the price of everything but the value of nothing. They advocate selling off industries, outsourcing to low wage economies, zero hours contracts and deregulation (under the bogus campaign line of cutting red tape).

All of these policies will ultimately end up with capitalism destroying itself. Low wage stagnation will result in penniless consumers which results in no growth which results in cuttin wages to maintain shareholder returns which results in penniless consumers etc etc etc. All our institutions are gradually eroded and life for the average citizen will become more and more unpleasant.

Willsmodger , 8 Jun 2013 03:42
Profit share may be a way forward, it's not perfect, companies can effectively use it to freeze wages and benefit from unpaid overtime, that creates unemployment as four people working a couple of hours extra ever day are denying someone else a job, but used in the right way it could ensure people get a share in the wealth they help create.

At the sharp end it's tough, at the company I worked at, all the managers were summoned to a meeting in September and told they had until Christmas to increase turnover and profits, or they would be out of a job.

At the same company, one of my managers complained that a successful manager at another branch was a crook. The CEO replied 'Yes, but he's a crook that makes a million pounds in profit every year'. I wonder how Deborah's article would have gone down with him?

peterfieldman , 8 Jun 2013 03:42
Everything was easier when the U S and Europe ran the world's economies with Bank regulations, currency controls and only the establishment could avoid income, capital gains and IHT taxes and grow wealthy generation after generation. Today there are simply too many players in the global arena and the rules have been torn up. We are in a jungle where greed is rife and only the powerful and corrupt survive, shipping and burying their loot in offshore havens.

We need a new global order with a change of mentality and more morality among the world's politicians, banking and corporate leaders. Unless we end corruption and exploitation of natural resources in the poor nations and a fairer distribution of the economic wealth the world faces economic and social collapse

Febo , 8 Jun 2013 03:41

Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can , because they are more powerful than governments.

Is it beyond the wit of government to close these (perfectly legal) loopholes? Otherwise, what you are asking for is for these companies to make charitible donations to government - nothing wrong with that per se, but let's not hide behind the misleading term 'tax avoidance' - companies are obliged to minimise taxes within the law, face it.

Liquidity Jones -> NicholasB , 8 Jun 2013 03:35
@NicholasB -

It is perfectly clear that in much of the EU public expenditure has been horribly inefficient and far too high

If you invent a set of rules that says a country that deficit spends above an arbitrary percentage of its GDP is horribly inefficient and far too high then it should not be a surprise that when that happens, it is described as such.

Whether that has any basis in reality or, as I suspect, is only relevant within its own ridiculous framework, is surely the question.

NotAgainAgain -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 03:32
@Fachan -

Deborah Orr is established writer for the Guardian and Married to a Will Self whose is almost certainly a millionaire. She is one of the rich. The idea that envy is driving her politics is just utterly absurd, and suggests a total lack of reflection.

finnkn , 8 Jun 2013 03:31

But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people

Not really; Amazon is just as happy to sell us trashy films, multipacks of chocolate, obesity drugs and baseball bats to stove our neighbour's head in. There's certainly an argument to be made that companies should have a duty to invest in the infrastructure that enables their product to be transported, stored etc...but they shouldn't be expected to give a toss if their customers are unhealthy ignoramuses. A market's a market.

NotAgainAgain -> NicholasB , 8 Jun 2013 03:24
@NicholasB -

But some countries manage to do this much more efficiently and effectively than others.

In Europe it would appear to be the Social Democratic Nordic countries and Germany which has very strong employment rights. Korea's economic growth was based on government investment and a degree of protectionism. These are precisely the ideas that neoliberalism opposes.

Liquidity Jones , 8 Jun 2013 03:23
If they had adopted The Keynes Plan at the 1944 Bretton Woods conference then the IMF and the World Bank would never have been set up. We most likely would not have had the euro crisis and the problem of trade imbalances between counties would most likely have gone away.

Now that is what I call 'Keynesian'. Feel free to continue to make up your own definitions though.

kingcreosote , 8 Jun 2013 03:19
Socialism for the 1% with the rest scraping around for the crumbs in an ever more divided world run by The Bilderbergers who play the politicians like puppets.
RedHectorReborn -> emkayoh , 8 Jun 2013 03:18
@emkayoh - I am not sure its in its death throes, I think what we are seeing is capitalism attempting to transform itself again. The success of that transformation will depend on how willing people across the western world to put up with reduced welfare, poverty pay and almost no employment rights. If we say no and make things too hot for the ruling class we have a chance to take control of the future direction of our world, if not then what's the point.
NicholasB , 8 Jun 2013 03:16
This is a strange rant. Everyone agrees that free markets need to be nurtured by appropriate state institutions. But some countries manage to do this much more efficiently and effectively than others. It is perfectly clear that in much of the EU public expenditure has been horribly inefficient and far too high.

There is no contradiction between being in favour of free markets and believing that markets and societies should be nurtured appropriately. We think people should be free and all accept that they should be nurtured.

UnevenSurface , 8 Jun 2013 03:10

So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"?

Corporate taxation is best explained as the license that business pays to access the market -- which is in turn created through the schools, hospitals, roads, etc. that the tax pays for. Unfortunately the new Corporate Social Irresponsibility being acted out by multinationals today neatly avoids paying that license, and sooner or later will damage them. Multinationals need to recognize that paying tax is an investment. Without that tax, their markets will slowly evaporate.

emkayoh , 8 Jun 2013 03:09
The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes is gobbling up the last scintilla of surplus that can be extracted from the poor ( anyone not independently wealthy).

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... What sticks in the neoliberalism craw is that the state provides these services instead of private businesses, and as such "rob" them of juicy profits! The state, the last easy cash cow! ..."
"... Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church. ..."
"... when Thatcher and Reagan deregulated the financial markets in the 80s, that's when the trouble began which in turn led to the immense crash in 2008. ..."
"... Neo-liberalism is just another symptom of liberal democracy which is government by oligarchs with a veneer of democracy ..."
"... The state has merged with the corporations so that what is good for the corporations is good for the state and visa versa. The larger and richer the state/corporations are, the more shyster lawyers they hire to disguise misdeeds and unethical behavior. ..."
"... If you support a big government, you are supporting big corporations as well. The government uses the taxpayer as an eternal fount of fresh money and calls it their own to spend as they please. Small businesses suffer unfairly because they cannot afford the shyster lawyers and accountants that protect the government and the corporations, but nobody cares about them. ..."
"... Deborah's point about the illogical demands of neoliberalism are indeed correct, which is somewhat ironic as neoliberalism puts objective rationality at the heart of its philosophy, but I digress... ..."
"... There would not be NHS, free education etc. without socialism; in fact they are socialism. It took the Soviet-style socialism ("statism") 70 years to collapse. The neoliberalistic capitalism has already started to collapse after 30 years. ..."
"... I'm always amused that neoliberal - indeed, capitalist - apologists cannot see the hypocrisy of their demands for market access. Communities create and sustain markets, fund and maintain infrastructure, produce and maintain new consumers. Yet the neolibs decry and destroy. Hypocrites or destructive numpties - never quite decided between Pickles and Gove ..."
"... 97% of all OUR money has been handed over to these scheming crooks. Stop bailing out the banks with QE. Take back what is ours -- state control over the creation of money. Then let the banks revert to their modest market-based function of financial intermediaries. ..."
"... The State can't be trusted to create our money? Well they could hardly do a worse job than the banks! Best solution would be to distribute state-created money as a Citizen's Income. ..."
"... To promote the indecent obsession for global growth Australia, burdened with debt of around 250 billion dollars, is to borrow and pay interest on a further 7 billion dollars to lend to the International Monetary Fund so as it can lend it to poorer nations to burden them with debt. ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
szwalby , 8 Jun 2013 06:03
This private good, public bad is a stupid idea, and a totally artificial divide. After all, what are "public spends"? It is the money from private individuals, and companies, clubbing together to get services they can't individually afford.

What sticks in the neoliberalism craw is that the state provides these services instead of private businesses, and as such "rob" them of juicy profits! The state, the last easy cash cow!

TedSmithAndSon , 8 Jun 2013 06:01
Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard.

Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church.

It's subsumed the entire planet, and waiting for them to see sense is a hopeless cause. In the end it'll probably take violence to rid us of the Neoliberal parasite... the turn of the century plague.

fr0mn0where -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 05:51
@CaptainGrey -

"Capitalism, especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won and countless people have gained as a result."

I agree with you and it was this beneficial version of capitalism that brought down the Iron Curtain. Working people in the former Communist countries were comparing themselves with working people in the west and wanted a piece of that action. Cuba has hung on because people there compare themselves with their nearest capitalist neighbor Haiti and they don't want a piece of that action. North Korea well North Korea is North Korea.

Isn't it this beneficial capitalism that is being threatened now though? When the wall came down it was assumed that Eastern European countries would become more like us. Some have but who would have thought that British working people would now be told, by the likes of Kwasi Kwarteng and his Britannia Unchained chums, that we have to learn to accept working conditions that are more like those in the Eastern European countries that got left behind and that we are now told that our version of Capitalism is inferior to the version adopted by the Communist Party of China?

jazzdrum -> bullwinkle , 8 Jun 2013 05:51
@bullwinkle - No , when Thatcher and Reagan deregulated the financial markets in the 80s, that's when the trouble began which in turn led to the immense crash in 2008.
Eddiel899 , 8 Jun 2013 05:51
Neo-liberalism is just another symptom of liberal democracy which is government by oligarchs with a veneer of democracy.

This type of government began in America about 150 years ago with the Rockefellers, Carnegie, J.P. Morgan, Ford etc who took advantage of new inventions, cheap immigrant labour and financial deregulation in finance and social mores to amass wealth for themselves and chaos and austerity for workers.

All this looks familiar again today with new and old oligarchs hiding behind large corporations taking advantage of the invention of the €uro, mass immigration into western Europe and deregulation of the financial "markets" and social mores to amass wealth for a super-wealthy elite and chaos and austerity for workers.

So if we want to see where things went wrong we need only go back 150 years to what happened to America. There we can also see our future?

WilliamAshbless -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 05:49
@CaptainGrey

The beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won

Free education and the NHS are state institutions. As Debbie said, Amazon never taught anyone to read. Beneficial capitalism is an oxymoron resulting from your lack of understanding.

cpp4ever -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 05:41
@CaptainGrey -

especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won and countless people have gained as a result.

At one and the same time being privatized and having their funding squeezed, a direct result of the neoliberal dogma capitalism of austerity. Free access is being eroded by the likes of ever larger student loans and prescription costs for a start.

ATrueFinn -> SpinningHugo , 8 Jun 2013 05:41
@ SpinningHugo 08 June 2013 10:02am .

Nah. They achieved this by copying the west.

I would not go that far. The Western Capitalist Party is only now getting to be as powerful as CCP and China started the "reforms" in the late 1970s.

succulentpork , 8 Jun 2013 05:36

they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments

Let's not get carried away here. Let's consider some of the things governments can do, subject only to a 5 yearly check and challenge:

  1. force people upon pain of imprisonment to pay taxes to them
  2. pay out that tax money to whomever they like
  3. spend money they don't have by borrowing against obligations imposed on future taxpayers without their agreement
  4. kill people in wars, often from the comfort of a computer screen thousands of miles away
  5. print money and give it to whomever they like,
  6. get rid of nation state currencies and replace them with a single, centrally controlled currency
  7. make laws and punish people who break them, including the ability to track them down in most places in the world if they try and run away.
  8. use laws to create monopolies and favour special interests

Let's now consider what power apple have...

- they can make iPhones and try to sell them for a profit by responding to the demands of the mass consumer market. That's it. In fact, they are forced to do this by their owners who only want them to do this, and nothing else. If they don't do this they will cease to exist.

generalelection , 8 Jun 2013 05:26
The state has merged with the corporations so that what is good for the corporations is good for the state and visa versa. The larger and richer the state/corporations are, the more shyster lawyers they hire to disguise misdeeds and unethical behavior.

If you support a big government, you are supporting big corporations as well. The government uses the taxpayer as an eternal fount of fresh money and calls it their own to spend as they please. Small businesses suffer unfairly because they cannot afford the shyster lawyers and accountants that protect the government and the corporations, but nobody cares about them. Remember, that Green Energy is big business, just like Big Pharma and Big Oil. Most government shills have personally invested in Green Energy not because they care about the environment, only because they know that it is a safe investment protected by government for government. The same goes for large corporations who befriend government and visa versa.

... ... ...

finnkn -> NeilThompson , 8 Jun 2013 05:20
@NeilThompson - It's all very well for Deborah to recommend that the well paid share work. Journalists, consultants and other assorted professionals can afford to do so. As a self-employed tradesman, I'd be homeless within a month.
finnkn -> SpinningHugo , 8 Jun 2013 05:17
@SpinningHugo - Interesting that those who are apparently concerned with prosperity for all and international solidarity are happy to ignore the rest of the world when it's going well, preferring to prophesy apocalypse when faced with government spending being slightly reduced at home.
sedan2 -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 05:11
@Fachan -

Dont see a lot of solutions in this article - as long as our sentiments revolve around envy of the rich, we wont get very far

Yeah, there actually wasn't anything in this article which even smelled of "envy of the rich". Read it again.

KingOfNothing -> 1nn1t , 8 Jun 2013 05:03
@1nn1t - That is a point which just isn't made enough. This is the first group of politicians for whom a global conflict seems like a distant event.

As a result we have people like Blair who see nothing wrong with invading countries at a whim, or conservatives and UKIP who fail to understand the whole point of the European Court of Human Rights.

They seem to act without thought of our true place in the world, without regard for the truly terrible capacity humanity has for self destruction.

REDLAN1 , 8 Jun 2013 05:03
Deborah's point about the illogical demands of neoliberalism are indeed correct, which is somewhat ironic as neoliberalism puts objective rationality at the heart of its philosophy, but I digress...

The main problem with replacing neoliberalism with a more rational, and fairer system, entails that people like Deborah accept that they will be less wealthy. And that my friends is the main problem. People like Deborah, while they are more than happy to point the fingers at others, are less than happy to accept that they are also part of the problem.

(Generalisation Caveat: I don't know in actuality if Deborah would be unhappy to be less wealthy in exchange for a fairer system, she doesn't say)

Herbolzheim , 8 Jun 2013 04:49
Good critique of conservative-neoliberalism, unless you subscribe to it and subordinate any morals or other values to it. She mentions an internal tension and I think that's because conservatism and neoliberal market ideology are different beasts.
NotAgainAgain -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 04:47
@CaptainGrey -

There are different models of capitalism quite clearly the social democratic version in Scandinavia or the "Bismarkian" German version have worked a lot better than the UKs.

DavidPavett , 8 Jun 2013 04:45

Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem.

How is it a sign of that? We are offered no clues.

What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return;

Try reading a history of financial crashes to dislodge this idea.

... even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more quickly and more savagely.

This may or may not be true but here it is mere assertion.

The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt.

At this point I start to have real doubts as to whether Deborah Orr has actually read even the Executive Summary of the Report this article is ostensibly a response to.

All the comments that follow about the need for public infrastructure, education, regulated markets and so on are made as if they were a criticism of the IMF and yet the IMF says many of those same things itself. The IMF position may, of course, be contradictory - but then that is something that would need to be demonstrated. It seems that Deborah has not got beyond reading a couple of Guardian articles on the issues she discusses and therefore is in no position to do this.

Thus, for example in its review of world problems of Feb 2013 the IMF comments favorably that in Bangladesh in order to boost competitiveness

Efforts are being made to narrow the skills gap with other countries in the region, as the authorities look to take full advantage of Bangladesh's favorable demographics and help create conditions for more labor-intensive led growth. The government is also scaling up spending on education, science and technology, and information and communication technology.

Which seems to be the sort of thing Deborah Orr is calling for. She should spend a little time on the IMF website before criticising the institution. It is certainly one that merits much criticism - but it needs to be informed.

And the solution to the problems? For Deborah Orr the response

... from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher John Gray has said all along.

Does anyone have any idea what this is supposed to mean? There are certainly no leads on this in the link given to "the philosopher" John Gray. And what a strange reference that is. John Gray, in his usual cynical mode, dismisses the idea of progress being achieved by the EU. But then I suppose that is consistent from a man who dismisses the idea of progress itself.

... Conservative neoliberalism is entirely without logic.

The first step in serious political analysis is to understand that the people one opposes are not crazy and are not devoid of logic. If that is not clearly understood then all that is left is the confrontation of assertion and contrary assertion. Of course Conservative neoliberalism has a logic. It is one I do not agree with but it is a logic all the same.

The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this [the need for public investment and a recognition of the multiple roles that individuals have].

Wrong again.

It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market.

And again.

This stuff can't be made up as you go along on the basis of reading a couple of newspaper articles. You actually have to do some hard reading to get to grip with the issues. I can see no signs of that in this piece.

EllisWyatt -> NotAgainAgain , 8 Jun 2013 04:43
@NotAgainAgain - We are going off topic and that is in no small part down to my own fault, so apologies. Just to pick up the point, I guess my unease with the likes of Buffet, Cooper-Hohn or even the wealthy Guardian columnists is that they are criticizing the system from a position of power and wealth.

So its easy to advocate change if you feel that you are in the vanguard of defining that change i.e. the reforms you advocate may leave you worse off, but at a level you feel comfortable with (the prime example always being Polly's deeply relaxed attitude to swingeing income tax increases when her own lifestyle will be protected through wealth).

I guess I am a little skeptical because I either see it as managed decline, a smokescreen or at worst mean spiritedness of people prepared to accept a reasonable degree of personal pain if it means other people whom dislike suffer much greater pain.

Again off topic so sorry about that

NotAgainAgain -> mountman , 8 Jun 2013 04:43
@mountman -

The critical bit is this

"There is a clear legal basis in Germany for the workplace representation of employees in all but the very smallest companies. Under the Works Constitution Act, first passed in 1952 and subsequently amended, most recently in 2001, a works council can be set up in all private sector workplaces with at least five employees."

http://www.worker-participation.eu/National-Industrial-Relations/Countries/Germany/Workplace-Representation

The UK needs to wake up to the fact that managers are sometimes inept or corrupt and will destroy the companies they work for, unless their are adequate mechanisms to hold poor management to account.

ATrueFinn -> SpinningHugo , 8 Jun 2013 04:42
@ SpinningHugo 08 June 2013 9:26am

More people lifted out of poverty in China over the last 25 years than the entire population of South America.

Maybe we need the Chinese Communist Party to take over the world?

ATrueFinn -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 04:40
@ CaptainGrey 08 June 2013 8:43am

Capitalism, especially the beneficial capitalism of the NHS, free education etc. has won

There would not be NHS, free education etc. without socialism; in fact they are socialism. It took the Soviet-style socialism ("statism") 70 years to collapse. The neoliberalistic capitalism has already started to collapse after 30 years.

irishaxeman , 8 Jun 2013 04:40
I'm always amused that neoliberal - indeed, capitalist - apologists cannot see the hypocrisy of their demands for market access. Communities create and sustain markets, fund and maintain infrastructure, produce and maintain new consumers. Yet the neolibs decry and destroy. Hypocrites or destructive numpties - never quite decided between Pickles and Gove, y'see.
EllisWyatt -> JamesValencia , 8 Jun 2013 04:38
@JamesValencia - Actually on reflection you are correct and I was wrong in my attack on the author above. Having re-read the article its a critique of institutions rather than people so my points were wide of the mark.

I still think that well heeled Guardian writers aren't really in a position to attack the wealthy and politically connected, but I'll save that for a thread when they explicitly do so, rather than the catch all genie of neoliberalism.

bullwinkle -> bluebirds , 8 Jun 2013 04:38
@bluebirds -

@CaptainGrey - deregulated capitalism has failed. That is the product of the last 20 years. The pure market is a fantasy just as communism is or any other ideology. In a pure capitalist economy all the banks of the western world would have bust and indeed the false value "earned" in the preceding 20 years would have been destroyed.

If the pure market is a fantasy, how can deregulated capitalism have failed? Does one not require the other? Surely it is regulated capitalism that has failed?

snodgrass , 8 Jun 2013 04:36
97% of all OUR money has been handed over to these scheming crooks. Stop bailing out the banks with QE. Take back what is ours -- state control over the creation of money. Then let the banks revert to their modest market-based function of financial intermediaries.

The State can't be trusted to create our money? Well they could hardly do a worse job than the banks! Best solution would be to distribute state-created money as a Citizen's Income.

EllisWyatt -> 1nn1t , 8 Jun 2013 04:35
@1nn1t - Some good points, there is a whole swathe of low earners that should not be in the tax system at all, simply letting them keep the money in their pocket would be a start.

Second the minimum wage (especially in the SE) is too low and should be increased. Obviously the devil is in the detail as to the precise rate, the other issue is non compliance as there will be any number of businesses that try and get around this, through employing people too ignorant or scared to know any better or for family businesses - do we have the stomach to enforce this?

Thirdly there is a widespread reluctance to separate people from the largesse of the state, even at absurd levels of income such as higher rate payers (witness child tax credits). On the right they see themselves as having paid in and so are "entitled" to have something back and on the left it ensures that everyone has a vested interest in a big state dipping it hands into your pockets one day and giving you something back the next.

Broken system

1nn1t -> Uncertainty , 8 Jun 2013 04:34

@Uncertainty - Which is why the people of the planet need to join hands.

The only group of people in he UK to see that need were the generation that faced WW2 together. It's no accident that, joining up at 18 in 1939, they had almost all retired by 1984.
BruceMullinger , 8 Jun 2013 04:31
To promote the indecent obsession for global growth Australia, burdened with debt of around 250 billion dollars, is to borrow and pay interest on a further 7 billion dollars to lend to the International Monetary Fund so as it can lend it to poorer nations to burden them with debt.

It is entrapment which impoverishes nations into the surrender of sovereignty, democracy and national pride. In no way should we contribute to such economic immorality and the entire economic system based on perpetual growth fuelled by consumerism and debt needs top be denounced and dismantled. The adverse social and environmental consequence of perpetual growth defies all sensible logic and in time, in a more responsible and enlightened era, growth will be condemned.

[Dec 03, 2018] The banks put their own short-term interests above their long-term interests of financial stability

Notable quotes:
"... Socialism for the 1% with the rest scraping around for the crumbs ..."
"... Don't you think a global recession and massive banking collapse should be classified as 'crash and burn'? ..."
"... It's one of the major contradictions of modern conservatism that the raw, winner-takes-all version of capitalism it champions actually undermines the sort of law abiding, settled communities it sees as the societal ideal. ..."
"... Rich people have benefited from this more than most: they need workers trained by a state-funded education system and kept healthy by a state-funded healthcare system; they depend on lending from banks rescued by the taxpayer; they rely on state-funded infrastructure and research, and – like all of us – on a society that does not collapse. Whether they like it or not, they would not have made their fortunes without the state spending billions of pounds ..."
"... You have to be careful when you take on the banksters. Abe Lincoln John Kennedy and Hitler all tried or (in Kennedy's case planned) on the issuance of money via the state circumventing the banks. All came to a sticky end. No wonder politicians run scared of them. ..."
"... Now, that's a novel interpretation! The working people in "Communist" countries had free healthcare and education, guaranteed employment and heavily subsidized housing. The reason we have healtcare and free education is that working people in Capitalist countries would otherwise have revolted to have Socialism. In the absence of competition, there is no benefit for the Capitalist to be "beneficial". ..."
"... The banks could plainly see that they were stoking a bubble, but chose not to pass on the increased risk of lending to consumers by raising their interest rates and coolling the market. Why? Because they were making a handsome short-term profit. The banks put their own short-term interests above their long-term interests of financial stability. When the house of cards came tumbling down - we bailed them out. It was idiotic banks who failed to properly control their risk of lending that caused the crash, not interventionist politicians. ..."
Jun 08, 2013 | www.theguardian.com
JFBridge , 8 Jun 2013 08:21
Virtually everyone knows what went wrong, with the exception only of uncontrollable ultra-right neoliberal buffs who try and put the blame on everyone else with various out and out lies and deceptions, and they are thankfully petering and dying out by the day, including deluded contributors to CiF, who seem to be positively and cruelly reveling in the suffering their beloved thesis has and is causing.

So, now that we know the symptoms, what about the cure? The coalition want to make the poor and vulnerable suffer even more than they have done over the last three decades or so while still refusing to clamp down and wholly regulate the bankers, corporates and free markets, who still hold too much power like the unions in the 70's,while Ed Miliband and 'One Nation Labour' merely suggest in mild, diffident terms about financial regulation and a more balanced economy, while still not wanting to upset those nice bankers too much.

It's time they were upset though, and made to pay for their errors and recklessness; while they still award themselves bonuses and take advantage of Gideon's recent tax cut, the poor and vulnerable who were never responsible for the long recession now have money taken off them and struggle to feed, pay bills and clothe themselves and their families, supported by the Daily Fail and co. who look on them as scrounging, lazy, criminal, violent, drunken, drug addicted and promiscuous sub-humans, who deserve their fate.

There's quite a few in the middle/professional classes (many bankers) if they didn't know, but they don't bother with such, do they?

MatthewBall -> emkayoh , 8 Jun 2013 08:20
@emkayoh -

The economic model we have is bankrupt and in its death throes

I am not sure if this is true. We have the same economic system (broadly speaking, capitalism) as nearly every country in the world, and the world economy is growing at a reasonable rate, at around 3-4% for 2013-14 (see http://www.imf.org/external/pubs/ft/weo/2013/01/pdf/c1.pdf for more details).

We perceive a problem in (most of) Europe and North America because our economies are growing more slowly than this, and in some cases not at all. The global growth figure comes out healthy because of strong growth in the emerging countries, like China, Brazil and India, who are narrowing the gap between their living standards and ours. So, the world as a whole isn't broken, even if our bit of it is going through a rough patch.

This is pertinant to a discussion of Deborah Orr's article, because in it she calls for global changes:

The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher John Gray has said all along.

My point is: I don't think this argument will work, because I don't see why the emerging countries would want wholesale change to what, for them, is quite a successful recipe, just because it going down badly in Europe. Instead, European countries need to do whatever it takes to fix their banking systems; but also learn to live within their means, and show some more of the discipline and enterprise that made them wealthy in the first place.

jazzdrum -> Uncertainty , 8 Jun 2013 08:12
@Uncertainty - I`m not defending philanthropy, i am saying in answer to some personal attacks on Miss Orr below the line, that her status as either rich or poor is irrelevant, it is her politics that count .
Tony Benn and Polly Toynbee both receive much abuse in this manner on Cif.
00000010 -> colonelraeburn , 8 Jun 2013 08:10
@colonelraeburn - You really are under the quaint illusion you are in a democracy...
MickGJ -> kingcreosote , 8 Jun 2013 08:08

@kingcreosote - Socialism for the 1% with the rest scraping around for the crumbs

And yet the rest have more crumbs than under any other conceivable system. Look at the difference that even limited market liberalisation has made to poverty in China. No loaf, no crumbs. You can always throw the loaf out of the window if you don't like the inequality and then no-one can have anything.

That's fair, isn't it?

Uncertainty -> jazzdrum , 8 Jun 2013 07:57
@jazzdrum - I don't have much time for those rich who feel guilty about their greed and do 'charity' to salve their souls. Oh and get a Knighthood as a result.

The more honest giver is the person who gives of what little they have in their purse and go without as a result. Not a tax dodge re-branded as philanthropy.

Also, such giving from the rich often has strings and may be tailored to what they think are the 'deserving poor'. I don't like that either.

Uncertainty -> CaptainGrey , 8 Jun 2013 07:54
@CaptainGrey - That is not capitalism. You cannot point to the benefits of socialism and call it capitalism.

Don't you think a global recession and massive banking collapse should be classified as 'crash and burn'?

liberalcynic -> Herbolzheim , 8 Jun 2013 07:52
@Herbolzheim - It's one of the major contradictions of modern conservatism that the raw, winner-takes-all version of capitalism it champions actually undermines the sort of law abiding, settled communities it sees as the societal ideal.
Rainborough , 8 Jun 2013 07:51
"Why, you have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?"

- asked the journalist employed by an organ of the capitalist press, with an implausible air of puzzlement.

liberalcynic -> szwalby , 8 Jun 2013 07:50
@szwalby -

The state, the last easy cash cow!

Damn, you've just revealed Richard Branson's secret business plan.
AndyPerry , 8 Jun 2013 07:39
More and more people are beginning to understand this as a fundamentally political problem ( ref. @XerXes1369). The 'left' prefers to concentrate on the role of a financial elite (which is supposed to be exerting some kind of malign supernatural force on the state), to divert attention from what mainstream 'left' poltics in this society has turned out to be.
szwalby -> colonelraeburn , 8 Jun 2013 07:26
@colonelraeburn -

When the state is taking over 60% of the income of even those on minimum wages we se how, from the very top to the very bottom, that the state is the problem.

It's become a monster that will destroy us all.

I would query where you get these figures from, but where it not for the state, do you really think that somebody on the minimum wage, keeping 100% of their wages, would be able to afford, out of these wages, health care, schooling for their children, infrastructure maintenance, their own police force and army, their own legal system? This from an article in the Independent:

Rich people have benefited from this more than most: they need workers trained by a state-funded education system and kept healthy by a state-funded healthcare system; they depend on lending from banks rescued by the taxpayer; they rely on state-funded infrastructure and research, and – like all of us – on a society that does not collapse. Whether they like it or not, they would not have made their fortunes without the state spending billions of pounds.

So the state, although not perfect benefit all of us, get over it!
outragedofacton , 8 Jun 2013 07:23
You have to be careful when you take on the banksters. Abe Lincoln John Kennedy and Hitler all tried or (in Kennedy's case planned) on the issuance of money via the state circumventing the banks. All came to a sticky end. No wonder politicians run scared of them.
CaptainGrey -> WilliamAshbless , 8 Jun 2013 07:04
@WilliamAshbless -

Free education and the NHS are state institutions. As Debbie said, Amazon never taught anyone to read. Beneficial capitalism is an oxymoron resulting from your lack of understanding.

Yes they are state institutions and the tax system should be changed to prevent Amazon et al from avoiding paying their fair share. But beneficial capitalism is not an oxymoron, it is alive and present in virtually every corner of the world. Rather than accuse me of not understanding, I think you would do well to take the beam out of your eye.
ATrueFinn -> fr0mn0where , 8 Jun 2013 07:02
@ fr0mn0where 08 June 2013 10:51am

I agree with you and it was this beneficial version of capitalism that brought down the Iron Curtain. Working people in the former Communist countries were comparing themselves with working people in the west and wanted a piece of that action.

Now, that's a novel interpretation! The working people in "Communist" countries had free healthcare and education, guaranteed employment and heavily subsidized housing. The reason we have healtcare and free education is that working people in Capitalist countries would otherwise have revolted to have Socialism. In the absence of competition, there is no benefit for the Capitalist to be "beneficial".

s0lar1 -> colonelraeburn , 8 Jun 2013 06:33
@colonelraeburn -

The banks couldn't stop property hyperinflation, at 20% a year for well over a decade.

The banks could plainly see that they were stoking a bubble, but chose not to pass on the increased risk of lending to consumers by raising their interest rates and coolling the market. Why? Because they were making a handsome short-term profit. The banks put their own short-term interests above their long-term interests of financial stability. When the house of cards came tumbling down - we bailed them out. It was idiotic banks who failed to properly control their risk of lending that caused the crash, not interventionist politicians.

[Dec 03, 2018] The classic form of neoliberal corruption: The rotating door betweens banks and intelligence agencies brass

This is the key feature of modern National Security State. Note where Mueller was after his retirement and before becoming the Special Procecutor.
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

MysticFish -> gbru2505 , 8 Jun 2013 16:23

@gbru2505 -

Last week there was a story where HSBC have taken on a senior ex-MI5 person to shore up their money laundering 'problems'. They're being fined over a billion dollars by the fed for taking blood money from murderers, drug dealers and corrupt politicians.

Not the Security Services' Director General by any chance?

-- In a filing to the Bermuda Stock Exchange ("BSX"), HSBC Holdings plc (Ticker: HSBC.BH), announced the appointment of Sir Jonathan Evans to the Board of Directors.

The filing stated:

Sir Jonathan Evans (55) has been appointed a Director of HSBC Holdings plc with effect from 6 August 2013. He will be an independent non-executive Director and a member of the Financial System Vulnerabilities Committee.

Sir Jonathan's career in the Security Service spanned 33 years, the last six of which as Director General. During his career Sir Jonathan's experience included counter-espionage, protection of classified information and the security of critical national infrastructure. His main focus was, however, counter-terrorism, both international and domestic including, increasingly, initiatives against cyber threats. As Director General he was a senior advisor to the UK government on national security policy and attended the National Security Council.

He was appointed Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (KCB) in the 2013 New Year's Honours List and retired from the Service in April 2013.

http://www.bsx.com/NewsArticle.asp?articleID=1100794622

gbru2505 , 8 Jun 2013 16:13
I think there's some really good points in the article.

Last week there was a story where HSBC have taken on a senior ex-MI5 person to shore up their money laundering 'problems'. They're being fined over a billion dollars by the fed for taking blood money from murderers, drug dealers and corrupt politicians.

Their annual fee for this guy with 20 years experience to tackle a billion dollar fine and the disfunction in their organisation? A lousy 100 k. Fee to UK for training him? 0.

Ridiculous! It should have been 10 times that for him and a finders fee of perhaps 10 million to the state.

Realistically, the state has NO clue about it's real value, or the real value of the UK population. And the example above, I think, demonstrates banks' attitude to the global demand that they clean up their act. We neef to take this lot to the cleaners before the stench gets any worse.

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberalism is a secular religion because it relies of beliefs (which in this case are presented using the mathematical notation of neoclassic economics)

Like bolshevism this secular regions is to a large extent is a denial of Christianity. While Bolshevism is closer to the Islam, Neoliberalism is closer to Judaism.
The idea of " Homo economicus " -- a person who in all his decisions is governed by self-interest and greed is bunk.
Notable quotes:
"... There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice. ..."
"... In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else. In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility down, just like it does here. ..."
"... We all probably know the answer to this. In order to maintain the consent necessary to create inequality in their own interests the neoliberals have to tell big lies, and keep repeating them until they appear to be the truth. They've gotten so damn good at it. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. ..."
"... It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard ..."
"... Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church. ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
TedSmithAndSon -> theguardianisrubbish , 8 Jun 2013 12:24
@theguardianisrubbish -

Unless you are completely confused by what neoliberalism is there is not a shred of logical sense in this.

There is not a shred of logical sense in neoliberalism. You're doing what the fundamentalists do... they talk about what neoliberalism is in theory whilst completely ignoring what it is in practice.

In theory the banks should have been allowed to go bust, but the consequences where deemed too high (as they inevitable are). The result is socialism for the rich using the poor as the excuse, which is the reality of neoliberalism.

Savers in a neoliberal society are lambs to the slaughter. Thatcher "revitalised" banking, while everything else withered and died.

Neoliberalism is based on the thought of personal freedom, communism is definitely not. Neoliberalist policies have lifted millions of people out of poverty in Asia and South America.

Neoliberalism is based on the thought that you get as much freedom as you can pay for, otherwise you can just pay... like everyone else. In Asia and South America it has been the economic preference of dictators that pushes profit upwards and responsibility down, just like it does here.

I find it ironic that it now has 5 year plans that absolutely must not be deviated from, massive state intervention in markets (QE, housing policy, tax credits... insert where applicable), and advocates large scale central planning even as it denies reality, and makes the announcement from a tractor factory.

Neoliberalism is a blight... a cancer on humanity... a massive lie told by rich people and believed only by peasants happy to be thrown a turnip. In theory it's one thing, the reality is entirely different. Until we're rid of it, we're all it's slaves. It's an abhorrent cult that comes up with purest bilge like expansionary fiscal contraction to keep all the money in the hands of the rich.

Jacobsadder , 8 Jun 2013 11:35
Bloody well said Deborah!

Why, you have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?

We all probably know the answer to this. In order to maintain the consent necessary to create inequality in their own interests the neoliberals have to tell big lies, and keep repeating them until they appear to be the truth. They've gotten so damn good at it.

iluvanimals54 , 8 Jun 2013 07:58
Today all politicians knee before the Altar that is Big Business and the Profit God, with his minions of multinational Angels.
TedSmithAndSon , 8 Jun 2013 06:01
Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers.

It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard.

Who could look at the way markets function and conclude there's any freedom? Only a neoliberal cult member. They cannot be reasoned with. They cannot be dissuaded. They cannot be persuaded. Only the market knows best, and the fact that the market is a corrupt, self serving whore is completely ignored by the ideology of their Church.

It's subsumed the entire planet, and waiting for them to see sense is a hopeless cause. In the end it'll probably take violence to rid us of the Neoliberal parasite... the turn of the century plague.

[Dec 03, 2018] Does any country on Earth has a democracy?

Notable quotes:
"... Have you been watching the news over the past few weeks where the clowns who supposedly represent us at Westminster were offering to take cash in brown envelopes for privileged access to the political system? ..."
"... Now we have the Prime Minister attending the Bilderberg Group meeting without any officials or Civil Servants to record what is going on. I suppose he needs to attend to get instructions from his bosses on how he must run his 'democracy'! ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | guardian.co.uk

LetsGetCynical -> Snookerboy , 8 Jun 2013 14:31

@ Snookerboy 08 June 2013 7:14pm . Get cifFix for Firefox .

Democracy = a political system in which citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate equally -- either directly or through elected representatives -- in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. It encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination. Do we have this in the UK at the moment bearing in mind recent events (brown envelopes and Bilderberg Group to name but two)?

Does any country have this? With all due respect it is just words and sentiment. In my previous comment I said that No i didnt think we had true democracy and I dont think it (if there is such a thing) is achievable, not everyone would be satisfied it would be true democracy thus its legitimacy would be called into question.

In my mind its a bit like saying the best thing would be a "benevolent, incorruptible, sensible dictator", its a fantasy.

Politicians who are found to be on the take or are fiddling the public purse should be dismissed immediately and a by election called. Would stop it happening as much as I am sure we are only seeing the 'tip of the iceberg'.

Agreed and they should always be innocent until proven guilty and if found guilty of abuse of office they should be barred from public office indefinitely in my mind, as long as they break the law, not fudge the rules or whatever, which is also part of the problem. Hazel Blears and countless others was re-elected despite being reviled in the media as an expenses cheat.

So I assume you are happy for our PM to attend a secret meeting where nothing is ever released to the media or press about what is going on or discussed?

I am neither happy nor unhappy, it is a private event that the PM is invited to by a steering committee, I imagine the idea being they can discuss candidly without official airs, graces, platitudes and politician speak for a while, it doesnt particularly concern me.

J Snookerboy -> LetsGetCynical , 8 Jun 2013 14:14
@LetsGetCynical - Democracy = a political system in which citizens have an equal say in the decisions that affect their lives. Democracy allows eligible citizens to participate equally -- either directly or through elected representatives -- in the proposal, development, and creation of laws. It encompasses social, economic and cultural conditions that enable the free and equal practice of political self-determination. Do we have this in the UK at the moment bearing in mind recent events (brown envelopes and Bilderberg Group to name but two)?

Politicians who are found to be on the take or are fiddling the public purse should be dismissed immediately and a by election called. Would stop it happening as much as I am sure we are only seeing the 'tip of the iceberg'.

So I assume you are happy for our PM to attend a secret meeting where nothing is ever released to the media or press about what is going on or discussed?

LetsGetCynical -> Snookerboy , 8 Jun 2013 13:55
@ Snookerboy 08 June 2013 6:31pm . Get cifFix for Firefox .

No, but then again what is a "true democracy"? Agreed they are bunch of clowns but then again who are the clowns that repeatedly vote for the same party regardless of what they say or do?

where the clowns who supposedly represent us at Westminster were offering to take cash in brown envelopes

Corruption is about as old as humanity itself, no "true democracy" will ever remove the human element and all the pros and cons that entails.

Now we have the Prime Minister attending the Bilderberg Group meeting without any officials or Civil Servants to record what is going on. I suppose he needs to attend to get instructions from his bosses on how he must run his 'democracy'!

Whether or not you argee or disagree with the conference, it is by invite only, they don't have to invite civil servants or journalists if they don't want to. And it does contain very powerful people, why would the PM not attend?

attend to get instructions from his bosses

I take it the waiters are under permanent surveillance in order to ensure they don't reveal the dastardly secrets about what Eric Schmidt "tells" Cameron to do? A bit fanciful in my opinion.

Snookerboy -> LetsGetCynical , 8 Jun 2013 13:31
@LetsGetCynical - Do you really believe that we live in a true democracy? Have you been watching the news over the past few weeks where the clowns who supposedly represent us at Westminster were offering to take cash in brown envelopes for privileged access to the political system?

Now we have the Prime Minister attending the Bilderberg Group meeting without any officials or Civil Servants to record what is going on. I suppose he needs to attend to get instructions from his bosses on how he must run his 'democracy'!

[Dec 03, 2018] The problem with giving any novel political idea a really extended trial is that you have to try it out on live human beings.

Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

MatthewBall -> Rainborough , 8 Jun 2013 14:19

@Rainborough -

How many alternative economic systems would you say have been given a fair trial under reasonably favorable circumstances?

A good question. Answer: admittedly, not a huge number - but not none either. Feudalism held sway in the middle ages and mercantilism in the 18th century, before both fell out of fashion. In the 20th century Russia stuck with communism for 74 years, and many other countries tried it for a while. At one time (around 1949-89) there were enough countries in the communist block for us to be able to say that they at least had a fair chance to make it work - that is, if it didn't work, they can't really blame it on the rest of the world ganging up on them.

Lately, serious challengers to the global economic order have been more isolated (Venzuela, Cuba, North Korea?) - so maybe you could argue that, if they are struggling, it is because they have been unfairly ganged up on. But then again, aren't they pursuing a version of socialism that has close affinities to that tried in the Soviet Union?

The problem with giving any novel political idea a really extended trial is that you have to try it out on live human beings. This means that, once a critical mass of data has built up that indicates a political idea doesn't work out as hoped, then people inevitably lose the will to try that idea again.

So my question is: are critics of the current world economic order able to spell out exactly how their proposed alternative would differ from Soviet-style socialism?

[Dec 03, 2018] There is no alterative (TINA) myth expressed via "Just as democracy is the worst system of government except for all other, so capitalism is the worst economic model except for all other"

Neoliberalism is clearly the result of coup d'état of financial oligarchy. So other forms of capitalism are possible.
Below is a set of typical augments for TINA from Guardian posts
Notable quotes:
"... How many alternative economic systems would you say have been given a fair trial under reasonably favorable circumstances? ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Rainborough -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 10:24

@Fachan - " Just as democracy is the worst system of government except for all other, so capitalism is the worst economic model except for all other."

How many alternative economic systems would you say have been given a fair trial under reasonably favorable circumstances?

epinoa -> Fachan , 8 Jun 2013 10:19

@Fachan -

Just as democracy is the worst system of government except for all other, so capitalism is the worst economic model except for all other.

Shame we only have bastardized forms of them.
MickGJ -> 00000010 , 8 Jun 2013 09:51

@00000010 - Neo-Liberalism is the only choice.

I'd tend to agree with you but in that case it's not an ideology, merely pragmatism. The convergence of the parties merely reflects the wider consensus in society.
Eddiel899 -> colonelraeburn , 8 Jun 2013 06:48
@colonelraeburn -

But you haven't got any alternative

The alternative is simple but people have become so wedded to the libertarian parts of liberal democracy that it will be some time before they are ready to contemplate the alternative, a return to the Judaeo/Christian version of human rights - an absolute right to God who made us, to the truth, to life, to a natural family, and to own the means of earning a living - to which all should be entitled and all should be held to account.

These are rights that any sensible person will tell you that we should be entitled to but believe it or not they are anathema to liberal democracy which is based on exploiting the selfishness of the individual to the detriment of the common good and the good of society at large.

colonelraeburn -> Eddiel899 , 8 Jun 2013 06:06
@Eddiel899 - Neo-liberalism is just another symptom of liberal democracy which is government by oligarchs with a veneer of democracy.

But you haven't got any alternative.

What are we supposed to do elect you Guardian Occupy lot on the promise you will come up with something.

You will have to do better than that.

[Dec 03, 2018] What is the result of "the peal oil" and technological progress (which was a side result of the Cold War arm race, especially in computers and communications, and in no way activity of private sector alone) is presented a gift from neoliberalism to mankind

This post is a variant of "fake prosperity" -- yet another neoliberal myth. Also known as "rising tidelift all boats"
The improvement of the standard of living in 90th was mainly due to economic plunder of xUSSR and Eastern Europe as well as well as communication revolution happening simultaneously. The period from 1990 to 2000 is known as "Triumphal March of Neoliberalism". Aftger year 200 neoliberalism went into recession and in 2008 in deep crisis. The neoliberal ideology was dead by 2008.
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

OneCommentator -> ATrueFinn , 8 Jun 2013 12:21

@ATrueFinn -

Indeed. That was in the time of feudalism and mercantilism.

No, it was as recently as WW2 more or less. After that it followed a confusing period where social and political freedoms darted ahead up to the '80s when the economic freedoms started being championed by the right: Thatcher, Reagan, etc.

That saw a liberalisation of trade and an explosive growth in international trade with huge benefits for the whole world: developing countries like the Asian dragons have seen their standards of living skyrocket and practically they can't get up with the developed countries in one generation. China, and India to an extent, is following on that path with pretty good results.

As the same time the developed countries saw a huge improvement in their standard of living with products and services available at incredible prices. Even the countries that did not get on this yet are benefiting and the fact that starvation in the world is less of a problem is the proof of that for example.

OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 12:04

The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe

But we know already how that is done: voluntary transactions among free agents. That's called a free market and it is by far the most efficient way to produce wealth humanity has ever known. Sure, we tried other methods (slavery, forced labour, communal entities, government controlled economies, tribal economies, etc.) but nothing worked as well as free markets.

The calls for governments' intervention in the economy is misguided and counterproductive. They already extract about 50% of all wealth created in this country. That's way too much since most of the money taken by governments is money diverted from productive use.

ATrueFinn -> OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 12:00
@ OneCommentator 08 June 2013 4:46pm

Wrong. Traditional liberalism supported both social and economic freedoms. That included support for most of the civil rights and freedoms we enjoy today AND free trade and free investments.

Indeed. That was in the time of feudalism and mercantilism.

I take this opportunity to draw everyone's attention to a Finnish theorist and proponent of liberal economical and political thinking, whose treatise on liberal national economy preceded Adam Smith by 11 years: Anders Chydenius (1729-1803).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anders_Chydenius

I have the feeling that he and Smith are rolling in their graves seeing what is done under the auspices of "liberalism".

SpinningHugo -> jazzdrum , 8 Jun 2013 05:59
@ jazzdrum 08 June 2013 10:51am . Get cifFix for Chrome .

Margaret Thatcher left office 23 years ago. The de-regulation of the City occurred in 1986, 27 years ago. Since then UK GDP has more than doubled, inflation and unemployment are far lower, and the numbers living in extreme poverty have fallen dramatically.

And yet in CiF world it is all Thatcher's fault.

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberal propaganda dictum: Nobody is owed a good living in this world

This is an attractive but idealistinc notion, because the person destiny often is shaped by forces beyond his control. Like Great Depression or WWII. The proper idea is that the society as a whole serves as a "social security" mechanism to prevent worst outcomes. At the same time neoliberalism accept bailout for financial sector and even demand them for goverment.
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

OneCommentator -> dmckm , 8 Jun 2013 13:03

@dmckm - Nobody is owed a good living in this world. That's what freedom means: one is free to chose the best way to make a living. Are you saying that by forcing people to pay you something they don't want to is freedom?

[Dec 03, 2018] No market is 'Free'. Free markets do not exist. Markets are there for those with a vested interest. i.e. the banksters. Note the growth of Hedge funds or slush funds for the rich.

Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Stonk , 8 Jun 2013 08:18

No market is 'Free'. Free markets do not exist. Markets are there for those with a vested interest. i.e. the banksters. Note the growth of Hedge funds or slush funds for the rich.

[Dec 03, 2018] The detachment from reality of "free market" propaganda is intentional. This notion is pure propaganda and there were never "free market" in any country in history of mankind

Neoliberalism like Bolshevism is based on brainwashing and propaganda. In this case by bought by financial elite and controlled by intelligence agencies MSM.
Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far. ..."
"... The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. ..."
"... A free market larger than a boot fair has never existed. A market can never have power, it's just a market after all. It's the people in the market that have power... or some of them... the few... have it disproportionately compared to others, and straight away the market isn't free. ..."
"... It's only even approximately free when properly regulated, but that's anathema to market fundamentalists so they end up with a market run for the benefit of vested interests that they will claim is "free" until their dying breath. ..."
"... Power belongs with democratically elected governments, not people in markets responsible only to themselves. Amazing that people still think as you do after all that's happened. ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

LiberteEgalite1 -> taxhaven , 8 Jun 2013 13:31

@taxhaven - I love this "free markets" expression, but can we really have free markets please then? This means that no taxpayer money is to be spent to bail out the capitalist bankers when things so sour.

It also means that there is completely free movement of labor so I as an employer should be able to hire anyone I like for your job and pay the wage that the replacement is willing to take i.e. tough luck to you if the person is more qualified and is willing to work for less but does not have the work visa because in free markets there will be no such things as work permits.

PointOfYou , 8 Jun 2013 13:37

Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom

Neoliberalism? This is not just a financial agenda. This a highly organized multi armed counterculture operation to force us, including Ms Orr [unless she has...connections] into what Terence McKenna [who was in on it] termed the `Archaic Revival'. That is - you and me [and Ms Orr] - our - return to the medieval dark ages, if we indeed survive that far.

The same names come up time and time again. One of them being, father of propaganda, Edward Bernays.

Bernays wrote what can be seen as a virtual Mission Statement for anyone wishing to bring about a "counterculture." In the opening paragraph of his book Propaganda he wrote:

".. The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organised habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are moulded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of.

This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organised. Vast numbers of human beings must cooperate in this manner if they are to live together as a smoothly functioning society. In almost every act of our daily lives, whether in the sphere of politics or business, in our social conduct or our ethical thinking, we are dominated by the relatively small number of persons who understand the mental processes and social patterns of the masses.

It is they who pull the wires which control the public mind..."[28]

Bernays' family background made him well suited to "control the public mind." He was the double nephew of psychoanalysis pioneer Sigmund Freud. His mother was Freud's sister Anna, and his father was Ely Bernays, brother of Freud's wife Martha Bernays.

TedSmithAndSon -> taxhaven , 8 Jun 2013 13:25
@taxhaven -

about being permitted to engage in voluntary exchange of goods and services with others, unmolested.

And if we ever had that, would it make the ideal society?

A free market larger than a boot fair has never existed. A market can never have power, it's just a market after all. It's the people in the market that have power... or some of them... the few... have it disproportionately compared to others, and straight away the market isn't free.

It's only even approximately free when properly regulated, but that's anathema to market fundamentalists so they end up with a market run for the benefit of vested interests that they will claim is "free" until their dying breath.

Power belongs with democratically elected governments, not people in markets responsible only to themselves. Amazing that people still think as you do after all that's happened.

[Dec 03, 2018] Is this corporatism when corporate funded think-tanks are having their non-mandated corporatist policies prioritized over government election pledges on policy?

Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

MickGJ -> MysticFish , 8 Jun 2013 09:44

@MysticFish - If these are completely different things, why has the austerity-stricken tax-payer been co-opted into paying for events like Thatcher's funeral

How is that corporatism?

Bilderberg policing,

How is that corporatism?

corporate funded think-tanks are having their non-mandated corporatist policies prioritized over government election pledges on policy?

Are they?
MysticFish -> MickGJ , 8 Jun 2013 09:24
@MickGJ -

Neo-liberalism and fascist corporatism are completely different things.

If these are completely different things, why has the austerity-stricken tax-payer been co-opted into paying for events like Thatcher's funeral and Bilderberg policing, and why is it that corporate funded think-tanks are having their non-mandated corporatist policies prioritised over government election pledges on policy?

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberal myth: Austerity is caused by incompetent governments unable to balance their budgets

In reality this is mostly neocolonial way of dealing with countries. Allowing local oligarchy to steal as much loaned by foreign states money as they can and converting the country into the debt slave. Look at Greece and Ukraine for two prominent examples.
The position of OneCommentator is a typical position of defenders and propagandists of neoliberalism
IMF is part of "Washington Consensus" with the direct goal of converting countries into debt slaves of industrialized West. It did not work well with Acia counties, but it is great success in some countries in Europe and most of Africa and Latin America (with Argentina as the most recent example)
Notable quotes:
"... As central banks such as the FED and the ECB operate with insatiable greed and cannot be audited or regulated by any government body anywhere in the world, due to their charters having been set up that way, then bankers are free to meet secretly and plot depressions so as to gain full control over sovereign nations and manipulate markets so that their "chums and agents" in business can buy up assets and land in depressed economies – while possible wars could also make corporations and banks more money as well! ..."
Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
OneCommentator -> petercs , 8 Jun 2013 11:46
@petercs -

..."neoliberal", concept behind the word, has nothing to do with liberal or liberty or freedom..

Wrong. Traditional liberalism supported both social and economic freedoms. That included support for most of the civil rights and freedoms we enjoy today AND free trade and free investments. It used to be that liberals were practically unpopular with right wing (traditional conservative for example) parties but more or less on the same side as left wing parties, mainly because of their social positions. More recently the left wing parties became more and more unhappy with the economic freedoms promoted by liberals while the right wing parties embraced both the economic and social freedoms to a certain degree.

So, the leftists found themselves in a bind practically having reversed roles which the the conservatives as far as support for liberalism goes. So, typically, they're using propaganda to cover their current reactionary tendencies and coins a new name for liberals: neoliberals which, they say, are not the same as liberals (who are their friends since liberal means freedom lover and they like to use that word a lot).

"austerity" is the financial sectors' solution to its survival after it sucked most the value out of the economy and broke it.

Austerity is caused by incompetent governments unable to balance their budgets. They had 60 years to do it properly after ww2 and the reconstruction that followed but many of them never did it. So now it is very simple: governments ran out of money and nobody wants to lend them more. That's it, they hit the wall and there is nothing left on the bottom if the purse.
OneCommentator , 8 Jun 2013 10:49

The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt.

It is a bit more complicated than that. Developed countries like Greece are supposed to run more or less balanced budgets over longer periods. Sure, they need to borrow money on a regular basis and may that is supposed to be done by issuing bonds or other forms of government debt that investors buy on the open market. For such governments the IMF is supposed to just fill in in a minor way not to provide the bulk of all the loans needed on a temporary basis. Because of incompetent governments Greece is practically bankrupt hence it is not going to be able to pay back most of the existing debts and definitely not newer debts. So practically the IMF is not, ending money to them, it is giving them the money. So, I would say that they have a good reason to wag its finger.

Malakia123 , 8 Jun 2013 11:15

LOGIC 101: Introductory Course of Study

If private, stockholder-held central banks such as the FED and the FED-backed ECB were not orchestrating this depression, and anybody who believed they were was a "wacko-nutcase conspiracy theorist", then why do they keep repeating the same mistakes of forcing un-payable bailout loans, collapsing banks, wiping out people's savings and then imposing austerity on those nations year after year – when it is clearly a failed policy?

Possible Answers :

1. Bank presidents are all ex-hippies who got hooked on LSD in the 70's and have not yet recovered fully as their brains are still fried!

2. Central bankers have been recruited from insane asylums in both Europe and America in government-sponsored programs to see whether blithering idiots are capable of running large, international financial institutions.

3. All catastrophic events in the banking/business world, such as the derivative and housing crash of 2008, the Stock Market Crash of 1929 and The Great Depression of 1929-40 were totally random events that just occurred out of nowhere and central banks were caught off guard – leaving them no option but to play with their willies for years on end until a major war suddenly happened to pull the whole world out of "bad times"!

4. As central banks such as the FED and the ECB operate with insatiable greed and cannot be audited or regulated by any government body anywhere in the world, due to their charters having been set up that way, then bankers are free to meet secretly and plot depressions so as to gain full control over sovereign nations and manipulate markets so that their "chums and agents" in business can buy up assets and land in depressed economies – while possible wars could also make corporations and banks more money as well!


Please choose one of the possible answers from above and write a short 500 word essay on whether it may or may not true – using well-defined logical arguments. I expect your answers in by Friday of this week as I would like to get pissed out of my mind at the pub on Saturday night!

petercs , 8 Jun 2013 10:44

The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda.

..."neoliberal", concept behind the word, has nothing to do with liberal or liberty or freedom...it is a PR spin concept that names slavery with a a word that sounds like the opposite...if "they" called it neoslavery it just wouldn't sell in the market for political concepts.

..."austerity" is the financial sectors' solution to its survival after it sucked most the value out of the economy and broke it. To mend it was a case of preservation of the elite and the devil take the hindmost, that's most of us.

...and even Labour, the party of trade unionism, has adopted austerity to drive its policy.

...we need a Peoples' Party to stand for the revaluation of labour so we get paid for our effort rather than the distortion, the rich xxx poor divide, of neoslavery austerity.

[Dec 03, 2018] I've spat my tea every time I hear some non-Brit brag of their freedom from royal tyranny. They are blissfully unaware they have created/inherited such in all but name

Dec 03, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Itsrainingtin -> crinklyoldgit , 8 Jun 2013 10:30

@ crinklyoldgit

Still it is surprising that they have gone so quickly from their stated position at the start of the republic of a rejection of kings and emperors to their position now of corruption so ingrained it is impossible to make distinctions.

Too right, I've spat my tea every time I hear some non-Brit brag of their freedom from royal tyranny. They are blissfully unaware they have created/inherited such in all but name. Fat Cat Bastard or Henry the Eighth, try to spot the difference in style or attitude.

[Dec 01, 2018] Assange Never Met Manafort by Craig Murray

Notable quotes:
"... I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services. ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

Luke Harding and the Guardian Publish Still More Blatant MI6 Lies

The right wing Ecuadorean government of President Moreno continues to churn out its production line of fake documents regarding Julian Assange, and channel them straight to MI6 mouthpiece Luke Harding of the Guardian.

Amazingly, more Ecuadorean Government documents have just been discovered for the Guardian, this time spy agency reports detailing visits of Paul Manafort and unspecified "Russians" to the Embassy. By a wonderful coincidence of timing, this is the day after Mueller announced that Manafort's plea deal was over.

The problem with this latest fabrication is that Moreno had already released the visitor logs to the Mueller inquiry. Neither Manafort nor these "Russians" are in the visitor logs.

This is impossible. The visitor logs were not kept by Wikileaks, but by the very strict Ecuadorean security. Nobody was ever admitted without being entered in the logs. The procedure was very thorough. To go in, you had to submit your passport (no other type of document was accepted). A copy of your passport was taken and the passport details entered into the log. Your passport, along with your mobile phone and any other electronic equipment, was retained until you left, along with your bag and coat. I feature in the logs every time I visited.

There were no exceptions. For an exception to be made for Manafort and the "Russians" would have had to be a decision of the Government of Ecuador, not of Wikileaks, and that would be so exceptional the reason for it would surely have been noted in the now leaked supposed Ecuadorean "intelligence report" of the visits. What possible motive would the Ecuadorean government have for facilitating secret unrecorded visits by Paul Manafort? Furthermore it is impossible that the intelligence agency – who were in charge of the security – would not know the identity of these alleged "Russians".

Previously Harding and the Guardian have published documents faked by the Moreno government regarding a diplomatic appointment to Russia for Assange of which he had no knowledge. Now they follow this up with more documents aimed to provide fictitious evidence to bolster Mueller's pathetically failed attempt to substantiate the story that Russia deprived Hillary of the Presidency.

My friend William Binney, probably the world's greatest expert on electronic surveillance, former Technical Director of the NSA, has stated that it is impossible the DNC servers were hacked, the technical evidence shows it was a download to a directly connected memory stick. I knew the US security services were conducting a fake investigation the moment it became clear that the FBI did not even themselves look at the DNC servers, instead accepting a report from the Clinton linked DNC "security consultants" Crowdstrike.

I would love to believe that the fact Julian has never met Manafort is bound to be established. But I fear that state control of propaganda may be such that this massive "Big Lie" will come to enter public consciousness in the same way as the non-existent Russian hack of the DNC servers.

Assange never met Manafort. The DNC emails were downloaded by an insider. Assange never even considered fleeing to Russia. Those are the facts, and I am in a position to give you a personal assurance of them.

I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services.

I am not a fan of Donald Trump. But to see the partisans of the defeated candidate (and a particularly obnoxious defeated candidate) manipulate the security services and the media to create an entirely false public perception, in order to attempt to overturn the result of the US Presidential election, is the most astonishing thing I have witnessed in my lifetime.

Plainly the government of Ecuador is releasing lies about Assange to curry favour with the security establishment of the USA and UK, and to damage Assange's support prior to expelling him from the Embassy. He will then be extradited from London to the USA on charges of espionage.

Assange is not a whistleblower or a spy – he is the greatest publisher of his age, and has done more to bring the crimes of governments to light than the mainstream media will ever be motivated to achieve. That supposedly great newspaper titles like the Guardian, New York Times and Washington Post are involved in the spreading of lies to damage Assange, and are seeking his imprisonment for publishing state secrets, is clear evidence that the idea of the "liberal media" no longer exists in the new plutocratic age. The press are not on the side of the people, they are an instrument of elite control.

Assange Never Met Manafort

SporadicMyrmidon , says: December 1, 2018 at 7:47 am GMT

My opinions are conflicted, but I'd rather give Assange a Nobel Peace Prize than a criminal conviction. He definitely deserves a Nobel Prize more than Obama. I was in an eatery in Cambridge, MA, when I heard Obama's prize announced, and even there people where aghast and astounded.
jilles dykstra , says: December 1, 2018 at 10:25 am GMT
The Guardian was bought by Soros, a few years ago.
Washpost, NYT and CNN, Deep State mouthpieces.
That the USA, as long as Deep State has not been eradicated completely from USA society, will continue to try to get Assange, and of course also Snowdon, in it claws, is more than obvious.
So what are we talking about ?
Assange just uses the freedom of information act, or how the the USA euphemism for telling them nothing, is called.
How Assange survives, mentally and bodily, being locked up in a small room without a bathroom, for several years now, is beyond my comprehension.
But of course, for 'traitors' like him human rights do not exist.
Bill Jones , says: December 1, 2018 at 10:33 am GMT
I tried this in the Grauniad search box

Term: "Far Right" result: "About 1,400,000 results (0.23 seconds)"

Term : "Far Left" result: "About 7,310 results (0.22 seconds) "

Only Pol Pot is to the Left of that bird-cage liner.

anon [271] Disclaimer , says: December 1, 2018 at 10:38 am GMT
"I can also assure you that Luke Harding, the Guardian, Washington Post and New York Times have been publishing a stream of deliberate lies, in collusion with the security services."

These outfits are largely state-run at this point. The Washington Post is owned by Jeff Bezos, a man with deep ties to the CIA through his Amazon company (which depends upon federal subsidies and has received security agency "support") and the Guardian is clandestinely funded through UK government purchases, among other things. MI6 has also effectively compromised the former integrity and objectivity of that outlet by threatening them with prosecutions for revealing MI6 spy practices. And the NYT has always been state-run. See their coverage of the Iraq War. The Israelis have bragged about having an asset at the Times. The American government has several.

Altai , says: December 1, 2018 at 11:38 am GMT
It's amazing to see the obvious progression of the lies as they take hold in an anti-Trump elite who seem completely impervious to understanding his victory over Clinton. All these people who claim to be so cosmopolitan and educated seem to think Assange or Manafort would have any interest in meeting each other. (Let alone in the company of unspecified 'Russians'.)

At first it was that Assange was wrong to publish the DNC leaks because it hurt Clinton and thus helped Trump.

Then it was that Assange was actively trying to help Trump.

Now it's that Assange is in collusion with Trump and the 'Russians'.

The same thing happened with the Trump-Russian nonsense which goes ever more absurd as time goes on. Slowly boiling the frog in the public's mind. The allegations are so nonsensical, yet there are plenty of educated, supposedly cosmopolitan people who don't understand the backgrounds or motives of their 'liberal' heroes in the NYT or Guardian who believe this on faith.

None of these people will ever question how if any of this is true how the security services of the West didn't know it and if they supposedly know it, how come they aren't acting like it's true. They are acting like they're attempting to smear politicians they don't like, however.

Che Guava , says: December 1, 2018 at 11:51 am GMT
Luke Harding is particularly despicable. He made his name as a journalist off privileged access to Wilkileaks docs, and has been persistently attacking Assange ever since the Swedish fan-girl farce.

Assange did make a mistake (of which I am sure he is all too aware now) in the choice to, rather than leave the info. open on-line, collaborate with the filthy Guardian, the sleazy NYT, and I forget dirty name of the third publication.

Big tactictal error.

Che Guava , says: December 1, 2018 at 12:05 pm GMT
@anon Since you are posting as Anon coward, I am not expecting a reply, but would be interested in (and would not doubt) state funding of the 'Guardian'?

As for the NYT, they are plainly in some sense state-funded, but the state in question is neither New York nor the U.S.A., but the state of Israel.

mike k , says: December 1, 2018 at 12:33 pm GMT
Only the thoroughly brainwashed can doubt the truths in this article. Unfortunately that includes a huge number of Americans.
Bill Jones , says: December 1, 2018 at 1:05 pm GMT
@Altai The one lesson that the left has learned is to double downin perpetuity.

Their invincible arragance is matched only by their stupidity.

Simon Tugmutton , says: December 1, 2018 at 1:23 pm GMT
@Che Guava Perhaps he is referring to the sheer volume of ads the British government places for public sector appointments. As for the paper edition, most of it seems to be bought by the BBC!

[Dec 01, 2018] The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a clandestine operation run by intelligence units.

Notable quotes:
"... You might like to report on the recent bill in Congress giving broadcasters "immunity" for spying. The New York Times acquires information from spying on citizens by the CIA twenty four hours a day - aa CIA Wire Service which is unconscionable for a newspaper. Such information allows the Times to keep competitors out of favored industries, scoop other news groups, and enhance revenues by pirated material. The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a clandestine operation run by intelligence units. ..."
"... Interestingly, the NYT revelation itself was illegal, a felony under the Intelligence Act of 1917. ..."
"... Which, ipso facto, makes at least that part of the Intelligence Act of 1917 unconstitutional: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" ( US. Constitution, Amendment I ). This perhaps explains why no newspaper has ever been prosecuted under the Intelligence Act of 1917. Prosecutors would rather have it available as a threat rather than having it thrown out as unconstitutional, and of course the Supreme Court can't rule on its constitutionality unless someone has standing to bring a case against it before them. ..."
"... It's also not surprising that the CIA would take an interest in how it is perceived. I would argue that the CIA was actually preventing or controlling the flow of info the WH was giving to filmmakers. ..."
"... This story only scratches the surface on the extent of corruption in US media and journalism in general over the last 10-15 years. The loss of journalistic integrity and objectivity in US media is on display as many media outlets showcase their one-sided liberal or conservative views. Sadly, the US media has become just as polarized as the government. However, the greatest corruption is not with the govt-media connection; the greatest corruption involves the lobbyists - foreign and domestic. Lobbying groups exert an enormous influence on politicians and the media and it extends to both sides of the aisle. ..."
"... It's no secret that the CIA and State Department have colluded with media since 1950. Public relations is nothing more than propaganda. And if you think the CIA doesn't have it's own PR department, with *hundreds* of employees, dedicated to misinformation, spin, half-truths, and psychological operations, well, consider this your wake-up call. ..."
"... "The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby - Former CIA Director ..."
"... "We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director 1981 ..."
"... While you rightly characterize this case as indicating the "virtual merger" of government and media "watchdogs," I think a meta-theme running through your writings illuminates the "virtual merger" of both corporate & state power (esp. after Citizens United), ..."
"... the real issue is not personalities or trivial post deletions, the real issue is that the CIA is tightly bound to the institutions of America ... and that this is not a good thing for everyone ..."
Aug 30, 2012 | www.theguardian.com
Zilchnada -> TerryMKl , 31 Aug 2012 09:47
...this is the norm not the exception. It's also representative of a very significant cross section of the State Department/CIA/Pentagon/DC Beaurcratic Machine, made up of various Leftists, Statists, academia, and privileged youth with political science degrees from east coast/DC/Ivy League schools.
TerryMKl , 31 Aug 2012 08:44
I am having a very difficult time wrapping my mind around this story.....we have an alleged CIA spokesperson purportedly attempting to engage in damage control with a prominent national newspaper regarding the flow of information between the CIA and film-makers doing a story on the Bin Laden raid. Ostensibly, the information provided, regarding the raid, was to help secure the President's reelection bid?

I note that the logo on the phone of the published photo of CIA spokesperson Marie Harf looks remarkably similar, if not identical, to the Obama campaign logo. A "Twitter" account profile for M's. Harf references that she is a "National Security Wonk at OFA...." . Could the "OFA" she makes reference to possibly be "Obama for America"? Her recent tweet history includes commentaries critical of Romney and his supporters, which appear to be in response to her observations while watching Republican Convention coverage.

My understanding heretofore was that those engaged in the Intelligence Community, particularly spokespersons, preferred to keep a low profile and at least appear apolitical. Based upon the facts as presented, one must reexamine whether a US intelligence agency is engaging in the most blatant form political partisanship to unduly influence a US Presidential election.

zany12 , 31 Aug 2012 08:31
You might like to report on the recent bill in Congress giving broadcasters "immunity" for spying. The New York Times acquires information from spying on citizens by the CIA twenty four hours a day - aa CIA Wire Service which is unconscionable for a newspaper. Such information allows the Times to keep competitors out of favored industries, scoop other news groups, and enhance revenues by pirated material. The Times isn't a newspaper at all but a clandestine operation run by intelligence units.
TheCharlatone , 31 Aug 2012 07:23
I'm surprised by the pettiness of it all. And it's this pettiness that makes me think that such data exchange is not only routine, but
an accepted way to enhance a career. After all, who really cares what Dowd writes? I believe Chomsky called her 'kinda a gossip columnist'. And, that's what she is.

That anyone would bother passing her column to the CIA is, on the face of it, a little absurd. I don't say she is a bad columnist, she's probably quite good, but hardly of interest to the CIA, even when she is writing about the CIA. So basically, someone passed her column along, because this is normal, and the more ambitious understand that this is how you 'get along'.

This kind of careerism is something I see, on some level, every day: the ambitious see the rules of the game, and follow them, and the rationale comes later. For most of us, this doesn't involve the security services. However, the principle that the MSM is, at the least, heavily influenced by state power is fairly well understood by now in more critical circles: all forms of media are subject to unusual and particular state pressures, due to their central import in propaganda and mass-persuasion. The NYT is, in short, an obvious target for this kind of influencing. And as such should really know much much better.

Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that most of what I read, or see on the nightly broadcasts, is essentially bullshit. I could switch to RT, and in a way its counter-point would be useful in stimulating my own critical thinking, but much of what RT broadcasts is also likely to be bullshit. We have a world of competing propaganda memes where nobody knows the truth. It's like we are all spooks now, each and every one of us. An excellent article, again.

Franklymydear0 -> JET2023 , 31 Aug 2012 04:26

Interestingly, the NYT revelation itself was illegal, a felony under the Intelligence Act of 1917.

Which, ipso facto, makes at least that part of the Intelligence Act of 1917 unconstitutional: "Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press" ( US. Constitution, Amendment I ). This perhaps explains why no newspaper has ever been prosecuted under the Intelligence Act of 1917. Prosecutors would rather have it available as a threat rather than having it thrown out as unconstitutional, and of course the Supreme Court can't rule on its constitutionality unless someone has standing to bring a case against it before them.

gibbon22 , 31 Aug 2012 03:57
Excellent article, but it's not necessarily a surprise to see a reporter who has developed a relationship with his source do that source a favor in hopes that the favor will some day be returned with greater access.

It's also not surprising that the CIA would take an interest in how it is perceived. I would argue that the CIA was actually preventing or controlling the flow of info the WH was giving to filmmakers.

This story only scratches the surface on the extent of corruption in US media and journalism in general over the last 10-15 years. The loss of journalistic integrity and objectivity in US media is on display as many media outlets showcase their one-sided liberal or conservative views. Sadly, the US media has become just as polarized as the government. However, the greatest corruption is not with the govt-media connection; the greatest corruption involves the lobbyists - foreign and domestic. Lobbying groups exert an enormous influence on politicians and the media and it extends to both sides of the aisle.

marjac , 31 Aug 2012 02:27
Obama's CIA leaking to anyone, including the NY Times and colluding? I'm shocked do your hear, shocked..........
Zilchnada , 31 Aug 2012 01:02
What the commoners fail to understand is that the Public Relations (PR) industry controls 75% of the information that you are fed from major media outlets. It's an industry that has artfully masked everything you thought you knew. It's no secret that the CIA and State Department have colluded with media since 1950. Public relations is nothing more than propaganda. And if you think the CIA doesn't have it's own PR department, with *hundreds* of employees, dedicated to misinformation, spin, half-truths, and psychological operations, well, consider this your wake-up call.
jaydiggity , 30 Aug 2012 22:30
"The CIA owns everyone of any significance in the major media." - William Colby - Former CIA Director

"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." - William Casey, CIA Director 1981

Christopher Tucker , 30 Aug 2012 21:52
Glenn, thanks for illuminating the insidious, dangerous cynicism pervading American media & culture, which have become so inured to hypocrisy, corruption & desecration of sacrosanct democratic values & institutions that has been crucial to the normalization of formerly intolerable practices, laws & policies eating away at the foundations of our constitutional democracy. The collective moral, principled "lines in the sand" protecting us from authoritarian pressures are steadily being washed away, compromised, thanks to media obsequious complicity.

While you rightly characterize this case as indicating the "virtual merger" of government and media "watchdogs," I think a meta-theme running through your writings illuminates the "virtual merger" of both corporate & state power (esp. after Citizens United), and all the "checks & balances" enshrined in our constitution after 9/11 (e.g. deferential judiciary, bi-partisan Congressional consensus on increasingly authoritarian, secretive US executive, propagandistic media, etc.). At least that's my thinking, and I see no significant countervailing pressure capable of slowing- let alone reversing- this authoritarian re-ordering of our constitutional order & political culture, though a few exceptions exist (e.g. Judge Forrest's suprising courage to suspend NDAA provision 1021), and rare journalists like yourself.

One astounding example of this widespread cynicism facilitating this authoritarian trend, was the media's rather restrained response to the revelation that elements in the massive Terrorist/Military Industrial Complex (HBGary) had been plotting military-style social-engineering operations to discredit & silence progressive journalists, specifically naming YOU, who I see as one of the rare defenders of the constitutional/democratic "lines in the sand" under relentless attack. Where was the overwhelming collective shock & outrage, or media demanding criminal investigations into US taxpayer-funded attacks on our so-called "free press?"

The paucity of outrage, outraged- but did not surprise- me, and neither does this revelation of a cozy relationship between censored/propagandistic media, CIA, White House, etc., as indicated by my articles about the " War on Whistleblowers, " " Where's the Free Press, " & " NDAA 2013 Legalizing US Propaganda Could Make Americans Less Gullible. "

My question for Glenn, is whether he thinks it would be possible for him to get legal standing to sue the private (& US??) entities, which proposed the covert discrediting/repression operations targeting you specifically?

I'm no lawyer, but it seems the documents published by Anonymous, reveal actions constituting criminal conspiracy. Given the proposed methods included forms of politically-motivated military warfare & coercion, the guilty parties would likely be aggressively investigated and charged with some terrorist crimes, if they had been busted planning attacks on people/entities that trumpeted Obama administration policies or its corporate backers (i.e. if they were Anonymous). The HBGary proposal to discredit/silence Wikileaks defenders strongly indicated they had experience with- & confidence in- such covert operations. Requiring a journalist/academic to be covertly discredited/destroyed/silenced before they get legal standing would be as absurd as the Obama administration's argument that Chris Hedges & Co. plaintiffs lack standing because they hadn't yet been stripped of their rights & secretly indefinitately detained without charges or trial.

I thought you might be in the unique position to use the US courts to pry open & shine some light upon the clearly anti-democratic, authoritarian abuses of power, & virtual fusion of corporate & state powers, which you so eloquently write about.

Grizz Mann , 30 Aug 2012 21:34
Is the CIA stuff in with the FAST AND FURIOUS files?
kschroder , 30 Aug 2012 20:26
I glad that foreign journalism is available for me to read our the internet, it's the only way i can find truthful information about what's going on in my own country (USA). I've known the liberal media bias was a problem for a long time, but articles like this continually remind me that things are far worse than they appear.
JRobinetteBiden , 30 Aug 2012 20:08
State-run media; right along with Apie-See, Empty-See and See-BS...
Steven Kingham , 30 Aug 2012 20:02
This is hilarious - even the left-wing Guardian is contemptuous of the lap-dog relationship the US press has with the Obama administration.
SmirkingChimp , 30 Aug 2012 19:09
All the actions surrounding the NY Times and the CIA on this issue are atrocious. With this type of "journalistic independence", why am I paying for a Times account??
Intercooler , 30 Aug 2012 18:16
As a favor to all readers, following is a summation of all past, present, and future ideas as articulated by the Fortune Cookie Thinker, John Andersson:
  1. A certain amount of genocide is good because the world is overpopulated.
  2. You should never question authority; after all, you are not an expert on authority.
  3. Everyone wins when we kill terrorists; the more we kill, the more we generate, thus the more we kill again, which makes us win more.
  4. It is not possible to have absolute power; therefore, power does not corrupt.
  5. Drones kill bad people. Only bad people are killed by drones. Thus, drones are good. We should have more drones. That is all.

I secretly think he's the real "Jack Handy" from the Deep Thoughts series on SNL.

kerrypay , 30 Aug 2012 18:00
In my high school history class in 1968 I learned all about how newspapers printed propaganda stories before WWI and Spanish American war in order to influence the public so they would want to go to war and it was called "yellow journalism". I also had an English teacher that taught us about "marketing" and how they use visuals and printed words and film to make us want to buy a product. My father taught me to NOT BELEIVE everything you read. Now it is called "critical thinking" and has been added as a general education class in college that you have to take for a college degree. Critical thinking about what you read and see and hear should be taught as early as 10 year olds so people can think for themselves. I do not read main stream newspapers in America but read news sites all over the world.

THANK GOD FOR THE INTERNET THAT YOU CAN READ WHAT OTHER NEWSPAPERS. I discovered Glenn on Democracy Now and they are my go to place to read about what is really happening.

JohnAndersson , 30 Aug 2012 17:47
the real issue is not personalities or trivial post deletions, the real issue is that the CIA is tightly bound to the institutions of America ... and that this is not a good thing for everyone

[Dec 01, 2018] The critical articles are nothing more than smokescreens. We are led to believe how hard-hitting the newspapers are and how they hold the politicians and other power-brokers to fire. All hogwash. It is better we recognize that the citizens are merely props they need to claim legitimacy.

Notable quotes:
"... We should not even talk about "conflict of interest" anymore. It is a collusion all the way. We saw it in the phone hacking scandal here, now at the New York Times. I have always wondered about these white tie dinners in Washington DC and how chummy and cozy the reporters looked mingling with the power-holders and -brokers. ..."
"... In what is turning out to be the CIA Century, the American President and major news outlets seem to operate under CIA authority and in accordance with CIA standard operating procedures. ..."
"... Or Afghanistan. Many of the cruise missile libs supported the invasion of Afghanistan but not Iraq. ..."
"... The press is managed on behalf of what I will call US powers. Those powers seem to be high level military, clandestine agencies, financial industry "leaders", and war contractors. The political parties and the faces they present to the public (with some few exceptions) act as functionaries to keep up the illusion that the US is a democracy. ..."
"... And I am not sure why I associate Washington's bureaucratic CIA with dancing midgets. ..."
Aug 30, 2012 | www.theguardian.com
jayant , 30 Aug 2012 11:17
If we thought the public trust in journalism is low, then this news only pushes it down further. Do people in journalism care? Some do very much but for the most the media and the power-holders are in collusion.

We should not even talk about "conflict of interest" anymore. It is a collusion all the way. We saw it in the phone hacking scandal here, now at the New York Times. I have always wondered about these white tie dinners in Washington DC and how chummy and cozy the reporters looked mingling with the power-holders and -brokers.

The critical articles are nothing more than smokescreens. We are led to believe how hard-hitting the newspapers are and how they hold the politicians and other power-brokers to fire. All hogwash. It is better we recognize that the citizens are merely props they need to claim legitimacy.

SeminoleSky , 30 Aug 2012 11:11
Not till this moment did I realize that we are under siege. I thought Julian Assange was the one under siege but he was just trying to offer us a path to freedom. With Assange neutralized and The New York Times and its brethren by all appearances thoroughly compromised, how can any one of us stand for all of us against government malfeasance let alone tyranny?

Where would you go if you had dispositive proof of devastating government malfeasance? In what is turning out to be the CIA Century, the American President and major news outlets seem to operate under CIA authority and in accordance with CIA standard operating procedures.

It would actually be foolish to take evidence of horrific government behavior to the titular head of the government {who'd likely persecute you as a whistleblower} or the major news organizations supposedly reporting to us about it {they'd bring it right back to the government for guidance on what to do}.

Without safe and reliable ways to stand and speak for and to each other on a large scale about the foul deeds of our government, we are damned to live very lonely vulnerable lives at the mercy of an unrestrained government.

Excerpt from script of Three Days of the Condor --

  • Higgins: I can't let you stay out, Turner.
  • Turner slowly stops, leans back against a building, shakes his head sadly.
  • Turner: Go home, Higgins. They have it all.
  • Higgins: What are you talking about?
  • Turner: Don't you know where we are?
  • Higgins looks around. The huge newspaper trucks are moving out.
  • Turner: It's where they ship from.
  • Higgins' head darts upward and he reads the legend above Turner's head. THE NEW YORK TIMES. He is stunned.
  • Higgins: You dumb son of a bitch.
  • Turner: It's been done. They have it.
  • Higgins: You've done more damage than you know.
  • Turner: I hope so.
  • Higgins: You want to rip us to pieces, but you damn fool you rely on us. {then} You're about to be a very lonely man, Turner.
  • ***
    Higgins: It didn't have to turn out like this.
  • Turner: Of course it did.
  • Higgins: {calling out as they depart separate ways} Turner! How do you know they'll print it?
  • Turner stops. Stares at Higgins. Higgins smiles.
  • Higgins: You can take a walk. But how far? If they don't print it.
  • Turner: They'll print it.
  • Higgins: How do you know?
BillOwen , 30 Aug 2012 11:00
Several commenters have pointed out that the NYT does do "good" journalism. That is true. It is also true that they tell absolute lies. See Judith Miller. The best way to sell a lie is to wrap it in the truth.
OnYourMarx -> avelna2001 , 30 Aug 2012 10:57
Or Afghanistan. Many of the cruise missile libs supported the invasion of Afghanistan but not Iraq.
Intercooler , 30 Aug 2012 10:56
I know it's late in the comments thread by the time anyone bothers to read THIS minor contribution, but I think it worth mentioning how this article from Glenn proves just how important are outlets like Democracy Now, RT, Cenk Uyger, Dylan Ratigan, et al. You really have to turn away from the mainstream media as a source of anything. Far too compromised, by both their embeddedness with the government, and their for-profit coroporate owners.

Note CNN's terrible ratings problems as of late, and the recent news that they are considering turning to more reality-type shows to get the eyeballs back. If that isn't proof positive of the current value of corporate news, I don't know what is.

DemocracyNow.org. I think I'm going to donate to them today....

Franklymydear0 -> rransier , 30 Aug 2012 10:08

i'm do not understand why so many people are against authority in general, even when the legal & enforcement system is there to protect your property, life and rights. i understand when corruption exists, it should be seriously addressed, but why throw out a whole system that is "somewhat working"? why blindly call for revolution?

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.--That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness."

The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, IN CONGRESS, July 4, 1776

Do you understand now?

Ahzeld , 30 Aug 2012 10:07
This is a political officer acting as editor of a major newspaper. I agree this has been going on for some time. Here is my analysis of that. The press is managed on behalf of what I will call US powers. Those powers seem to be high level military, clandestine agencies, financial industry "leaders", and war contractors. The political parties and the faces they present to the public (with some few exceptions) act as functionaries to keep up the illusion that the US is a democracy.

Romney and Obama are functionaries. They do as they're told. Obama is the more useful of the two as fewer people seem able to look honestly at his policies. They will not oppose Obama for doing the same things and worse as Bush. It is why all stops are being pulled out to get him, rather than Romney elected. The policies will be the same but the reaction of our population to each man is vastly different.

So yes, the capture of the media has been going on for quite some time. It appears nearly consolidated at this time. Instead of using this as a reason to ignore the situation, it is more important than ever to speak out. History is helpful in learning how to confront injustice. It is not a reason, as I see many use it, to say; "well it's always been that way, so what?" In history, we learn about corruption but we also learn that people opposed corruption. Is there some reason why we cannot also oppose corruption right now?

evenharpier -> MonotonousLanguor , 30 Aug 2012 09:16
"During the Vietnam War the Military Briefings were Derisively called the Five O' Clock Follies."

... ... ...

IgAIgEIgG , 30 Aug 2012 08:32
I though Michael Wolff's recent analysis of Apple (here in the Guardian) was in many ways metaphorical for Western leadership, his article acting in some ways to explain the behavior we see in cultural "elites."

Worth the read.

And somehow, after reading this article, all I can think of is the Wizard of Oz and a dancing midget army singing in repetitive, high-pitched tones.

And I am not sure why I associate Washington's bureaucratic CIA with dancing midgets.

BaldieMcEagle , 30 Aug 2012 08:15
Who will be the first commenter to leave the classic devastating critique: "The author fails to present a balanced view, showing only one side. The author's argument has no substance and is not really worth anything."

Don't forget this one: "The author just complains and complains without ever offering a solution or a better approach."

Also, can anyone 'splain me how to do a "response"?

thedark , 30 Aug 2012 08:09
I think Glenn Greenwald would be better off concerning himself less with matters below the ads and more with researching interesting stuff.

[Dec 01, 2018] In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in Nevada

Dec 01, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

RobGehrke -> MonaHol , 30 Aug 2012 06:12

"What do you mean by claiming Hersh "cozys up" to MIC ppl? And what would be a specific example of a story he broke after doing that?"

Our Men in Iran?

"We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada," a former senior American intelligence official told me. ... In a separate interview, a retired four-star general, who has advised the Bush and Obama Administrations on national-security issues, said that he had been privately briefed in 2005 about the training of Iranians associated with the M.E.K. in Nevada

http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/newsdesk/2012/04/mek.html

His conversations with Lieutenant Calley are apparently what allowed him to break the My Lai massacre story as well, even though members of the military had already spoken out about it, and there had been already been charges brought. It just revealed the story to the general public, which prompted a fuller investigation and courts martial. I'm sure there are others.

So, obviously Hersh's "cozying up" (surely not the right term for it, though) is in the interests of raising public awareness of nefarious deeds, and is not scared of painting these organizations in a bad light, whereas Mazzetti's goal here seems to be to maintain his privileged access by providing favors - totally different motivations. It's rather easy to contrast the two, which "smartypants54" has even stated here.

Whatever the case, it's true that elements of the NYT have been mouthpieces more or less for government and corporate power for a long time. While I agree with Glenn about the faux cynicism perpetuating this kind of activity - "don't be naive, this is done all the time" - I can understand that it exists.

Such cynicism on the part of the public, rather than being an acknowledgment of acceptance and approval of such practices, can also be seen as part of a more radical critique of the corporate media in general, and the NYT particularly, in that such organizations - not that I totally agree with this - , by their very nature, can't be reformed and can never be totally effective checks on power because of the way they're structured, and who they answer to.

That's definitely not a reason to stop pointing it out, though.

[Dec 01, 2018] An interesting book: The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence by Victor Marchetti

Notable quotes:
"... Here's a wonderful example of the NYT's propensity for re-writing history: http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08/30/ny-times-scrubs-mention-cia-arming-syrian-rebels-177311/ Long live the memory hole. ..."
Aug 30, 2012 | www.theguardian.com

bilejones, 30 Aug 2012 16:16

Here's a wonderful example of the NYT's propensity for re-writing history: http://blog.alexanderhiggins.com/2012/08/30/ny-times-scrubs-mention-cia-arming-syrian-rebels-177311/ Long live the memory hole.
BillOwen , 30 Aug 2012 13:15
The CIA and the Cult of Intelligence Victor Marchetti

"It is the first book the federal government of the United States ever went to court to censor before its publication. The CIA demanded the authors remove 399 passages but they stood firm and only 168 passages were censored. The publisher, Alfred A. Knopf, chose to publish the book with blanks for censored passages and with boldface type for passages that were challenged but later uncensored."

There exists in our nation today a powerful and dangerous secret cult -- the cult of intelligence. Its holy men are the clandestine professionals of the Central Intelligence Agency.

Its patrons and protectors are the highest officials of the federal government. Its membership, extending far beyond governmental circles, reaches into the power centers of industry, commerce, finance, and labor. Its friends are many in the areas of important public influence -- the academic world and the communications media.

The cult of intelligence is a secret fraternity of the American political aristocracy.

The purpose of the cult is to further the foreign policies of the U.S. government by covert and usually illegal means, while at the same time containing the spread of its avowed enemy, communism. Traditionally, the cult's hope has been to foster a world order in which America would reign supreme, the unchallenged international leader.

Today, however, that dream stands tarnished by time and frequent failures. Thus, the cult's objectives are now less grandiose, but no less disturbing. It seeks largely to advance America's self-appointed role as the dominant arbiter of social, economic, and political change in the awakening regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America. And its worldwide war against communism has to some extent been reduced to a covert struggle to maintain a self-serving stability in the Third World, using whatever clandestine methods are available.

Wiki

[Nov 27, 2018] EU-wide 'anti-Russian psy-ops' program confirms UK govt funding, Anonymous denies leak

Notable quotes:
"... "clear that much of the material was indeed on the Integrity Initiative or Institute systems." ..."
"... The organization expressed outrage over the publication of emails belonging to its alleged agents, and implied that the Russian intelligence community must have been behind the leak. ..."
"... The leaked documents, if confirmed genuine, expose the II as a semi-secretive operation to coordinate efforts by seemingly independent journalists, academics and experts involved in exposing and countering "Russian propaganda." The documents say the program cost £1,961,000 ($2.5 million) this year alone. ..."
Nov 26, 2018 | www.rt.com
A network exposed by leaked documents as a Europe-wide PR operation aimed at curbing "Russian propaganda" has confirmed receiving money from the British government, while Anonymous has denied on Twitter that it's behind the leak. The Integrity Initiative (II) is a network claiming to fight disinformation that threatens democracy. A trove of alleged II documents, which purports to show costs and internal guidelines as well as names of individuals cooperating with it, has been published by people claiming to be part of the Anonymous collective. A major Anonymous-linked Twitter account has denied it was linked to the leak.

Also on rt.com Anonymous blows lid off huge psyop in Europe and it's funded by UK & US

Responding to the leak on Monday, the organization said it did indeed receive funding from the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office (FCO) for the past two years, but insisted that private donors were its primary source of money.

The statement neither confirmed nor denied that the documents were genuine, saying that it didn't have time to validate them yet. But it said it was "clear that much of the material was indeed on the Integrity Initiative or Institute systems."

It claimed that many of the published documents were "dated and never used," and that many of the individuals listed as members of II "clusters of influencers" were never contacted by the program.

The documents not confirmed. However:
1. Their detail suggests they may be genuine
2. Nobody with knowledge has denied they're genuine
3. Some of those named have confirmed their association
4. Wkileaks hasn't evidenced its concerns
5. A history of some Wiki & Anonymous animosity

-- Charles Shoebridge (@ShoebridgeC) November 25, 2018

The organization expressed outrage over the publication of emails belonging to its alleged agents, and implied that the Russian intelligence community must have been behind the leak.

Russian news agency RIA Novosti contacted the FCO for comment about the disclosure, but its representative said that information about the II was "already in the public domain," and that the British diplomatic service was "happy for the project to receive greater exposure."

Interesting to watch Westerners picking up the Kremlin propaganda line that standing up to Putin's lying, thieving, murdering regime is 'anti Russian'. Putin and his enablers and appeasers are the true 'Russophobes'.

-- Integrity Initiative (@InitIntegrity) November 25, 2018

The leaked documents, if confirmed genuine, expose the II as a semi-secretive operation to coordinate efforts by seemingly independent journalists, academics and experts involved in exposing and countering "Russian propaganda." The documents say the program cost £1,961,000 ($2.5 million) this year alone.

RT, which reported on the leak last Friday, asked a number of alleged participants in the II program about their contribution. The majority of these have not yet replied, except for journalist Edward Lucas and Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council Stephen Blank.

It's been amusing to watch Putin sympathisers in the West who claim to be so adept at seeing through 'government lies' and 'MSM bias' uncritically swallow and regurgitate the version of events spread by Kremlin propaganda outlets that are known to relentlessly lie and distort.

-- Integrity Initiative (@InitIntegrity) November 25, 2018

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[Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders

Highly recommended!
Skripal events probably helped to advance this line of investigation. So in a way UK intelligence services put their own stooge on the line of fire.
Notable quotes:
"... Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money laundering ..."
"... The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November 2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008 and September 2008, respectively. ..."
"... Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did. ..."
"... The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle taxpayers' money involving Russian officials. ..."
"... The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up. ..."
"... Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin. ..."
"... The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic competition. ..."
"... Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to US lawmakers and media outlets. ..."
"... If you like this story, share it with a friend! ..."
Nov 19, 2018 | www.rt.com
Kremlin critic Bill Browder may have given the order for his employee Sergei Magnitsky to be poisoned with a rare toxin in a Russian prison cell, along with other suspects in a tax-evasion probe against him, prosecutors have said. British financier Browder was once a well-connected investor in post-Soviet Russia, but he became a fugitive from the law in the country after being accused of financial crimes. In the West, however, he is best known as the employer of Sergei Magnitsky, a Russian accountant who died in police custody while being investigated in connection to the Browder case. Magnitsky's death became an international scandal, with Browder accusing Russian officials of killing him.

Russian prosecutors on Monday claimed that Magnitsky and several other people familiar with Browder's illicit activities in Russia may have been killed on his order. They said a new criminal case has been opened against Browder in Russia, and that Moscow will seek his extradition as an alleged ringleader of an international criminal enterprise involved in money laundering.

The prosecutors identified four people who were suspects in the Browder case, all of whom died over the course of less than two years as the investigation against him unfolded. Oktay Gasanov was the first of the four, dying in October 2007; while Magnitsky's death in November 2009 was the last. By the time of his death, Magnitsky had spent almost a year in pre-trial detention. The two others were Valery Kurochkin and Sergey Korobeinikov, who died in April 2008 and September 2008, respectively.

Korobeinikov died after falling off a high-rise building, while the others had health complications. The Russian prosecutors believe all four of them may have been killed with a rare water-soluble compound of aluminum. Each of the men showed symptoms consistent with being poisoned by the toxin prior to their deaths, while Korobeinikov had traces of it in his liver, according to a post mortem. An investigation into four possible murders has been opened.

Read more
UK 'fraudster' Browder briefly detained in Spain on Russian warrant, tweets from police car

Considering that the three individuals, with the exception of Magnitsky, died within months of each other while being investigated as part of Browder's case, "it is highly likely that they were killed to get rid of accomplices who could give an incriminating testimony against Browder," a senior official with the Russian General Prosecutor's office told journalists. The same may be true for Magnitsky, he said. The prosecutor stressed that Russia didn't conduct detailed studies into how the suspected poison affects living organisms, but several research institutions based in the US, France and Italy did.

The prosecutors claim that Browder was the party who benefited most from the death of Magnitsky. They cited journalist Oleg Lurie, who shared a prison cell with Magnitsky before the latter's death. Speaking under oath during a court hearing in New York, Lurie said that his cellmate had complained to him that Browder's lawyers were pressuring him into signing a false statement. Magnitsky's testimony claimed that he had uncovered a conspiracy to embezzle taxpayers' money involving Russian officials.

The Russian prosecutors said Browder allegedly wanted to silence his employee after obtaining the false claim. The statement itself was used to blame Russian officials for Magnitsky's death and accuse the Russian government of a cover-up.

Last year, Browder was sentenced by a Russian court to nine years in prison for tax evasion. The trial was held in absentia and Moscow failed to have him extradited to serve the term. The prosecutors said that they will renew attempts to get custody of Browder as part of the new criminal case, using a UN convention on fighting transnational crime to have him arrested.

Browder is a US-born British financier, whose change of citizenship had the benefit of allowing him to avoid paying tax on foreign earnings. However, he claimed the switch was prompted by his family being persecuted in the US during the McCarthyism witch hunt, while the UK seemed like the land of law and order.

Read more

Magnitsky Act mastermind seeks to stop Cyprus from revealing his offshore assets to Russia

He made a fortune in Russia during the country's chaotic transition to a market economy, having invested before there was a stock exchange in Moscow. His Hermitage Capital Management fund was a leading foreign investment entity in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

Described by critics as a 'vulture capitalist,' Browder seemed quite comfortable earning millions of dollars in the financial wild west. In 2005, as fallen oil tycoon Mikhail Khodorkovsky was standing trial for tax evasion, Browder scolded him on the BBC for using personal wealth to grasp at political power, and for leaving "in his wake aggrieved investors too numerous to count." He was also a staunch public supporter of the policies of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The transformation of his public image from a financial shark into a human rights crusader started when Browder himself entered the spotlight of Russian law enforcement. In 2007, the foundation he ran was targeted by a probe into possible large-scale embezzlement of Russian taxpayers' money. Magnitsky, who worked for Browder and had knowledge of his firms' finances, was arrested and held in pre-trial detention until his death in November 2009. The British businessman insisted that the entire case was fabricated and that Magnitsky had been assassinated for exposing a criminal scheme involving several Russian tax officials.

The investor then reinvented himself as an anti-Putin figure, using the death of Magnitsky to lobby various countries to impose sanctions on the Russian officials he blamed for his employee's death. The US Magnitsky Act was passed in 2012, allowing people accused by Washington of human rights violations to be targeted. However, it is perceived by the Kremlin as just a tool to restrain Russia for the sake of global political and economic competition.

Browder's new-found status as a rights advocate and self-proclaimed worst enemy of Putin helps him deflect Russia's attempts to prosecute him. On several occasions, Russia filed international arrest warrants against him with Interpol, which even led to his brief detention in Spain last May.

Among Browder's latest exploits is playing a role in the 'Russiagate' story. A key part of the elusive search for collusion between US President Donald Trump and the Russian government is a meeting between Donald Trump Jr. and a Russian lawyer. The meeting was apparently organized with a view to lobbying for the repeal of the Magnitsky Act. Its architect, Browder, has therefore been eager to lend his expertise on 'Russian machinations' to US lawmakers and media outlets.

If you like this story, share it with a friend!

[Nov 27, 2018] Why social security became welfare under neoliberalism

Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

thesingingdetective -> ABasu , 11 Jun 2013 05:38

@ABasu - My comment was not in direct agreement with the article, it was a critique of the first comment above.

I won't even begin with the welfare debate in which you somehow think that 'welfare' and its relatively recent introduction is somehow anti neo-liberal because that is nothing other than newspeak...

The point I was making (with perhaps a less than perfect example) is that language is political and therefore it matters greatly what we call things.

[Nov 27, 2018] terms that carry with them implicit moral connotations. Investment implies an action, even a sacrifice, undertaken for a better future. It evokes a future positive outcome. Another words that reinforces neoliberal rationality is "growth", Modernization and

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... And that bloody word...'modernisation' (Moderni- z -ation - for the management speak geeks). Why is it every time I come across that word in meetings, it means some worker is either losing money or losing their job? ..."
"... the monetisation of everything and the use of language to make the neo-liberal nightmare through which we are living seem, not only the norm, but the only way. ..."
"... Social security becomes welfare and suddenly masses of society (the majority of benefit claimants being in work) are not drawing on an insurance policy but are in receipt of 'welfare' subject to the largesse and judgements of an ever more cruel and avaricious 'elite'. ..."
"... I'm a big fan of Steven Poole's Unspeak , which looks at the way in which terms and terminology have been engineered precisely to hollow out meaning and present an argument instead. A kind of Neoliberal Emperor's New Clothes, the problem is that, obviously, if your vocabulary and your meanings become circumscribed, it limits what can be said, and even how people think about what's being said. ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

restructuring


Sidfishes , 11 Jun 2013 04:26

And that bloody word...'modernisation' (Moderni- z -ation - for the management speak geeks). Why is it every time I come across that word in meetings, it means some worker is either losing money or losing their job? Or some manager is about to award themselves a bonus?
thesingingdetective -> gyges1 , 11 Jun 2013 04:22
@gyges1 - No, she is surely railing against the monetisation of everything and the use of language to make the neo-liberal nightmare through which we are living seem, not only the norm, but the only way.

Social security becomes welfare and suddenly masses of society (the majority of benefit claimants being in work) are not drawing on an insurance policy but are in receipt of 'welfare' subject to the largesse and judgements of an ever more cruel and avaricious 'elite'.

Language matters and its distortion is a political act.

michaelsylvain , 11 Jun 2013 04:17
But without these Exciting New Word Uprating Initiatives, we can never win The Global Race... or something.

I'm a big fan of Steven Poole's Unspeak , which looks at the way in which terms and terminology have been engineered precisely to hollow out meaning and present an argument instead. A kind of Neoliberal Emperor's New Clothes, the problem is that, obviously, if your vocabulary and your meanings become circumscribed, it limits what can be said, and even how people think about what's being said.

(By the way, the link's to Amazon, but, obviously, you may find you have a better "Customer Experience" if you get from somewhere less tax-dodgy.)

[Nov 27, 2018] Language is the first victim of any hegemonic project. This is true for communism, fascism and neoliberalism

Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

maxfisher , 11 Jun 2013 05:42

Quite. Language is the first victim of any hegemonic project. Examples abound in communism, fascism and neoliberalism. There's nothing to argue with in this article yet, unsurprisingly, the usual swivel-eyed brigade seem to have popped up. Perhaps your discussion of work strays a little too close to philosophy for the unthinking. I don't know why I'm disheartened by some of the responses, as the same voices appear btl in almost ever CIF article, but I am somehow. Perhaps because the point of the article - the hijacking of language - is so obviously true as to be uncontroversial to any but the ideologically purblind, yet still....
ABasu -> thesingingdetective , 11 Jun 2013 05:28
@thesingingdetective - what is an insurance policy other than a financial product where in return for payments over a period of time a claim can be made in certain circumstances?

If anything, particularly given that the link between contributions and claims is now nugatory, describing welfare as welfare is much more honest and much less "neoliberal". It is a set of payments and entitlements society has agreed upon to ensure a level of welfare for all rather than an insurance policy which each individual may claim against if they've kept up their payments.

If an anti-neo-liberal, supportive of the article can get this so back to front, perhaps the "debate" being posited is an empty one about language.

OberynMartell , 11 Jun 2013 05:22
If you changed a few words from the Communist Manifesto, it could easily be about neo-liberalism and leftist attitudes towards it.

"A spectre is haunting Europe; the spectre of neo-liberalism. All the leftists of old Europe have entered into a Holy Alliance to exorcise this spectre; Toynbee and Loach; Redgrave and Harris.

Where is the party in power that has not been decried as neo-liberalistic by its leftist opponents on the sidelines?"

Sidfishes , 11 Jun 2013 05:19
Take FE as a case study on how the coin counters have taken over the world.

Back in the dark ages of the 1980s, the maths department had 7 lecturers (2 part time) and two people to look after the admin - there was also the Department Head (who was a lecturer) and a Head of School. They had targets, loosely defined, but it was a rare year when there wasn't a smattering of A grades at A level...

Then along came the coin counters, the target setters, with their management degrees and swivel eyed certainty that 'greed is good... competition! competition! competition!' and with them came the new professionals into the department... the 'Quality Manager'... the 'Curriculum Manager' the 'Exams Manager' the 'Deputy Exams Manager'... and the paperwork increased to feed the beast that counts everything but knows nothing... and targets were set.... 'Targets! Targets! Targets!... and we were all sent in search of excellence... 'teach to the exam' 'We must meet our targets'... 'we won't use exam board 'A' because they're tough' and the exam boards reacted to their own target culture by all simplifying. The universities began to notice the standard of 'A' grade students (who increased) was equivelant to a C grade of 5 years ago. However, targets were being met (on paper) quality was maintained (on paper) we were improving year on year (on paper). However, what was going on in the real world is that our students were being sold a pup - their level of competence and of knowledge was very much inferior to their same grade fore bearers of just 5 years previous

Eventually, the department became 1 full time lecturer and 4 on 'zero hour contracts' and the Head of School became 'Chief Executive' the 'Head of Department' became 'Department Manager' and a gap developed between those who taught and those who 'managed'... not just a culture gap... a bloody big pay gap...

Who benefited from all this marketisation?

Not the lecturers... not the students... not the universities... not industry...not the economy...

Who benefited? Work it out for yourselves (as I used to tell my students)

Damntheral -> roachclip , 11 Jun 2013 05:18
@roachclip - I am familiar with the numerous wiki sites including Wikipedia, thank you very much. If you read the article yourself you would see it supports my point of view here.
retro77 , 11 Jun 2013 05:17

There are loads of other examples of rarely scrutinised terms in our economic vocabulary, for instance that bundle of terms clustered around investment and expenditure – terms that carry with them implicit moral connotations. Investment implies an action, even a sacrifice, undertaken for a better future. It evokes a future positive outcome. Expenditure, on the other hand, seems merely an outgoing, a cost, a burden.

This is absolute nonsense...the terms "investment" and "expenditure" carry no moral connotations that I can determine. Does the author accept that we need to have terms to express each of these concepts? Perhaps she would like to come up with some alternative suggestions for the notions of "contributing money" and "spending money"?

Mark Taylor , 11 Jun 2013 05:11
Seconded, its uses and abuses of the English Language second only that of the Church. A fitting comparison in my book because they both have much in common. Both are well aware that it is through language and the control of which that true cultural change is achieved.
Both know that this new language must be propagated as far and as wide as possible, with saturation coverage. Control of information is a a must, people must see and they must know only things of your choosing.
For example, back in the 4th Century AD (which is incidentally an abbreviation of the Latin 'Anno Domini', which means 'in the year of our Lord'), the church became centralised and established under the patronage of the Roman Emperor Constantine. Part of this centralising mission was the creation of a uniform belief system. Those that 'chose' to believe something else were branded 'heretics'. The word 'heresy' coming from the Greek 'αἵρεσις' for 'choice'. Thus to choose to have your own opinions was therefore deemed to be a bad thing.
As a quick aside, 'Pagan' comes from the Latin 'paganus' which means 'rural dweller'. I.e. those beyond the remit of the urban Christian elites. 'Heathen' on the other hand is Old English (hæðen). It simply means 'not Christian or Jewish.
When you have complete control over the flow of information, as the Church did by the 5th Century, then you can write practically anything. This doesn't mean just writing good things about yourself and bad things about your enemies. Rather it means that you can frame the debate anyway you wish.
In modern times, I would argue that you can see similar things happen here. As the author suggests, terms like 'Wealth Creator', 'Scrounger', 'Sponger', 'living on welfare', 'Growth', 'progress' and my personal favourite, 'reform', take on a whole new meaning.
Their definition of the word 'reform' and what we would see it to mean are two totally different things, Yet since it is they that has access to the wider world and not us, then it is their definition that gets heard. The same could be said for all the other words and their latter day connotations.
Thus when you hear the news and you hear what passes for debate, you hear things on their terms. Using their language with their meanings. A very sad state of affairs indeed.
Themiddlegound , 11 Jun 2013 05:11
Neoliberalism is in the first instance a theory of political economic practices that proposes that human well-being can best be advanced by liberating individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework characterized by strong private property rights, free markets, and free trade.

You'll notice I've highlighted the word freedoms. Freedom is a word they hijacked right from the start of the process and how they hijacked the Republican party in the USA.

For any way of thought to become dominant, a conceptual apparatus has to be advanced that appeals to our intuitions and instincts, to our values and our desires, as well as to the possibilities inherent in the social world we inhabit. If successful, this conceptual apparatus becomes so embedded in common sense as to be taken for granted and not open to question. The founding figures of neoliberal thought took political ideals of human dignity and individual freedom as fundamental.

Concepts of dignity and individual freedom are powerful and appealing in their own right. Such ideals empowered the dissident movements in eastern Europe and the Soviet Union before the end of the Cold War as well as the students in Tiananmen Square. The student movements that swept the world in 1968––from Paris and Chicago to Bangkok and Mexico City––were in part animated by the quest for greater freedoms of speech and of personal choice.
More generally, these ideals appeal to anyone who values the ability to make decisions for themselves.

The idea of freedom, long embedded in the US tradition, has played a conspicuous role in the US in recent years. '9/11' was immediately interpreted by many as an attack on it. 'A peaceful world of growing freedom', wrote President Bush on the first anniversary of that awful day, 'serves American long-term interests, reflects enduring American ideals and unites America's allies.' 'Humanity', he concluded, 'holds in its hands the opportunity to
offer freedom's triumph over all its age-old foes', and 'the United States welcomes its responsibilities to lead in this great mission'. This language was incorporated into the US National Defense Strategy document issued shortly thereafter. 'Freedom is the Almighty's gift to every man and woman in this world', he later said, adding that 'as the greatest power on earth we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom'.

When all of the other reasons for engaging in a pre-emptive war against Iraq were proven wanting, the president appealed to the idea that the freedom conferred on Iraq was in and of itself an adequate justification for the war. The Iraqis were free, and that was all that really mattered. But what sort of 'freedom' is envisaged here, since, as the cultural critic Matthew Arnold long ago thoughtfully observed, 'freedom is a very good horse to ride, but to
ride somewhere'.To what destination, then, are the Iraqi people expected to ride the horse of freedom donated to them by force of arms?

As Hayek quoted....

Planning and control are being attacked as a denial of freedom. Free
enterprise and private ownership are declared to be essentials of freedom.
No society built on other foundations is said to deserve to be called free.
The freedom that regulation creates is denounced as unfreedom; the justice, liberty and welfare it offers are decried as a camouflage of slavery.

The Neoliberal idea of freedom 'thus degenerates into a mere advocacy of free
enterprise. It helps explain why neoliberalism has turned so authoritarian, forceful, and anti-democratic at the very moment when 'humanity holds in its hands the opportunity to offer freedom's triumph over all its age-old foes'. It makes us focus on how so many corporations have profiteered from withholding the benefits of their technologies, famine, and environmental disaster. It raises the worry as to whether or not many of these calamities or
near calamities (arms races and the need to confront both real and
imagined enemies) have been secretly engineered for corporate advantage.

Political slogans can be invoked that mask specific strategies beneath vague rhetorical devices. The word 'freedom' resonates so widely within the common-sense understanding of Americans that it becomes 'a button that elites can press to open the door to the masses' to justify almost anything.

Appeals to traditions and cultural values bulked large in all of this. An open project around the restoration of economic power to a small elite would probably not gain much popular support. But a programmatic attempt to advance the cause of individual freedoms could appeal to a mass base and so disguise the drive to restore class power.

Wastoid , 11 Jun 2013 05:05
Fascinating article, thanks for publishing. It goes some way to explaining, not only the tenacity of neo-liberalism, but also its ability to consolidate its power, even at the moment when it seemed weakest. Its ability to rearticulate language and to present as natural law what is socially constructed, shows the depth of its hold on society, economics, politics, culture and even science.

There is a neat cross-over here between neo-liberal discourses and the use of language by the military. Not only does this extend to the general diffusion of certain key phrases, but I think it also runs deeper. Just as the elision of meaning in the language of war facilitates the perpetuation of abuses and war crimes, so the neo-lib discourse permits the perpetuation of questionable economic activity, even as this presents itself in the unquestionable guise of "common sense".

[Nov 27, 2018] Why the fact the neoliberal MSM avoiv the work "neoliberalism" is important: the unwillingness to even call a spade a spade has political consequences

Notable quotes:
"... This unwillingness to even call a spade a spade has political consequences ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

KingOfNothing -> gyges1 , 11 Jun 2013 07:22

@gyges1 - The idea of language is very important in the production of a way of thinking which closes down other alternatives and futures. One which leaves neoliberal globalisation as 'the only game in town'.

I worry that the very term 'neoliberalism' is one not used by the political classes and much of the media, I don't think I've ever heard the world 'neoliberalism' used on the BBC.

This unwillingness to even call a spade a spade has political consequences . For example, I had an online discussion with someone over Thatchers death a little while ago. He called me 'comrade' and then questioned the very existence of the term Neo-liberalism. At the time I thought this was a bit of a cheap shot, but if you can quite cheerfully label someone a 'socialist' and then refuse to accept that neo-liberalism exists, you are well on your way to making people believe that the current set of social relations are indeed completely normal and that there are few, if any, alternative ways of rewiring the world which can create a better world.

[Nov 27, 2018] The Argentinian military coup, like those in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, was sponsored by the US to protect and further its interests during the Cold War. By the 1970s neoliberalism was very much part of the menu; paramilitary governments were actively encouraged to practice neoliberal politics; neoliberalism was at this stage, what communism was to the Soviet Union

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... I was, of course, referring to the families of the disappeared in Chile. They are, of course, relevant and should not be excluded from any arguments about neoliberalism and its effects. Nor should the families of the disappeared in Argentina, though it is less well known, the junta was entrusted with the introduction of neoliberal policies in Argentina. ..."
"... The Argentinian military coup, like those in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, was sponsored by the US to protect and further its interests during the Cold War. By the 1970s neoliberalism was very much part of the menu; paramilitary governments were actively encouraged to practice neoliberal politics; neoliberalism was at this stage, what communism was to the Soviet Union; the ideological wing of the Cold War. You may be familiar with Operation Condor? ..."
"... It has been pretty firmly established that the Allende regime was victim of US sponsored military coup and that said coup was sponsored to protect US interests. The Chicago boys then flew into Chile to use the nation as a laboratory for the more outlandish (at the time) neoliberal policies they were unable to practice at home. ..."
"... The political class, with the aid of their subservient corporate media quislings, have taken our language apart and used it against us. We have been backed into a corner, we are told, by both Labour and Tories, that there is no choice, either rabid profiteering or penury and we have, to our everlasting shame, lapped up every word of it. ..."
"... We have become so embedded in the language of individuals, choice, contracts and competition that we cannot see any alternative. Even Adam Smith understood the difference between "economy" and "society" when he argued that labor is directly connected to public interest while business is connected to self-interest. If business took over the public sphere, Smith argued, this would be quite destructive. ..."
Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
maxfisher -> finnkn , 11 Jun 2013 07:45
@finnkn - Apologies. I was, of course, referring to the families of the disappeared in Chile. They are, of course, relevant and should not be excluded from any arguments about neoliberalism and its effects. Nor should the families of the disappeared in Argentina, though it is less well known, the junta was entrusted with the introduction of neoliberal policies in Argentina.

The Argentinian military coup, like those in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, was sponsored by the US to protect and further its interests during the Cold War. By the 1970s neoliberalism was very much part of the menu; paramilitary governments were actively encouraged to practice neoliberal politics; neoliberalism was at this stage, what communism was to the Soviet Union; the ideological wing of the Cold War. You may be familiar with Operation Condor?

To be clear: I am arguing that the direct effects of 'actually existing neoliberalism' are very far from benign. I do not argue that the militarisation of Central and South America are the direct consequence neoliberal theory.

maxfisher -> finnkn , 11 Jun 2013 07:04
@finnkn - Well I think many would. It has been pretty firmly established that the Allende regime was victim of US sponsored military coup and that said coup was sponsored to protect US interests. The Chicago boys then flew into Chile to use the nation as a laboratory for the more outlandish (at the time) neoliberal policies they were unable to practice at home.

Neoliberalism was first practiced in authoritarian states; the states in which neoliberalism is most deeply embedded are (surprise, surprise) increasingly authoritarian, and neoliberalism solutions are regularly imposed on client/vulnerable states by suprastructures such as the IMF, the EU, and the World Bank. Friedrich Hayek and Adam Smith were very clear that the potential for degeneracy existed. We have now reached that potential; increasingly centralised authority, states within states, the denuding of democratic institutions and crony capitalism. Neoliberalism in practice is very different to neoliberalism in practice. Rather like 'really existing socialism' and Marxism.

works best in authoritarian states because (in practice, if not in theory

finnkn -> BaronessHawHaw , 11 Jun 2013 07:41

@BaronessHawHaw - Simply untrue.

http://www.pewglobal.org/2009/11/02/end-of-communism-cheered-but-now-with-more-reservations/

As the statistics on that link show, there are certain countries (notably Russia and the Ukraine) where the +65 age group disapprove of the change to democracy and capitalism. In the majority, however, people of all ages remain in favour.

retro77 -> anonid , 11 Jun 2013 07:10
@anonid -

For 'job' read 'bribe' (keep your mouth shut or lose it), for 'management' read 'take most of the interest out of the job for everybody else and put them on a lower scale', etc. I guess you get my drift.

It's sad that you have such a negative, self-hating attitude towards your work.

BobJanova , 11 Jun 2013 07:09

Work is usually – and certainly should be – a central source of meaning and fulfilment in human lives. And it has – or could have – moral and creative (or aesthetic) values at its core

Spoken like a true champagne socialist in a creative industry. How do you find meaning and fulfillment, or creative values, in emptying bins, cleaning offices, sweeping the streets and a whole load of other work which needs doing but which is repetitive, menial and not particularly pleasant?

There are two ways to get people to do work that needs doing but wouldn't be done voluntarily: coercion or payment. I think the second is a more healthy way to run a society.

retarius , 11 Jun 2013 07:07
I've thought pretty much the same myself. Democracies can be good or bad (as the Greeks knew well)...but in our politic-speak it is used to denounce and make good; as in "Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East"...it is intended to make us feel something good about Israel, as it humiliates the Palestinians and steals their land.

In ancient Greece....'tyrant' simply meant 'usurper' without any neccessary negative association....simply someone who had usurped political power...they recognized that tyrannies could be good, bad or indifferent.

In Rome, dictator simply meant the cahp that took over fpr periods of six months at a time, during times of crisis.

I used to vacation in Yugoslavia in Marshall Tito's time....it was a wonderful place, beautiful, inexpensive and safe...very very safe. What came into the power vacuum after he died in 1980...what happened to the country? I'd argue that his was a good dictatorship or tyranny....

I'm also not too sure what the 90% of people unaffected by and uninterested in power politics in any given country feel about the 'liberation' of Libya and Iraq from their prior dictatorships...I'm sure that plenty of people whose previously steady lives have been wrecked, are all that thrilled.

Antiquarian , 11 Jun 2013 07:06
I have recently been exercised by the right's adoption of "Social Justice". In the past it was the left and churches who talked of social justice as a phenomenon to empower the poor and dispossessed, whether in this country or the developing world. Social Justice was a touchstone of Faith in the City, for example, but it seems now to be the smoke screen behind which benefits are stipped from the "undeserving poor".
BaronessHawHaw , 11 Jun 2013 06:59
Most of this crap comes from America. Crappy middle-management bureaucrats spouting "free-market" bollocks.
The efficiency of the private sector - some nob with a name badge timing how long you've been on the toilet.
Freedommm!!!!
BlankReg -> joseph1832 , 11 Jun 2013 06:56
@ joseph1832 11 June 2013 9:24am . Get cifFix for Firefox .

It is not just neoliberalism. Everyone is at it - sucking the meaning out of words. Corporate bullshit, public sector bullshit. Being customers of your own government is a crime that everyone is guilty of. This is what Orwell railed against decades ago, and it has got worse.

Case in point; just look at the way in which the Cameron set about co-opting words and phrases justifiably applied to his own regime and repurposed them against his detractors.

For example, people who took a stand against the stealth privatisation of the NHS were branded as "vested interests", quite unlike the wholesome MPs who voted for the NHS bill who, despite the huge sums of money they received from the private healthcare lobby, we are encouraged to believe were acting in our best interests by selling our health service to their corporate paymasters. Or the farcical attempt to rebrand female Tory MPs as "feminists" despite their anti-social mobility, anti-equality, anti-human rights and anti-abortion views.

The political class, with the aid of their subservient corporate media quislings, have taken our language apart and used it against us. We have been backed into a corner, we are told, by both Labour and Tories, that there is no choice, either rabid profiteering or penury and we have, to our everlasting shame, lapped up every word of it.

Arabica Robusta -> Obelisk1 , 11 Jun 2013 06:55
@Obelisk1 - You have single-handedly proven Massey's argument. We have become so embedded in the language of individuals, choice, contracts and competition that we cannot see any alternative. Even Adam Smith understood the difference between "economy" and "society" when he argued that labor is directly connected to public interest while business is connected to self-interest. If business took over the public sphere, Smith argued, this would be quite destructive.
Snapshackle , 11 Jun 2013 06:50

Our whole conversation seemed somehow reduced, my experience of it belittled into one of commercial transaction. My relation to the gallery and to this engaging person had become one of instrumental market exchange.

But in the eyes of the economic right, that is precisely the case. Adjectives like altruistic, caring, selfless, empathy and sympathy are simply not in their vocabulary. They are only ever any of those things provided they can see some sort of beneficial payback at the end.

maxfisher -> Venebles 11 Jun 2013 06:20

@Venebles - I was simply joining many commentators in the mire. Those that dispute the neoliberal worldview are routinely dismissed as marxists. I thought I'd save you all the energy, duck.

I'm not sure that the families of the disappeared of Chile and Argentina would concur with you benign view of neoliberalism and its effects.

Liquidity Jones, 11 Jun 2013 06:04
Might as well define it.

Neoliberalism framework vs Full employment framework

Full employment. The 3 pillars

Redistributive pillar

Collective pillar

Neo-liberalism. The 3 pillars

Economic pillar

Redistributive pillar

Individuality pillar

[Nov 27, 2018] There is a neat cross-over here between neo-liberal discourses and the use of language by the military. Not only does this extend to the general diffusion of certain key phrases, but I think it also runs deeper. Just as the elision of meaning in the language of war facilitates the perpetuation of abuses and war crimes, so the neo-lib discourse permits the perpetuation of questionable economic activity, even as this presents itself in the unquestionable guise of "common sense"

Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Wastoid , 11 Jun 2013 05:05

Fascinating article, thanks for publishing. It goes some way to explaining, not only the tenacity of neo-liberalism, but also its ability to consolidate its power, even at the moment when it seemed weakest. Its ability to rearticulate language and to present as natural law what is socially constructed, shows the depth of its hold on society, economics, politics, culture and even science.

There is a neat cross-over here between neo-liberal discourses and the use of language by the military. Not only does this extend to the general diffusion of certain key phrases, but I think it also runs deeper. Just as the elision of meaning in the language of war facilitates the perpetuation of abuses and war crimes, so the neo-lib discourse permits the perpetuation of questionable economic activity, even as this presents itself in the unquestionable guise of "common sense".

[Nov 26, 2018] >Revealed: faulty medical implants harm patients around world by Hilary Osborne , Hannah Devlin and Caelainn Barr

Notable quotes:
"... In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has collected 5.4m "adverse event" reports over the past decade, some from manufacturers reporting problems in other parts of the world. ..."
"... Interviews with patients and doctors have revealed flaws in how the medical devices industry is regulated. ..."
Nov 25, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
The Implant Files investigation reveals damage caused by poor regulation and lax testing rules

Why we're examining the implants industry

Patients around the world are suffering pain and many have died as a result of faulty medical devices that have been allowed on to the market by a system dogged by poor regulation, lax rules on testing and a lack of transparency, an investigation has found.

Pacemakers, artificial hips, contraceptives and breast implants are among the devices that have caused injuries and resulted in patients having to undergo follow-up operations or in some cases losing their lives.

In some cases, the implants had not been tested in patients before being allowed on to the market.

In the UK alone, regulators received 62,000 "adverse incident" reports linked to medical devices between 2015 and 2018. A third of the incidents had serious repercussions for the patient, and 1,004 resulted in death.

In the US, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has collected 5.4m "adverse event" reports over the past decade, some from manufacturers reporting problems in other parts of the world.

These included 1.7m reports of injuries and almost 83,000 deaths. Nearly 500,000 mentioned an explant – surgery to remove a device.

The figures come from research by 252 journalists from 59 media organisations in 36 countries, which has uncovered a litany of problems in the global $400bn (£310bn) industry.

Examples of failure in the market include:

Replacement hips and vaginal mesh products sold to hospitals without any clinical trials. Patients relying on faulty pacemakers when manufacturers were aware of problems. Complications with hernia mesh that ruled one of Britain's top athletes out of competing for years. Regulators approving spinal disc replacements that later disintegrated and migrated in patients. Surgeons admitting they were unable to tell patients about the risks posed by implants because of a lack of central registers. Patients in Australia being given devices that the regulator has approved on the basis they have been approved in Europe.

The findings raise concerns about the level of scrutiny devices undergo before and after they go on the market, and whether regulators detect and act upon findings quickly enough.

Information about problems with devices is, in many countries, kept under wraps, making it difficult for patients to research procedures that have been recommended to them.

Interviews with patients and doctors have revealed flaws in how the medical devices industry is regulated.

Prof Derek Alderson, the president of the Royal College of Surgeons, said there had been enough incidents involving flawed devices to "underline the need for drastic regulatory changes", including the introduction of mandatory national registries for all implantable devices.

"In contrast to drugs, many surgical innovations are introduced without clinical trial data or centrally held evidence," he said. "This is a risk to patient safety and public confidence."

The Guardian and organisations including the BBC , Le Monde and Süddeutsche Zeitung, coordinated by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), have trawled through thousands of documents, many obtained through freedom of information (FoI) requests, to unearth some of the biggest problems.

Alongside interviews with patients and doctors, these have revealed flaws in the way the industry is regulated that are unlikely to be fixed by rules due to come into force in Europe.

Among the concerns raised by the Implant Files project are that manufacturers are in charge of testing their own products after faults have developed – and are allowed to shop around for approval to market their products, without declaring any refusals.

The Guardian has also heard about doctors who have close industry ties or seem eager to be early adopters of the latest devices to enhance their professional standing.

Plans for tougher EU rules have been watered down after industry lobbying, according to a huge trove of documents uncovered by the project.

[Nov 26, 2018] Muller investigation might last another six months

Nov 26, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

She thought the investigation might have about six months left, although if Trump refuses a face-to-face meeting, Mueller could seek a subpoena to put him before the grand jury. That could be fought all the way to the supreme court.

There is a precedent, US v Nixon, when the justices ruled that the president must deliver subpoenaed materials to a district court. Sixteen days later, Nixon resigned.

If Mueller decides not to have that fight, he could write a report saying he believed the president obstructed justice. If he does not reach that conclusion, the Democratic-led House could issue its own subpoenas.

"It is a chess match," said Milgram. "We'll have to see how it plays out in the next year."

[Nov 26, 2018] Language is a mental battlefield

The denial of the economic ideology of Neo-liberalism is nothing more than a cheap debating point. If you pretend something doesn't exist then you make it difficult to attack.
Notable quotes:
"... Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University Press". ..."
"... What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen? ..."
"... All one needs to know is that English language is being manipulated just as it always has been by those that have the power to do it. Today the main manipulators are, Madison Avenue, agencies and departments the United States government, Wall Street, US television media. Most people don't realize that the language is being manipulated, when they hear or see in print words being used in unusual ways they just go along with it. ..."
"... Advertising frequently refers to things being "better" with no explanation of what it is better than. ..."
"... "Underpriviliged" to describe people living in poverty but no explanation of the privileges that people have who are not poor. ..."
"... I could go on and on, but I am sure that you scribblers who do not indulge in "confuse speak" know exactly what I am trying to explain. Best example I can give is "The free world" which by latest check includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and sundry other brutal regimes and one time actually included outright fascist countries. ..."
"... Yes - the person who said language was mankind's first technology were absolutely correct. I expect language was invented by those who invent all technology to be just out of reach of the general public until the inventers decide they can do business for themselves out of it. ..."
"... Neoliberalism is the final stage of liberal democracy which has been around for 60-70 years, the most destructive form of government the world has ever seen, based on deregulation for the wealthy oligarchs and debt and debauchery for the poor .............. which is rapidly taking us back to feudal times. ..."
"... I prescribe a course of Orwell, Start, perhaps, with short stories...... Politics and the English Language, Why I Write, Notes on Nationalism, for example. And then a full dose of Nineteen Eighty-Four. That should do the trick! ..."
"... Nothing has been learnt from the crash of 2008 beyond "get rich even quicker", or as its more commonly known, economic and ecological suicide. ..."
Nov 26, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

MartynInEurope , 11 Jun 2013 13:13

Term abuse didn't arrive with neoliberalism; it's been around since forever. Also, the fact that most of our daily transactions might be commercial is a reflection of our own habits as much as the changing use of language.

If a person is employed by a commercial gallery, they are effectively working in a shop, and the people who visit these galleries are potentially customers. No surprise there. Just like a person who uses transport can be a customer. Of course, there are public services where commercial terms such as customer make little sense.

Nostradamus333 , 11 Jun 2013 13:08
Marxism has hijacked our vocabulary for a 150 years. Nice to have a change for awhile.
MartynInEurope -> bongoid , 11 Jun 2013 13:06
@bongoid -

Sure, it isn't that important who is making the point, even if the point is made by reference to questionable and contentious examples.

I also think that any even bigger influence on meaning / lack of meaning / interchangeable meaning etc.has been postmodernity far more than neoliberalism.

dourscot , 11 Jun 2013 13:00
All true but the left is just as bad as coining its Orwellisms. Witness the way nobody has to use an approved vocabulary to talk about every and any group on fear of moral ridicule or worse. Language is a mental battlefield.
LondonPhil -> RClayton , 11 Jun 2013 12:57
@RClayton - Can I suggest resurrecting William Morris's distinction between "work" (ie labour that is moral, creative, aesthetic or, at least, hygienic - ie intrinsically worth doing) and "toil" which is work done only because of the necessity to earn money to buy the means of existence?

Having words that distinguish between these two ideas is useful. The 'work' you talk about is 'toil' and most of it is done simply to service the money/capitalist system.

As an example, I have in front of me a rubber 'stress reliever' in the shape of PacMan. It was given to me as a gift.

Presumably, somewhere in the world there is a factory full of people turning out this rubbish. It adds nothing to the world's beauty, nor its ability to support the people living on it. Its only uses are in providing paid 'toil' to support the factory workers and to enable someone to give me something I don't need as a token of their friendship, probably paid for from the fruits of their own toil.

Changing the words we use will not change this, but it does give us a framework in which to think about how it might be changed.

KingOfNothing -> Yorkied24 , 11 Jun 2013 12:45
@Yorkied24 -

Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University Press".

What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen?

If I can repeat what I said at the top of this thread - The denial of the economic ideology of Neo-liberalism is nothing more than a cheap debating point. If you pretend something doesn't exist then you make it difficult to attack.

Sorry, but it just won't wash with me.

bill4me -> darylrevok , 11 Jun 2013 12:10
@darylrevok - Well, perhaps you might describe the sweet smell of success as 'funny', but I don't.
MartynInEurope , 11 Jun 2013 12:08
The biggest problem isn't so much that people use the language of commercial business and are free and easy with their abuse of terms (there's a new one), but that people treat government and politics as a service, and see their relationship with governance as akin to a client/customer relationship, to that end we elect politicians who tell us what we want to hear, even if what we hear can be, all to often, somewhat meaningless or trite.
makingtime -> TheRealCmdrGravy , 11 Jun 2013 11:55
@TheRealCmdrGravy - There's nothing vague about it, It represents the whole of UK and US government economic policy for the last thirty years with the happy outcomes that we enjoy today.

But now you know what a neoliberal is, perhaps you can reread the excellent article above with added relish and understanding. Glad to be of assistance. If you want anything else looking up I suggest using a search engine before posting here that a particular word is too difficult for you.

darylrevok -> bill4me , 11 Jun 2013 11:49
@bill4me - And Capitalism is not dead, it just smells funny.
MartynInEurope , 11 Jun 2013 11:40
According to Bradford DeLong, a Berkeley economic historian, neoliberalism has two main tenets:

"The first is that close economic contact between the industrial core and the developing periphery is the best way to accelerate the transfer of technology which is the sine qua non for making poor economies rich (hence all barriers to international trade should be eliminated as fast as possible).

The second is that governments in general lack the capacity to run large industrial and commercial enterprises. Hence, [except] for core missions of income distribution, public-good infrastructure, administration of justice, and a few others, governments should shrink and privatize)."

Justthefactsman , 11 Jun 2013 11:36
Such a long article.

All one needs to know is that English language is being manipulated just as it always has been by those that have the power to do it. Today the main manipulators are, Madison Avenue, agencies and departments the United States government, Wall Street, US television media. Most people don't realize that the language is being manipulated, when they hear or see in print words being used in unusual ways they just go along with it.

Example:

A couple of years back a motormouth U.S TV show host used the word "impact" in place of the word "affect". He did so simply because "impact" seemed more dramatic. Now it is almost impossible to hear or see the word "affect" used anywhere.

Now there are some of you that will say that language and usage of words change over time, and I would agree with you, but when you see a word used in a context that is completely inappropriate and that use is adopted in general you have to ask yourself questions like who benefits from this.
Remember when Bush wanted to increase troop levels, he refered to the increase as a "surge". "Surge" until then had a distinct meaning it was not associated with any meaning of permanence, and that is why it was used.

Advertising frequently refers to things being "better" with no explanation of what it is better than.

"Underpriviliged" to describe people living in poverty but no explanation of the privileges that people have who are not poor.

I could go on and on, but I am sure that you scribblers who do not indulge in "confuse speak" know exactly what I am trying to explain.
Best example I can give is "The free world" which by latest check includes Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and sundry other brutal regimes and one time actually included outright fascist countries.

Enough said.

ascania , 11 Jun 2013 11:34
Now all London Underground passengers are 'customers', which implies you are buying the travel experience rather than paying for transportation. When misused it suggests to me lack of strength and self-belief from the organization concerned.
bill4me -> callaspodeaspode , 11 Jun 2013 11:31
@callaspodeaspode - Gosh - an excellent example of how to get things completely wrong. Just because a firm has the government for a customer does not mean it is a public sector business.

Note the word 'customer'. In the case of the FE college, who is the customer - the government or the students? Are the students just incidental fodder?

Your contract with the government will be for a certain job done in a certain for a certain sum of money. In FE, the government has a sum of money which gets paid out irrespective of the outcome. Indeed, how do you measure the 'outcome' of an FE college? In your case, it's easy - either the software works or it doesn't.

Your company no doubt is either owned by an individual, or has shareholders. Those people live on the profits of the company, or lose their money if it goes bust. What is the profit made by an FE college? Who are the shareholders? Who goes broke if the college folds? Still think an FE college is the same as private company?

makingtime -> TheRealCmdrGravy , 11 Jun 2013 11:15
@TheRealCmdrGravy - No definition is a distinct improvement on your deliberate distortion. I was assuming you had the sense to find a definition on the internet for yourself, since you managed to find your way here.

I do not consider alternative viewpoints brainless, i consider a refusal to even engage in debate brainless, pretending that a word is undefined when there's reams of literature as well as concise definitions freely available from any number of sources. That might reasonably be construed as brainless.

Here, fill your boots, then if you have an actual argument instead of a crude attempt to derail the debate it can be considered.

Neoliberalism is a political philosophy whose advocates support economic liberalization, free trade and open markets, privatization, deregulation, and decreasing the size of the public sector while increasing the role of the private sector in modern society. (From wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neoliberalism)

I'm convinced you had the brains to look it up yourself, that's why I suspect your agenda. Now please stop wasting everyone's time unless you have something to contribute. I even looked it up for you.

callaspodeaspode -> bill4me , 11 Jun 2013 11:13
@bill4me - That's an excellent point.

And I can give a further example. I used to work in a Private Equity-owned firm, which happened to have some contracts to provide software support to the government. Thus, in your conceptual framework, it was a public sector business. Indeed, by your reasoning, Lockheed Martin is a state-owned company as well.

seanmatthews , 11 Jun 2013 11:06
I agree that 'Neoliberalism' has hijacked our vocabulary, but that is about the limit of our agreement. People fling the word 'neoliberalism' around these days as a synonym for 'anything I and my friends have decided is politically-economically objectionable' ('have decided', not 'think'). In the old days, 'fascist' served the same purpose in all those late-night student flat discussions. I assume, until proven otherwise, that people who talk about 'neoliberalism', fall into the same category as those people who had so much difficulty distinguishing between 'liberal democracy' and 'fascism'.

I can actually think of liberal left-leaning intellectuals who I can recall having self-described as neoliberal. They, however, are distinctive for the sort of nuanced understanding of political economy you are unlikely to find represented around the candles in the kitchen on a Friday night when the world's problems are being discussed and solved.

HarryTheHorse -> TheRealCmdrGravy , 11 Jun 2013 11:03
@TheRealCmdrGravy -

First of all I am impressed by the psychic ability which enables you to deduce my "closed political agenda", very impressive

Not really. It is transparently obvious when you declare that neo-liberalism is "vague stuff which I don't like" when there are cogent definitions of it, to which you have been referred in the past.

pagey23 , 11 Jun 2013 10:57
this is not the kind of liberalism we needed it needed to be socially liberal but not economically liberal. How dare people become entrepenurial or take the thatcherite tax cuts, or buy goods made from slave labour. Some seriously sick yuppies out there.
PointOfYou , 11 Jun 2013 10:54
Yes - the person who said language was mankind's first technology were absolutely correct. I expect language was invented by those who invent all technology to be just out of reach of the general public until the inventers decide they can do business for themselves out of it.
Claire75 -> gyges1 , 11 Jun 2013 10:22
@gyges1 - doesn't say that though, does it?

She says that we need to look at the language as it says a lot about how we think. Sounds about right to me. It's hardly arguing white means black, just that the words we choose say something about what we mean.

Then she says that what we talk about isn't the stuff we need to concentrate on. That's a matter of debate and opinion.

Snapshackle -> Yorkied24 , 11 Jun 2013 10:12
@ Yorkied24 11 June 2013 12:57pm . Get cifFix for Firefox .

Except that preference theory does not take into account causality. In any event we have the evidence, there are those who are perfectly happy to cast others to the wall just so long as they do OK and even benefit from it.

TheRealCmdrGravy -> makingtime , 11 Jun 2013 09:58
@makingtime - Really ? Some very interesting points you've made there ...

your closed political agenda may make it impossible for you to understand without a brain transplant.

First of all I am impressed by the psychic ability which enables you to deduce my "closed political agenda", very impressive. Secondly though it's interesting that you think a "closed political agenda", which I am taking to mean a concrete political viewpoint, can only be remedied with a "brain transplant" rather than through discussion. It's almos as though you're saying "those with political views different to mine are brainless" which is quite a bigoted point of view.

No definition from you regarding the word neo-liberal though so all in all not a very helpful or insightful post. Disappointing.

makingtime -> TheRealCmdrGravy , 11 Jun 2013 09:45
@TheRealCmdrGravy -

..the word "neo-liberal" which, so far as I can see, simply means "vague stuff which I don't like".

Is it possible that you can't see very far because you're deliberately not looking? There are perfectly adequate and precise definitions. I quite liked 'A Brief History of Neoliberalism' by Prof D.Harvey as a long form definition, but since it's rather critical of 'vague stuff which I don't like', your closed political agenda may make it impossible for you to understand without a brain transplant.

It is exasperating when political discussion is reduced to which foghorn can generate the loudest interference. I suppose it's a mistake to waste time on correcting this rubbish

tiojo , 11 Jun 2013 09:41
Doreen Massey is an academic. It shows in the way she writes. It's good that she raises fundamental questions about society and the way it is managed. It has traditionally been the role of academics to play that role.

The disappointing feature of the debate however is the absence of input from our politicians. All our leading politicians have essentially the same view of our society and economy. One in which, as Ms Massey indicates, choice exercised through market based mechanisms is the key principal. There is no view of progress towards a good society. There is no view of co-operation rather than competition. The only option is for us to measure ourselves by what we consume.

Our political system and its parties have failed us. In particular it is the left that has failed. It has accepted the social and economic arguments of the right and contented itself with suggesting minor variations on the same theme. Activists on the left need to re-gather their strength and more forcefully put forward a better alternative.

Damntheral -> roachclip , 11 Jun 2013 09:40
@roachclip - The fact that you refer to "neoliberalism" as "they" in a comment below speaks volumes about the mental fog behind that term.
Eddiel899 -> retarius , 11 Jun 2013 09:34
@retarius - Any government is only as good as the human rights it upholds.

Neoliberalism is the final stage of liberal democracy which has been around for 60-70 years, the most destructive form of government the world has ever seen, based on deregulation for the wealthy oligarchs and debt and debauchery for the poor .............. which is rapidly taking us back to feudal times.

Pagey -> TobyLatimer , 11 Jun 2013 09:33
@TobyLatimer - See also: "hardworking famiies/taxpayers"
OneCommentator , 11 Jun 2013 09:15

This is a view that misunderstands where pleasure and fulfilment in human lives are found. Work is usually – and certainly should be – a central source of meaning and fulfilment in human lives.

Wishful and naive thinking. Most work is very unfulfilling and even in cases where it is meaningful the day to day grind and intensity required by a job is making it a chore. There are very few people who have a job that is really a pleasure. There are many people though who have empty lives and were brainwashed into believing that their job is the most important part of their existence.
Barry1858 -> gyges1 , 11 Jun 2013 09:05
@gyges1 - " This is playground level debating. You are just saying the meaning you give to words is to be preferred to that of your opponents."

Ah, I see the problem - a narrow mind with a broad-brush tendency.

I prescribe a course of Orwell, Start, perhaps, with short stories...... Politics and the English Language, Why I Write, Notes on Nationalism, for example. And then a full dose of Nineteen Eighty-Four. That should do the trick!

natedogg -> RClayton , 11 Jun 2013 09:01
@RClayton - But if we start to think about work differently - which then gets its expression with the words we use - maybe it can change. Your Bangladeshi example is interesting because it assumes they need to work in that way to exist. Should we not try and change the system so a Bangladeshi can harness his or her creativity to connect their creative ideas to a global market and earn money in this way, rather than selling their physical labour to connect someone else's t-shirt to a global market?
MartynInEurope , 11 Jun 2013 08:48
Good grief, how many more times will Adorno be plagiarised?
bongoid , 11 Jun 2013 08:38
It's not just vocabulary, its demeanor, etiquette and peoples entire self perception that has been usurped by the skewed modern logic of markets and the service industry.

People are preempting the technological singularity by rendering themselves robotic in a quite tragic struggle to perpetually remain relevant and employable in the form that the whims of the dictatorship of the market see fit to determine.

Some nationalities even have an intrinsic advantage, their national character tending rather to the robotic from the outset. What remains of human expression, of impulsivity, of spontaneity, of charisma, of originality is up for question, but the paucity of modern life, of human expression and interaction, will increase in direct relation to the increases in efficiency and productivity that will be demanded of citizens. And this despite the fact that we are suffering under the weight of massive over production, and the excessive demand on resources that this entails.

Nothing has been learnt from the crash of 2008 beyond "get rich even quicker", or as its more commonly known, economic and ecological suicide.

BobJanova -> BaronessHawHaw , 11 Jun 2013 08:37
@BaronessHawHaw - Working class pride in their jobs came from being highly skilled – for example riveting in shipyards was difficult and you really were adding value there, so was assembling a car and so on. Also, didn't most of their 'meaning and fulfilment' come from the community, not really the work they were doing, except in so far as most of the people in the community would be doing the same work so it gave them something to talk about?

I've never heard a modern person saying how much any of the jobs I listed give them meaning or fulfilment. The kind of jobs that gave working class people a meaningful identity have pretty much all gone.

Giggidy -> BaronessHawHaw , 11 Jun 2013 08:30
@BaronessHawHaw - most? You are kidding right?

Just looking at the Governments of Poland, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Hungary as an example seems to indicate centrist and centre-right parties in power.

Venebles -> BaronessHawHaw , 11 Jun 2013 08:25
@ BaronessHawHaw

Most want socialism back. Socialism with the freedom to travel and the ability to buy a nice pair of jeans to look cool in.

May I suggest that you look up the meaning of the word "patronising"?

Giggidy -> Sidfishes , 11 Jun 2013 08:24
@Sidfishes - does your FE College pay tax, then?

As I'm reading the annual report of my old sixth form college - which also operate adult learning courses - and they're an exempt charity and therefore not liable for corporation tax. They have an operating surplus (read: profit) on which no tax is paid, quite unlike a private sector company.

[Nov 26, 2018] Neoliberalism has hijacked our vocabulary by Doreen Massey

Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism is bankrupt, it isn't even a philiosophy its simple social nihilism. The proof is in the get rich quick, or short term profit mentality of those at the top. Get rich quick is tantamount to jumping the ship, its the economic equivalent of deserting a sinking vessel. Until people recognise the destructive cynical nature of the current economic philosophy and cast out those that are steering the ship, we are all doomed. ..."
"... Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University Press". ..."
"... What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen? ..."
"... Well it could be argued that postmodernism is the necessary condition for neoliberalism. ..."
Jun 11, 2013 | www.theguardian.com

'Customer'; 'growth'; 'investment'. We should scrutinise the everyday language that shapes how we think about the economy

'We need to question that familiar categorisation of the economy as a space into which people enter in order to reluctantly undertake unwelcome and unpleasing "work''.'

A t a recent art exhibition I engaged in an interesting conversation with one of the young people employed by the gallery. As she turned to walk off I saw she had on the back of her T-shirt "customer liaison". I felt flat. Our whole conversation seemed somehow reduced, my experience of it belittled into one of commercial transaction. My relation to the gallery and to this engaging person had become one of instrumental market exchange.

The message underlying this use of the term customer for so many different kinds of human activity is that in all almost all our daily activities we are operating as consumers in a market – and this truth has been brought in not by chance but through managerial instruction and the thoroughgoing renaming of institutional practices. The mandatory exercise of "free choice" – of a GP, of a hospital, of schools for one's children – then becomes also a lesson in social identity, affirming on each occasion our consumer identity.

This is a crucial part of the way that neoliberalism has become part of our commonsense understanding of life. The vocabulary we use to talk about the economy is in fact a political construction, as Stuart Hall, Michael Rustin and I have argued in our Soundings manifesto .

Another word that reinforces neoliberal common sense is "growth", currently deemed to be the entire aim of our economy. To produce growth and then (maybe) to redistribute some of it, has been a goal shared by both neoliberalism and social democracy. In its crudest formulation this entails providing the conditions for the market sector to produce growth, and accepting that this will result in inequality, and then relying on the redistribution of some portion of this growth to help repair the inequality that has resulted from its production.

This of course does nothing to question the inequality-producing mechanisms of market exchange itself, and it has also meant that the main lines of struggle have too often been focused solely on distributional issues. What's more, today we are living with a backlash to even the limited redistributional gains made by labour under social democracy. In spite of all this, growth is still seen as providing the solution to our problems.

The second reason our current notion of wealth creation, and our commitment to its growth, must be questioned is to do with our relationship with the planet. The environmental damage brought about by the pursuit of growth threatens to cause a catastrophe of which we are already witnessing intimations. And a third – and perhaps most important – defect of this approach is that increased wealth, especially as measured in the standard monetary terms of today, has few actual consequences for people's feelings of wellbeing once there is a sufficiency to meet basic needs, as there is in Britain. In pursuing "growth" in these terms, as a means to realise people's life goals and desires, economies are pursuing a chimera.

Instead of an unrelenting quest for growth, might we not ask the question, in the end: "What is an economy for?", "What do we want it to provide?"

Our current imaginings endow the market and its associated forms with a special status. We think of "the economy" in terms of natural forces, into which we occasionally intervene, rather than in terms of a whole variety of social relations that need some kind of co-ordination.

Thus "work", for example, is understood in a very narrow and instrumental way. Where only transactions for money are recognised as belonging to "the economy", the vast amount of unpaid labour – as conducted for instance in families and local areas – goes uncounted and unvalued. We need to question that familiar categorisation of the economy as a space into which people enter in order to reluctantly undertake unwelcome and unpleasing "work", in return for material rewards which they can use for consuming.

This is a view that misunderstands where pleasure and fulfilment in human lives are found. Work is usually – and certainly should be – a central source of meaning and fulfilment in human lives. And it has – or could have – moral and creative (or aesthetic) values at its core. A rethinking of work could lead us to address more creatively both the social relations of work and the division of labour within society (including a better sharing of the tedious work, and of the skills).

There are loads of other examples of rarely scrutinised terms in our economic vocabulary, for instance that bundle of terms clustered around investment and expenditure – terms that carry with them implicit moral connotations. Investment implies an action, even a sacrifice, undertaken for a better future. It evokes a future positive outcome. Expenditure, on the other hand, seems merely an outgoing, a cost, a burden.

Above all, we need to bring economic vocabulary back into political contention, and to question the very way we think about the economy in the first place. For something new to be imagined, let alone to be born, our current economic "common sense" needs to be challenged root and branch.

• Doreen Massey will be discussing Vocabularies of the Economy at a Soundings seminar on 13 June, 6.30-8.30pm, at the Marx Memorial Library, London. More information [email protected]


KingOfNothing -> Yorkied24 , 12 Jun 2013 13:06

@Yorkied24 - Well, I just don't accept that. I agree that monetarism is a major part of Friedman's legacy (as incorporated into neo-liberal doctrine). But, neo-liberalism is what is says on the tin. It is a 'new' version of the liberalist free trade agenda of the past, modified to take into account the welfare state.

I guess what I'm most interested in is how you can disentangle and separate politics from economics, since they are two sides of the same coin (where does 'science' fit in, by the way).

Eddiel899 , 12 Jun 2013 12:12
it seems that the political side of Neo-liberalism (or liberal democracy) has come up with a new definition of the word "Catholic".

The Irish Prime-minster stated with a straight face in the Irish parliament today ........ that he is a "Catholic" outside parliament but when he enters parliament he is not a "Catholic"........ in relation to a bill allowing for abortion to be legalized in Ireland.

Ronpert -> NeverMindTheBollocks , 12 Jun 2013 07:22
@NeverMindTheBollocks - when you criticise the author of "nonsensical thinking", this suggests to me that you are uncomfortable with ideas that question "common sense". Rather than engaging with the arguments, you are simply dismissing them as somebody's arbitrary opinion. You seem to be suggesting that Massey is forcing her opinion on you - but surely, like any good academic, she is really asking critical questions, rather than providing answers and solutions. That's what academia is for. Why does that seem to make you so angry?
MagicRusski , 11 Jun 2013 19:44
Add "development" to that list.
bongoid -> Pumplechook , 11 Jun 2013 19:24
@Pumplechook - Enterprise culture is a fine emboldening phrase to describe the sinking of society casting citizens adrift with nothing but what nature gave them to keep them afloat. Some might suggest we need to concentrate on mono platform non deliverables going backwards. Or on a fleet of very cheap rubber dinghies.
Pumplechook , 11 Jun 2013 18:48
Ms Massey clearly fails to see importance of remaining customer/client-focused in our modern enterprise culture. It is crucial in terms of achieving outcomes-based win-win solutions, as well as assisting in the interation of leading-edge opportunities and leveraging cross-platform deliverables going forward.
Yorkied24 -> KingOfNothing , 11 Jun 2013 17:44
@KingOfNothing - No, what I said was that neoliberalism is not an economic theory. For a start, Milton Friedman's work has its own name in economics, which is monetarism. Neoliberalism is a made up political word only used by those who are more interested in politics and rhetoric than economics and science.
bongoid , 11 Jun 2013 17:08
Neoliberalism is bankrupt, it isn't even a philiosophy its simple social nihilism. The proof is in the get rich quick, or short term profit mentality of those at the top. Get rich quick is tantamount to jumping the ship, its the economic equivalent of deserting a sinking vessel. Until people recognise the destructive cynical nature of the current economic philosophy and cast out those that are steering the ship, we are all doomed.
darylrevok -> bill4me , 11 Jun 2013 17:02
@bill4me - 'Sweet smell of success'?
No, it's just that your shit-detector is so absent or degraded that you can no longer smell the stink of 'filthy lucre'.
bongoid -> Yorkied24 , 11 Jun 2013 16:59
@Yorkied24 - I disagree. There is only one writer that deserves volleys of ad hominem attacks and cheap insults and thats Julie Burchill. I know she's about as relevant as a horse drawn carriage but nevertheless I think we need to keep criticism of journalists in proportion.
maxfisher -> bill4me , 11 Jun 2013 16:07
@bill4me - The US under the aegis of freedom and capitalism sponsored paramilitary regimes in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, Chile and Argentina. Not to mention Greece and Iran. It continues to sponsor repressive regimes in the middle east and is about to make peace with the Taliban.

You mistake capitalism as it exists in theory, or in your head with 'actually existing capitalism' which is often red in tooth and claw. The bloody history of the 20th century (particularly world war one, without which no world war two) was in many ways a consequence of imperialism which was a consequence of capitalism.

Theories are all very well, but they run into problems called people. This applies equally to Marx, Smith and Hayek.

MartynInEurope -> maxfisher , 11 Jun 2013 16:05
@maxfisher -

True.

ascania -> bongoid , 11 Jun 2013 16:01
@bongoid - I'd like to see the second sentence of your comment engraved above a University Sociology Department office. Quite brilliant!
maxfisher -> Yorkied24 , 11 Jun 2013 15:57
@Yorkied24 - But they don't do they? They don't engage in cowardly and anonymous ad hominem attacks. They are professional journalists. The Guardian pays them to write articles. They then put their name to said articles. It's a transparent process. They are infinitely better than people who anonymously insult them without engaging in debate.
maxfisher -> bill4me , 11 Jun 2013 15:40
@bill4me - No, but it rather skews the data doesn't it? The Soviet Union lifted more people out of extreme poverty than perhaps any society before or since. But I wouldn't advocate Stalinism. I'm sure Pinochet's supporters could point to a growth in prosperity during his reign, but I shouldn't imagine many Chileans would favour a return to authoritarian rule.

Headline date is often meaningless, for example George Osborne may be able to argue that more people are employed than ever before, whilst the opposition may be able to argue that more people are unemployed than ever before. Bo

Both statements my be true, but what do they tell us in isolation?

Does it not occur to you that appalling governance may be a consequence of the form capitalism takes right now?

Yorkied24 -> maxfisher , 11 Jun 2013 15:40
@maxfisher - Most of them aren't ad homs. They're just insults.

And the pair of them deserve it. They're embarrassing enough for all of us.

Yorkied24 -> KingOfNothing , 11 Jun 2013 15:25
@KingOfNothing - Oh, and no, it's not difficult to attack at all - you just attack something that exists. Like capitalism.

Keynes has already done the work for you. You're crying about nothing.

Yorkied24 -> KingOfNothing , 11 Jun 2013 15:24
@KingOfNothing -

Strange then, that you can buy a book called: "Masters of the Universe: Hayek, Friedman, and the Birth of Neoliberal Politics. By Daniel Stedman Jones. Princeton University Press".

What were Friedrich Heyek and Milton Friedman: lollypop salesmen?

So, someone writes a book calling two economists 'neoliberals', so that makes it so? By that argument, it also calls them Masters of the Universe, so they're fucking He-Man too.

Is this how logic works in your world?

maxfisher -> bill4me , 11 Jun 2013 15:09
@bill4me -

If you think capitalism is all winners and no losers you're either tremendously naive or a bit thick.

I wouldn't rely on headline figures on Wikipedia to support your argument. Drill down a little, find the data, look at individual countries, see what type of regimes operate in said countries. And imagine, for a second, that the stats are meaningful, then imagine what responsible capitalism could achieve.

maxfisher -> Justthefactsman , 11 Jun 2013 14:40
@Justthefactsman - Slightly off topic, but I hanker for obliged rather than obligated. Also, most of the time I just feel ok, sometimes good, sometimes bad. Fair to middlin' you might say. I seldom feel awesome.
maxfisher -> natedogg , 11 Jun 2013 14:34
@natedogg - Of course. Francis Fukuyama told us so in the 80s. Oh....
maxfisher -> MartynInEurope , 11 Jun 2013 14:33
@MartynInEurope - Well it could be argued that postmodernism is the necessary condition for neoliberalism.
maxfisher -> Damntheral , 11 Jun 2013 14:29
@Damntheral - No, it means this:

http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/sociology/rsw/research_centres/theory/conf/rg/harvey_a_brief_history_of_neoliberalism.pdf

Go on, read it. Then come back to me.

JTStone -> TheRealCmdrGravy , 11 Jun 2013 14:27
@TheRealCmdrGravy -

No definition from you regarding the word neo-liberal though so all in all not a very helpful or insightful post. Disappointing.

It's sometimes worth having a debate about what particular words mean, but all debate rests on certain presumptions, a foundation on which the argument is built, and in this case, Massey counts on her audience sharing her understanding of the term 'neoliberal', which many of us do. Anyone who doesn't can very easily look it up online and quickly find a definition which sits well with Massey's points.

Your and others' approach to rejecting her argument is ungracious cavilling. It's easy to do this in response to any argument, and make no mistake - anyone with intelligence and an open mind can recognise it very clearly.

darylrevok -> Ken Terry , 11 Jun 2013 14:01
@Ken Terry - Chomsky is right, ("The Manufacturing of Consent") 'At the head of it is the Military\Industrial Complex, coining the euphemisms of war to make the unthinkable palatable.

On a localised scale, consider the Coalition who have done a similar job on the word, "Reform". If you look at history's most accurate and honorific incidences of political and parliamentary Reform look at the two Reform Acts which extended the franchise to adult male suffrage, 1832 and 1867, under Peel and Disraeli, Tories FFS, opposed to the Liberal's merciless free market obsessions.

What is "reforming" about stripping poor, ill and vulnerable people of their material support?

Pure Deformation.

I'm not a Tory, (Lifelong Socialist) but I think it's important to reconnect the Conservative Party with some of its avowed traditional self-definitions. "Maintaining continuity with past institutions, and a 'gradualism', if change is necessary." (Henry Cecil, I think).

Where has been the 'gradualism' in this Govt's' sudden and relentless pace of forcing change on the mass of its people by Bill after Bill restricting our aspirations and well-being?

We are governed by political liars who see this state of affairs as a triumph for their expertise. Any criticism is dismissed as not being able to accept the world 'as it is.'

maxfisher -> Giggidy , 11 Jun 2013 14:00
@Giggidy - You've got it. Except that you haven't. 'Trickle up' would be more accurate though a little illogical: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/jun/10/truth-richard-branson-virgin-rail-profits
r0ssa -> Giggidy , 11 Jun 2013 13:55
@Giggidy -

The irony, of course, is that neoliberalism has *always* been coupled by high state spending. I know they say different, but that doesn't make it a reality. Stop showing your ignorance of the subject and go and delve in to some of the vast literature on the subject.

r0ssa -> joseph1832 , 11 Jun 2013 13:50
@joseph1832 - I think this misses the point though. You're trying to claim there can be words that are neutral, a language without a political dimension. This is besides the point, it's certainly not feasible in a society constructed as it is now.

The real point is that language is itself a field of struggle. It's a terrain on which neoliberalism must be fought. In doing so we need not pretend to be doing anything less than entering a political fight. In combating neoliberalism no claim to be 'neutral' is necessary, that would be precisely to do what it does from the opposite direction - claim universality, eternalisation etc. The left does need to assert interrogate the language of neoliberalism and assert its own. Not becuase this is less political (I think "manipulation" is too strong a word here, the matter is somewhat more complex than that) but becuase it can offer a better future.

maxfisher -> DemocracyNever , 11 Jun 2013 13:45
@DemocracyNever - I should think the first two responses illustrate how and why debate is increasingly meaningless. Neither of you engage with the argument or posit an alternative; hence no debate.

That debate should be meaningful is given, that it should be an art form is, frankly, silly.

Ken Terry , 11 Jun 2013 13:34
"The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum."
Noam Chomsky

[Nov 25, 2018] Death of GRU Chief Sends Western Media and Pundits Into Tailspin of Conspiracy Theories

Notable quotes:
"... The Private Contractors Using Vault 7 Tools for US Gov: Testimony Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild Part 1... https://www.opednews.com/ar... ..."
"... Why Vault 7 Tools Used by Private Contractors Shows US Intel Needs a Ground-Up Rebuild- It's the News- Part 2... https://www.opednews.com/ar... ..."
"... Or is it owing to MI5/MI6 desperation, with how Trump will handle their involvement in the US Presidential Campaign. James Bond never had those types of problems, in the days when UK intelligence was not run by social media outlets. ..."
Nov 25, 2018 | russia-insider.com

[Nov 25, 2018] The Price of Peace

Nov 25, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

6 Nov, 2018 in Uncategorized by craig | View Comments

I have never managed fully to understand the mechanism by which the media and political class decide when to leave a fact, a glaringly obvious and vital fact, completely excluded from public debate. That process of exclusion is a psychological, not an organisational, phenomenon but extremely effective.

Brexit continues to dominate mainstream political discussion, and the Northern Ireland border issue remains at the centre of current negotiations, forced there by the London government's reneging on the agreement it signed almost a year ago. But there is a secret here, hidden in plain sight, the glaring fact driving the entire process, but which the media somehow never mention.

[Nov 25, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

Nov 25, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Uncle $cam , Nov 24, 2018 9:41:12 PM | link

Wikileaks: "British Army creates a 1,500 strong team of Facebook psychological operations warriors...3 years ago." grrr. sorry...

V , Nov 24, 2018 10:42:02 PM | link

b's article is a sad, sad, commentary on today's reality.
But in fact, there is nothing shocking or even unexpected; just sad...
Geo , Nov 24, 2018 10:45:06 PM | link
Curious if and how this recent push against Zuckerberg by the UK government plays into this.

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/nov/24/mps-seize-cache-facebook-internal-papers?CMP=share_btn_tw

I'm not well versed enough myself but I am baffled by this whole mess. All sides of this are entities I don't trust at all: Intelligence agencies, Facebook, Trump and his crooked playmates... seems there are no sides to trust or root for in this whole game of espionage.

[Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The Telegraph adds that the UK's dispute with the Trump administration is so politically sensitive that staff within the British Embassy in D.C. have been barred from discussing it with journalists. Theresa May has also "been kept at arms-length and is understood to have not raised the issue directly with the US president ." ..."
"... In September , we reported that the British government "expressed grave concerns" over the material in question after President Trump issued an order to the DOJ to release a wide swath of materials, "immediately" and "without redaction." ..."
"... Trump walked that order back days later after the UK begged him not to release them. ..."
"... MI6 agents have a reputation for writing fiction. Ian Fleming comes to mind. Its is interesting to reflect on the similarities of fiction and so called intelligence. ..."
"... Six U.S. agencies created a stealth task force, spearhead by CIA's Brennan, to run domestic surveillance on Trump associates and possibly Trump himself. ..."
"... To feign ignorance and to seemingly operate within U.S. laws, the agencies freelanced the wiretapping of Trump associates to the British spy agency GCHQ ..."
"... The decision to insert GCHQ as a back door to eavesdrop was sparked by the denial of two FISA Court warrant applications filed by the FBI to seek wiretaps of Trump associates. ..."
"... GCHQ did not work from London or the UK. In fact the spy agency worked from NSA's headquarters in Fort Meade, MD with direct NSA supervision and guidance to conduct sweeping surveillance on Trump associates. ..."
"... The illegal wiretaps were initiated months before the controversial Trump dossier compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele. ..."
"... The Justice Department and FBI set up the meeting at Trump Tower between Trump Jr., Manafort and Kushner with controversial Russian officials to make Trump's associates appear compromised. ..."
"... Following the Trump Tower sit down, GCHQ began digitally wiretapping Manafort, Trump Jr., and Kushner. ..."
"... After the concocted meeting by the Deep State, the British spy agency could officially justify wiretapping Trump associates as an intelligence front for NSA because the Russian lawyer at the meeting Natalia Veselnitskaya was considered an international security risk and prior to the June sit down was not even allowed entry into the United States or the UK, federal sources said. ..."
"... By using GCHQ, the NSA and its intelligence partners had carved out a loophole to wiretap Trump without a warrant. While it is illegal for U.S. agencies to monitor phones and emails of U.S. citizens inside the United States absent a warrant, it is not illegal for British intelligence to do so. Even if the GCHQ was tapping Trump on U.S. soil at Fort Meade. ..."
"... The wiretaps, secured through illicit scheming, have been used by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller's probe of alleged Russian collusion in the 2016 election, even though the evidence is considered "poisoned fruit. ..."
"... Add: GCHQ (UK NSA) was in agreement with HilBarry Inc to block the US 2016 election for U.K. candidate Hillary aka Clinton 'Rhodes scholar' Brit colonial agent. Study who 'Rhodes' was. CIA and MI6 are UK siblings. Note nickname for CIA is "Langley" = 'The English' in French L'Anglai. Trump Tower - Russkie atty Natalia met with Simpson GPS Fusion to debrief before & after meeting. Natalia was granted US entry by Mueller Spec Counsel teamster Preet Baharara (conflict in that Preet is compromised witness and also SC "investigator"). Russkie Ahkmedishin met with Obama WH in prep for meeting (see Jan 2016 WH log). The 'translator' at meeting was Obama WH translator. ..."
"... The evidence for false Trump Russkie bank connections is a phony server set up by CIA agent McMullen that robo scammed Russian Alfa Bank to robo talk to the phony server the CIA named with miss-spell Trump OrGAINization. See godaddy domain registration. Hillary slandered Trump with this scam on Twitter Oct 31, 2016 - her witchy day. ..."
"... Obama used the intelligence agencies to spy on all political opponents, not just the Trump campaign and eventually the administration. NSA databases were being queried by Democrat contractors with content feed to Obama's National Security staff where communications were "unmasked" by Rice and others. Rodgers shut down the scheme. So much Marxist criminality and fraud left unpunished. ..."
"... George Papadopoulos was not the reason the FBI opened their 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation into the Trump Campaign. John Brennan was the reason. ..."
"... Brennan was the man pushing the entire Russian Narrative that consumed Washington D.C. – and ultimately led to the Mueller Investigation. He did this based on little or no evidence. The Electronic Communication should prove interesting. John Brennan's Role in the FBI's Trump-Russia Investigation ..."
"... In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow. ..."
"... @Chupacabra-322 URL s/b " https://themarketswork.com/2018/04/09/john-brennans-role-in-the-fbis-trump-russia-investigation/ " ..."
"... The Trump Team was being surveiled the entire time by Breanan via the GCHQ. The CIA are Analysts. That's it. They had to involve the FBI to begin the Surveillance & Criminal Investigation into the Counter Intelligence Operation. Thus, Criminal at Large Breanan's trip up to Capital Hill to meet with Harry Reid to brief him on Steele. Brennan the "Puppet Master" has been quarter backing the entire Deep State Intelligence Psychological Operation & Parallel Construction Surveillance from the very start. ..."
"... They've been reverse engineering their lies ever since they lost the election to cover their tracks and use the excuse of "Plausible Deniability" as the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the CIA always claim. ..."
"... Why get a FISA warrant for Cater Paige after he left the Trump Team? Because folks, the FISA Warrant is RETROACTIVE. ..."
Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation, according to The Telegraph , stating that any disclosure would "undermine intelligence gathering if he releases pages of an FBI application to wiretap one of his former campaign advisers."

Trump's allies, however, are fighting back - demanding transparency and suggesting that the UK wouldn't want the documents withheld unless it had something to hide.

The Telegraph has talked to more than a dozen UK and US officials, including in American intelligence, who have revealed details about the row.

British spy chiefs have "genuine concern" about sources being exposed if classified parts of the wiretap request were made public, according to figures familiar with discussions.

" It boils down to the exposure of people ", said one US intelligence official, adding: " We don't want to reveal sources and methods ." US intelligence shares the concerns of the UK.

Another said Britain feared setting a dangerous "precedent" which could make people less likely to share information, knowing that it could one day become public. - The Telegraph

The Telegraph adds that the UK's dispute with the Trump administration is so politically sensitive that staff within the British Embassy in D.C. have been barred from discussing it with journalists. Theresa May has also "been kept at arms-length and is understood to have not raised the issue directly with the US president ."

In September , we reported that the British government "expressed grave concerns" over the material in question after President Trump issued an order to the DOJ to release a wide swath of materials, "immediately" and "without redaction."

Trump walked that order back days later after the UK begged him not to release them.

Mr Trump wants to declassify 21 pages from one of the applications. He announced the move in September, then backtracked, then this month said he was "very seriously" considering it again. Both Britain and Australia are understood to be opposing the move.

Memos detailing alleged ties between Mr Trump and Russia compiled by Christopher Steele, a former MI6 officer , were cited in the application, which could explain some of the British concern. - The Telegraph

The New York Times reported at the time 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 noted in September, 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.

Papadopoulos, who was sentenced to 14 days in prison for lying about his conversations with a shadowy Maltese professor and self-professed member of the Clinton Foundation , has publicly claimed he was targeted by UK spies, and told The Telegraph that he demands transparency. Trump's allies in Washington, meanwhile, have suggested that the facts laid out before us mean that the ongoing Russia investigation was invalid from the start .

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.


Anunnaki , 3 minutes ago link

Trump talks the talk but so far no walking of the walk. Not falling for it anymore, Tyler. No Swamp Draining from Pres. Cheeto anymore than we got Hope or Change from Superfly

Kefeer , 28 minutes ago link

When fraud is coming to light, the cockroaches scramble. The so-called intelligence agencies have run amuck for way too long and leave a trail of lies, murder and deception.

custard , 1 hour ago link

That is the reason Obama and Clinton went to New Zealand and Australia. They have access to the Five Eyes network in New Zealand and Australia without their requests being recorded whereas if they had asked in the US their requests and all documents given to them would have been recorded. . They are both traitors to not only the sitting President and the US people but also to the United States.

Synoia , 1 hour ago link

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.

MI6 agents have a reputation for writing fiction. Ian Fleming comes to mind. Its is interesting to reflect on the similarities of fiction and so called intelligence.

STONEHILLADY , 1 hour ago link

I think we all know now that the UK not Russia was the dirtbags working for Obama/HRC to trap Trump. Release the declass Trump and let's start cleaning up the swamp. Let the SHTF those Brits have never been friends to freedom.

fleur de lis , 1 hour ago link

@European American,

If they released audio-video evidence of public officials indulging in cannibalistic pedophilia at their state desks, they would still get off the hook.

Their MSM fiends oops I meant friends would scramble to the rescue and create another AV to counter the actual one, and their idiot Democrat audiences would fall for it.

No matter what is exposed on 5 December the perps will get off the hook.

Chupacabra-322 , 2 hours ago link
StarGate , 1 hour ago link

Add: GCHQ (UK NSA) was in agreement with HilBarry Inc to block the US 2016 election for U.K. candidate Hillary aka Clinton 'Rhodes scholar' Brit colonial agent. Study who 'Rhodes' was. CIA and MI6 are UK siblings. Note nickname for CIA is "Langley" = 'The English' in French L'Anglai. Trump Tower - Russkie atty Natalia met with Simpson GPS Fusion to debrief before & after meeting. Natalia was granted US entry by Mueller Spec Counsel teamster Preet Baharara (conflict in that Preet is compromised witness and also SC "investigator"). Russkie Ahkmedishin met with Obama WH in prep for meeting (see Jan 2016 WH log). The 'translator' at meeting was Obama WH translator.

GPS Fusion wrote the Dossier with UK spy Steele and was paid by Hillary/DNC.

The evidence for false Trump Russkie bank connections is a phony server set up by CIA agent McMullen that robo scammed Russian Alfa Bank to robo talk to the phony server the CIA named with miss-spell Trump OrGAINization. See godaddy domain registration. Hillary slandered Trump with this scam on Twitter Oct 31, 2016 - her witchy day.

https://mobile.twitter.com/hillaryclinton/status/793234169576947712?lang=en

WorkingFool , 1 hour ago link

Obama used the intelligence agencies to spy on all political opponents, not just the Trump campaign and eventually the administration. NSA databases were being queried by Democrat contractors with content feed to Obama's National Security staff where communications were "unmasked" by Rice and others. Rodgers shut down the scheme. So much Marxist criminality and fraud left unpunished.

Chupacabra-322 , 2 hours ago link

George Papadopoulos was not the reason the FBI opened their 2016 Counterintelligence Investigation into the Trump Campaign. John Brennan was the reason.

Brennan was the man pushing the entire Russian Narrative that consumed Washington D.C. – and ultimately led to the Mueller Investigation. He did this based on little or no evidence. The Electronic Communication should prove interesting. John Brennan's Role in the FBI's Trump-Russia Investigation

April 9, 2018 by Jeff Carlson, CFA

In the summer of 2016, Robert Hannigan, head of Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) traveled to Washington D.C. to meet with then-CIA Head John Brennan regarding alleged communications between the Trump Campaign and Moscow.

That summer, GCHQ's then head, Robert Hannigan, flew to the US to personally brief CIA chief John Brennan. The matter was deemed so important that it was handled at "director level", face-to-face between the two agency chiefs. The meeting between Hannigan and Brennan appears somewhat unusual.

The US and the UK are two of the so-called Five Eyes -- along with Canada, Australia and New Zealand -- that share a broad range of intelligence through a formalized alliance.

The GCHQ is responsible for Britain's Signals Intelligence. The NSA is responsible for the United States' Signals Intelligence. Hannigan's U.S. counterpart was not CIA Director Brennan. Hannigan's U.S. counterpart was NSA Director Mike Rogers. Luke Harding of the Guardian originally reported the meeting in an April 13, 2017 article on Britain's spy agencies early role in the Trump-Russia investigation:

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information

Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians.

https://www.themarketswork.com/2018/04/09/john-brennans-role-in-the-fbi

StarGate , 1 hour ago link

See above about phony robot "suspicious communications" set up by CIA McMullen to smear Trump with Trump Tower falsely named server and data created in robo call response with Russian Alfa bank.

Russian "communications" was e-data of the Russkie Bank and the non-Trump server named "Trump OrGAINization". It was just two robo-computers pinging back and forth.

smacker , 1 hour ago link

@Chupacabra-322 URL s/b " https://themarketswork.com/2018/04/09/john-brennans-role-in-the-fbis-trump-russia-investigation/ "

Chupacabra-322 , 2 hours ago link

The Trump Team was being surveiled the entire time by Breanan via the GCHQ. The CIA are Analysts. That's it. They had to involve the FBI to begin the Surveillance & Criminal Investigation into the Counter Intelligence Operation. Thus, Criminal at Large Breanan's trip up to Capital Hill to meet with Harry Reid to brief him on Steele. Brennan the "Puppet Master" has been quarter backing the entire Deep State Intelligence Psychological Operation & Parallel Construction Surveillance from the very start.

They've been reverse engineering their lies ever since they lost the election to cover their tracks and use the excuse of "Plausible Deniability" as the Pure Evil War Criminal Treasonous Seditious Psychopaths at the CIA always claim.

Feb 13th, Don Bongino Podcast.

"I'll include an article from NPR. NPR, not a by any stretch a right Wing outlet. Ok? But it's actually a decent piece. Now, it describes the three hop rule. It's from 2013, but it describes it very shortly & ce scintillating in about 400 words. And it's done well so I'll include it in todays show notes.

Remember, It's now the "Two Hop Rule" but you just have to know what a "Hop" is to understand how dangerous this is.

Here's how they explain it.

It says, "testimony before Congress on Wednesday, remember this is written in 2013 Joe. Showed how easy it is for Americans, with no connection to Terrorism to unwittingly have their calling patterns analyzed by the Government." This is really wacko stuff. It hinges on what is known as a "Hop."

Or chain analysis. When the NSA identifies a suspect, it can look not just at his phone records Joe, but also the records of everyone he calls, everyone who calls those people and everyone who calls those people." Chain Migration.

You ain't kidding! Right!? Chain spying!

It goes on...though....this is good.

"If the average person Joe, called 40 unique people. "Three Hop Analysts" would allow the Government to mine the records....this is a staggering number...of 2.5 Million Americans when investigating one suspected terrorist."

"Holy Moly!" Holly Moly is right.

Why get a FISA warrant for Cater Paige after he left the Trump Team? Because folks, the FISA Warrant is RETROACTIVE.

All the the emails he sent in the past to Trump Team members, combine that with "Two Hops" you basically have everybody in the known universe that could of ever contacted the Trump Team.

Paige sends an email, whatever to Kushner. I don't know who he sends emails to. He probably didn't. But you get the point. Then you go to another "Hop." Kushner, who'd he send an email to? Now you got the while Trump Team.

That's the whole point. That's why I constantly say to you that they were trying to put a legal face on this thing after they realized the election was coming up and they could lose.

They were like. Man, we've been spying on these people the whole time. We already got most of their emails and their communications. How do we legally do it now?

Oh, we get a FISA Warrant, we use couple of "Hops" and we're Golden."

[Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region ..."
"... The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies." ..."
Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

The hacking collective known as "Anonymous" published a trove of documents on November 5 which it claims exposes a UK-based psyop to create a " large-scale information secret service " in Europe in order to combat "Russian propaganda" - which has been blamed for everything from Brexit to US President Trump winning the 2016 US election.

The primary objective of the " Integrity Initiative " - established in 2015 by the Institute for Statecraft - is "to provide a coordinated Western response to Russian disinformation and other elements of hybrid warfare."

And while the notion of Russian disinformation has become the West's favorite new bogeyman to excuse things such as Hillary Clinton's historic loss to Donald Trump, we note that "Anonymous" was called out by WikiLeaks in October 2016 as an FBI cutout, while the report on the Integrity Initiative that Anonymous exposed comes from Russian state-owned network RT - so it's anyone's guess whose 400lb hackers are at work here.

Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics. The team is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs , while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.

The UK establishment appears to be conducting the very activities of which it and its allies have long-accused the Kremlin, with little or no corroborating evidence. The program also aims to "change attitudes in Russia itself" as well as influencing Russian speakers in the EU and North America, one of the leaked documents states. - RT

The Integrity Initiative "clusters" currently operate out of Spain, France, Germany, Italy, Greece, Montenegro, Serbia, Norway, Lithuania and the netherlands. According to the leak by Anonymous, the Integrity Initiative is working to aggressively expand its sphere of influence throughout eastern Europe, as well as the US, Canada and the MENA region .

The work done by the Initiative - which claims it is not a government body, is done under "absolute secrecy via concealed contacts embedded throughout British embassies," according to the leak. It does, however, admit to working with unnamed British "government agencies."

The initiative has received £168,000 in funding from HQ NATO Public Diplomacy and £250,000 from the US State Department , the documents allege.

Some of its purported members include British MPs and high-profile " independent" journalists with a penchant for anti-Russian sentiment in their collective online oeuvre, as showcased by a brief glance at their Twitter feeds. - RT

Noted examples of "inedependent" anti-Russia journalists:

Spanish "Op"

In one example of the group's activities, a "Moncloa Campaign" was successfully conducted by the group's Spanish cluster to block the appointment of Colonel Pedro Banos as the director of Spain's Department of Homeland Security. It took just seven-and-a-half hours to accomplish, brags the group in the documents .

"The [Spanish] government is preparing to appoint Colonel Banos, known for his pro-Russian and pro-Putin positions in the Syrian and Ukrainian conflicts, as Director of the Department of Homeland Security, a key body located at the Moncloa," begins Nacho Torreblanca in a seven-part tweetstorm describing what happened.

Others joined in. Among them – according to the leaks – academic Miguel Ángel Quintana Paz, who wrote that "Mr. Banos is to geopolitics as a homeopath is to medicine." Appointing such a figure would be "a shame." - RT

The operation was reported in Spanish media, while Banos was labeled "pro-Putin" by UK MP Bob Seely.

In short, expect anything counter to predominant "open-border" narratives to be the Kremlin's fault - and not a natural populist reflex to the destruction of borders, language and culture.

[Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" ..."
"... "The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016." ..."
"... "Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..." ..."
"... this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war ..."
"... Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK. ..."
"... The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth ..."
"... British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me ..."
"... It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations ..."
"... A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants? ..."
"... I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins. ..."
"... The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval. ..."
"... Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda ..."
"... This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap. ..."
"... Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification ..."
"... It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling ..."
"... As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job. ..."
"... The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love? ..."
"... They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites. ..."
"... The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation. ..."
"... Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power. ..."
"... Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government. ..."
"... William Browder ..."
Nov 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns Steveg , Nov 24, 2018 11:43:44 AM | link

In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream.

We have already seen many consequences of this and similar programs which are designed to smear anyone who does not follow the anti-Russian government lines. The 'Russian collusion' smear campaign against Donald Trump based on the Steele dossier was also a largely British operation but seems to be part of a different project.

The ' Integrity Initiative ' builds 'cluster' or contact groups of trusted journalists, military personal, academics and lobbyists within foreign countries. These people get alerts via social media to take action when the British center perceives a need.

On June 7 it took the the Spanish cluster only a few hours to derail the appointment of Perto Banos as the Director of the National Security Department in Spain. The cluster determined that he had a too positive view of Russia and launched a coordinated social media smear campaign (pdf) against him.


bigger

The Initiative and its operations were unveiled when someone liberated some of its documents, including its budget applications to the British Foreign Office, and posted them under the 'Anonymous' label at cyberguerrilla.org .

The Initiative is nominally run under the (government financed) non-government-organisation The Institute For Statecraft . Its internal handbook (pdf) describes its purpose:

The Integrity Initiative was set up in autumn 2015 by The Institute for Statecraft in cooperation with the Free University of Brussels (VUB) to bring to the attention of politicians, policy-makers, opinion leaders and other interested parties the threat posed by Russia to democratic institutions in the United Kingdom, across Europe and North America.

It lists Bellingcat and the Atlantic Council as "partner organisations" and promises that:

Cluster members will be sent to educational sessions abroad to improve the technical competence of the cluster to deal with disinformation and strengthen bonds in the cluster community. [...] (Events with DFR Digital Sherlocks, Bellingcat, EuVsDisinfo, Buzzfeed, Irex, Detector Media, Stopfake, LT MOD Stratcom – add more names and propose cluster participants as you desire).

The Initiatives Orwellian slogan is 'Defending Democracy Against Disinformation'. It covers European countries, the UK, the U.S. and Canada and seems to want to expand to the Middle East.

On its About page it claims: "We are not a government body but we do work with government departments and agencies who share our aims." The now published budget plans show that more than 95% of the Initiative's funding is coming directly from the British government, NATO and the U.S. State Department. All the 'contact persons' for creating 'clusters' in foreign countries are British embassy officers. It amounts to a foreign influence campaign by the British government that hides behind a 'civil society' NGO.

The organisation is led by one Chris N. Donnelly who receives (pdf) £8,100 per month for creating the smear campaign network.


Chris Donnelly - Pic via Euromaidanpress

From its 2017/18 budget application (pdf) we learn how the Initiative works:

To counter Russian disinformation and malign influence in Europe by: expanding the knowledge base; harnessing existing expertise, and; establishing a network of networks of experts, opinion formers and policy makers, to educate national audiences in the threat and to help build national capacities to counter it .

The Initiative has a black and white view that is based on a "we are the good ones" illusion. When "we" 'educate the public' it is legitimate work. When others do similar, it its disinformation. That is of course not the reality. The Initiative's existence itself, created to secretly manipulate the public, is proof that such a view is wrong.

If its work were as legit as it wants to be seen, why would the Foreign Office run it from behind the curtain as an NGO? The Initiative is not the only such operation. It's applications seek funding from a larger "Russian Language Strategic Communication Programme" run by the Foreign Office.

The 2017/18 budget application sought FCO funding of £480,635. It received £102,000 in co-funding from NATO and the Lithuanian Ministry of Defense. The 2018/19 budget application shows a planned spending (pdf) of £1,961,000.00. The co-sponsors this year are again NATO and the Lithuanian MoD, but also include (pdf) the U.S. State Department with £250,000 and Facebook with £100,000. The budget lays out a strong cooperation with the local military of each country. It notes that NATO is also generous in financing the local clusters.

One of the liberated papers of the Initiative is a talking points memo labeled Top 3 Deliverable for FCO (pdf):

  • Developing and proving the cluster concept and methodology, setting up clusters in a range of countries with different circumstances
  • Making people (in Government, think tanks, military, journalists) see the big picture, making people acknowledge that we are under concerted, deliberate hybrid attack by Russia
  • Increasing the speed of response, mobilising the network to activism in pursuit of the "golden minute"

Under top 1, setting up clusters, a subitem reads:

- Connects media with academia with policy makers with practitioners in a country to impact on policy and society: ( Jelena Milic silencing pro-kremlin voices on Serbian TV )

Defending Democracy by silencing certain voices on public TV seems to be a self-contradicting concept.

Another subitem notes how the Initiative secretly influences foreign governments:

We engage only very discreetly with governments, based entirely on trusted personal contacts, specifically to ensure that they do not come to see our work as a problem, and to try to influence them gently, as befits an independent NGO operation like ours, viz;
- Germany, via the Zentrum Liberale Moderne to the Chancellor's Office and MOD
- Netherlands, via the HCSS to the MOD
- Poland and Romania, at desk level into their MFAs via their NATO Reps
- Spain, via special advisers, into the MOD and PM's office (NB this may change very soon with the new Government)
- Norway, via personal contacts into the MOD
- HQ NATO, via the Policy Planning Unit into the Sec Gen's office.
We have latent contacts into other governments which we will activate as needs be as the clusters develop.

A look at the 'clusters' set up in U.S. and UK shows some prominent names.


bigger

Members of the Atlantic Council, which has a contract to censor Facebook posts , appear on several cluster lists. The UK core cluster also includes some prominent names like tax fraudster William Browder , the daft Atlantic Council shill Ben Nimmo and the neo-conservative Washington Post columnist Anne Applebaum. One person of interest is Andrew Wood who handed the Steele 'dirty dossier' to Senator John McCain to smear Donald Trump over alleged relations with Russia. A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times, Neil Buckley from the FT and Jonathan Marcus of the BBC.


bigger - bigger

A ' Cluster Roundup ' (pdf) from July 2018 details its activities in at least 35 countries. Another file reveals (pdf) the local partnering institutions and individuals involved in the programs.

The Initiatives Guide to Countering Russian Information (pdf) is a rather funny read. It lists the downing of flight MH 17 by a Ukranian BUK missile, the fake chemical incident in Khan Sheikhoun and the Skripal Affair as examples for "Russian disinformation". But at least two of these events, Khan Sheikun via the UK run White Helmets and the Skripal affair, are evidently products of British intelligence disinformation operations.

The probably most interesting papers of the whole stash is the 'Project Plan' laid out at pages 7-40 of the 2018 budget application v2 (pdf). Under 'Sustainability' it notes:

The programme is proposed to run until at least March 2019, to ensure that the clusters established in each country have sufficient time to take root, find funding, and demonstrate their effectiveness. FCO funding for Phase 2 will enable the activities to be expanded in scale, reach and scope. As clusters have established themselves, they have begun to access local sources of funding. But this is a slow process and harder in some countries than others. HQ NATO PDD [Public Diplomacy Division] has proved a reliable source of funding for national clusters. The ATA [Atlantic Treaty Association] promises to be the same, giving access to other pots of money within NATO and member nations. Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow.

The programme has begun to create a critical mass of individuals from a cross society (think tanks, academia, politics, the media, government and the military) whose work is proving to be mutually reinforcing . Creating the network of networks has given each national group local coherence, credibility and reach, as well as good international access. Together, these conditions, plus the growing awareness within governments of the need for this work, should guarantee the continuity of the work under various auspices and in various forms.

The third part of the budget application (pdf) list the various activities, their output and outcome. The budget plan includes a section that describes 'Risks' to the initiative. These include hacking of the Initiatives IT as well as:

Adverse publicity generated by Russia or by supporters of Russia in target countries, or by political and interest groups affected by the work of the programme, aimed at discrediting the programme or its participants, or to create political embarrassment.

We hope that this piece contributes to such embarrassment.

Posted by b on November 24, 2018 at 11:24 AM | Permalink

Comments Perfidious ALbion!

When will we learn?


pretzelattack , Nov 24, 2018 11:44:00 AM | link

Coincidentally, or not, i just saw this article at the guardian; https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2018/nov/23/robert-mueller-profile-donald-trump-russia-investigation.
Anya , Nov 24, 2018 11:57:00 AM | link
The British government has been running a serious meddling into the US affairs:
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-11-23/mi6-scrambling-stop-trump-releasing-classified-docs-russia-probe

"The UK's Secret Intelligence Service, otherwise known as MI6, has been scrambling to prevent President Trump from publishing classified materials linked to the Russian election meddling investigation. ... much of the espionage performed on the Trump campaign was conducted on UK soil throughout 2016."

A Steele & Skrupal's anti-Russian / anti-Trump saga: https://spectator.org/big-dots-do-they-connect/

"Gregory R. Copley, editor and publisher of Defense & Foreign Affairs, posited that Sergei Skripal is the unnamed Russian intelligence source in the Steele dossier. ... In Skripal's pseudo-country-gentleman retirement, the ex-GRU-MI6 double agent was selling custom-made "Russian intelligence"; he had fabricated "material" that went into the Steele dossier..."

For M16 to expose this level of stupidity is stunning.

james , Nov 24, 2018 11:58:02 AM | link
thanks b....

this movement in the west by gov'ts to pay for generating lies, hate and propaganda towards russia is really sick... it is perfect for the military industrial complex corporations though and they seem to be calling the shots in the west, much more so then the voice of the ordinary person who is not interested in war.. i guess the idea is to get the ordinary people to think in terms of hating another country based on lies and that this would be a good thing... it is very sad what uk / usa leadership in the past century has come down to here.... i can only hope that info releases like this will hasten it's demise...

Ingrian , Nov 24, 2018 12:03:55 PM | link
Seems to me that this shows the primacy of the City of London, with its offshore network of illicit capital accumulation, within Britain. It is a state within a state or even a financial empire within a state, which, for deep historical reasons isn't subject to the same laws as the rest of the UK.

The UK's pathological obsession with Russia only makes sense to me as the city's insistence on continued 90s style appropriation of Russia's wealth

james , Nov 24, 2018 12:15:31 PM | link
@6 ingrian... things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of Russia after the fall of the Soviet Union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit Russia fully, as they'd intended...
et Al , Nov 24, 2018 12:20:09 PM | link

Let the Doxx wars begin! Sure, Anonymous is not Russian but it will surely now be targeted and smeared as such which would show that it has hit a nerve. British hypocrisy publicly called out. How this all unravels is one to watch. Extra large popcorn and soda for me.

I think we've all noticed the euro-asslantic press (and friends) on behalf of, willingly and in cooperation with the British intelligence et al 'calling out' numerous Russians as G(R)U/spies/whatever for a while now yet providing less than a shred of credible evidence.

It seems to me that the UK has far more to lose from doxxing than Russia does. The interference in sovereign allied states to 'manage' who the UK thinks they should appoint does not bode well for such relations.

Meanwhile in Brussels they are having their cake and eating it, i.e. bemoaning Europe's 'weak response' to Russian propaganda:

https://www.euractiv.com/section/global-europe/news/experts-lament-underfunding-of-eu-task-force-countering-russian-disinformation/

BTW, did anyone read Wired UK's current advertorial (nov 14) by Carl Miller for Brigade 77?

Forthestate , Nov 24, 2018 12:26:09 PM | link
"A separate subcluster of so-called journalists names Deborah Haynes, David Aaronovitch of the London Times and Neil Buckley from the FT." Subcluster. Love it. Just how crap do you have to be to fail to make it to membership of a full cluster of smear merchants?
worldblee , Nov 24, 2018 12:33:05 PM | link
Yet another example of the pot calling the kettle black when in fact the kettle may not be black at all; it's just the pot making up things. "These Russian criminals are using propaganda to show (truths) like the fact the DNC and Clinton campaigns colluded to prevent Sanders from being nominated, so we need to establish a clandestine propaganda network to establish that the Russians are running propaganda!"
psychohistorian , Nov 24, 2018 12:34:32 PM | link

....full cluster of smear merchants". May all the clusters of smear merchants be exposed to the public as the acolytes of evil they are.

plantman , Nov 24, 2018 12:36:48 PM | link
"In 2015 the government of Britain launched a secret operation to insert anti-Russia propaganda into the western media stream."

I doubt very seriously that the British launched this operation without the CIA's implicit and explicit support. This has all the markings of a John Brennan operation that has been launched stealthily to prevent anyone from knowing its real origins.

The Brits don't act alone, and a project of this magnitude did not begin without Langley's explicit approval.

Now check out the wording in the above document: "Funding from institutional and national governmental sources in the US has been delayed by internal disputes within the US government, but w.e.f. March 2018 that deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow." Think about that. What would have blocked the flow of USG support for this project?? Why, the allegations of collusion against Trump, of course. Naturally, the Republicans are not going to provide money to an operation that threatens to destroy the head of their own party. So, there has been no bipartisan agreement on funding for anti-Russia propaganda

BUT...the author assures us that the "deadlock seems to have been resolved and funding should now flow" Huh?? In other words, the fix is in. Mueller will pardon Trump on collusion charges but the propaganda campaign against Russia will continue...with the full support of both parties. I could be wrong, but that's how I see it...

m , Nov 24, 2018 12:40:07 PM | link
This mob was created in the autumn of 2015, according to their site. That would have been about the time -- probably just after -- the Russians intervened in Syria. The Brits had plans for an invasion of Syria in 2009, according to their fave Guardian fish wrap.

A lot of sour grapes with this so-called 'integrity initiative', IMO. BP was behind a lot of this, I would also think. When Assad pulled the plug on the pipeline through the Levant in 2009, the Brits hacked up a fur ball. It's gone downhill for them ever since. Couldn't happen to a nicer lot. If you can't invade or beat them with proxies, you can at least call them names.

Jackrabbit , Nov 24, 2018 12:40:58 PM | link
Anya

Pat Lang posted a report that strongly implies that charges of Russian influence on Trump are a deliberate falsification: THE CHIMERA OF DONALD TRUMP, RUSSIAN MONEY LAUNDERER :

If Trump was taking dirty money or engaged in criminal activity with Russians then he was doing it with Felix Sater, who was under the control of the FBI... And who was in charge of the FBI during all of the time that Sater was a signed up FBI snitch? You got it -- Robert Mueller (2001 thru 2013) ...

It seems quite possible that what is alleged as "Russian meddling" is actually CIA-MI6 meddling, including:

Steele dossier: To create suspicion in government, media, and later the public

Leaking of DNC emails to Wikileaks (but calling it a "hack"): To help with election of Trump and link Wikileaks (as agent) to Russian election meddling

Cambridge Analytica: To provide necessary reasoning for Trump's (certain) win of the electoral college.

Note: We later found that dozens of firms had undue access to Facebook data. Why did the campaign turn to a British firm instead of an American firm? Well, it had to be a British firm if MI6 was running the (supposed) Facebook targeting for CIA.

As I have said before, MAGA is a POLICY RESPONSE to the challenge from Russia and China. The election of a Republican faux populist was necessary and Trump, despite his many flaws, was the best candidate for the job.
Cyril , Nov 24, 2018 1:10:13 PM | link
The Integrity Initiative's goal is to defend democracy against the truth about Russia. All this is so Orwellian. When will we get the Ministry of Love?
Russ , Nov 24, 2018 1:16:21 PM | link
Posted by: james | Nov 24, 2018 12:15:31 PM | 7

"things didn't go as planned for the expropriation of russia after the fall of the soviet union.. it seems the west is still hurting from not being able to exploit russia fully, as they'd intended..."

They shot at an elephant and failed to kill it. So yes, out of the combo of frustration, resentment, and fear they hate the resurgent Russia and prefer Cold War II, and if necessary WWIII, to peaceful co-existence. Of course the usual corporate imperative (in this case weapons profiteering) reinforces the mass psychological pathology among the elites.

The ironic thing is that Putin doesn't prefer to challenge the neoliberal globalist "order" at all, but would happily see Russia take a prominent place within it. It's the US and its UK poodle who are insisting on confrontation.

GeorgeV , Nov 24, 2018 1:34:08 PM | link
Great article! It reminded me of what I read in George Orwell's novella "1984." He summed it all up brilliantly in nine words: "War is Peace"; "Freedom is Slavery"; "Ignorance is Strength." The three pillars of political power.
Sasha , Nov 24, 2018 1:38:39 PM | link
Since UK has always blocked the "European Intelligence" initiative, on the basis of his pertenence to the "Five Eyes", and as UK is leaving the European Union, where it has always been the Troyan Horse of the US, one would think that all these people belonging to the so called "clusters" should register themselves as "foreign agents" working for UK government...and in this context, new empowerished sovereign governemts into the EU should consider the possibility expelling these traitors as spies of the UK....

http://www.voltairenet.org/article204051.html

Some of the "clusters" unmasked here....some, like Ignacio Torreblanca in Spain, are related to the CFR....

https://www.rt.com/news/444737-uk-funded-campaign-russia-leaks/

Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:12:45 PM | link
Country list of agents of influence according to the leak:
Zanon , Nov 24, 2018 2:13:28 PM | link
cresty , Nov 24, 2018 2:18:30 PM | link
Thank you very much for going through all the files, b. Will share far and wide

[Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also. ..."
"... Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. ..."
"... This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts. ..."
Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

HowdyDoody , 7 hours ago link

One of the documents lists a series of propaganda weapons to be used against Russia. One is use of the church as a weapon. That has already been started in Ukraine with Poroshenko buying off regligious leader to split Ukraine Orthodoxy from Russian Orthodoxy. It also explicitly states that the Skripal incident is a 'Dirty Trick' against Russia.

activisor , 10 hours ago link

The British political system is on the verge of collapse. BREXIT has finally demonstrated that the Government/ Opposition parties are clearly aligned against the interests of the people. The EU is nothing more than an arm of the Globalist agenda of world domination.

The US has shown its true colours - sanctioning every country that stands for independent sovereignty is not a good foreign policy, and is destined to turn the tide of public opinion firmly against global hegemony, endless wars, and wealth inequity.

The old Empire is in its death throes. A new paradigm awaits which will exclude all those who have exploited the many, in order to sit at the top of the pyramid. They cannot escape Karma.

smacker , 11 hours ago link

The Western world needs to come to terms with the collapse of the Soviet Union and its aftermath. Today, Russia is led by Putin and he obviously has objectives as any national leader has.

Western "leaders" need to decide whether Putin:

  1. Is trying to create Soviet Union 2.0, to have a 2nd attempt at ruling the world thru communism and to do this by holding the world to ransom over oil/gas supplies. OR
  2. Is wanting Russia to become a member of the family of nations and of a multi-polar world to improve the lives of Russian people, but is being blocked at every twist and turn by manufactured events like Russia-gate and the Skripal affair and now this latest revelation of anti-Russian propaganda campaigns being coordinated and run out of London.

Both of the above cannot be true because there are too many contradictions. Which is it??

Lokiban , 13 hours ago link

Yes because imagine that that we lived in 1940 without any means to inform ourselves and that media was still in control over the information that reaches us. We would already be in a fullblown war with Russia because of it but now with the Internet and information going around freely only a whimpy 10% of we the people stand behind their desperately wanted war. Imagine that, an informed sheople.
Can't have that, they cannot do their usual stuff anymore.... good riddance.

LOL123 , 14 hours ago link

"250,000 from the US State Department , the documents allege."....... Interesting.

"During the third Democratic debate on Saturday night, Hillary Clinton called for a "Manhattan-like project" to break encrypted terrorist communications. The project would "bring the government and the tech communities together" to find a way to give law enforcement access to encrypted messages, she said. It's something that some politicians and intelligence officials have wanted for awhile,"........

***wasn't the Manhatten project a secret venture?????? Hummmmm"

Hillary Clinton has all of our encryption keys, including the FBI's . "Encryption keys" is a general reference to several encryption functions hijacked by Hillary and her surrogate ENTRUST. They include hash functions (used to indicate whether the contents have been altered in transit), PKI public/private key infrastructure, SSL (secure socket layer), TLS (transport layer security), the Dual_EC_DRBG NSA algorithm and certificate authorities.

The convoluted structure managed by the "Federal Common Policy" group has ceded to companies like ENTRUST INC the ability to sublicense their authority to third parties who in turn manage entire other networks in a Gordian knot of relationships clearly designed to fool the public to hide their devilish criminality. All roads lead back to Hillary and the Rose Law Firm."- patriots4truth

artistant , 14 hours ago link

But, but some people keep getting away with it.

hooligan2009 , 15 hours ago link

When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots "psyops", you tend to come up with plots for "psyops". The word "entrapment" comes to mind. Probably "self-serving" also.

larryriedel , 15 hours ago link

FBI/Anonymous can use this story to support a narrative that social media bots posting memes is a problem for everybody, and it's not a partisan issue. The idea is that fake news and unrestricted social media are inherently dangerous, and both the West and Russia are exploiting that, so governments need to agree to restrict the ability to use those platforms for political speech, especially without using True Names.

Baron Samedi , 15 hours ago link

Oilygawkies in the UK and USSA seem to be letting their spooks have a good-humored (rating here on the absurd transparency of these ops) contest to see who can come up with the most surreal propaganda psy-ops.

But they probably also serve as LHO distractions from something genuinely sleazy.

headless blogger , 15 hours ago link

Anti-Russian is just a code word for Globalist, Internationalist. Anything that is remotely like Nationalism is the true enemy of these Globalist/Internationalists, which is what the Top-Ape Bolshevik promoted: see Vladimir Lenin and his quotes on how he believed fully in "internationalism" for a world without borders. Ironic how they Love the butchers of the Soviet Union but hate Russia. It is ALL ABOUT IDEOLOGY to these people and "the means justify the ends".

They are frightening people.

Push , 15 hours ago link

Basically, if one acquires factual information from an internet source, which leads to overturning the propaganda to which we're all subjected, then it MUST have come from Putin. This is the direction they're headed. Anyone speaking out against the official story is obviously a Russian spy.

Xena fobe , 15 hours ago link

"Instutute for Statecraft"? Seriously?

OverTheHedge , 11 hours ago link

"Substitute for Statecraft"

Fify ;-)

koan , 16 hours ago link

The UK is waging psyop against their own people using the Russians as an excuse to further oppress the population, especially the white population.

FIFY.

East Indian , 16 hours ago link

Never thought Putin would be the symbol of free speech! The totalitarian EU and Deep State can come out of closet and denounce their predecessors.

brewing_it , 17 hours ago link

If you call ******** on the whole Russia cyberscare, you will be labeled a puppet of Putin.

The establishment is afraid of free thinking men and women that can call ******** when they see and hear it.

AriusArmenian , 17 hours ago link

Better to call it the Anti-Integrity Initiative. UK cretins up to their usual dirty tricks - let them choke on their poison. The judgement of history will eventually catch up with them.

Mike Rotsch , 17 hours ago link

A good 'ole economic collapse will give western countries a chance to purge their crazy leaders before they involve us all in a thermonuclear war. Short everything with your entire accounts.

RealistDuJour , 17 hours ago link

This is such BS. Since when does Russia have the resources to pull all this off? They have such a complex program that they need the coordinated efforts of all the resources of the WEST? This is nuts.

Isn't it just as likely someone in the WEST planted this cache, intending Anonymous to find it?

HRClinton , 18 hours ago link

When two sides fight - especially white v white - the hidden 3rd party (((instigator))) wins.

How dumb and mallaleable can these goys be? Pretty dumb and mallaleable, it seems.

J S Bach , 18 hours ago link

Any propaganda coming from the UK or US is strictly zionist. EVERYTHING they put out is to the benefit of Israel and the "lobby". Russia isn't perfect, but if they're an enemy of the latter, then they should NOT be considered a foe to all thinking and conscientious people.

OverTheHedge , 11 hours ago link

Yesterday, the BBC had a thing on Thai workers in Israel, and how they keep dying of accidents, their general level of slavery etc. Very odd to have a negative Israel story, so I wonder who upset whom, and what the ongoing status will be.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/world-middle-east-46311922/thai-labourers-in-israel-tell-of-harrowing-conditions

Thai labourers in Israel tell of harrowing conditions

A year-long BBC investigation has discovered widespread abuse of Thai nationals living and working in Israel - under a scheme organized by the two governments.

Many are subjected to unsafe working practices and squalid, unsanitary living conditions. Some are overworked, others underpaid and there are dozens of unexplained deaths.

Herdee , 18 hours ago link

England and the U.S. don't like their very poor and rotten social conditions put out for the public to see. Both countries have severely deteriorating problems on their streets because of bankrupt governments printing money for foreign wars.

Quadruple_Rainbow , 18 hours ago link

More of the same fraudulent duality while alleged so called but not money etc continues to flow (everything is criminal) and the cesspool of a hierarchy pretends it's business as usual.

This isn't about maintaining balance in a lie this is about disclosing the truth and agendas (Agenda 21 now Agenda 2030 = The New Age Religion is Never Going To Be Saturnism). The layers of the hierarchy are a lie so unless the alleged so called leaders of those layers are publicly providing testimony and confession then everything that is being spoon fed to the pablum puking public through all sources is a lie.

Herdee , 18 hours ago link

They're afraid of stories like this: https://www.rt.com/news/444737-uk-funded-campaign-russia-leaks/

HRClinton , 17 hours ago link

Operating on a budget of £1.9 million (US$2.4 million), the secretive Integrity Initiative consists of "clusters" of (((local politicians, journalists, military personnel, scientists and academics))).

The (((team))) is dedicated to searching for and publishing "evidence" of Russian interference in European affairs, while themselves influencing leadership behind the scenes, the documents claim.

gatorengineer , 18 hours ago link

Do Neocons get time and half for Overtime, they sure have been putting in a bunch lately.

[Nov 22, 2018] I've lately been wondering about the economics of being a big tax haven like the UK

Nov 22, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

blatnoi November 5, 2018 at 3:06 am

I've lately been wondering about the economics of being a big tax haven like the UK. A place like the Bahamas, I think benefits from it since there are so few citizens and it's easy to bribe them, and it costs a lot less than paying taxes back home. But then you move on to Panama, and the grey area starts. Someone is getting rich there, but the population of Panama is a lot bigger than that of the Bahamas, and that population is not exactly rich. Does it create bigger class divisions and also retards politics in terms of trying to develop their own unique economy not dependent on servicing the rich foreign tax thieves?

Then you get to London and the UK, with their absolutely enormous population. Most of the people outside of London will never see any of this money, and in London it creates a runaway housing crisis as the best investment for laundered money is thought to be real estate. Obviously there is investment in the local economy other than that, such as buying football clubs and stores, but I don't think that money goes towards funding a pharma start-up or buying stock in a local car company.

So it exacerbates inequality sure (London real estate is insane and out of reach of most locals), and creates a parallel society in the countryside that never see these money, but are the pros of having that money there and contributing to the economy outweigh these cons? It would if the money were invested with a view of making a profit from a factory, but I don't think that happens in this case. What do you think?

Mark Chapman November 5, 2018 at 3:20 am
I think it is an extremely interesting discussion point; one that I would not venture into without doing a bit of research, but right now I have to leave for work. It's definitely something we could chew over for a bit, and I imagine Jen will have something for us on it.
Jen November 5, 2018 at 2:00 pm
Blatnoi, if you get hold of the Nicholas Shaxson book I mentioned before, I recall there's a chapter that discusses the effect of being a tax haven has on the Channel Islands economy and Jersey Island in particular. The money that ends up there is in the pockets of a very few people who use it to buy and real estate as if it were shares on the stock market. The result is what we Australians call a two-speed economy or a split economy, where one sub-economy caters for the very rich (real estate agents specialising in luxury properties, lots of luxury hotels and playgrounds, boutique shops and restaurants) and the other sub-economy is hidden away, made up of local people who have to rent their homes because they can't afford to buy their own homes, who have to hold down two or more jobs to survive and who supply the staff for the hotels, shops and restaurants frequented by the rich. Eventually the local people start disappearing to find better-paying jobs and the hotels, restaurants, etc start bringing in foreign labour to replace them.

I certainly agree with you that a two-speed economy creates and exacerbates class divisions, and moreover destroys not only local economies in the areas where it operates but also local societies and cultures.

Aha I Googled "Shaxson", "economy" and "Jersey" and out of what Google threw at me, I found this account by Bram Wanrooij of his time living in Jersey with his family for six years:

An excerpt from Wanrooij's post:

".. I have never been so aware of wealth discrepancies as I have in Jersey. And that says a lot, as I have lived in places like Kenya and Sudan when I was younger. Disparity is on full display, in combination with a shameless promotion of greed and privilege. Range Rovers wizz past you, their 4×4 engines sputtering out clouds of pollution, utterly useless on a small island with a decent infrastructure and no real elevation to speak of. You even see flashy sports cars; quite amusing when you consider the speed limit is 40 at most. What are these people trying to prove?

The island caters to the very wealthy, especially reflected in everyday expenses and housing and travel costs. Getting off the island becomes ever more impossible as your family grows, with flights to England ridiculously expensive and ferries charging a small fortune for carrying you across the channel. In this way, Jersey has quickly become a financial and geographical prison for middle and low earners.

In the six years I've lived here, my family has had to move six times and every time we had to rent a house which was slightly beyond our budget, even though both my wife and I are hard workers with honest professions. I have seen qualified, talented people leave because of this, a phenomenon which makes no sense, neither on a social, nor an economic level "

Comparisons between the Jersey-style financial two-speed economy and economies afflicted with so-called Dutch disease (typically economies like Saudi Arabia and others dependent on oil, gas and mineral exploitation) have been made. Characteristics of such economies are outlined in detail at this link:
https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/11977/oil/dutch-disease/

blatnoi November 6, 2018 at 2:34 am
Thanks for the information! I still think that the money must make it to the country's economy somehow, but if you've got a democracy and as a result of the money a disenfranchised class, then you get things like votes for Brexit and 'populists'.

It's still hard for me to think that there is not benefit for the country to be a tax haven, since so many places try to do it. Maybe the criminals who launder the money are very enterprising and smart people, so there is a chance they will start a legitimate business as well as buy expensive real estate is probably how the thinking goes.

My sister was living in a big Western city that has a huge problem with foreign capital investment into real estate. No young people there can afford a house. She recently moved to a much smaller city in the countryside with bad weather, but where she could afford a house and a job was available in her field. But I don't think the issues were from foreign investors only. Also the zoning rules are very restrictive and it leads to price increases since it's so hard to build new houses that people want. Then again, this is probably due to investor lobbying partly, since then house prices would go down and would not be that good of an investment.

Mark Chapman November 6, 2018 at 9:55 am
Countries do not seek to be tax havens because of perceived benefit to their populations, but because their governments want to exercise a degree of control over the money supply. If your enemy's money passes through a network of which you are a part, why, you can cut him off from his money. That was the whole point of the west falling upon Cyprus, destroying it as a tax haven – that they were going to disinherit the Russian wealthy overnight. It's always Russians they're after, and anyone else who gets caught in the net is collateral damage.

http://blogs.reuters.com/great-debate/2013/03/18/why-the-eu-is-right-on-cyprus/

Germany told the EU that Russian billionaires had about $26 Billion in Cyprus – more than the total bailout package. It must have seemed like inspired genius to the Europeans (and doubtless to Washington as well) to seize a chunk of the Russians' money and use it to bail out an EU country. Well, as we now know, that's not what happened at all. The usual fatuous argument – offered also, predictably, by the author of the cited piece – is that Cyprus could be like Iceland, and a bit of tough love would be better for it in the long run. Of course nobody was going to say that the plan would mostly wipe out Russian wealth, while the rest of the world was free to go on using approved tax havens like London, as they do now. The two situations are completely different, and if anyone needs proof, they can take a look at how much Cyprus is like Iceland now.

It's still not clear to what extent Russians learned of the plan in advance and pulled their money out, and how much Russian money was never actually there at all, a figment of Germany's fevered imagination. I imagine the 'investigation' was done by 'journalists', as seems to be de rigueur these days (when the actual investigative services just stay back at the office plotting and planning and drinking coffee, and cite the work of 'journalists' in their reports), but there's an obvious hole in the technique. Journalists are interested in selling stories, and a story that nothing was discovered is boring. There is overwhelming pressure to sensationalize.

Fern November 5, 2018 at 5:25 pm
I've lived on the outskirts of London for many years and what I've seen is the city becoming increasingly hollowed out. You can walk around street after street at night and everywhere is in darkness – the lights are out because no-one is home, not that evening, not ever. London is permanently under construction; huge numbers of new buildings have gone up in recent years – all of them beyond the purchasing power of most Londoners – and huge numbers of those new buildings have been purchased off plan by overseas investors with no intention or interest in living in them.

When the money moves in existing communities disintegrate, local councils seek to dump those in social housing on other, less fashionable boroughs (thus exacerbating housing problems in those areas) or even outside London so housing can be razed and the land sold to developers, those renting in the private sector are priced out, local businesses close down – their market has gone plus insane rent and rates increases etc etc. London used to have a bit of a 'village' feel to it – distinct areas with settled communities, traditional butcher-baker-candlestick maker high streets, a sense of community. All gone or going.

Moscow Exile November 5, 2018 at 10:26 pm
When I was last in London in 2016, I was with my family. My children quickly realized then that "papa" was one of a rare breed in the British capital and also the capital of England: an Englishman!

We were living in Sussex Gardens, Paddington, which seems to be part of the Lebanon now. Nothing against the Lebanesse, nor any of the other immigrants really, as long as they are willing to adapt to the normalities of their host country: it is they, after all, who have made the effort to live in the UK. However, it seemed rather strange to me walking along the Edgeware Road towards Marble Arch and Hyde Park, passing on our way one Lebanese café after another, outside of which their clients were puffing away at hookahs.

I should add that I am still rather fond of London -- "When a man is tired of London, he is tired of life " and all that -- but that fondness of mine is ever waning following my very infrequent visits to the place.

The London in which I lived from 1967-69 is very different to the London of today. For one thing, in those days there was a race called "Cockneys" that lived in the East End. What's left of them now is in Esssex, on a big reservation, I think: sort of like the Cherokee in Oklahoma or wherever.

However, London oozes with history and hidden gems of interest, not to mention the museums, parks, theatres etc.

To quote fully Doctor Johnson, which I partly have done above:

"Sir, when a man is tired of London, he is tired of life; for there is in London all that life can afford".

And there's the rub, Samuel, old boy: there's now precious litle in London now that an ordinary man or woman can afford!

Cortes November 6, 2018 at 2:31 am
When I worked in London 1989/90) it struck me as an agglomeration of medium sized towns, by and large, the huge cultural centres apart. Where we rented, Lee (SE) socialising was done normally in Blackheath. Our flat was about 500 yards from a major junction of the South Circular and my memory seared with the experience of queuing for well over two hours to get into Kent early morning on a Bank Holiday. Uptown nights out were a pain due to transport.
When the first reports appeared (?in the Guardian) about people commuting from York to jobs in London my mind went to a chat I'd had with my host's maid in Mexico City in 1982. She had a 2.5 hours each way commute. For the ordinary inhabitants, London is probably the 4th World.
Northern Star November 6, 2018 at 4:25 pm
http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/11/06/home-n06.html
Moscow Exile November 5, 2018 at 3:51 am
'Billionaires Row': inside Hampstead palaces left empty for decades
On The Bishops Avenue houses worth tens of millions of pounds lay derelict in a spectacular example of waste and profligacy

The multimillion-pound wrecks are evidence of a property culture in which the world's richest people see British property as investments. One Hyde Park, a block of apartments in Knightsbridge, is another example where more than half the flats are registered with the council as empty or second homes.

Rinat Akhmetov pays record £136.4m for apartment at One Hyde Park
Ukraine's richest man spends record amount for a UK home after buying two Knightsbridge flats totalling 25,000 sq ft

He just loves the weather there!

Northern Star November 5, 2018 at 2:35 pm
Hmmm ..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinat_Akhmetov#Political_activity
Jen November 5, 2018 at 3:46 pm
Buying properties in hot-spot areas and leaving them empty – because you plan to trade and sell them if and when the prices rocket up to levels you want – would be typical behaviour of people who treat property portfolios like share portfolios. You want to be ready to sell when the price is right so you don't move tenants into them. Getting rid of tenants can be a hassle if you want to sell quickly.

Also buying property and deliberately leaving it to rot is a way of using it as a tax shelter to minimise land and other taxes, lower your income or claim a tax rebate on losses you make because you're forking out more in land taxes, council rates and other rates than you are making on the property, depending on the taxation jurisdiction prevailing in the area or country where you have bought the property.

Evgeny November 5, 2018 at 3:59 am
Thanks for a great article, Mark!

Apparently, the U.S. authorities believe that by squeezing the corrupt Russian money out of the Great Britain, they would force those corrupt rich Russians to return their money home and remake the Russia as a modern Western nation with the rule of law and checks and balances.

At least, that's what I have heard at anti-Putin forums. So -- and especially so in view of your article -- that ought to be taken with a grain of salt.

But if that's indeed the idea -- I'm skeptical that it would work. Definitely, it sounds alright, and if it were implemented, say, 30 years ago -- it might have sort of worked, by preventing the corrupt Russians to move their assets abroad. Now, I think, they would just move their fortunes into some other friendly jurisdiction outside of the reach of Uncle Sam and Russia's authorities.

If getting at dirty money was that easy, I doubt that China would ever need to resort to such a complex operation as the "Fox Hunt".

[Nov 22, 2018] No grey areas in this excellent documentary "The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire" by Michael Oswald that's been getting a lot of attention:

Nov 22, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

Jen November 5, 2018 at 2:32 am

No grey areas in this excellent documentary "The Spider's Web: Britain's Second Empire" by Michael Oswald that's been getting a lot of attention:
https://topdocumentaryfilms.com/spider-web-britain-second-empire/

Much of the documentary is based on Nicholas Shaxson's book "Treasure Islands: Tax Havens and the Men who stole the World" and he and some of his interviewees in the book are featured in the documentary.
http://treasureislands.org/

Thanks Mark for getting out this new post so quickly!

[Nov 22, 2018] Sanctimoneyous: Post-Brexit Britain Will Test-Drive a Conscience

Notable quotes:
"... "Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike." ..."
"... "An Ideal Husband" ..."
"... "I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said." ..."
"... "Everybody knows that the dice are loaded, ..."
"... Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed; ..."
"... Everybody knows that the war is over, ..."
"... Everybody knows the good guys lost: ..."
"... Everybody knows the fight was fixed, ..."
"... The poor stay poor, the rich get rich ..."
"... That's how it goes ..."
"... Everybody knows " ..."
"... "Everybody Knows" ..."
"... Because the rest of Europe is so corrupt, Britain had to pretend to be corrupt, too, or else it might not fit in ..."
"... "Brexit will free the UK to intensify its crackdown on dirty money sloshing through the City of London because the authorities will no longer have to win the approval of the rest of the EU." ..."
"... "Sigal P. Mandelker, a top American Treasury official in London to meet with her counterparts, said British banks could face "consequences" if they continued to carry out significant transactions on behalf of the 24 influential Russians sanctioned by Washington on Friday. The list includes the industrialists Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, along with Kirill Shamalov, who American officials have identified as President Vladimir V. Putin's son-in-law." ..."
"... Moreover, to secure the credit guarantees, Blavatnik and his Washington advisers have so far outmaneuvered a Goliath: BP-Amoco. The largest producer of oil and gas in the United States, the British-American giant is fighting to keep its interest in another rich Siberian field also coveted by Tyumen Oil. BP-Amoco contends that Tyumen's takeover tactics there are unfair and could jeopardize its $571 million investment, one of the largest by a western company in Russia. ..."
"... "It's not the bureaucracy, it's not the police, it's not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital." ..."
"... "It's absolutely true that the UK is one of the leading financial centres for the laundering of corrupt money from overseas, whether through the property market, luxury goods or other sectors The UK has been a prime location for stashing away illicitly gained wealth, as anti-money laundering systems are weak and sectors such as UK property represent a safe investment, as well as a place to hide corrupt money." ..."
"... The Panama Papers leak – with 11.5 million documents the the largest leak in history so far – has implicated many of Britain's biggest banks as well. HSBC, Coutts, and Rothschild were among the banks mentioned in the papers. Since the 1970s the Mossack Fonseca law firm set up over 3000 shell companies for the aforementioned banks. These shell companies allowed their clients to evade taxes, as well as allowing them to participate in criminal or corrupt activities. ..."
"... since the 1970's ..."
Nov 22, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

"When mores are sufficient, laws are unnecessary; when mores are insufficient, laws are unenforceable."
Uncle Volodya

"Morality is simply the attitude we adopt toward people we personally dislike." Oscar Wilde, from "An Ideal Husband"

"I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said." William F. Buckley Jr.

"Everybody knows that the dice are loaded,
Everybody rolls with their fingers crossed;
Everybody knows that the war is over,
Everybody knows the good guys lost:
Everybody knows the fight was fixed,
The poor stay poor, the rich get rich
That's how it goes
Everybody knows "

Leonard Cohen, from "Everybody Knows"

I wonder if you were as flabbergasted as I was to discover the sole reason Britain has not cracked down before now on the flood of dirty money lapping its shores is because are you ready? Because the rest of Europe is so corrupt, Britain had to pretend to be corrupt, too, or else it might not fit in !! I'm not even kidding; read it for yourself .

"Brexit will free the UK to intensify its crackdown on dirty money sloshing through the City of London because the authorities will no longer have to win the approval of the rest of the EU."

The article is The Telegraph's 'Premium content', and so you can't see the rest of it without being a subscriber – but for my part, I've seen enough. If that isn't the most goodie-goodie, self-serving teacher's-pet bullshit I've ever heard, it would certainly be in the top five.

As I've queried elsewhere, if the rest of Europe is perfectly happy rooting in its corrupt sty, while Britain holds its nose and plays at being the bad-ass so that the European hoodlums will accept it, what draws foreign robber-barons to London with cash that they need laundered? Why don't they just go to Paris or Berlin? Can they not sense how uncomfortable Britain is with money that was not honestly earned by the sweat of one's brow? Dear God, it makes me want to scream.

Let's just dispense with the notion that Honest-John Bull yearns to boot out the rotten Russian oligarchs because of a deep-seated aversion to dirty money, right now. In fact, Uncle Sam told Britain back in the spring that it was going to have to cut the Russian oligarchs loose if it wants to have continued access to the US market. And considering the arsehole Britain is making of itself in Europe, it doesn't actually have a lot of other friends. What would happen to Britain without the coziness of the Special Friendship? Like The Eagles sang in "Already Gone", it would have to eat its lunch all by itself.

"Sigal P. Mandelker, a top American Treasury official in London to meet with her counterparts, said British banks could face "consequences" if they continued to carry out significant transactions on behalf of the 24 influential Russians sanctioned by Washington on Friday. The list includes the industrialists Oleg Deripaska and Viktor Vekselberg, along with Kirill Shamalov, who American officials have identified as President Vladimir V. Putin's son-in-law."

So I guess if Britain is going to have to bury its face in the pillow while Uncle Sam rides it from behind like a pile-driver, it might as well amuse itself – and everyone else – with the notion that showing the Russian rich the door to the cold outside was all its own idea. Yes; 'course it was!

The welcome mat is still emphatically out for guys like Len Blavatnik, though, the richest man in Britain , with an estimated fortune of £15 billion. Because he's from Odessa originally, and the last time I looked, that was in Ukraine. Even when it was prodding Britain to impose sanctions against certain Ukrainian oligarchs (never Poroshenko, of course, who is a 'tycoon', which is a different thing altogether), the USA made it clear that sanctioning Ukrainians was meant to pressure them to break with Viktor Yanukovich , not to punish them. Mr. Blavatnik had a spot of bother when he was accused of working through his connections with TNK-BP oil company in Russia to drive westerners – including Britons – out of Russia in a dispute between TNK-BP and BP. You would think critics' attitude was a bit churlish, considering Mr. Blavatnik had just donated £75 million to Oxford University, the largest single donation in its history and one recognized publicly by the British Prime Minister. But Mr. Blavatnik knows how to spread money around; he is a patron not only of Oxford, but of the British Museum, the Tate Modern, the Royal Opera House, the National Portrait Gallery and the Museum of Modern Art. He is a personal friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, and a generous supporter of both US political parties, although he leans heavily Republican. He could show up at a Royal Opera House performance of Anna Karenina with a human head in his lap and nobody would give it a second look.

Good thing they did not investigate far enough back to learn that Mr. Blavatnik outmaneuvered BP in an almost-identical riposte back in the late 90's except then he did it with the help of his Washington advisers .

Moreover, to secure the credit guarantees, Blavatnik and his Washington advisers have so far outmaneuvered a Goliath: BP-Amoco. The largest producer of oil and gas in the United States, the British-American giant is fighting to keep its interest in another rich Siberian field also coveted by Tyumen Oil. BP-Amoco contends that Tyumen's takeover tactics there are unfair and could jeopardize its $571 million investment, one of the largest by a western company in Russia.

Well, enough of that; we're not really here to talk about Mr. Blavatnik and his squeaky-clean money – we're here to talk about the patently ridiculous announcement that Britain has an aversion to 'dirty money', and would have been much more a scourge of fiscal dishonesty if it had not been held back by its corrupt European partners.

The well-established facts suggest that Britain how can I put this? A nice way to not be deliberately insulting would be to say that London's financial centers do not discriminate against money based on its origins; there is no such thing as dirty money, or clean money, there is just money; how's that? Or, to put it as the man who blew the whistle on the Naples crime syndicate, the Camorra – Robert Saviano – did back in 2016, " the UK is the most corrupt place on earth ". Not a lot of gray area there, I think you'll agree.

"It's not the bureaucracy, it's not the police, it's not the politics but what is corrupt is the financial capital."

His assessment was backed by Transparency International, the outfit the UK worships whenever it is ripping on Russia for being an authoritarian hellhole ruled by an imp of Satan. The agency's own UK head of advocacy and research had no argument with the allegation.

"It's absolutely true that the UK is one of the leading financial centres for the laundering of corrupt money from overseas, whether through the property market, luxury goods or other sectors The UK has been a prime location for stashing away illicitly gained wealth, as anti-money laundering systems are weak and sectors such as UK property represent a safe investment, as well as a place to hide corrupt money."

All, all because the other European nations were mocking Britain for not being sufficiently corrupt, of course – what's a country to do when its conscience says, "This is so wrong", while the rest of the gang chants, "Scrub!! Scrub!! Launder that dirty money and pocket usurious profits, or you can't be in the club!!" As if.

Oh, but wait! We don't have complete agreement. The British Home Office – a term that, for me, always conjures an image of a crackling fire in a cozy fireplace, perhaps with a dog snoozing on the rug – said only this year that it was so darned proud that none other than, yes, Transparency International had ranked the UK the 8th least-corrupt country in the world !

How can those two realities co-exist?

Obviously, they cannot. I suggest the conundrum offers at least two considerations; one, the British Home Office has an obvious interest in refuting any talk about the UK being a festering swamp of corruption. Two, Transparency International cannot be relied upon to supply unbiased assessments so long as it is funded by, among others , the European Commission and the UK's own Department of International Development. So you can consider their evaluations with the same gravitas you might accord a similar opinion expressed by the paper boy, or whoever cuts your hair – interesting, but not necessarily informed, and quite possibly influenced.

I'm sure most or all of you remember the "Panama Papers"; those who obtained the files gloated that the information revealed was going to be curtains for Putin, as it exposed his nefarious financial dealings that made him the richest person on earth. That turned out to be horseshit, as we have learned to expect – not because Putin would never do anything bad, but because of the ideological nutjobbery of those who make such promises, as if wishing really hard would make it true. Putin himself was not mentioned anywhere in the millions of documents, and attempts to link him to a few Russian accounts that were said to be those of 'Putin's cronies' got no traction whatsoever.

However, the Mossack-Fonseca law firm's stolen files did reveal some astonishing British connections , not least of which was the then-Prime-Minister of the UK's father, who used an offshore account to evade British taxes. How do you guys feel about paying into his old-age pension now? But that was just a relatively-amusing diversion. This was the real money shot:

The Panama Papers leak – with 11.5 million documents the the largest leak in history so far – has implicated many of Britain's biggest banks as well. HSBC, Coutts, and Rothschild were among the banks mentioned in the papers. Since the 1970s the Mossack Fonseca law firm set up over 3000 shell companies for the aforementioned banks. These shell companies allowed their clients to evade taxes, as well as allowing them to participate in criminal or corrupt activities.

Over 3000 shell companies set up, since the 1970's , to allow HSBC, Coutts, and Rothschild – among others – to evade taxes and to engage in criminal or corrupt activities. Like money-laundering. Since the 1970's, which mathematics bids me point out was at least 39 years ago. Kind of a long time to be striving for acceptance into the Corruption Club, don't you think – what does a country have to do these days to receive its due acclaim?

Look; I don't know who Britain thinks it's fooling with that butter-wouldn't-melt-in-my-mouth wide-eyed innocence. But chances are good that it is not the US Department of State from whom Britain takes its orders, couched as 'helpful suggestions'. The hash the British government is making of Brexit, coupled with the US State Department's focus on squeezing only Russian oligarchs out of the money trough, virtually guarantees the whole effort will rebound on Britain in the worst kind of consequences.

Meanwhile, the fatuous premise that Britain was only pretending to walk the walk so that the mean kids in the gang wouldn't beat it up for its lunch money is somewhere south of insulting.

[Nov 22, 2018] Moscow Exile

Nov 22, 2018 | gravatar.com

November 19, 2018 at 9:57 pm Mention of Meghan, "Duchess of Sussex", leads me to this:

Britain's enemy is not Russia but its own ruling class, UN report confirms

A devastating UN report into poverty in the UK provides incontrovertible evidence that the enemy of the British people is the very ruling class that has gone out of its way these past few years to convince them it is Russia.

Professor Philip Alston, in his capacity as the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights, spent two weeks touring the United Kingdom. He did so investigating the impact of eight years of one of the most extreme austerity programs among advanced G20 economies in response to the 2008 financial crash and subsequent global recession.

What he found was evidence of a systematic, wilful, concerted and brutal economic war unleashed by the country's right-wing Tory establishment against the poorest and most vulnerable section of British society – upending the lives of millions of people who were not responsible for the aforementioned financial crash and recession but who have been forced to pay the price.

The above photograph was taken in Windsor, site of an ancient pile that is one of the British royal residences and also the place where "Meghan" and "Harry" got wed. The British press likes to refer to "royals" in first name terms in order to to suggest that they are all just good friends of every true Briton.

Before that great jamboree, the streets of Windsor were cleared of the homeless. Windsor is a good place to cadge off tourists. However, those deluded folk who wished to yell "Hurrah!" as the happy newlyweds passed them in their open landau were allowed by the authorities to sleep all night along the route along which the happy couple would take across Windsor Great Park.

Meanwhile, great criticism of the Russian authoritiies was made in the free Western press when it was alleged that civic authorities there were removing and humanely destroying feral dogs that roamed the streets of those cites venued for competitions in the football world cup championship. Some articles crticizing this, in my opinion at least, eminently wise action, were accompanied by a fake photograph of culled dogs on a Pakistan street.


Spare a copper, guv? [ca. 1920]

In the above picture, the bearded toff in a topper is Betty Windsor's grandfather, King George V, Defender of the Faith, King of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, King of Ireland and of the British Dominions beyond the Seas, Emperor of India.

I call Elizabetth II "Betty" because we are good friends.

Like Like Reply

  1. Moscow Exile says: November 20, 2018 at 4:42 am
    Milla, Liz and Kate looking proper pissed off.

    Struggling to make ends meet must be a real burden for them.

    Like Like Reply

    1. Jen says: November 20, 2018 at 4:36 pm You can see Betty Windsor's mind is on other things like how well the financial consultants from the US will get along with the corgis. No doubt those dogs will discover a new purpose in life!

      Like Like Reply

    2. Mark Chapman says: November 20, 2018 at 4:42 pm Sharing a balcony with Camilla would put me off my food – you could push her face in dough and make ugly cookies.

      Maybe they're all upset at the entry into the family of the former Ms. Markle, albeit she's the kind of easy on the eyes I like. Although Mrs. William is no slouch in that department. I never really expected them to toil from sunup to sundown for their crust, and they don't run my country, so I'm not disappointed.

      Like Like Reply

[Nov 19, 2018] Did Britain initiate both world wars?

Nov 19, 2018 | www.unz.com

Wally , says: November 18, 2018 at 4:38 pm GMT

@Tulip So then, you do not have proof that the Germans killed those which they are said to have killed.
But hey, you do have the almighty name calling. I suggest giving Zionist TeeVee a rest.

As for German aggression, you're wrong on that too.
Sorry to keep posting the same rebuttals below, Ron. But as you see, we get the same ignorant claims.
facts:
- USSR invaded Finland, Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland, invaded & annexed parts of Romania, invaded Iran, invaded northern Norway and the Danish island of Bornholm, yet the 'Allies' did nothing.
- Poland invaded and annexed parts of Czechoslovakia, held large parts of German territory, was engaged in atrocities against German civilians. Yet the 'Allies' did nothing.
- The "neutral" US had been attacking German U-boats & shipping, while supplying both Britain & the USSR long before Germany's declaration of war on the US.
- Brits invaded & were mining Norway at Narvik before Germany arrived & stopped it.
- France had positioned 2 million soldiers on the Belgian border, and the BEF had almost another half million.
- France and England were already violating Belgian and Dutch "neutrality" with impunity by flying aircraft over the lowlands.
- It is important to remember that France had already invaded Germany, the Saar in 1939, and that throughout this entire period Hitler was begging Churchill to negotiate a return to the status quo.
Did Britain initiate both world wars? : https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=10458
Responsibility for WW2 : https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7544
Introduction to HITLER'S WAR: http://www.unz.com/article/introduction-to-hitlers-war/
Who started bombing civilians first: Germany or Great Britain, Britain: https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=8172
Operation Barbarossa Was A Preventive Attack : https://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=7999
http://www.codoh.com

jilles dykstra , says: November 18, 2018 at 6:40 pm GMT
@Tulip Hitler Germany conquered Poland in a few weeks, snatched Norway from under Churchill's nose, and beat France in three weeks.
About Churchill's stupidity in military matters: Gallipoli, and see what the commander of the British army thought about him:
Colonel Roderick Macleod, D.S.O., M.C., and Dennis Kelly, 'TIME UNGUARDED The Ironside Diaries 1937- 1940′, New York, 1963
Hitler never wanted war:
A J P Taylor, 'The Origins of the Second World War', 1961, 1967, Londen
German economy:
from 1933 until 1936 unemployment was reduced from six to one million.
FDR's New Deal did hardly reduce USA unemployment.
Hitler's big mistake was to underestimate the power of international jewry:
Jean-Noël Jeanneney, 'Francois de Wendel en République, L'Argent et le Pouvoir 1914-1940, Paris 1976
Ludendorff already understood quite well that the allies wanted to destroy Germany
Erich Ludendorff, 'Meine Kriegserinnerungen 1914 = 1918′, Berlin, 1918
And see
Patrick J. Buchanan, 'Churchill, Hitler and "The unnecessary war", How Britain lost its empire and the west lost the world', New York, 2008

[Nov 16, 2018] What America's Coup in Ukraine Did by Eric Zuesse

This critique is pretty superficial. The truth is that Ukraine drifted to Baltic model (not without help from Western Europe and the USA) for a long time. And the process started in 2001 not in 2014. That means that February 2014 coup d'état by far right nationalist forces was just quantity turned into quality. With the dissolution of the USSR, it is clear that the result of WWII and Yalta conference will be revised.
While it is true that it was the greatest geopolitical victory of Barack Obama and the USA against Russia, it made the world more dangerous. The fact that it saws the teeth of dragon escaped those great US neocon strategists, like Victoria Nuland. She looks pretty medictre person to me, judging from her public appearances. Far below the level of position she occupied. Out of depth. Kind of early variation of Nikki Haley theme.
The USA established itself as a world power at the end of WWI, and the No.1 nation after WWII. So apparance of the USA on world scene happened a century ago and the period of the USA primacy started around 1945 or 72 year ago. But after dissolution of the USSR the US elite lost the countervailing power that kept it in check (and Sober) and now neocons which came to power after the crash fo the USSR are destroying the USA pretty fast. They are real national cancer. So sad... Neocons policy of fighting and challenging the rest of the world essentially guarantee that its dominant position will not last more one century.
Mar 24, 2017 | off-guardian.org
In March 23rd, Gallup headlined "South Sudan, Haiti and Ukraine Lead World in Suffering" , and the Ukrainian part of that can unquestionably be laid at the feet of U.S. President Barack Obama, who in February 2014 imposed upon Ukraine a very bloody coup (see above), which he and his press misrepresented (and still misrepresent) as being (and still represent as having been) a 'democratic revolution', but was nothing of the sort, and actually was instead the start of the Ukrainian dictatorship and the hell that has since destroyed that country, and brought the people there into such misery, it's now by far the worst in Europe, and nearly tied with the worst in the entire world.

America's criminal 'news' media never even reported the coup, nor that in 2011 the Obama regime began planning for a coup in Ukraine . And that by 1 March 2013 they started organizing it inside the U.S. Embassy there . And that they hired members of Ukraine's two racist-fascist, or nazi, political parties, Right Sector and Svoboda (which latter had been called the Social Nationalist Party of Ukraine until the CIA advised them to change it to Freedom Party, or "Svoboda" instead). And that in February 2014 they did it (and here's the 4 February 2014 phone call instructing the U.S. Ambassador whom to place in charge of the new regime when the coup will be completed), under the cover of authentic anti-corruption demonstrations that the Embassy organized on the Maidan Square in Kiev, demonstrations that the criminal U.S. 'news' media misrepresented as 'democracy demonstrations,' though Ukraine already had democracy (but still lots of corruption, even more than today's U.S. does, and the pontificating Obama said he was trying to end Ukraine's corruption -- which instead actually soared after his coup there).

The head of the 'private CIA' firm Stratfor said it was "the most blatant coup in history" but he couldn't say that to Americans, because he knows that our press is just a mouthpiece for the regime (just like it was during the lead-up to George W. Bush's equally unprovoked invasion of Iraq -- for which America's 'news' media suffered likewise no penalties).

When subsequently accused by neocons for his having said this, his response was "I told the business journal Kommersant that if the US were behind a coup in Kiev, it would have been the most blatant coup in history," but he was lying to say this, because, as I pointed out when writing about that rejoinder of his, he had, in fact, made quite clear in his Kommersant interview, that it was, in his view "the most blatant coup in history," no conditionals on that.

Everybody knows what Obama, and Clinton , and Sarkozy, did to Libya -- in their zeal to eliminate yet another nation's leader who was friendly toward Russia (Muammar Gaddafi), they turned one of the highest-living-standard nations in Africa into a failed state and huge source of refugees (as well as of weapons that the Clinton State Department transferred to the jihadists in Syria to bring down Bashar al-Assad, another ally of Russia) -- but the 'news' media have continued to hide what Obama (assisted by America's European allies, especially Poland and Netherlands, and also by America's apartheid Middle Eastern ally, Israel) did to Ukraine.

I voted for Obama, partly because the insane McCain ("bomb, bomb, bomb Iran") and the creepy Romney ("Russia, this is, without question, our number one geopolitical foe") were denounced by the (duplicitous) Obama for saying such evil things, their aggressive international positions, which continued old Cold-War-era hostilities into the present, even after the Cold War had ended long ago (in 1991) ( but only on the Russian side ). I since have learned that in today's American political system, the same aristocracy controls both of our rotten political Parties, and American democracy no longer exists. (And the only scientific study of whether America between the years 1981 and 2002 was democratic found that it was not, and it already confirmed what Jimmy Carter later said on 28 July 2015 :

Now it's just an oligarchy with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or being elected president. And the same thing applies to governors, and U.S. Senators and congress members."

But yet our Presidents continue the line, now demonstrably become a myth, of 'American democracy', and use it as a sledgehammer against other governments, to 'justify' invading (or, in Ukraine's case, overthrowing via a 'democratic revolution') their lands (allies of Russia) such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and maybe even soon, Iran.

Here are some of the events and important historical details along the way to Ukraine's plunge into a worse condition than most African nations:

"Yanukovych's Removal Was Unconstitutional" "Obama Definitely Caused The Malaysian Airliner To Be Downed" "War on Donbass was planned to ignite a major war in Europe." "Our 'Enemies' In Ukraine Speak" "Meet Ukraine's Master Mass-Murderer: Dmitriy Yarosh" "Ukrainian Soldier Explains Why He Enjoys Killing Russians" "Russia's Leader Putin Rejects Ukrainian Separatists' Aim To Become Part Of Russia" "Gallup: Ukrainians Loathe the Kiev Government Imposed by Obama"

Please send this article to every friend who is part of the majority that, as a Quinnipiac University poll published on March 22nd reported, "A total of 51 percent of voters say they can trust U.S. intelligence agencies to do what is right 'almost all of the time' or 'most of the time'" (and that level of trust was far higher than for the rotten press and for the rotten politicians), even after the CIA's rubber-stamping Bush's lies to invade Iraq, and after the FBI's shameless performance on Hillary Clinton's privatized State Department emails even after her smashing their cell-phones with hammers , etc., and all the other official cover-ups, with no American officials even so much as being charged for their rampant crimes against the American public. Besides: ever since the CIA's founding, it has had an "Operation Gladio" that specializes in organizing terrorist acts so as for them to be blamed on, first, communist countries when they existed; and, then, after the end of communism, on allies of Russia. Did the American dictatorship begin right after FDR died in 1945? How much longer will these lies succeed?

For the people of Iraq , and of Syria , and of Ukraine, and many such countries, this dictatorship has destroyed their lives. Trusting the 'intelligence' services of a dictatorship doesn't make any sense at all. They're all working for the aristocracy, the billionaires -- not for any public, anywhere; not here, not there, just nowhere. Should the cattle trust the feedlot-operator? Only ignorance can produce trust, under the conditions that actually exist.

So, unless the idea is that ignorance is bliss, pass along the truth, when you find it, because it is very rare -- and the system operates to keep it that way.


Farrier says Nov, 14, 2017

Overthrowing Ukraine was an attempt to end Russia being the major power on the Black Sea and establish it as a NATO lake to stop Russia from using the sea to aid Syria or Iran. That was ruined when Putin seized Crimea, keeping the Russian naval base.
Frank says Mar, 25, 2017
In fact, the destabilization of the Ukraine occurred at the dawn of the new century in 2004. The Presidential election of that year between Victor Yuschenko and Victor Yanukovich resulted initially in the victory of Yanukovich. However serious allegations regarding electoral fraud were raised. This resulted in mass demonstrations in Kiev and other cities throughout Ukraine.

A re-run was ordered and the second time around Yushchenko took the Presidency with 52% of the vote to Yanukovich's 44%. Suffice it to say that prior to the re-run a number of shadowy foreign NGOs – including the National Endowment for Democracy – were active in promoting civic disobedience in a number of Ukrainian cities in west and central Ukraine. Independence Square in the middle of Kiev was occupied after the first election which was declared invalid. These events became known as the 'Orange Revolution'.

It would be misleading to assume that significant numbers of the protestors did not have a valid case against Yanukovich in terms of corruption and self-serving. However, it was equally true that many of the demonstrators' motives were somewhat less noble. Prior to the election Yushchenko had promised his running mate Yulia Tymoshenko the position of Prime Minister should he win the election. Thus throughout, the disturbances were a struggle between the eastern and western oligarchs.

On the crucial question of the nature of these events, 'Peoples power' or 'revolutionary coup' the issue remains undecided.
This notwithstanding the British historian David Lane of Emmanuel College Cambridge argued that

"The 'Orange Revolution' in Ukraine was widely considered to be an instance of the 'coloured revolutions' of 1989 engendered by democratic values and nascent civil societies in the process of nation building. The extent to which the 'Orange Revolution' could be considered a revolutionary event stimulated by civil society, or a different type of political activity (a putsch, coup d'état), legitimated by elite-sponsored 'soft' political power. Based on public opinion poll data and responses from focus groups, the author contends that what began as an orchestrated protest election fraud developed into a novel type of political activity -- a revolutionary coup d'état. It is contended that the movement was divisive rather than integrative and did not enjoy widespread popular support."

Which is about the nearest we will get to an authentic answer.

What followed, however, was a complete and corrupt shamble of opportunism, corruption and self-serving misrule of Yuschenko and Tymoshenko who, after becoming involved in some dubious energy deals was to become known as the 'Gas Princess'. These two paragons of democracy eventually became bitter enemies and saw the return of Yanukovich after the Presidential contest between her and Yanukovich in 2010 which Yanukovich narrowly won.

leruscino says Mar, 24, 2017
Wanted Dead or Alive !

BARRACK HUSSEIN OBAMA – AKA 'Barry Soetoro'

Crimes:
Mass Murder (c) 600,000+ Killed, Syria, Libya, Ukraine, Yemen.
&
Wiretapping

Reward : Clear Conscious, Service to Humanity.

Loading...
mohandeer says Mar, 24, 2017
Reblogged this on wgrovedotnet and commented:

It's long been a truth that democracy in the US died a long time ago and the wealth and power behind the POTUS, irrespective of who that might be, are mere puppets. Obama won his presidency on outright lies and the crooked Clintons and Sarkozys of the US corrupt elite serve no-one's interests but their own at the cost of the lives of Ukrainian Russian ethnics and the Libyan, Iraqi and Syrian people. "Saving Syria's children" would require the removal of the source of their suffering, which can be firmly laid at the door of murderous Washington War Hawks, rent-a-gobs like Samantha Powers and Victoria Nuland(nee Kagan)and corrupt MSM supporting the rogue state that is the USA.

[Nov 06, 2018] US-British Threats Against Russia Have a Long History by T.J. Coles – Matthew Alford

Notable quotes:
"... Union Jackboot: What Your Media and Professors Don't Tell You About British Foreign Policy ..."
"... There seems to be a consensus that we need a strong military because Russia is on the rise. What do you think about that rationale? ..."
"... What about military threats? ..."
"... So we've extended NATO to pretty much the Russian border? But there's a hard border there. Everyone knows we're never going to attack Russia, both for reasons of morality and self-preservation. So maybe this situation is safer than you imply. ..."
"... Brexit White Paper ..."
"... T. J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University's Cognition Institute and the author of several books. ..."
"... Matthew Alford teaches at Bath University in the UK and has also written several books. Their latest is ..."
"... The Rise and Fall of the British Empire ..."
"... Bolshevism and Imperial Sedition ..."
"... Power without Responsibility ..."
"... Russian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot ..."
"... Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community ..."
"... Vision for 2020 ..."
"... Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future ..."
"... The New Atlanticist ..."
"... The United Kingdom's relations with Russia ..."
Nov 06, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

In their new book Union Jackboot: What Your Media and Professors Don't Tell You About British Foreign Policy (Até Books), doctors T.J. Coles and Matthew Alford debate the rationale of Anglo-American policy towards Russia.

Alford: There seems to be a consensus that we need a strong military because Russia is on the rise. What do you think about that rationale?

Coles: There's no consensus, except among European and American elites. Europe and America are not the world.

There are a lot of issues to consider with regards to Russia. Is it a threat? If so to whom? What kind of threat is Russia? So let's consider these questions carefully. As far as the British establishment is concerned, Russia is an ideological threat because it is a major power with a substantial population. It's also self-reliant where oil and gas is concerned, unlike Britain. So there's lots of potential for Russian political ideology to undermine Britain's status. In fact, there are European Council on Foreign Relations papers saying that Putin's Russia presents an "ideological alternative" to the EU. [i] And that's dangerous.

Britain, or more accurately its policymaking elites, have considered Russia a significant enemy for over a century. Under the Tsar, the so-called Great Game was a battle for strategic resources, trading routes, and so on. The historian Lawrence James calls this period the first Cold War, which went "hot" with the Crimean War (1853-56). [ii] Britain had a mixed relationship with the Tsars because, on the one hand, theirs' were repressive regimes and Britain tended to favour repressive regimes, hence their brief alliance with Russia's enemy, the Ottomans. On the other hand, Russia was a strategic threat to Britain's imperial interests, and thus the Crimean War (1853-56).

When the Bolsheviks took over Russia, beginning 1917, the relationship became much less ambiguous – Russians, and especially Bolsheviks, were clearly the enemy. Their ideology posed a threat internally. So Winston Churchill, who began as a Liberal and became a Conservative, considered the Labour Party, which was formed in 1900, as basically a front for Bolsheviks. [iii] That shows the level of paranoia among elites. The Labour Party, at least at the beginning, was a genuine, working man's political organisation – women couldn't vote then, remember. So by associating this progressive, grassroots party representing the working classes as an ideological ally or even puppet of the brutal Bolshevik regime, the Tories had an excuse to undermine the power of organised, working people. So you had the Zinoviev letter in 1924, which we now know was a literal conspiracy between the secret services and elements of the Tory party to fabricate a link between Labour and Moscow. And it famously cost Labour the general election, since the right-wing, privately-owned media ran with the story as though it was real. It's an early example of fake news. [iv]

That's the ideological threat that Russia has posed, historically. But where there's a threat, there's an opportunity. The British elites exploited the "threat" then and as they do today by associating organised labour with evil Bolshevism and, in doing so, alienate the lower classes from their own political interests. Suddenly, we've all got to be scared of Russia, just like in 1917. And let's not forget that Britain used chemical weapons – M-Devices, which induced vomiting – against the Bolsheviks. Chemical weapons were "the right medicine for the Bolshevist," in Churchill's words. This was in 1919, as part of the Allied invasion of Russia in support of the White Army. [v]

So if we're talking about the historical balance of forces and cause and effect, Britain not Russia initiated the use of chemical weapons against others. But this history is typically inverted to say that Russia poses a threat to the West, hence all the talk about Novichok, the Skripals, and Dawn Sturgess, the civilian who supposedly came into contact with Novichok and died in hospital a few days later.

The next question: What sort of threat is Russia? According to the US Army War College, since the collapse of the Soviet Union and since pro-US, pro-"free market" President Boris Yeltsin resigned in 1999, Russia has pursued so-called economic nationalism. And the US doesn't like this because markets suddenly get closed and taxes are raised against US corporations. [vi] That's the real threat. But you can't tell the public that: that we hate Russia because they aren't doing what we say. If you look through the military documents, you can find almost nothing about security threats against the US in terms of Russian expansion, except in the sense that "security" means operational freedom. You can find references to Russia's nuclear weapons, though, which are described as defensive, designed "to counter US forces and weapons systems." [vii] Try finding that on the BBC. I should mention that even "defensive" nukes can be launched accidentally.

The real goal with regards to Russia is maintaining US economic hegemony and the culture of open "free markets" that goes with it, while at the same time being protectionist in real life. (US protectionism didn't start under Trump, by the way.) Liberal media like the New York Times run sarcastic articles about Russian state oil and gas being a front for Putin and his cronies. And yes, that may be true. But what threat is Russia to the US if it has a corrupt government? The threat is closing its markets to the US. The US is committed to what its military calls Full Spectrum Dominance. So the world needs to be run in a US-led neoliberal order, in the words of the US military, "to protect US interests and investment." [viii] But this cannot be done if you have "economic nationalism," like China had until the "reforms" of the '70s and '80s, and still has today to some extent. Russia and China aren't military threats. The global population on the whole knows this, even though the domestic US and British media say the opposite.

Alford: What about military threats?

Coles: The best sources you can get are the US military records. Straight from the horse's mouth. The military plans for war and defence. They have contingencies for when political situations change. So they know what they're talking about. There's a massive divide between reality, as understood from the military records, and media and political rhetoric. Assessments by the US Army War College, for instance, said years ago that any moves by NATO to support a Western-backed government in Ukraine would provoke Russia into annexing Crimea. They don't talk about Russia spontaneously invading Ukraine and annexing it, which is the image we get from the media. The documents talk about Russia reacting to NATO provocation. [ix]

If you look at a map, you see Russia surrounded by hostile NATO forces. The media don't discuss this dangerous and provocative situation, except the occasional mention of, say, US-British-Polish war-gaming on the border with Russia. When they do mention it, they say it's for "containment," the containment of Russia. But to contain something, the given thing has to be expanding. But the US military – like the annual threat assessments to Congress – say that Russia's not expanding, except when provoked. So at the moment as part of its NATO mission, the UK is training Polish and Ukrainian armed forces, has deployed troops in Poland and Estonia, and is conducting military exercises with them. [x]

Imagine if Scotland ceded from the UK and the Russians were on our border conducting military exercises, supposedly to deter a British invasion of Scotland. That's what we're doing in Ukraine. Britain's moves are extremely dangerous. In the 1980s, the UK as part of NATO conducted the exercise, Operation Able Archer, which envisaged troop build-ups between NATO and the Warsaw Pact countries. Now-declassified records show that the Russians briefly mistook this exercise for a real-world scenario. That could have escalated into nuclear war. This is very serious. [xi]

But the biggest player is the USA. It's using the threat of force and a global architecture of hi-tech militarism to shape a neoliberal order. Britain is slavishly following its lead. I doubt that Britain would position forces near Russia were it not for the USA. Successive US administrations have or are building a missile system in Europe and Turkey. They say it's to deter Iran from firing Scud missiles at Europe. But it's pointed at Russia. It's a radar system based in Romania and Turkey, with a battery of Patriot missiles based in Poland. The stationing of missiles there provoked Russia into moving its mobile nuclear weapons up to the border in its Kaliningrad exclave, as it warned it would do in 2008. [xii] Try to find any coverage of that in the media, except for a few articles in the print media here or there. If Western media were interested in survival, there would be regular headlines: "NATO provoking Russia."

But the situation in Ukraine is really the tipping point. Consider the equivalent. Imagine if Russia was conducting military exercises with Canada or Mexico, and building bases there. How would the US react? It would be considered an extreme threat, a violation of the UN Charter, which prohibits threats against sovereign states.

Alford: So we've extended NATO to pretty much the Russian border? But there's a hard border there. Everyone knows we're never going to attack Russia, both for reasons of morality and self-preservation. So maybe this situation is safer than you imply.

Coles: There's no morality involved. States are abstract, amorphous entities comprised of dominant minorities and subjugated majorities who are conditioned to believe that they are relatively free and prosperous. The elites of those states act both in their self-interests – career, peer-pressure, kickbacks, and so on – and in the interests of their class, which is of course tied to international relations because their class thrives on profiting from resource exploitation. So you can't talk about morality in this context. Only individuals can behave morally. The state is made up of individuals, of course, but they're acting against the interests of the majority. As we speak, they are acting immorally – or at least amorally – but creating the geopolitical conditions that imperil each and every one of us.

As for invasion, we're not going to invade Russia. This isn't 1918. Russia has nuclear weapons and can deter an invasion. But that's not the point. Do we want to de-escalate an already tense geopolitical situation or make it worse to the point where an accident happens? So while it's not about invading Russia directly, the issue is about attacking what are called Russia's "national interests." Russia's "national interests" are the same as the elites' of the UK. National interest doesn't mean the interests of the public. It means the interests of the policymaking establishment and the corporations. For example, the Theresa May government sacrificed its own credibility to ensure that its Brexit White Paper (2018) appeased both the interests of the food and manufacturing industries that want a soft Brexit – easy trade with the EU – and the financial services sector which wants a hard Brexit – freedom from EU regulation. Everyone else be damned. That's the "national interest."

So for its real "national interest," Russia wants to keep Ukraine in its sphere of influence because its oil and gas to Europe pass through Ukraine. About 80% of Russia's export economy is in the oil and gas sector. It's already had serious political tensions with Ukraine, which on several occasions hasn't paid its energy bills, so Russia has cut supplies. If Europe can bump Ukraine into its own sphere of influence it has more leverage over Russia. This is practically admitted in Parliamentary discussions by Foreign Office ministers, and so forth. [xiii] Again, omitted by the media. Also, remember that plenty of ethnic Russians live in eastern Ukraine. In addition, Russia has a naval base in Crimea. That's not to excuse its illegal action in annexing Ukraine, it's to highlight the realpolitik missing in the media's coverage of the situation.

T. J. Coles is a postdoctoral researcher at Plymouth University's Cognition Institute and the author of several books.

Matthew Alford teaches at Bath University in the UK and has also written several books. Their latest is Union Jackboot (Até Books).

SOURCES

[i] Mark Leonard and Nicu Popescu (2007) 'A Power Audit of EU-Russia Relations' European Council on Foreign Relations, Policy Paper, p. 1 http://www.ecfr.eu/page/-/ECFR-02_A_POWER_AUDIT_OF_EU-RUSSIA_RELATIONS.pdf .

[ii] 'Anglo-Russian relations were severely strained; what was in effect a cold war lasted from the late 1820s to the beginning of the next century'. The Crimean War seems to have set a precedent for today. James writes:

[It] was an imperial war, the only one fought by Britain against a European power during the nineteenth century, although some would have regarded Russia as essentially an Asiatic power. No territory was at stake; the war was undertaken solely to guarantee British naval supremacy in the Mediterranean and, indirectly, to forestall any threat to India which might have followed Russia replacing Britain as the dominant power in the Middle East.

Lawrence James (1997) The Rise and Fall of the British Empire London: Abacus, pp. 180-82.

[iii] Churchill said in 1920:

All these strikes and rumours of strikes and threats of strikes and loss and suffering caused by them; all this talk of revolution and "direct action" have deeply offended most of the British people. There is a growing feeling that a considerable section of organized Labour is trying to tyrannize over the whole public and to bully them into submission, not by argument, not by recognized political measures, but by brute force

But if we can do little for Russia [under the Bolsheviks], we can do much for Britain. We do not want any of these experiments here

Whether it is the Irish murder gang or the Egyptian vengeance society, or the seditious extremists in India, or the arch-traitors we have at home, they will feel the weight of the British arm.

Winston Churchill (1920) Bolshevism and Imperial Sedition . Speech to United Wards Club. London: The International Churchill Society https://winstonchurchill.org/resources/speeches/1915-1929-nadir-and-recovery/bolshevism-and-imperial-sedition/ .

[iv] The fake letter says:

A settlement of relations between the two countries [UK and Russia] will assist in the revolutionising of the international and British proletariat, [and] make it possible for us to extend and develop the propaganda and ideas of Leninism in England and the colonies.

It also says that 'British workmen' have 'inclinations to compromise' and that rapprochement will eventually lead to domestic '[a]rmed warfare'. It was leaked by the services to the Conservative party and then to the media. Richard Norton-Taylor (1999) 'Zinoviev letter was dirty trick by MI6' Guardian https://www.theguardian.com/politics/1999/feb/04/uk.politicalnews6 and Louise Jury (1999) 'Official Zinoviev letter was forged' Independent http://www.independent.co.uk/news/official-zinoviev-letter-was-forged-1068600.html . For media coverage at the time, see James Curran and Jean Seaton (1997) Power without Responsibility London: Routledge, p. 52.

[v] Paul F. Walker (2017) 'A Century of Chemical Warfare: Building a World Free of Chemical Weapons' Conference: One Hundred Years of Chemical Warfare: Research, Deployment, Consequences pp. 379-400 and Giles Milton (2013) Russian Roulette: A Deadly Game: How British Spies Thwarted Lenin's Global Plot London: Hodder, eBook.

[vi] 'The Russian Federation has shown repeatedly that common values play almost no role in its consideration of its trading partners', meaning the US and EU. 'It often builds relationships with countries that most openly thwart Western values of free markets and democracy', notably Iran and Venezuela. 'In this regard, the Russian Federation behaves like "Russia Incorporated." It uses its re-nationalized industries to further its wealth and influence, the latter often at the expense of the EU and the U.S.'. Colonel Richard J. Anderson (2008) 'A History of President Putin's Campaign to Re-Nationalize Industry and the Implications for Russian Reform and Foreign Policy' Senior Service College, US Army War College, Pennsylvania: Carlisle Barracks, p. 52.

[vii] Daniel R. Coats (2017) Statement for the Record: Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Washington, DC: Office of the Director of

National Intelligence, pp. 18-19 https://www.dni.gov/files/documents/Newsroom/Testimonies/SSCI%20Unclassified%20SFR%20-%20Final.pdf .

[viii] US Space Command (1997) Vision for 2020 Colorado: Peterson Air Force Base https://ia802705.us.archive.org/10/items/pdfy-j6U3MFw1cGmC-yob/U.S.%20Space%20Command%20Vision%20For%202020.pdf .

[ix] The document also says: 'a replay of the West-sponsored coup against pro-Russian elites could result in a split, or indeed multiple splits, of the failed Ukraine, which would open a door for NATO intervention'.Pavel K. Baev (2011) 'Russia's security relations with the United States: Futures planned and unplanned' in Stephen J. Blank (ed.) Russian Nuclear Weapons: Past, Present, and Future Strategic Studies Institute Pennsylvania: Carlisle Barracks, p. 170, www.strategicstudiesinstitute.army.mil/pdffiles/PUB1087.pdf.

[x] Forces Network (2016) 'British troops to deploy to Poland' https://www.forces.net/news/tri-service/british-troops-deploy-poland .

[xi] For example, Nate Jones, Thomas Blanton and Christian F. Ostermann (2016) 'Able Archer 83: The Secret History' Nuclear Proliferation International History Project Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars https://www.wilsoncenter.org/event/able-archer-83-the-secret-history .

[xii] It was reported in the ultra-right, neo-con press at the time that:

[Russian] President Dmitri Medvedev announced in his first state-of-the-nation address plans to deploy the short-range SS-26 ("Iskander") missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad if the U.S. goes ahead with its European Ballistic Missile Defense System (BMDS). Medvedev told parliament that the deployment would "neutralize" U.S. plans for a missile defense shield based in Poland and the Czech Republic [now in Romania), which the U.S. claims as vital in defending against missile attacks from 'rogue states' such as Iran.

Neil Leslie (2008) 'The Kaliningrad Missile Crisis' The New Atlanticist , available at http://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/new-atlanticist/the-kaliningrad-missile-crisis.

[xiii] For example, a Parliamentary inquiry into British-Russian relations says of the newly-imposed US-British ally in Ukraine:

President Poroshenko's Government is more openly committed to economic reform and anti-corruption than any previous Ukrainian Administration. The reform agenda has made considerable progress and has enjoyed some successes including police reform, liberalisation of the energy market and the launch of an online platform for government procurement

The annexation of Crimea also resulted in a ban on importing products from Crimea, on investing in or providing services linked to tourism and on exporting certain goods for use in the transport, telecoms and energy sectors.

House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee (2017) The United Kingdom's relations with Russia Seventh report of session 2016-17, HC 120 London: Stationary Office, pp. 28, 31 https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201617/cmselect/cmfaff/120/120.pdf

[Nov 05, 2018] Papadopoulos Details Alleged Entrapment Scheme By Undercover Deep State Agents

Notable quotes:
"... "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. ..."
"... 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 ..."
Nov 04, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

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:

[Nov 05, 2018] Bolsonaro a monster engineered by our media by Jonathan Cook

Notable quotes:
"... Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion. ..."
"... Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite's power. ..."
"... The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US. ..."
"... Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election. ..."
"... The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence. ..."
"... As in Pinochet's Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism. ..."
"... Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net . ..."
Nov 05, 2018 | www.unz.com

With Jair Bolsonaro's victory in Brazil's presidential election at the weekend, the doom-mongers among western elites are out in force once again. His success, like Donald Trump's, has confirmed a long-held prejudice: that the people cannot be trusted; that, when empowered, they behave like a mob driven by primitive urges; that the unwashed masses now threaten to bring down the carefully constructed walls of civilisation.

The guardians of the status quo refused to learn the lesson of Trump's election, and so it will be with Bolsonaro. Rather than engaging the intellectual faculties they claim as their exclusive preserve, western "analysts" and "experts" are again averting their gaze from anything that might help them understand what has driven our supposed democracies into the dark places inhabited by the new demagogues. Instead, as ever, the blame is being laid squarely at the door of social media.

Social media and fake news are apparently the reasons Bolsonaro won at the ballot box. Without the gatekeepers in place to limit access to the "free press" – itself the plaything of billionaires and global corporations, with brands and a bottom line to protect – the rabble has supposedly been freed to give expression to their innate bigotry.

Here is Simon Jenkins, a veteran British gatekeeper – a former editor of the Times of London who now writes a column in the Guardian – pontificating on Bolsonaro:

"The lesson for champions of open democracy is glaring. Its values cannot be taken for granted. When debate is no longer through regulated media, courts and institutions, politics will default to the mob. Social media – once hailed as an agent of global concord – has become the purveyor of falsity, anger and hatred. Its algorithms polarise opinion. Its pseudo-information drives argument to the extremes."

This is now the default consensus of the corporate media, whether in its rightwing incarnations or of the variety posing on the liberal-left end of the spectrum like the Guardian. The people are stupid, and we need to be protected from their base instincts. Social media, it is claimed, has unleashed humanity's id.

Selling plutocracy

There is a kind of truth in Jenkins' argument, even if it is not the one he intended. Social media did indeed liberate ordinary people. For the first time in modern history, they were not simply the recipients of official, sanctioned information. They were not only spoken down to by their betters, they could answer back – and not always as deferentially as the media class expected.

Clinging to their old privileges, Jenkins and his ilk are rightly unnerved. They have much to lose.

But that also means they are far from dispassionate observers of the current political scene. They are deeply invested in the status quo, in the existing power structures that have kept them well-paid courtiers of the corporations that dominate the planet.

Bolsonaro, like Trump, is not a disruption of the current neoliberal order; he is an intensification or escalation of its worst impulses. He is its logical conclusion.

The plutocrats who run our societies need figureheads, behind whom they can conceal their unaccountable power. Until now they preferred the slickest salespeople, ones who could sell wars as humanitarian intervention rather than profit-driven exercises in death and destruction; the unsustainable plunder of natural resources as economic growth; the massive accumulation of wealth, stashed in offshore tax havens, as the fair outcome of a free market; the bailouts funded by ordinary taxpayers to stem economic crises they had engineered as necessary austerity; and so on.

A smooth-tongued Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton were the favoured salespeople, especially in an age when the elites had persuaded us of a self-serving argument: that ghetto-like identities based on colour or gender mattered far more than class. It was divide-and-rule dressed up as empowerment. The polarisation now bewailed by Jenkins was in truth stoked and rationalised by the very corporate media he so faithfully serves.

Fear of the domino effect

Despite their professed concern, the plutocrats and their media spokespeople much prefer a far-right populist like Trump or Bolsonaro to a populist leader of the genuine left. They prefer the social divisions fuelled by neo-fascists like Bolsonaro, divisions that protect their wealth and privilege, over the unifying message of a socialist who wants to curtail class privilege, the real basis of the elite's power.

The true left – whether in Brazil, Venezuela, Britain or the US – does not control the police or military, the financial sector, the oil industries, the arms manufacturers, or the corporate media. It was these very industries and institutions that smoothed the path to power for Bolsonaro in Brazil, Viktor Orban in Hungary, and Trump in the US.

Former socialist leaders like Brazil's Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva or Hugo Chavez in Venezuela were bound to fail not so much because of their flaws as individuals but because powerful interests rejected their right to rule. These socialists never had control over the key levers of power, the key resources. Their efforts were sabotaged – from within and without – from the moment of their election.

Local elites in Latin America are tied umbilically to US elites, who in turn are determined to make sure any socialist experiment in their backyard fails – as a way to prevent a much-feared domino effect, one that might seed socialism closer to home.

The media, the financial elites, the armed forces were never servants of the socialist governments that have been struggling to reform Latin America. The corporate world has no interest either in building proper housing in place of slums or in dragging the masses out of the kind of poverty that fuels the drug gangs that Bolsonaro claims he will crush through more violence.

Bolsonaro will not face any of the institutional obstacles Lula da Silva or Chavez needed to overcome. No one in power will stand in his way as he institutes his "reforms". No one will stop him creaming off Brazil's wealth for his corporate friends. As in Pinochet's Chile, Bolsonaro can rest assured that his kind of neo-fascism will live in easy harmony with neoliberalism.

Immune system

If you want to understand the depth of the self-deception of Jenkins and other media gatekeepers, contrast Bolsonaro's political ascent to that of Jeremy Corbyn, the modest social democratic leader of Britain's Labour party. Those like Jenkins who lament the role of social media – they mean you, the public – in promoting leaders like Bolsonaro are also the media chorus who have been wounding Corbyn day after day, blow by blow, for three years – since he accidentally slipped past safeguards intended by party bureacrats to keep someone like him from power.

The supposedly liberal Guardian has been leading that assault. Like the rightwing media, it has shown its absolute determination to stop Corbyn at all costs, using any pretext.

Within days of Corbyn's election to the Labour leadership, the Times newspaper – the voice of the British establishment – published an article quoting a general, whom it refused to name, warning that the British army's commanders had agreed they would sabotage a Corbyn government. The general strongly hinted that there would be a military coup first.

We are not supposed to reach the point where such threats – tearing away the façade of western democracy – ever need to be implemented. Our pretend democracies were created with immune systems whose defences are marshalled to eliminate a threat like Corbyn much earlier.

Once he moved closer to power, however, the rightwing corporate media was forced to deploy the standard tropes used against a left leader: that he was incompetent, unpatriotic, even treasonous.

But just as the human body has different immune cells to increase its chances of success, the corporate media has faux-liberal-left agents like the Guardian to complement the right's defences. The Guardian sought to wound Corbyn through identity politics, the modern left's Achille's heel. An endless stream of confected crises about anti-semitism were intended to erode the hard-earned credit Corbyn had accumulated over decades for his anti-racism work.

Slash-and-burn politics

Why is Corbyn so dangerous? Because he supports the right of workers to a dignified life, because he refuses to accept the might of the corporations, because he implies that a different way of organising our societies is possible. It is a modest, even timid programme he articulates, but even so it is far too radical either for the plutocratic class that rules over us or for the corporate media that serves as its propaganda arm.

The truth ignored by Jenkins and these corporate stenographers is that if you keep sabotaging the programmes of a Chavez, a Lula da Silva, a Corbyn or a Bernie Sanders, then you get a Bolsonaro, a Trump, an Orban.

It is not that the masses are a menace to democracy. It is rather that a growing proportion of voters understand that a global corporate elite has rigged the system to accrue for itself ever greater riches. It is not social media that is polarising our societies. It is rather that the determination of the elites to pillage the planet until it has no more assets to strip has fuelled resentment and destroyed hope. It is not fake news that is unleashing the baser instincts of the lower orders. Rather, it is the frustration of those who feel that change is impossible, that no one in power is listening or cares.

Social media has empowered ordinary people. It has shown them that they cannot trust their leaders, that power trumps justice, that the elite's enrichment requires their poverty. They have concluded that, if the rich can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the planet, our only refuge, they can engage in slash-and-burn politics against the global elite.

Are they choosing wisely in electing a Trump or Bolsonaro? No. But the liberal guardians of the status quo are in no position to judge them. For decades, all parts of the corporate media have helped to undermine a genuine left that could have offered real solutions, that could have taken on and beaten the right, that could have offered a moral compass to a confused, desperate and disillusioned public.

Jenkins wants to lecture the masses about their depraved choices while he and his paper steer them away from any politician who cares about their welfare, who fights for a fairer society, who prioritises mending what is broken.

The western elites will decry Bolsonaro in the forlorn and cynical hope of shoring up their credentials as guardians of the existing, supposedly moral order. But they engineered him. Bolsonaro is their monster.

Jonathan Cook won the Martha Gellhorn Special Prize for Journalism. His books include "Israel and the Clash of Civilisations: Iraq, Iran and the Plan to Remake the Middle East" (Pluto Press) and "Disappearing Palestine: Israel's Experiments in Human Despair" (Zed Books). His website is www.jonathan-cook.net .

[Oct 28, 2018] WikiLeaks' Legacy of Exposing US-UK Complicity by Mark Curtis

Notable quotes:
"... Save WikiLeaks is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its exposures, including of the U.S.-UK "special relationship" in running a joint foreign policy of deception and violence that serves London and Washington's elite interests, says Mark Curtis. ..."
"... Middle East Eye ..."
"... A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had "put measures in place to protect your interests". ..."
"... The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I've extensively come across in my own research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya in March 2011, for example, the British government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on civilians and not to overthrow him. ..."
"... However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, having talked with now Foreign Secretary Hague about a "post-Qaddafi" Libya . This was more than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing. ..."
"... (U.S. Air Force photo) ..."
"... Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information on British ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S. officials were briefing the office of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that he was depressed and had a reputation as a bully, and on " the state of his marriage. " ..."
"... In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009, Joint Services Publication 440 , a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the security services on to avid leaks of information by hackers , journalists and foreign spies. ..."
"... (New Media Days / Peter Erichsen) ..."
Oct 28, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

WikiLeaks' Legacy of Exposing US-UK Complicity October 27, 2018 • 7 Comments

Save WikiLeaks is vilified by governments (and increasingly by journalists) for its exposures, including of the U.S.-UK "special relationship" in running a joint foreign policy of deception and violence that serves London and Washington's elite interests, says Mark Curtis.

By Mark Curtis
Middle East Eye

Twelve years ago this month, WikiLeaks began publishing government secrets that the world public might otherwise never have known. What it has revealed about state duplicity, human rights abuses and corruption goes beyond anything published in the world's "mainstream" media.

After over six months of being cut off from outside world, on 14 October 14 Ecuador has partly restored Wikileaks founder Julian Assange's communications with the outside world from its London embassy where the founder has been living for over six years. (Assange, however, later rejected Ecuador's restrictions imposed on him.)

The treatment – real and threatened – meted out to Assange by the U.S. and UK governments contrasts sharply with the service Wikileaks has done their publics in revealing the nature of elite power, as shown in the following snapshot of Wikileaks' revelations about British foreign policy in the Middle East.

Conniving with the Saudis

Whitehall's special relationship with Riyadh is exposed in an extraordinary cable from 2013 highlighting how Britain conducted secret vote-trading deals with Saudi Arabia to ensure both states were elected to the UN human rights council. Britain initiated the secret negotiations by asking Saudi Arabia for its support.

Hague: 'World needs pro-American regime' in Britain. (Chatham House)

The Wikileaks releases also shed details on Whitehall's fawning relationship with Washington. A 2008 cable , for example, shows then shadow foreign secretary William Hague telling the U.S. embassy that the British "want a pro-American regime. We need it. The world needs it."

A cable the following year shows the lengths to which Whitehall goes to defend the special relationship from public scrutiny. Just as the Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq War was beginning in 2009, Whitehall promised Washington that it had "put measures in place to protect your interests".

American Influence

It is not known what this protection amounted to, but no U.S. officials were called to give evidence to Chilcot in public. The inquiry was also refused permission to publish letters between former U.S. President George W. Bush and former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair written in the run-up to the war.

Also in 2009, then Prime Minister Gordon Brown raised the prospect of reducing the number of British nuclear-armed Trident submarines from four to three, a policy opposed in Washington. However, Julian Miller, an official in the UK's Cabinet Office, privately assured U.S. officials that his government "would consult with the U.S. regarding future developments concerning the Trident deterrent to assure there would be 'no daylight' between the U.S. and UK." The idea that British decision-making on Trident is truly independent of the U.S. is undermined by this cable.

The Wikileaks cables are rife with examples of British government duplicity of the kind I've extensively come across in my own research on UK declassified files. In advance of the British-NATO bombing campaign in Libya in March 2011, for example, the British government pretended that its aim was to prevent Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi's attacks on civilians and not to overthrow him.

However, Wikileaks files released in 2016 as part of its Hillary Clinton archive show William Burns, then the U.S. deputy secretary of state, having talked with now Foreign Secretary Hague about a "post-Qaddafi" Libya . This was more than three weeks before military operations began. The intention was clearly to overthrow Gaddafi, and the UN resolution about protecting civilians was simply window dressing.

Another case of British duplicity concerns Diego Garcia, the largest island in the Chagos archipelago in the Indian Ocean, which is now a major U.S. base for intervention in the Middle East. The UK has long fought to prevent Chagos islanders from returning to their homeland after forcibly removing them in the 1960s.

A secret 2009 cable shows that a particular ruse concocted by Whitehall to promote this was the establishment of a " marine reserve " around the islands. A senior Foreign Office official told the US that the "former inhabitants would find it difficult, if not impossible, to pursue their claim for resettlement on the islands if the entire Chagos Archipelago were a marine reserve."

A B-1B Lancer unleashes cluster munitions. The B-1B uses radar and inertial navigation equipment enabling aircrews to operate without the need for ground-based navigation aids. (U.S. Air Force photo)

A week before the "marine reserve" proposal was made to the U.S. in May 2009, then UK Foreign Secretary David Miliband was also conniving with the U.S., apparently to deceive the public. A cable reveals Miliband helping the U.S. to sidestep a ban on cluster bombs and keep the weapons at U.S. bases on UK soil, despite Britain signing the international treaty banning the weapons the previous year.

Miliband approved a loophole created by diplomats to allow U.S. cluster bombs to remain on UK soil and was part of discussions on how the loophole would help avert a debate in Parliament that could have "complicated or muddied" the issue. Critically, the same cable also revealed that the U.S. was storing cluster munitions on ships based at Diego Garcia.

Spying on the UK

Cables show the US spying on the Foreign Office and collecting information on British ministers. Soon after the appointment of Ivan Lewis as a junior foreign minister in 2009, U.S. officials were briefing the office of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about rumors that he was depressed and had a reputation as a bully, and on " the state of his marriage. "

Washington was also shown to have been spying on the UK mission to the UN, along with other members of the Security Council and the UN Secretary General.

In addition, Wikileaks cables reveal that journalists and the public are considered legitimate targets of UK intelligence operations. In October 2009, Joint Services Publication 440 , a 2,400-page restricted document written in 2001 by the Ministry of Defence, was leaked. Somewhat ironically, it contained instructions for the security services on to avid leaks of information by hackers , journalists and foreign spies.

Millions worldwide are demanding the release of Wikileaks founder Assange after six years of what the UN calls "arbitrary detention." (New Media Days / Peter Erichsen)

The document refers to investigative journalists as "threats" alongside subversive and terrorist organizations, noting that "the 'enemy' is unwelcome publicity of any kind, and through any medium."

Britain's GCHQ is also revealed to have spied on Wikileaks itself – and its readers. One classified GCHQ document from 2012 shows that GCHQ used its surveillance system to secretly collect the IP addresses of visitors to the Wikileaks site in real time, as well as the search terms that visitors used to reach the site from search engines such as Google.

Championing Free Nedua

The British government is punishing Assange for the service that Wikileaks has performed. It is ignoring a UN ruling that he is being held in " arbitrary detention " at the Ecuadorian embassy, while failing, illegally, to ensure his health needs are met. Whitehall is also refusing to offer diplomatic assurances that Assange will not be extradited to the US – the only reason he remains in the embassy.

Smear campaigns have portrayed Assange as a sexual predator or a Russian agent, often in the same media that have benefitted from covering Wikileaks' releases.

Many journalists and activists who are perfectly aware of the fake news in some Western media outlets, and of the smear campaign against Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn , are ignoring or even colluding in the more vicious smearing of Assange.

More journalists need to champion the service Wikileaks performs and argue for what is at stake for a free media in the right to expose state secrets.

This article originally appeared on Middle East Eye.

Mark Curtis is an historian and analyst of UK foreign policy and international development and the author of six books, the latest being an updated edition of Secret Affairs: Britain's Collusion with Radical Islam.

[Oct 26, 2018] FBI Concealed Evidence That Directly Refutes Premise Of Trump-Russia Probe GOP Lawmaker

Notable quotes:
"... 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 ..."
"... 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 . ..."
"... 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." ..."
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."

[Oct 22, 2018] Russian has a unique descriptive term--Anglicized as Neculturny: Those without/incapable of having culture, an extremely disparaging term. I

Notable quotes:
"... Russian has a unique descriptive term--Anglicized as Neculturny: Those without/incapable of having culture, an extremely disparaging term. I bring this up because what we see rising again in the United States is intolerance and the criminalization of charity--particularly toward the homeless. The attitude of the Outlaw US Empire's military toward the bombing of civilians, their infrastructure and all related behavior that are War Crimes is the most graphic example--Yemen, Haiti, Palestine, Somalia, and all too many other places. Just the Russian attempts to try and minimize civilian casualties in Syria versus NATO's attitude on the question shows the vast divide present. Which nations are tolerant thus ipso facto humanitarian and which aren't? IMO, the divide is very stark. One side says There's No Alternative, while the other says Another World's Possible that dignifies people rather than denigrating them. ..."
Oct 22, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

karlof1 , Oct 21, 2018 5:20:19 PM | link

The following is from the Q&A portion of Valdai Club's Plenary Session and IMO is very critical as we attempt to understand what underlies the extreme Russophobia displayed by Western elites and their minions:

"Chairman of the Patriarchal Council for Culture Metropolitan Tikhon:

"The round table I took part in here, at Valdai, dealt with cultural issues, or to be exact, whether and how culture can affect the life of society in the 21st century and today.

"At the onset of the discussion Mr Zanussi asked the following question, Can we even grasp, can we assess a nation's culture today? An opinion was voiced that the level of charity in society may be such an assessment criterion. I mean general culture, not its specific manifestations.

"It may seem that it was a fairly abstract discussion. But the events in Kerch, even though we do not fully understand the motives behind this ill-fated person's actions, let us see how aggression and intolerance are on the rise not only in Russia but also generally everywhere.

"My question is as follows: Firstly, what do you yourself think of the conclusions we have made at this round table regarding charity as a key criterion of society's general culture ? [My Emphasis]

"Secondly, we talk a lot of about state culture policy nowadays. There is a lot of debate. We are all aware that the state will not regulate culture in a rough or intrusive way, and this is probably absolutely correct. But can the state deliberately support all those creative and historical spiritual and cultural keynote dominants that have developed in Russia, something we call spiritual and cultural values?

"Vladimir Putin: I think this what we have been doing, in reference to the second part of your question. I think the state must do this very carefully by allowing people with different outlooks to work out their own views, express them and compete, let us say, with your views. It may seem surprising for me to say that, but I think this is the way it is.

"My sympathies certainly lie with you, but as a state official, I still think it is my duty to ensure the opportunity for every person to express their position. Why? Because my position is based on the first part of your comment.

" What is charity? To use more modern words, it is tolerance, commitment to compromise. At any rate, it is one of the facets of charity. This is the way it is. If we claim that charity, tolerance is a criterion of culture, then we must be in a position to let people express their views and listen to them. " [My Emphasis]

Russian has a unique descriptive term--Anglicized as Neculturny: Those without/incapable of having culture, an extremely disparaging term. I bring this up because what we see rising again in the United States is intolerance and the criminalization of charity--particularly toward the homeless. The attitude of the Outlaw US Empire's military toward the bombing of civilians, their infrastructure and all related behavior that are War Crimes is the most graphic example--Yemen, Haiti, Palestine, Somalia, and all too many other places. Just the Russian attempts to try and minimize civilian casualties in Syria versus NATO's attitude on the question shows the vast divide present. Which nations are tolerant thus ipso facto humanitarian and which aren't? IMO, the divide is very stark. One side says There's No Alternative, while the other says Another World's Possible that dignifies people rather than denigrating them.

[Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir

Highly recommended!
UK politicians in Skripal story behaved by cheap clowns. Their story with door knob was pathetic. They tried to invent the legend with poisoning on the fly and that shows. There is definitely something else brewing here and Shamir proposed his version with Skripal double dealings or something along those line is quite plausible.
We will never know, but I think British discredited themselves for the whole world in this story. Trump was not better will using this tory to impose additional sanctions on Russia. This is just another proof that he is another neocon who during election campaign like Obama played the role of isolationalist and then appointed Haley to UN and hired Pompeo as his Secretary of state and Bolton as his security advisor -- a typical "bat and switch" operation in US politics.
Notable quotes:
"... Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly. ..."
"... As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home. ..."
"... There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was. ..."
"... However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services. ..."
"... Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. ..."
"... I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors. ..."
Oct 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

... ... ...

Vrublevsky thinks that British intelligence convinced the GRU (probably we should say that GRU is not called GRU anymore but GU, the Chief Directorate of the General Staff, but it hardly matters) that Mr Skripal wanted to return home to Russia. Probably they were told that Mr Skripal intended to bring some valuable dowry with him, including Porton Down data and the secrets of the Golden Rain dossier. It is possible that Skripal had been played, too; perhaps he indeed wanted to go back to Russia, the country he missed badly.

Two GRU agents, supposedly experts on extraction (they allegedly sneaked the Ukrainian president Yanukovych from Ukraine after the coup and saved him from lynching mob) were sent to Salisbury to test the ground and make preparations for Skripal's return. As we had learned from videos and stills published by the Brits, the two men had been carefully followed from the beginning to the end. Meanwhile, British intelligence staged a 'poisoning' of Skripal and his daughter, and the two agents quickly returned home.

There is not a single man close to Russian intelligence who thinks that Skripal had actually been poisoned by the Russians. First, there was absolutely no reason to do it, and second, if the Russians would poison him, he would stay poisoned, like the Ukrainian Quisling Stepan Bandera was.

However, by playing this card, the British secret service convinced the Foreign Office to expel all diplomats who had contacts and connection to the exposed GRU agents. The massive expulsion of 150 diplomats caused serious damage to the Russian secret services.

Still, the Russians had no clue how the West had learned identities of so many diplomats connected to GRU. They suspected that there was a mole, and a turncoat who delivered the stuff to the enemy.

That is why Vladimir Putin decided to dare them. As he knew that the two men identified by the British service had no connection to the alleged poisoning, he asked them to appear on the RT in an interview with Ms Simonyan. By acting as village hicks, they were supposed to provoke the enemy to disclose its source. The result was unexpected: instead of revealing the name of a turncoat, the Belling Cat, a site used by the Western Secret Services for intentional leaks, explained how the men were traced by using the stolen databases. Putin's plan misfired.

The Russian secret service is not dead. Intelligence services do suffer from enemy action from time to time: the Cambridge Five infiltrated the upper reaches of the MI-5 and delivered state secrets to Moscow for a long time, but the Intelligence Service survived. Le Carre's novels were based on such a defeat of the intelligence. However they have a way to recover. Identity of their top agents remain secret, and they are concealed from the enemy's eyes.

But in order to function properly, the Russians will have to clean their stables, remove their databases from the market place and keep its citizenry reasonably safe. Lax, and not-up-to-date agents do not apparently understand the degree the internet is being watched. Considering it should have been done twenty years ago, and meanwhile a new generation of Russians has came of age, perfectly prepared to sell whatever they can for cash, it is a formidable task.

There is an additional reason to worry. Such a massive operation against Russian agents and their contacts could signal forthcoming war. In normal circumstances, states do not reveal their full knowledge of enemy agents. It made president Putin worry; and he said this week: we'll go to heaven as martyrs, the attackers will die as sinners. In face of multiple and recent threats, this end of the world is quite possible.


utu , says: October 20, 2018 at 4:23 am GMT

Great story. If told many people would believe it. But now it is kind of late. So why it wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair? Why it is the British media that has initiative and Russian media is reactive and defensive? The story that Skripal wanted to return and that two agents were lured in there should have been told right away and that it turned out be MI5 provocation should have been insinuated. And the two agents should have been interviewed on Russian media. Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions.

I do not know what is the truth. At this point I no longer care because we will never know but it will be the British version that will be the most popular. I like most people like good stories. Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors.

jilles dykstra , says: October 20, 2018 at 7:25 am GMT
@utu " Instead we get defensive inept and indolent Russian reactions."
The reaction 'if we want to kill somebody that somebody does not survive' I cannot see as inept and indolent.
Malaysian Truther , says: October 20, 2018 at 8:24 am GMT
Excellent piece by Israel Shamir which I think gives the correct explanation of the Skripal poisoning. This was a classic fishing, 'click bait' operation which produced a very valuable haul for Western Intelligence. The only question is whether Skripal cooperated with it – which I think he did – not knowing that both he and his daughter were meant to die. Hence Putin's rage against Skripal a few weeks ago ( calling him a scumbag traitor etc, etc) after the Russian operatives were identified because retired agents are supposed to stay retired.

Russia made a very serious mistake with the RT interview with the 2 operatives. Better not to say anything if you can't give the whole story. The GU weren't happy to show their incompetence, but compounded the original mistake with obvious lying. That was a propaganda gift to the Western media and has helped convince original disbelievers of Russian perfidy.

Russia needs to step up its game especially in the media dept.

Tom Welsh , says: October 20, 2018 at 9:38 am GMT
"Unfortunately for Russia the Brits have better script writers, director and actors".

Maybe, if your taste runs to "Dr Who" or "Carry On Spying". That's about the level of the Skripal nonsense.

If it was meant for public consumption, the British government's opinion of the British people is much lower than mine.

jilles dykstra , says: October 20, 2018 at 10:33 am GMT
@Anatoly Karlin " British or American human capital, but there are certainly consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian intelligence services. "

On what this 'certainly' is based, I see no argument whatsoever.
Already a long time ago, I must admit, the CIA director had to admit to senator Moynihan that he had lied about the CIA not laying mines in Havana harbour.
A professional in espionage does not get caught.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, 'Secrecy', New Haven 1998
Anyone acquinted with Sept 11 understands that the USA's secret army, the CIA, was involved.
Another blunder.
As far as I know British secret services never get caught.
How clever the Russians are, suppose quite clever, I for one do not think that the stupid stories about for example Skripal have any truth in them.
Until now the asserted Russian meddling in USA elections have not been proved.
Do not know of anything credible that Russian intelligence people are said to have done.
But of course Russian intelligence does exist.

Fatima Manoubia , says: October 20, 2018 at 11:18 am GMT
@Anatoly Karlin

"A related problem is that since there is now a free market economy, with many more attractive career options for talented people, the high quality people go to work in other spheres, leaving the intelligence agencies with the dregs;" .

A direct result of erasing ideology so as to erase personality cult towards highly respected people in former USSR .When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has a price .The challenge is finding out where that little bunch who have not are ..Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little" advantage How to overcome this would be part of "what is to be done" ..

Ilyana_Rozumova , says: October 20, 2018 at 12:07 pm GMT
If the Russians wanted to kill them they would be dead. Period. It is all FN hoax.
The latest English came up with was that poison was smeared on the door handle and that both touched the door handle. Give me a break. Such a idiocy. Just imagine the exit procedure where both are touching the door knob.
And than both Russians went to garbage dump carrying the little bottle and thru it there.
What an exemplary citizen neat behavior by Russians,
All English story is such a stupid idiocy that it turns my stomach.
All we like sheep , says: October 20, 2018 at 12:14 pm GMT

However, the presence of Russian spies in Salisbury can be explained by its nearness to Porton Down, the secret British chemical lab and factory for manufacturing chemical weapons applied by the White Helmets in Syria in their false-flag operation in Douma and other places. It is possible that a resident of Salisbury (Mr Skripal?) had delivered samples from Porton Down to the Russian intelligence agents. This makes much more sense than the dubious story of Russians trying to poison an old ex-spy who did his stretch in a Russian jail.

If Mr. Skripal has been poisoned by the stuff of which he himself took samples in Porton Down, this would run completely parallel to the earlier poisoning of Mr. Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko, who also became ill because of carrying poison (polonium) around.

Eagle Eye , says: October 20, 2018 at 12:54 pm GMT

If [Yulia Skripal] had not had the courage to make this call while slipping the observance of British intelligence, she would probably be dead by now.

Both Skripals are most likely DEAD, murdered by British "intelligence" services.

The formulaic and curiously uninterested treatment of the matter in the British media seems inconsistent with the Skripals still being alive.

The article above suggests that the Skripals were unwitting or witting participants in a sting to expose Russian intelligence agents. More importantly, Sergey Skripal appears to have had a role in the creation of the DNC's "dossier" to undermine the Trump presidencey.

Whatever the background, Sergey Skripal became privy to important secrets that the Brits and their seditious allies in the U.S. Deep State do not want exposed.

macilrae , says: October 20, 2018 at 2:38 pm GMT
In the Skripal case the British have not explained why, after claiming to have found the closest approach to a smoking gun in the form of traces of novichok in that hotel room, the hotel was not then immediately quarantined.

And assuredly, with Putin's name on the line, the Russians have to do a better job if they are to refute the standing accusations – the RT interview was something of a PR disaster.

The Belloncat data, although superficially convincing, could so easily have been faked by anybody with reasonable knowledge of Russian internet infrastructure and some proficiency in Photoshop.

CalDre , says: October 20, 2018 at 3:21 pm GMT
@utu

But now it is kind of late. So why it wasn't told within few days or weeks of Skripal affair?

It's still not being told – believe it or not, Israel Shamir is not Sergei Lavrov. I hypothesized to the same state of affairs in early September re: Skripals.

But I did not know about these massive intelligence security breaches in Russia. Wow, that's huge. Even though it's not clear to me how this indicates Putin's plan misfired. If anything he got exactly what he wanted: confirmation that the "West" had access to the entire passport database. Knowing what your enemy has in intelligence is a huge win, now they can work on correcting it (hard as it may be, it would be impossible without knowing).

CalDre , says: October 20, 2018 at 3:24 pm GMT
@macilrae You are right, it could have been faked, anything can be faked today, even a video of Putin speaking (search for "deep fakes" and watch the video at https://www.wsj.com/articles/deepfake-videos-are-ruining-lives-is-democracy-next-1539595787 ).

But the fact is Russia has not really disputed the results so I am fairly confident that not only was Belling Cat right, but Israel is right, and now we have the situation where Russia knows that Western intelligence has full access to Russia's passport database.

wayfarer , says: October 20, 2018 at 3:55 pm GMT
@Tyrion 2 Had some experiences with Chinese and Mossad spies, not to mention Russian Jewish hard-drug dealers.

Here are a few examples.

There was an AMES postdoc at UCSD, a Chinese applied-math brain who had a 10-plus female handler. She'd stop by occasionally to check up on him. He always get extremely anxious when she was around. Couldn't figure out if it was fear, sexual excitement, or a combination of both.

There was an old Chinese man and his foxy young female protege, who enjoyed filming U.S. military maneuvers along the San Diego coast. I observed their operation for days.

There was a swing-shift cleaning crew in a Southern California high-tech mfg facility that was all Chinese, in an area that typically employed Latin American crews. Its head honcho was a beautiful Chinese lady. They made it their job to sort through trash bins and save papers. The feds busted them.

As far as the Mossad, I spent two years on a rental property in SD county, which was occupied by them as well. Mostly Israeli kids using the property and a local Israeli-owned vegetarian restaurant as their "scorpion den." Got fairly familiar with some of their espionage work and methods.

I don't go looking for this stuff. I'm just able to recognize it. As an empath I can read people, quite well. It's a natural gift.

Can't stomach Israel's insensitive nature. That's why you'll typically find me pointing out their self-serving bullshit.

source: https://themindunleashed.com/2013/10/30-traits-of-empath.html

FB , says: October 20, 2018 at 4:13 pm GMT
This is a pretty good article but also falls on its face at the end

Mr Shamir's 'inside' information confirms my own take on Petrov and Boshirov which I published a few days after that RT interview with Ms Simonyan I wrote this on Col Lang's blog on Sept 14

'Yeah those two 'tourists' do look the part don't they I would say they are probably GRU or something similar but nobody 'poisoned' the Skripals that's total kabuki theater another Potemkin village production from the reality masters

Something is afoot here though perhaps these two were lured to Salisbury as part of a frame up plot, perhaps by Skripal himself or perhaps the Brits caught wind of their plans to visit [on some standard spying mission, certainly not assassination] and put in motion the elaborate hoax

Everybody there protested loudly including Andrey Martyanov [Smoothie] I also added this

' I disagree with everyone here it seems these guys aren't tourists but they also didn't try to kill anyone that's stupid

It's some sort of spy game

Here's one scenario double agent Skripal makes convincing noises about flipping back someone at GRU [or some similar outfit] sends these two to Salisbury to check it out a very stupid move which is why Putin is now miffed enough to display these guys publicly and their field career surely over also a slap in the face to the silly Limeys for playing dirty pool even in the cloak and dagger game there are unwritten rules '

This is now exactly the story that Mr Shamir is presenting here but he is a day late and a dollar short

I also don't agree with his take that this is all somehow a big loss for Russian intel the Brits are the ones who have painted themselves in a corner their Skripal story is a wet paper bag waiting to fall apart the fact that they lured the Russians to Salisbury, under whatever pretext, be it Skripal or Porton Down/white helmets etc was their only small tactical victory because they could then later expose those two after months of Russian denials in order to show the Russians were in fact somehow involved

But that exposure came months later all that time the Russians would have known that Boshirov and Petrov had been captured on candid camera and would have had time to work on their countermove

Mr Shamir writes this like the game is over that is ridiculous the Brits have no way out of the Skripal hoax there was never any poisoning the original diagnosis of the Skripals in the Salisbury hospital was opioid overdose that came out in the first BBC interview with the hospital staff months after the 'poisoning'

It was not until 48 hours after the Skripals were admitted to hospital and the convenient intervention of Porton Down that the medical diagnosis was 'changed' to nerve agent poisoning

BUT this is an unsustainable story that WILL FALL APART the simple reason is medical and chemical fact both nerve agents and agricultural pesticides are based on the exact same chemical compound organophosphates

It just so happens that organophsphate poisoning is 'one of the most common causes of poisoning worldwide '

'There are nearly 3 million poisonings per year resulting in two hundred thousand deaths.'

That is the simple reason why emergency doctors EVERYWHERE are trained to recognize and treat this kind of poisoning especially in rural, agricultural areas like Salisbury

That is why it took months for media to gain access to the medical staff at that hospital the British spooks needed to do a lot of 'persuading' with medical professionals that would have wanted no part in such trickery and fakery

But this is a ticking time bomb that is bound to blow up in the faces of the very stupid Brits

So yes they pulled off a minor coup in luring those two to Salisbury but the game is very very far from over

As for Skripal he is in on it for sure as I speculated in my original comment on the matter..the Russian intel services are perfectly aware of this, yet Mr Shamir's supposedly well connected source has zero knowledge of this which tells me this source is actually a useless clown who 'knows' exactly what an internet commenter [myself] already knew two months ago

PS the fact that the Brits supposedly have all kinds of database info on the Russian intel apparatus and personnel files etc doesn't mean anything the author is a making a big deal out of this, but his story lacks meat on its bones most 'intel' is open source material anyway

As for sensitive stuff that may have been 'sold' by 'corrupt' bureaucrats one must ask if such 'info' is actually real or a clever plant providing fake info is the oldest spy trick in the book and this article simply takes for granted that such a trick would not have been employed why not ?

CalDre , says: October 20, 2018 at 5:30 pm GMT
@FB How would a fake database leak include the real data on the two GRU agents that just happened to be sent to UK? Maybe it was to make the data leak seem real?

In spycraft it is always impossible to know how deep the deception goes. That's why the very article to which you are responding started with:

It is hard to evaluate the exact measure of things in the murky world of spies and counter-spies, but it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean battle.

An acknowledgement you stubbornly ignore.

M Edward , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:01 pm GMT
None of this matters.

All governments are corrupt and have no interest in the welfare of the native populations.

All this he said she said crap is irrelevant, in the end we all will end up under a totalitarian police state run out of Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem.

Cyrano , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:06 pm GMT
I think that a clear strategy by the western "intelligence" services is starting to emerge vis-a-vis the Russians. By accusing any Russian that they can get their hands on, of being a spy, they want to scare the ordinary Russians from visiting the west, so afterwards any Russian actually caught traveling to the west can be safely assumed to be a spy – since by the calculations of the clever western intelligence – only someone who is actually a spy while at the same time being Russian, would dare to travel to the west. How smart is that?

Joking aside, it really is becoming unsafe for Russian nationals to travel to the west. Even though the west reserves the generosity of calling somebody equal only for those that are from the 3rd world – Russians clearly don't deserve such generosity.

Despite this, exceptions can be made and some unfortunate Russian soul could be accused of being equal with those highly evolved westerners and against their will can be offered protection from Mother Russia.

Pretty much like it happened to Yulia Skripal. She was only visiting her gastarbeiter father in GB, who apparently expressed desire to return to Russia, against pretty much everybody's wishes, and all of a sudden Yulia Skripal found herself bestowed with the western generosity of being declared equal, and was disappeared from public eye in order to protect her from those with whom she is clearly not equal – the Russians.

Thank God at least MI-6 proved equal to the task and discovered her equalness in a nick of time and saved her. The moral of the story: Only democracy has the power to recognize who is equal and who is not. Then, on the other hand, capitalism can keep acquiring new monikers such as "democracy" – all they want, Russia still has better quality of equality, despite ditching socialism.

FB , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:24 pm GMT
@CalDre Yes I 'stubbornly' refuse to take at face value this silly statement

it appears that the Western spies have had extraordinary success in the subterranean battle.'

Because it's not backed up by anything other than hot air as for that supposed 'data' about Petrov and Boshirov that was put out by Bellingcat

Ie mickey mouse stuff as with everything these clowns do, it is meant only to bamboozle the most utterly stupid bipeds

A very nice clue is the fact that a Russian website called 'The Insider' is Bellingcat's acknowledged partner here

If you read the article in English they claim to have 'dug' up a lot of info from various sources such the central Russian resident database and passenger check in data for their flight to the UK

Big deal that Shamir is building a mountain out of a molehill is more than clear

In fact this entire Shamir tale appears to have one subtle purpose to publicize and glorify the Bellingcat outfit

which irredeemably lost any credibility a few weeks back when illiterate poofter Eliott Higgins refused a debate challenge by the distinguished MIT physicist and former presidential advisor Ted Postol actually calling Postol an 'idiot' a move that astounded even those willing to entertain Higgins on a semi-credible level

peterAUS , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:39 pm GMT
@Anatoly Karlin Be that as it may, the "Western side" had (publicly known) Aldrich, Hanssen and Benghazi fiasco.

Boils down to, from the comment below:

When you have no ideology ( or worst, share ideology with your opponent, i.e free market .) all what you have, from values to secrets, from scientific human capital to secret service officials, are out there in the global market for possible selling to the best postor .this is the principle of capitalism .. after all, it is said, almost everybody has a price..

and

Obviously, in this scenario, the one who has the printing machine has a "little" advantage.

And, on top of it, in West, since the fall of The Wall, we've been having "Cooking the Intelligence to Fit the Political Agenda".

Incompetence vs blatant lying?
What a choice.

Kubarking , says: October 20, 2018 at 6:43 pm GMT
This commenter begs to differ with M. Karlin's assessment (8) of the relative competence of Russian sovok and CIA. "consummate professionals relative to what passes for today's Russian intelligence services"? Mais non.

CIA always gets caught. All they do is step on their crank, again and again. They depend not on professionalism but on what Russ Baker describes as a strange mix of ruthlessness and ineptitude. Both stem from impunity in municipal law.

For example: CIA torture and coercive interference got comprehensively exposed, worldwide, in the '70s. What happened? Don Gregg gave the Church and Pike committees an ultimatum: Back off or it's martial law. CIA got busted again in the '80s for the criminal enterprises under the Iran/Contra rubric. By then CIA had installed Tom Polgar, Former Saigon Station Chief, as chief investigator for the cognizant Senate Select committee, and Polgar assured Gregg that his hearings would not be a repeat of the abortive Pike and Church flaps.

So CIA are clowns. They can afford to be clowns because they know they can get away with it. Getting away with it is their only skill, and the only skill they need.

The persistent category error at this site is failing to realize that CIA is the state. They rule the USA.

[Oct 11, 2018] Telegraph propaganda honchos as " "Highly likely" jerks

Oct 11, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

moscowexile

October 10, 2018 at 6:20 pm
A suspected third member of the Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack has been named, according to a respected Russian news website.

Sergey Fedotov, 45, travelled to the UK on the same day as the two assassins already charged by British authorities – and boarded the same flight home.

The Telegraph had previously reported the existence of a third member of the Russian intelligence hit squad and a trawl of flight records by the Fontanka news agency matched it to Fedotov.

According to Fontanka, Fedotov flew to the UK on a passport whose number differs by only a few digits from those used by the two GRU military intelligence agents officially wanted for the nerve agent attack.

It is almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger's real name but an alias. No traces of Sergei Fedotov have been found in documentary databases or on social media. He has no property, vehicles or telephone numbers registered to his name in Russia, according to Fontanka.

Telegraph

No "alleged"in "Kremlin hit squad behind the Salisbury nerve agent attack but It is almost certain Fedotov is not the passenger's real name but an alias.

Highly likely indeed!

[Oct 08, 2018] British intelligence now officially is a by-word for organized crime by John Wight

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... 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. ..."
"... 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. ..."
"... "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." ..."
"... "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." ..."
"... "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? ..."
Oct 08, 2018 | www.rt.com

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

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.

[Oct 06, 2018] America s new aristocracy lives in an accountability-free zone by David Sirota

Notable quotes:
"... Accountability is for the little people, immunity is for the ruling class. If this ethos seems familiar, that is because it has preceded some of the darkest moments in human history ..."
"... September began with John McCain's funeral – a memorial billed as an apolitical celebration of the Arizona lawmaker, but which served as a made-for-TV spectacle letting America know that everyone who engineered the Iraq war is doing just fine. ..."
"... The underlying message was clear: nobody other than the dead, the injured and the taxpayer will face any real penalty for the Iraq debacle. ..."
"... Meanwhile, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon garnered non-Onion headlines by floating the idea of running for president – a reminder that a decade after his firm played a central role in destroying countless Americans' economic lives, he remains not only unincarcerated and gainfully employed, but so reputationally unscathed that he is seen as a serious White House candidate. ..."
Oct 05, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Accountability is for the little people, immunity is for the ruling class. If this ethos seems familiar, that is because it has preceded some of the darkest moments in human history

'If there are no legal consequences for profiteers who defrauded the global economy into a collapse, what will deter those profiteers from doing that again?' Illustration: Mark Long/Mark Long for Guardian US W hen the former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was released from prison a few weeks ago, the news conjured memories of a corporate scandal that now seems almost quaint – and it was also a reminder that Enron executives were among the last politically connected criminals to face any serious consequences for institutionalized fraud.

Since Skilling's conviction 12 years ago, our society has been fundamentally altered by a powerful political movement whose goal is not merely another court seat, tax cut or election victory. This movement's objective is far more revolutionary: the creation of an accountability-free zone for an ennobled aristocracy, even as the rest of the population is treated to law-and-order rhetoric and painfully punitive policy.

Let's remember that in less than two decades, America has experienced the Iraq war, the financial crisis, intensifying economic stratification, an opioid plague, persistent gender and racial inequality and now seemingly unending climate change-intensified disasters. While the victims have been ravaged by these crime sprees, crises and calamities, the perpetrators have largely avoided arrest, inquisition, incarceration, resignation, public shaming and ruined careers.

That is because the United States has been turned into a safe space for a permanent ruling class. Inside the rarefied refuge, the key players who created this era's catastrophes and who embody the most pernicious pathologies have not just eschewed punishment – many of them have actually maintained or even increased their social, financial and political status.

The effort to construct this elite haven has tied together so many seemingly disparate news events, suggesting that there is a method in the madness. Consider this past month that culminated with the dramatic battle over the judicial nomination of Brett Kavanaugh.

September began with John McCain's funeral – a memorial billed as an apolitical celebration of the Arizona lawmaker, but which served as a made-for-TV spectacle letting America know that everyone who engineered the Iraq war is doing just fine.

The event was attended by Iraq war proponents of both parties, from Dick Cheney to Lindsey Graham to Hillary Clinton. The funeral featured a saccharine eulogy from the key Democratic proponent of the invasion, Joe Lieberman, as well the resurrection of George W Bush. The codpiece-flaunting war president who piloted America into the cataclysm with "bring 'em on" bravado, "shock and awe" bloodlust and "uranium from Africa" dishonesty was suddenly portrayed as an icon of warmth and civility when he passed a lozenge to Michelle Obama. The scene was depicted not as the gathering of a rogues gallery fit for a war crimes tribunal, but as a venerable bipartisan reunion evoking nostalgia for the supposed halcyon days – and Bush promptly used his newly revived image to campaign for Republican congressional candidates and lobby for Kavanaugh's appointment .

The underlying message was clear: nobody other than the dead, the injured and the taxpayer will face any real penalty for the Iraq debacle.

Next up came the 10th anniversary of the financial crisis – a meltdown that laid waste to the global economy, while providing lucrative taxpayer-funded bailouts to Wall Street firms.

To mark the occasion, the three men on whose watch it occurred – Fed chair Ben Bernanke, Bush treasury secretary Hank Paulson and Obama treasury secretary Tim Geithner – did not offer an apology, but instead promised that another financial crisis will eventually occur, and they demanded lawmakers give public officials more power to bail out big banks in the future.

In a similar bipartisan show of unity, former Trump economic adviser Gary Cohn gave an interview in which he asked "Who broke the law?" – the implication being that no Wall Street executives were prosecuted for their role in the meltdown because no statutes had been violated. That suggestion, of course, is undermined by banks ' own admissions that they defrauded investors (that includes admissions of fraud from Goldman Sachs – the very bank that Cohn himself ran during the crisis). Nonetheless, Obama's attorney general, Eric Holder – who has now rejoined his old corporate defense law firm – subsequently backed Cohn up by arguing that nobody on Wall Street committed an offense that could have been successfully prosecuted in a court of law.

Meanwhile, JP Morgan CEO Jamie Dimon garnered non-Onion headlines by floating the idea of running for president – a reminder that a decade after his firm played a central role in destroying countless Americans' economic lives, he remains not only unincarcerated and gainfully employed, but so reputationally unscathed that he is seen as a serious White House candidate.

Again, the message came through: nobody who engineered the financial crisis will pay any real price for wreaking so much havoc.

Then as Hurricane Florence provided the latest illustration of climate change's devastation, ExxonMobil marched into the supreme court to demand an end to a state investigation of its role denying and suppressing climate science. Backed by 11 Republican attorneys general , the fossil fuel giant had reason to feel emboldened in its appeal for immunity: despite investigative reporting detailing the company's prior knowledge of fossil fuel's role in climate change, its executives had already convinced the Securities and Exchange Commission to shut down a similar investigation.

Once again, the message was unavoidable: in the new accountability-free zone, companies shouldn't be bothered to even explain – much less face punishment for – their role in a crisis that threatens the survival of the human species.

... ... ...

The answer is nothing – which is exactly the point for the aristocracy. But that cannot be considered acceptable for the rest of us outside the accountability-free zone.

David Sirota is a Guardian US columnist and an investigative journalist at Capital & Main. His latest book is Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now

[Oct 05, 2018] Wilderness of mirrors MI6, the Cold War, spies and traitors from Gordievsky to Skripal -- RT Op-ed

Notable quotes:
"... What could possibly go wrong? ..."
Oct 05, 2018 | www.rt.com

Which brings me to the Skripal affair.

That the USSR was an existential threat to Western capitalism and colonialism and war – of one kind or another – between these two camps was logical and inevitable. But the Soviet Union is 30 years dead.

Indeed, Gordievsky through Macintyre can – if he's telling the truth – claim that he helped bring about the (brief) end of history and the "final" victory. His claimed role in the rise and rise of Gorbachev's relationship with Mrs Thatcher and, by extension, President Reagan certainly hastened the downfall of the USSR.

But Britain recruited Skripal in 1996 when not only was the Soviet Union dead but Russia was ruled by the West's performing bear Boris Yeltsin. And during his presidency, Russia was passed-out on the floor with everyone picking its pockets.

Why was Britain still fighting the Cold War against Russia in 1996, and why is it still fighting the Cold War against Russia now?

Just this week, the rather effete British Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson – a former fireplace salesman – said he was sending 800 shivering British soldiers to the Arctic to be ready to fight Russia there. Amidst the snow. And the ice.

As both Napoleon and Hitler must have said: " What could possibly go wrong? "

[Oct 05, 2018] The USA + GB have become totally unhinged.

Oct 05, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette , Oct 5, 2018 2:11:45 PM | link

For those who missed May's latest Brexit speech (which had zero content), here she is jiving to Dancing Queen by Abba for her glorified entrance. No need to make caricatures, she does it herself. Free of charge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tbCDFNRA-Wo&frags=pl%2Cwn

The USA + GB have become totally unhinged. Seeking a 'safe' enemy *without* - as the Deplorables or Brexiteers *within* don't hit the spot, for many reasons - .. to explain and cover up Hillary's loss and the ugly Brexit mess with its clueless posturing pols, is one thing.

To continue to provoke Russia and China, particularly Russia, in this way is now skirting with danger beyond the .. ? Containable, ignorable, what ..?

Plus, the MSM, lousy as it is and was, has spinned off into even further mad realms, seemingly forced into a hyper, over-blown anti-Russian hysteria. Often far more strongly so than the pols. / others they seemingly quote.

This is all becoming seriously alarming. I'm getting very bad feelings.

[Oct 02, 2018] The danger of false accusations from women who have a grudge or female sociopaths

This is ridiculous. "Me too" movement actually propagandizing Islam.
Oct 02, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

The #MeToo movement hits a block when it gets reduced to party politics, as we are witnessing...

... ... ...

A young woman marching in support of Kavanaugh put it this way: "This could be our brother, our dad, our boyfriend "

[Sep 24, 2018] 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.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... 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. ..."
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.

[Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... 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). ..."
"... 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. ..."
"... 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. ..."
"... I 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. ..."
"... 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... ..."
"... England 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. ..."
"... It 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. ..."
"... '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? ..."
"... U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you. ..."
"... Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE ..."
"... May 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? ..."
"... "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 ..."
"... 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. ..."
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 ago

I 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!)

texantim , 1 hour ago

I say release the docs and put sanctions on UK.

BitchesBetterRecognize , 1 hour ago

So 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....

Baron von Bud , 2 hours ago

England 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.

Malvern Joe , 3 hours ago

It 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.

Bricker , 3 hours ago

You 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

Moving and Grooving , 3 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.

Ban KKiller , 4 hours ago

U.K. does not want the jurisdiction. U.S. spies lure you overseas then...compromise you.

John C Durham , 4 hours ago

Duh. This Started In London! Britain is the "foreign country" involved in our elections. Wake up everyone. It's LONDONGATE .

Anunnaki , 4 hours ago

May 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?

PeaceForWorld , 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.

Buddha71 , 4 hours ago

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%.

[Sep 22, 2018] A confidential report by Belgian investigators confirms that British intelligence services hacked state-owned Belgian telecom giant Belgacom on behalf of Washington

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?

[Sep 21, 2018] Hold The Front Page The Reporters Are Missing And Journalism Is Dead

Sep 21, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

by Tyler Durden Fri, 09/21/2018 - 22:25 1 SHARES Authored by John Pilger via ConsortiumNews.com,

So much of mainstream journalism has descended to the level of a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters is 'perception'...

The death of Robert Parry earlier this year felt like a farewell to the age of the reporter. Parry was "a trailblazer for independent journalism", wrote Seymour Hersh, with whom he shared much in common.

Hersh revealed the My Lai massacre in Vietnam and the secret bombing of Cambodia, Parry exposed Iran-Contra, a drugs and gun-running conspiracy that led to the White House. In 2016, they separately produced compelling evidence that the Assad government in Syria had not used chemical weapons. They were not forgiven.

Driven from the "mainstream", Hersh must publish his work outside the United States. Parry set up his own independent news website Consortium News, where, in a final piece following a stroke, he referred to journalism's veneration of "approved opinions" while "unapproved evidence is brushed aside or disparaged regardless of its quality."

Although journalism was always a loose extension of establishment power, something has changed in recent years. Dissent tolerated when I joined a national newspaper in Britain in the 1960s has regressed to a metaphoric underground as liberal capitalism moves towards a form of corporate dictatorship.

This is a seismic shift, with journalists policing the new "groupthink", as Parry called it, dispensing its myths and distractions, pursuing its enemies.

Witness the witch-hunts against refugees and immigrants, the willful abandonment by the "MeToo" zealots of our oldest freedom, presumption of innocence, the anti-Russia racism and anti-Brexit hysteria, the growing anti-China campaign and the suppression of a warning of world war.

With many if not most independent journalists barred or ejected from the "mainstream", a corner of the Internet has become a vital source of disclosure and evidence-based analysis: true journalism sites such as wikileaks.org, consortiumnews.com, wsws.org, truthdig.com, globalresearch.org, counterpunch.org and informationclearinghouse.com are required reading for those trying to make sense of a world in which science and technology advance wondrously while political and economic life in the fearful "democracies" regress behind a media facade of narcissistic spectacle.

Propaganda Blitz

In Britain, just one website offers consistently independent media criticism. This is the remarkable Media Lens -- remarkable partly because its founders and editors as well as its only writers, David Edwards and David Cromwell, since 2001 have concentrated their gaze not on the usual suspects, the Tory press, but the paragons of reputable liberal journalism: the BBC, The Guardian , Channel 4 News.

Cromwell and Edwards (The Ghandi Foundation)

Their method is simple. Meticulous in their research, they are respectful and polite when they ask why a journalist why he or she produced such a one-sided report, or failed to disclose essential facts or promoted discredited myths.

The replies they receive are often defensive, at times abusive; some are hysterical, as if they have pushed back a screen on a protected species.

I would say Media Lens has shattered a silence about corporate journalism. Like Noam Chomsky and Edward Herman in Manufacturing Consent, they represent a Fifth Estate that deconstructs and demystifies the media's power.

What is especially interesting about them is that neither is a journalist. David Edwards is a former teacher, David Cromwell is an oceanographer. Yet, their understanding of the morality of journalism -- a term rarely used; let's call it true objectivity -- is a bracing quality of their online Media Lens dispatches.

I think their work is heroic and I would place a copy of their just published book, Propaganda Blitz , in every journalism school that services the corporate system, as they all do.

Take the chapter, Dismantling the National Health Service, in which Edwards and Cromwell describe the critical part played by journalists in the crisis facing Britain's pioneering health service.

The NHS crisis is the product of a political and media construct known as "austerity", with its deceitful, weasel language of "efficiency savings" (the BBC term for slashing public expenditure) and "hard choices" (the willful destruction of the premises of civilized life in modern Britain).

"Austerity" is an invention. Britain is a rich country with a debt owed by its crooked banks, not its people. The resources that would comfortably fund the National Health Service have been stolen in broad daylight by the few allowed to avoid and evade billions in taxes.

Using a vocabulary of corporate euphemisms, the publicly-funded Health Service is being deliberately run down by free market fanatics, to justify its selling-off. The Labour Party of Jeremy Corbyn may appear to oppose this, but is it? The answer is very likely no. Little of any of this is alluded to in the media, let alone explained.

Edwards and Cromwell have dissected the 2012 Health and Social Care Act, whose innocuous title belies its dire consequences. Unknown to most of the population, the Act ends the legal obligation of British governments to provide universal free health care: the bedrock on which the NHS was set up following the Second World War. Private companies can now insinuate themselves into the NHS, piece by piece.

Where, asks Edwards and Cromwell, was the BBC while this momentous Bill was making its way through Parliament? With a statutory commitment to "providing a breadth of view" and to properly inform the public of "matters of public policy," the BBC never spelt out the threat posed to one of the nation's most cherished institutions. A BBC headline said: "Bill which gives power to GPs passes." This was pure state propaganda.

Media and Iraq Invasion

Blair: Lawless (Office of Tony Blair)

There is a striking similarity with the BBC's coverage of Prime Minister Tony Blair's lawless invasion of Iraq in 2003, which left a million dead and many more dispossessed. A study by the University of Wales, Cardiff, found that the BBC reflected the government line "overwhelmingly" while relegating reports of civilian suffering. A Media Tenor study placed the BBC at the bottom of a league of western broadcasters in the time they gave to opponents of the invasion. The corporation's much-vaunted "principle" of impartiality was never a consideration.

One of the most telling chapters in Propaganda Blitz describes the smear campaigns mounted by journalists against dissenters, political mavericks and whistleblowers.

The Guardian' s campaign against the WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange is the most disturbing. Assange, whose epic WikiLeaks disclosures brought fame, journalism prizes and largesse to The Guardian , was abandoned when he was no longer useful. He was then subjected to a vituperative – and cowardly -- onslaught of a kind I have rarely known.

With not a penny going to WikiLeaks, a hyped Guardian book led to a lucrative Hollywood movie deal. The book's authors, Luke Harding and David Leigh, gratuitously described Assange as a "damaged personality" and "callous." They also disclosed the secret password he had given the paper in confidence, which was designed to protect a digital file containing the U.S. embassy cables.

With Assange now trapped in the Ecuadorean embassy, Harding, standing among the police outside, gloated on his blog that "Scotland Yard may get the last laugh."

The Guardian columnist Suzanne Moore wrote, "I bet Assange is stuffing himself full of flattened guinea pigs. He really is the most massive turd."

Moore, who describes herself as a feminist, later complained that, after attacking Assange, she had suffered "vile abuse." Edwards and Cromwell wrote to her: "That's a real shame, sorry to hear that. But how would you describe calling someone 'the most massive turd'? Vile abuse?"

Moore replied that no, she would not, adding, "I would advise you to stop being so bloody patronizing." Her former Guardian colleague James Ball wrote, "It's difficult to imagine what Ecuador's London embassy smells like more than five and a half years after Julian Assange moved in."

Such slow-witted viciousness appeared in a newspaper described by its editor, Katharine Viner, as "thoughtful and progressive." What is the root of this vindictiveness? Is it jealousy, a perverse recognition that Assange has achieved more journalistic firsts than his snipers can claim in a lifetime? Is it that he refuses to be "one of us" and shames those who have long sold out the independence of journalism?

Journalism students should study this to understand that the source of "fake news" is not only trollism, or the likes of Fox News, or Donald Trump, but a journalism self-anointed with a false respectability: a liberal journalism that claims to challenge corrupt state power but, in reality, courts and protects it, and colludes with it. The amorality of the years of Tony Blair, whom The Guardian has failed to rehabilitate, is its echo.

"[It is] an age in which people yearn for new ideas and fresh alternatives," wrote Katharine Viner. Her political writer Jonathan Freedland dismissed the yearning of young people who supported the modest policies of Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as "a form of narcissism."

"How did this man .," brayed the Guardian 's Zoe Williams, "get on the ballot in the first place?" A choir of the paper's precocious windbags joined in, thereafter queuing to fall on their blunt swords when Corbyn came close to winning the 2017 general election in spite of the media.

Complex stories are reported to a cult-like formula of bias, hearsay and omission: Brexit, Venezuela, Russia, Syria. On Syria, only the investigations of a group of independent journalists have countered this, revealing the network of Anglo-American backing of jihadists in Syria, including those related to ISIS.

Leni Riefenstahl (r.) (Keystone-France/Gamma-Keystone via Getty Images)

Supported by a "psyops" campaign funded by the British Foreign Office and the U.S. Agency for International Development, the aim is to hoodwink the Western public and speed the overthrow of the government in Damascus, regardless of the medieval alternative and the risk of war with Russia.

The Syria Campaign, set up by a New York PR agency called Purpose, funds a group known as the White Helmets, who claim falsely to be "Syria Civil Defense" and are seen uncritically on TV news and social media, apparently rescuing the victims of bombing, which they film and edit themselves, though viewers are unlikely to be told this. George Clooney is a fan.

The White Helmets are appendages to the jihadists with whom they share addresses. Their media-smart uniforms and equipment are supplied by their Western paymasters. That their exploits are not questioned by major news organizations is an indication of how deep the influence of state-backed PR now runs in the media. As Robert Fisk noted recently, no "mainstream" reporter reports Syria.

In what is known as a hatchet job, a Guardian reporter based in San Francisco, Olivia Solon, who has never visited Syria, was allowed to smear the substantiated investigative work of journalists Vanessa Beeley and Eva Bartlett on the White Helmets as "propagated online by a network of anti-imperialist activists, conspiracy theorists and trolls with the support of the Russian government."

This abuse was published without permitting a single correction, let alone a right-of-reply. The Guardian Comment page was blocked, as Edwards and Cromwell document. I saw the list of questions Solon sent to Beeley, which reads like a McCarthyite charge sheet -- "Have you ever been invited to North Korea?"

So much of the mainstream has descended to this level. Subjectivism is all; slogans and outrage are proof enough. What matters is the "perception."

When he was U.S. commander in Afghanistan, General David Petraeus declared what he called "a war of perception conducted continuously using the news media." What really mattered was not the facts but the way the story played in the United States. The undeclared enemy was, as always, an informed and critical public at home.

Nothing has changed. In the 1970s, I met Leni Riefenstahl, Hitler's film-maker, whose propaganda mesmerized the German public.

She told me the "messages" of her films were dependent not on "orders from above", but on the "submissive void" of an uninformed public.

"Did that include the liberal, educated bourgeoisie?" I asked.

"Everyone," she said. "Propaganda always wins, if you allow it."

Propaganda Blitz by David Edwards and David Cromwell is published by Pluto Press.

[Sep 19, 2018] Guardian journos are proclaiming themselves the bastion of free speech, when in reality they are the enemies of it.

Sep 19, 2018 | thesaker.is

I gave up on the Guardian's comment site myself, 10 years ago, as the censorship on there made it pointless. Has something changed?

There was one prolific commenter there, MrPikeBishop, who was so popular, he was even commissioned to write articles above the line. Then one day, bam, he is banned, and his entire posting history gone. That did it for me; little emperors not fit to clean his boots, just rubbed him out. I spat on the site that day and never went back. Proclaiming themselves the bastion of free speech, when they actually the enemies of it.

Actually, I was caught out here in the UK, by the demise of the old five pound note, and then the ten pound note, because I stopped reading and watching MSM years ago. It's worth it, to get their irritating buzzing out of my head.

Back to the linked Guardian article; this is indeed interesting – these questions asked by the journalist:

– Who really did shoot down this plane? Was it an accident or did France and/or Israel attack?
– Are Russia publicly accepting a false narrative to avoid having to retaliate?
– Do they even understand how close we're coming to global war, whenever a NATO country operates in Syria?
– How long can we rely on Russian common sense to avoid WWIII?

[Sep 19, 2018] Open Thread Russian Plane Brought Down in Syria

Sep 19, 2018 | off-guardian.org

The questions raised: Who really did shoot down this plane? Was it an accident or did France and/or Israel attack? If France are attacking Russia/Syria what prompted this? What do they have to gain? Is it possible for Syria to "accidentally" bring down an allied plane? Don't they have IFFs? Are Russia publicly accepting a false narrative to avoid having to retaliate? Will Russia retaliate against Israel? They have claimed that right already. What will they expect to extract as a quid pro quo on this issue? How will the media report this? Will they call it a "near miss"? That's surely what it was. Do they even understand how close we're coming to global war, whenever a NATO country operates in Syria? How long can we rely on Russian common sense to avoid WWIII?


Admin says September 19, 2018

What do you think Putin should have done?

Your reply needs to acknowledge the following:

1) the neocon hardline and Israel are currently trying to manufacture an excuse for a massive attack on Syria, aimed at widening the war.

2) the Israeli action was aimed at provoking a military response from Russia/Syria that could be used as such an excuse.

3) a widened war would play into western hands and destroy Russia's current ascendancy

What action should Russia take that would punish Israel but avoid giving the neocon hardliners exactly what they wanted?

Admin says September 19, 2018
Try to remain calm.

I notice you don't advocate that Russia should have immediately retaliated militarily. All the things you do advocate (well, most) – quite rationally – would not have shown any results as yet, so we don't know they haven't been done, do we?

But, to repeat, you don't defeat a man who is trying to lure you into a fight by punching him in the face. Intelligence is underrated by the non-intelligent. Subtlety is unappreciated by the crass. The Russian govt's actions tend to be both subtle and intelligent – whether you approve of them or not, and so can go unappreciated by many on all sides of the debate.

As to ascendancy – Syria was intended to be a new Libya by now. That this has been avoided, that the various terrorists are in retreat, that the country remains largely functional, and all without direct confrontation between east and west (so far), is an achievement anyone with any intelligence should recognise, and which the Russia government has every right to be proud of.

Forgive me, but people have been saying variants of "if Putin doesn't DO SOMETHING HUGE right now he's going to burn" for at least the last four years, and they are still saying it, despite the fact he hasn't burned (and neither have we), and, if their sage advice had been followed, we might all be cinders on a dead and cindered planet right now.

ragheadthefiendlyterrorist says September 19, 2018
The only reason it hasn't come to that yet is that the ground was not prepared fully before. Russia is slowly being pushed back to the ropes, the average Western citizen is being conditioned to racially hate Russians (did you read Nikki Haley's comment today that Russians are culturally conditioned to lie and cheat?) and the consent is being steadily manufactured. As I said in my original comment, by showing "restraint" and not that he has teeth, Putin is encouraging his country's enemies. Personally, I don't give a damn about what he does about people he doesn't like, but he's not a private citizen; he is in control of Russia, for good or ill. Most of my Russian friends, all of the far left variety, despise him, incidentally, but that's neither here nor there. The simple fact is that if Russia is to avoid a big war it has to actively deter one, not act like someone attempting to disarm an armed drunk by logical words and sweet reason. That is not going to work.
Paul X says September 19, 2018
If the Russians got a cruise missile down the funnel of the French frigate Auvegne (assuming there is a funnel) what do you think NATO would do? Would they shrug and say it serves Macron right or would they take off the safety locks and blast Russia from every direction in order to protect their partner who had been so 'wrongly' attacked? Haven't they been waiting for the chance for years? Aren't they already loaded up expecting the 'chemical weapons' shout to go up this very week? It would be vey foolish of Russia to take the bait of these provocations and it makes for uneasy reading when Westerners, sitting comfortably in safety, complain that Russians aren't prepared to die for us in large enough numbers to keep them safe. You first guy!
Paul X says September 19, 2018
When provoked so blatantly you need to look to see what the guy is hiding behind his back. In this case the West had built up their forces for a full scale attack on Syria as soon as the White Helmets released their video of choking children filmed a week or so ago. Putin disappointed them by coming to an agreement with Turkey that means the jihadis are further isolated and pushed into possible conflict with radicals.

The time scales of the agreement are vague/unknown but it's unlikely we will see a Jihadi Caliphate set up under Turkish protection.

Like the Syrians it's the crazy foreign fighters that alarm the Turks, the Chinese especially of whom there are 6000 heavily armed in the South. Turkey is keen to see the extremists pushed South making it difficult for them to enter Turkey. Putin's reaction is far more sensible than firing the gun for a major conflict which Russia is most unlikely to win.

Russia is still on track to squeeze the jihadis into smaller and smaller areas where they might be eliminated. It might make liberals happy to see Russia sacrifice herself a la 1941 but it's not going to help anybody except their enemies.

You can't help thinking Putin knows exactly what he's doing.

Admin says September 19, 2018
There can never be a non-nuclear war between the US and Russia. Every strategist worth anything knows this. It's the belief – created by the PNAC neocons – that this isn't true that drives the hardcore nuts in Washington and London and elsewhere.

This is the problem. They are delusional and believe they can fight a limited war with Russia. Those who know they are wrong, and that any such war would go nuclear very very fast are stuck in a profound dilemma. – How to defend oneself and one's interests while avoiding the conflict the lunatics want, which will destroy life on earth?

Answers on a post card please for anyone who thinks they can do better than the current Russian govt is doing.

白矛 says September 19, 2018
It's a complex web.. one has to bear this in mind.. the inter-relationships.. the connections.. Putin for example has to tread the razor edge and fight with one hand tied behind his back due to the Zionist influence atop the Russian hierarchy .
Matt says September 19, 2018
S-200 uses the SAHR guidance system. The radar signal is fairly wide, and if multiple objects fall within the signal, the one with the largest cross-section will be targeted. The Russian IL is much larger than the American F-16. Larger missiles like the 200's 5V21 also tend to hit from above (they come down in a parabolic arc after the motors burned out). So if the F-16's stayed a little behind and below the IL they'd basically guarantee the IL get's killed.

As "Partisangirl" claims, but does not properly understand, Russia integrated Syrian AD into their network some time ago. The purpose of such a integration was to avoid similar accidents.

One problem: That was only for the newer stuff.

A Pantsir, for example, can be told where targets are and what to shoot at by a larger system (they work in a pyramid hierarchy). S-200s are older than h*ll though. It's basically a dumb system from the 60's. (even dumber than a BUK)
What it'll do is spot a target, fire the missile and then when the missile "thinks" it's in the right area (the kill box), it's seeker head goes active (it's a semi active seeker). It starts looking for radar 'reflections' and then homes in on the biggest one it can see. It doesn't actually know what it's looking at and doesn't care. Just goes for the shiniest thing it can detect.

My favourite part is how all these lies are held up as if they merit discussion and as if they deserve to be given equal treatment with what actually happened. It's like holding a "discussion" as to whether or not Aliens rule the Earth.

grandstand says September 19, 2018
I tend to agree with you, on the whole, Mulga, about issues to do with Israel, though perhaps not so stridently. But on this occasion I think Matt is honestly telling things how he sees it.

On the other hand, one should ask why Israel is arbitrarily attacking targets in a sovereign country that is not threatening it. Of course, the answer is that this is what Israel does with impunity – witness USS Liberty among many others. On this occasion, it appears, from what I have read, that Israel was targeting the delivery of Iranian S300 copies to Syria – that is weapons to defend from this kind of attack in future. In reality, far from attacking Israel, Syria has even done nothing about recovering territory lost to Israel in 1967, though in international law Israel – that Israel signed up to – it should be given back to Syria. A few days ago, Israel attacked Damascus airport during an international fair with many visitors and potential for massive loss of life. It seems clear that Israel is trying (probably with US approval) to provoke a response.

Putin always keeps his eye on the long term view but it is time for him to put a stop to this activity if he is to maintain credibility with his allies and his voters. This attack will serve to weaken Putin's hitherto Israel friendly stance unless he wants to lose support in Russia. Putin is the best friend Israel has in Russia. It seems that Russian military is saying that there will be a response – much stronger than Putin.

grandstand says September 19, 2018
On the other hand – re my previous comment, Matt, IAF was clearly using the Russian ELINT plane as cover. It is tantamount to using civilians as human shields. Though the crew were Russian military, they were not involved in the action, apparently, and Israel had agreed not to target Russian assets in Syria. One cannot absolve Israel on this and the Russian military know it. They will be looking to Putin to permit a response.
Jen says September 19, 2018
Then you surely would not object if Russia were to ask Israel to hand over the pilots involved so they can explain in a Russian military court or a similar setting their actions and the thinking and expectations that motivated them to hide their jets in the Ilyushin transport plane's radar shadow.
Yarkob says September 19, 2018
israel is breaking international law (again) its pilots, and their commanders and any FAO they use, are criminals. plain and simple
Guest Columnist says September 19, 2018
Yes, there is a large element of theatre at play in this conflict. What many people don't want to accept is that they have no way of knowing what the entire truth is. All the information about situations and events comes from partisan organizations with vested interests. Expecting the side one personally favours to present objective truths is wishful thinking at best, downright delusional at worst.

The post-truth era means everybody walks around believing they have 'figured out' the truth, no hard evidence required, but they can't all be right can they?

It's neoliberal individualism gone mad.

Harry Law says September 18, 2018
Not so long ago Netanyahu was pleading with Putin [successfully] not to supply the S300 anti aircraft system [defensive] to Syria, at the same time Israel was the first country to get a fleet of F35's [offensive] from the US. Putin defers far to much to the US/Israel, we now see the results. Incidentally how come Saudi Arabia can buy the S400 system, when they were one of the instigators of Syrian regime change. Russia's "partners" want Syria destroyed, the warmonger McCain always said the US should take on Syria and that Russia would 'do nothing', was he right?
Admin says September 18, 2018
Let's recall the realities here and not succumb to hysteria. One of the reasons these provocations are happening is that Russia is winning in Syria, militarily and politically. Loading...
Big B says September 18, 2018
What are the realities: we are not being told?

Harry has touched on an important point: that Russia and Israel are becoming closer and closer strategic Russophone partners. Russia was the first country in the world to recognise W Jerusalem as Israel's capital (before even Trump). There was only one foreign dignitary at the May 9th Victory Parade their growing economic, military and cultural ties (Customs Union negotiations and visa free travel for instance) cannot be ignored.

The IDF's 200 strikes in 18 months must lead to serious consideration of tacit Russian approval because they could be quite quickly stopped without it? But that would escalate the situation. Where does Iran stand in this, because VVP made quite clear to Netanyahu that Iran was Russia's principle strategic partner in the region. Is that set to change?

Netanyahu has met VVP what, three times this year, behind closed doors. What was said, and what agreements were made? It is also reputed that they have a direct one-to-one encrypted comms network (though I can't confirm it was activated). But that they are in regular contact is undoubted.

There is a lot more going on beneath the surface than first meets the eye. VVP's relations with Netanyahu blurs the boundaries and greys the narrative. The fact that VVP is saying it "looks accidental" doesn't ring true it looks anything other than accidental to me. Was there a communication breakdown as VVP is in Hungary?

I do not know, and based on what we have been told, neither does anyone else. The FS Auvergne fired missiles just as the Il-20 HQ went off screen. They weren't firing at the IDF, I wouldn't be too sure they were "window dressing" for them either. Whatever went on, we are being kept in the dark. Not precipitating WW3 is a good thing. Other than that, Russia's foreign policy and ME relations are a 3D chess game that we know little of the motivation behind: but I can infer that Russia's strategic needs are primary. At what point can that be labelled imperialist?

Frankly Speaking says September 18, 2018
"What are the realities: we are not being told?"

Are you expecting to be spoon fed? And by the biased BBC, Guardian, etc!

It's pretty clear that Assad has won with Putin's support. China is on side too as evidenced by recent military manoeuvres. What is happening now is the US, UK, France, Israel, Turkey, Saudi just saving face and been allowed the odd small success or two.

However, Israel royally fucked up last night and Netanyahu will lose a plane or three if he tries it again.

Big B says September 18, 2018
You didn't really read my comment: this "odd small success " has happened 200 times in the last 18 months with the downing of how many IDF planes 1? Russia providing S-300s, or S-400s, or upgrading the 1960's SAM 2s would secure Syrian airspace. But these supplies are not forthcoming. Because Israel will not allow them.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/liberman-to-russian-media-israel-did-not-join-western-action-against-moscow/

The situation is a lot more complex: and no, I don't want to be spoonfed by the BBC. The Saker posits a "Zionist 5th Column" in Russia that VVP has to accommodate. You seem to want a simplistic ZioNATO v Russia narrative, all I am saying it is a lot more nuanced than that. And I didn't get that from the Graun!

Big B says September 19, 2018
200 IDF strikes in 18 months, that could be stopped by turning on their S-400s, would be an instance.. Israel has lobbied successfully to prevent Syria from securing its own airspace. The majority of these attacks are to prevent Assad acquiring what Haaretz terms "lethal weaponry" a euphemism for Iranian supplied air defences that could secure Syrian airspace. As could a Russian declared NFZ (though the IDF would just standoff over Lebanon or the Med, and not penetrate Syrian airspace). Or Russian supplied S-300s.

So my answer is yes and no. The Russophone alliance of Russia and Israel seems to be ascendant over Syrian sovereignty. Or it was, until Monday. There appears to have been a breakdown in the de-confliction agreement, or a deliberate misuse and provocation by Israel. The jury is out on that one for the moment. If the attacks are stopped, I would tend to agree with you.

There is the small matter of the international silence surrounding the FS Auvergne firing missiles concurrent with the downing of the Il-20 HQ. These either hit the Il-20 or Latakia. Has anyone considered the Il-20 WAS the target? That there was no accident, but a deliberate targeting? Did the IDF or French take out the Russian early warning system and electronic warfare capability to leave Latakia vulnerable? I don't know, and Rothschild Macron said no! It is worth considering though, I feel.

Integrated into the systems view of militaristic, imperialistic, and sub-imperialistic, and extractivist proliferation: it hardly matters who did what when. They are not giving us an insight into their collective insanity and power games, where the stakes are humanities very survivability. Russia only seemed to remember on Monday that the serial numbers on the MH-17 BUK, means it was made in 1986. What else have they forgotten? What else do they not know?

Humanity has no strategic allies within the global neoliberal ruling class. Arming the world is a "pro-conflict policy", wouldn't you agree? Where militaristic proliferation can't facilitate peace: the only possible de-confliction becomes system change? There are good and bad actors within the current globally hegemonic cultural system: VVP is possibly the best, so it would be unfair to heap the woes of an essentially evil system upon him especially in isolation. So it must fall to those outside the transnational globally integrated system to call out where this insanity will lead. That's you and me?

What I am suggesting is rather than the inevitably favourable comparison of VVP, and well, just about anyone else let's look at the bigger picture. International World Capitalism, as Guattari termed it, has faced us with the choice of three suicides. Without a radical transformation of the oppressed consciousness (a la Guattari, Deleuze, Freire, Bookchin, Naess, but better still the secular Buddha) there will soon enough come the day that does not dawn Monday night was a foreshadowing of that very day?

Admin says September 19, 2018
The idea a head of state can function as a moral paragon is naive of course. Putin pursues Russia's interests, not world peace and brotherhood. But at the same time we can't ignore the fact he does so while adhering to the requirements of international law far more than the west does. In that sense, he has some claim to respect from those who value ethical conduct. Whatever his motives may be this fact deserves to be stated and made clear.
manfromatlan says September 18, 2018
Ronald Reagan and the US were complicit in the downing of KAL Flight 007. Similar moves afoot again to build up military race between Russia and US and bog Russia in Syria https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1985/09/26/the-fate-of-ke007-an-exchange/
vexarb says September 18, 2018
BTL SyrPer, vot tak on September 18, 2018 · at 12:22 pm EST/EDT

Interesting take from an israeli.

Israel Unlikely to Fly Freely Over Syria After Il-20 Incident – Ex-Official

https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/201809181068132500-israel-syria-il-20-incident-airspace/

"Israel is unlikely to freely use Syrian airspace in the wake of the crash of a Russian Il-20 military aircraft over the Mediterranean Sea, Yakov Kedmi, a former high-ranking Israeli intelligence official, told Sputnik.

"There was an agreement between Israel and Russia that the actions of Israel in Syria's airspace would not endanger lives of Russian troops. Israel breached this commitment What happens next will depend on the position of Israel. Most likely, Israel will no longer be able to enjoy the same freedom in the sky of Syria as it did before the incident," Kedmi said.

"Israel's attack in itself, regardless of the consequences, was an irresponsible step, because there is not a single facility on the territory of Syria that might have been used by Iran and whose destruction would have justified an attack on it, which could endanger the Russian troops," Kedmi said."

Mulga Mumblebrain says September 19, 2018
The idea that Israel would honour ANY 'agreement' made with anyone is quite mirth-inducing.
archie1954 says September 18, 2018
The US must be the worst nation on the face of the Earth. Everywhere it goes, death and destruction follow. To top it all off, the blatant hypocrisy is too much to handle. America is treacherous and duplicitous in the extreme. It has supported terrorists of all stripes in the Middle East and elsewhere for its own selfish geopolitical reasons. It is an entity not to be trusted, ever!
Cassandra says September 18, 2018
admin you might find some answers to your questions here:

http://www.voltairenet.org/article202998.html

Regarding (the long tradition of ) British-French-Israeli collusion

"Not only Russian and (allegedly) Israeli and French aircraft and missiles were in the air. Civilian radar also tracked British Royal Air Force aircraft, which, unusually, had switched on their transponders and gone into holding patterns – most likely to avoid being somehow involved in the exchange of fire over Latakia." (source: Haaretz)

we should remember Sykes-Picot and "Operation Revised" (the 1956 Suez-deception)

http://users.ox.ac.uk/~ssfc0005/The%20Protocol%20of%20Sevres%201956%20Anatomy%20of%20a%20War%20Plot.html

"The documentary evidence does not leave any room for doubt that at Sèvres, during the three days in late October 1956, an elaborate war plot was hatched against Egypt by the representatives of France, Britain and Israel. The Protocol of Sèvres is the most conclusive piece of evidence for it lays out in precise detail and with a precise time-table how the joint war against Egypt was intended to proceed and shows foreknowledge of each other's intentions .

The central aim of the plot was the overthrow of Gamal Abdel Nasser. This aim is not explicitly stated in the protocol but it emerges clearly and unambiguously from all the records of the discussions surrounding it. Yet each of the three partners had a very different perspective on this war plot, and it was not at all clear how even the agreed aim was to be achieved.
The French were the most straight-forward, unwavering and unabashed advocates of military force. As far as they were concerned, Colonel Nasser supported the Algerian rebels and that, along with his nationalization of the Suez Canal Company, was enough to justify a war to overthrow him. For their part, the French did not need any further pretext for taking military action. It was the British, unwilling to incur Arab hostility by appearing as ally of Israel, who needed a pretext and Israel was able and willing to provide it but only at a price. Israel also required the elimination of Nasser's air force, for which task Britain alone had the heavy bomber bases sufficiently near at hand."

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/USO/chp1_p2.html (Col.Fletcher Prouty's insights into the engineered "Suez Crisis")

MI6, the CIA the long history of covert ops in Syria

https://www.youtube.com/embed/511W2O-fPrY?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

John Gilberts says September 19, 2018
I was also struck by the Haaretz report that "Something strange was definitely in the air over Syria on Monday night with British and French forces reportedly present." I hope this open thread may bring more information on this alleged NATO involvement. I am beginning to think this incident may have rather more actors than we've been told. Loading...
grandstand says September 19, 2018
Yes – agreed. FUKUS ships have moved closer to the Syrian coast in the last few days, presumably in anticipation of an attack (chemical or otherwise) that they could justify a response to. The Russians have been doing a great job in the (non-Western) media of predicting potential chemical fake attacks and thereby defusing them. The one minute warning from Israel suggests the possibility (no more than that) that the Israelis saw the ELINT plane approaching the airfield and quickly decided to use it as cover for whatever reason.

As I've said in other posts, the Israelis have narrowed Putin's options. Of FUKUS +I they are the easiest to pick off.

A very different and is some ways attractive theory is presented here:

https://www.fort-russ.com/2018/09/full-analysis-russian-disinfo-campaign-blames-israel-for-il-20-plane-downing-yet-exonerates-france/

I am not totally convinced – Matt's view on the capability of the Syrian SAMs seems more convincing and it is not clear that Russian fighters could have scrambled in time, especially as the Israelis had agreed not to target Russian assets, but if true it perhaps is a clever – nay Machiavellian – way of opening up options for Putin vis-a-vis his Israeli/Russian Jewish oligarchs and hanging the Israelis out to dry.

Paul X says September 19, 2018
Is there any information about whether the Auvergne did or didn't fire missiles? The Syrians (and Russians?) said they had witnessed the firing of missiles which seemed to be aimed at the same government buildings as that being attacked by Israel which suggests collusion. Loading...
Admin says September 19, 2018
Apparently France is denying it
Philpot says September 18, 2018
The US and NATO's compliant poodles are clearly willing to risk WWIII as they think Russia will simply back down when they instigate open warfare and regime change in Syria. My own belief is that poor honest broker Russia has been left to decide the fate of world peace. Personally, for all our futures, I believe Russia must declare a no fly zone over Syria – anyone entering to bomb will be at mercy of S400. Otherwise this will continue and if the US gets Syria it will be Iran next and WWIII – that is, armageddon.
Gary Weglarz says September 18, 2018
The entire of the West has now become simply a huge collective criminal enterprise operating completely outside the bounds of international law and threatening to bring about armageddon in the process. Of course one would never know this by reading or watching Western media where our clueless psychopathic leaders are portrayed as gallantly fighting for "human rights" and "democracy" through "regime change" and endless slaughter.
vexarb says September 18, 2018
BTL SyrPer Auslander on September 18, 2018 · at 7:54 am EST/EDT

Israeli plane apparently passed just in front of the plane, SAA got a lock, Israeli doglegged left, missile lost lock and chose the biggest target ..our plane. Israel violated protocol, called one minute before the attack, not enough time for our bird to get out of the way. The french frigate was window dressing.

It was a setup.

europeannewright says September 18, 2018
Interesting that both Trump and Macron involved both stooges is the Israel military trying to trigger the third European War ? Loading...
Rigged Democracy says September 18, 2018
Here are a couple of quotes that show how far the system has been rigged/corrupted:

"one of the things we need to do is give young Jewish people the confidence to be proud of their identity – as British, Jewish and Zionist too .. There is no contradiction between these identities and we must never let anyone try to suggest that there should be ..
"You can also count on my commitment to Israel's security .. I am clear that we will always support Israel's right to defend itself."
– UK Prime Minister Theresa May, at the United Jewish Israel Appeal

"I've never seen a President -- I don't care who he is -- stand up to them (Israel). It just boggles the mind. They always get what they want. The Israelis know what is going on all the time. I got to the point where I wasn't writing anything down. If the American people understood what a grip these people have got on our government, they would rise up in arms. Our citizens certainly don't have any idea what goes on."
– U.S. Navy Admiral and former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Thomas Moorer

Paul X says September 18, 2018
The BBC report no longer mentions the French frigate. Vanished!
0use4msm says September 18, 2018
The significance of direct military involvement by Israel and France is that the facade of a "civil war" (albeit by proxy) can no longer be maintained. The only thing that prevents it from being a regular war between nations is the omission of a declaration.
SO. says September 18, 2018

Is it possible for Syria to "accidentally" bring down an allied plane? Don't they have IFFs?

Yup, and kinda. It's perfectly possible to do it and IFF doesn't really work the way a lot of people think. (IFF transponder beacon works by transmitting a signal to the ground station or launcher).

If the ground station recognises the beacon it labels the aircraft as friendly and either denies launch permission or warns the operator beforehand.

However with a system like the S-200 that will not actually matter. The SA-5 (S-200) is an old system from the 60's which uses a semi active radar homing missile and how it works is quite simple.

When the ground system detects a target it illuminates the target with it's radar like a torch and launches the missile.

The missile then follows the radar reflection from the target until it gets close enough to detonate, goes bang, shoots plane down.

However the beam from the radar 'torch' can be quite wide (miles wide), F-16's are quite small, IL-20's quite big.. and the missile itself is pretty dumb.

As such by hiding in behind the larger aircraft the smaller aircraft can almost guarantee an incoming missile will prioritise the large aircraft reflection and kill that instead. It doesn't actually matter if the missile was launched against the smaller target in the first instance or if IFF came into play. The missile itself is too dumb to care. It just goes for the largest thing it can see.

BigB says September 18, 2018
Thanks for clearing that up: but it raises the question that the Il-20 was on a pre-planned flight path known in advance to both Russian and Syrian air traffic control (whom I believe are sitting next to each other?) Knowing what you have just posted (which I do not doubt) it can hardly be termed "accidental"?

I suspect the FS Auvergne fired its Aster missiles, but I'm not expecting a clarification of that. The situation is greyed by the burgeoning Russian-Israeli Russophone alliance. A simple narrative will not be forthcoming, I suspect.

SO. says September 18, 2018
The IL-20's been on station flying figure 8's on constant rotation for months so it's flight and landing path would be known to everyone with half assed radar or even functional eyeballs.
Paul X says September 18, 2018
Putin can't afford to get it wrong – for everybody's sake. His power is limited. He has done an excellent job in defeating the West in Syria but how could he react to missiles from the French frigate without triggering a massive NATO attack not just on Syria but Russia? In the current climate and the West's readiness it could happen in hours. He has always emphasised he puts Russian interests first – and those included eliminating thousands of Russian Jihadis before they returned home to create mayhem. He has never said he'll take on the World. So the French missiles were a mirage and the plane an accident? Well that's better than an even bigger war maybe?
vexarb says September 19, 2018
@BigB. Igor Bundy ABTL SyrPer supplies additonal info plus timeline, concludes that attack from only 4 planes is not lkely.

Russia not received data from #Israel on situation with IL-20 in #Syria – Peskov
https://sptnkne.ws/j9ce

-#Russia launched an S-400 missile/s against the Israeli jets which were dropping bombs 100Km away, so we're kept in the dark for now.

-#Russia responded immediately to the attack before the il-20M was lost Because the S-200 missiles were launched 20 min after the first wave.

-The attack lasted about 50 min, so only 4 F-16 doing the bombing is unlikely

Paul X says September 18, 2018
If the French and Israeli's attacked at the same time then they must have liased with each other. Or conspired is another way of putting it. Shades of 1956? But nowadays there wouldn't be the slightest outrage at such a collusion; it's oar for the course. And where is the missing partner, the UK? "No longer up to it" the French would say. "Too busy" say the Brits. NB which bit of Syria are the French after this time? Or do they see it descending into the chaos of a Libya, their last successful destabilisation.
Jo says September 18, 2018
Note Russian and IDF planes in direct line from s-200 being fired ..with French frigate ..looks like deliberate coordination to provide cover for each .but if frigate attacked then IDF planes available to directly attack Bashir in Damascus .and frigate to provide a source of provocation for excuse for Nato forces to launch their massive attack they desparately wish to do .especially as Putin agreed no military attack in Idlib ..and Russian MoD presentation yesterday it was a Ukraine BUK .in fact it is tempting to say Nato did this to get back at Russian MoD and punish them for this and expose in any way Russia's belief in trust and agreements and hotlines as a laughing stock ..and they have succeeded .a Russian plane shot down by an outdated Russian missile launched by Syria and Russia failing to supply s-300 but Turkey and everyone else can have s-400 which might ? have not ended up like this.
And did not Russia promise to deal with the "launch source" of any more missiles against Syria since the previous lot? Surely their are Russians in Latakia
Paul X says September 18, 2018
But you seem to be expecting or encouraging Russia to take on the World when in fact it's resources are limited
Jo says September 19, 2018
The elephant in the room is Iran .no responses from them yet even though Israel uses excuses to say it is defending itself from them and continues to attack what tjey call Iranian assets or anything they might vaguely claim have any connections to Iran ..does Iran follow Putins example to keep calm and carry on .thinking their"partnership" is being put to the test as of course it is in order to provoke it to invite a response by usa and associates .does it say to Putin enough is enough we are going to do our thing as you have said Russia is only in Syria to protect its own interests so cannot we do the same ..what options covert or overt does Iran have one wonders ..
David Macilwain says September 18, 2018
One question you didn't ask is whether this act, which appears to be an Israeli provocation assisted by the French, is related to the Sochi talks/agreement? Seems that supporters of the Syrian Opposition, of which France is right behind Turkey, might not like the agreement, partly because it stalls the plans for a "Syrian gas attack" by removing the pretext.
However I think the wider question is why and how has France been involved in this, described on SBS as "Israeli and French forces conducting aerial attacks on Syrian State assets"? Israel is a law unto itself, but France's intervention without any pretext whatsoever is a blatant war crime and escalation. The whole thing looks like a provocation, and one wonders when Russia will break. If Putin was unhappy having to make a peace agreement with the psycho Erdogan, he will be more unhappy now.
Paul X says September 18, 2018
If Russia was 'obliged' to retaliate to Israeli or French attacks its inherent weaknesses would be exposed. It remains a relatively poor country and Putin must be well aware it can't take on the US, Israel, the KSA and the other Gulf Emirs as well as France and the UK. It's done a fantastic job saving Syria but it can't take on The Rest of the World. If it has accepted Syrian missile defences brought it down that may well be the way out of a bigger war – this time.
manfromatlan says September 18, 2018
Putin's main interest is preserving Russian interests. Here, turning the other cheek likely is the best course. Loading...
writerroddis says September 18, 2018
I agree, Paul X. These are not only perilous waters, but untested to boot. In fact not one of the military powers you cite has had its strength tested against a non third world adversary. I know there are infantile tendencies crying "bring it on!" – as though speaking of a long awaited prize fight involving their heavyweight boxer of choice – but saner voices can only express alarm and profound dismay at what Western rulers seem bent on dragging us into. I say enough of this macho nonsense about who would prevail. I do take some comfort in the possibility – https://www.unz.com/tsaker/book-review-losing-military-supremacy-the-myopia-of-american-strategic-planning-by-andrei-martyanov/- that US military power is overstated, but it is comfort of the bleakest possible kind. Loading...
archie1954 says September 18, 2018
The point is this, Russia can take on the whole World if it had to, but it would be a pyrrhic victory, because to do so would require nuclear weapons which no nation could survive. However, Russia has many allies, the largest of which is China, so it probably would only be taking on one major opponent, the US and a few of its erstwhile allies (France, Britain etc.), not by any stretch of the imagination, the whole World!
Paul X says September 18, 2018
China is even weaker than Russia and not long ago said it was 10 years behind the US in military terms and it's hard to see they'd welcome a bit of sacrifice to pull Putin's chestnuts out of the fire. That Alliance is for the future. Right now a full blooded NATO response would be quite enough. Many in America would be delighted if Russia used a nuke; total annihaltion of Russia would follow, something they've been dying to do for 75 years. And of course they might go for the First Strike.

[Sep 16, 2018] Looks like the key players in Steele dossier were CIA assets

Highly recommended!
'Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.
'What exactly might an "insurance policy" against Donald Trump look like?'
All this leads me back to the suspicion that Steele's involvement may have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it possible to conceal its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with Steele.
Notable quotes:
"... A great deal of evidence, I think, suggests that practically all those involved in 'Russiagate' were caught totally unprepared by Trump's victory, that they then went rushing around like headless chickens, and that part of this process involved a decision being taken to publish the dossier, without consulting British intelligence. If people like Younger were not consulted, then it would seem to me unlikely that Steele was. ..."
"... And I have immense difficulty seeing how any competent media lawyer would not have recommended, at the minimum, the redaction of the names of Aleksej Gubarev and his company from the final December 2016 memorandum. This would have made legal action unlikely, without greatly diminishing the effect of the claims. ..."
"... But if this was so, and if what they thought was accurate information was actually disinformation, the likely conduit would not have been through Steele, but from FSB cybersecurity people to their FBI counterparts. ..."
"... It it is I think material that intelligence agencies commonly include a great variety of people, ranging from very able analysts and operators to complete dolts. So, the CIA has employed both Philip Giraldi and John Brennan, MI6 both Alastair Crooke and also Christopher Steele and Alex Younger. ..."
"... It is however somewhat revealing that one now finds Giraldi and Crooke appearing on a Russian site, 'Strategic Culture Foundation', while Brennan and Younger are treated as authoritative figures by the MSM. ..."
"... My strong suspicion is that 'Russiagate' is a kind of nemesis, arising from the fact that key figures in British and American intelligence have, over a protracted period of time, got involved in intrigues where they are way out of their depth. The unintended consequences of these have meant that people like Brennan and Younger, and also Hannigan, have ended up having to resort to desperate measures to cover their backsides. ..."
"... There are many aspects to this story that don't make any sense to me if one looks at it from a rational perspective. One of course being concerns about libel litigation and the related legal discovery that you note. The second being no real contingency planning in the event Hillary loses the election. Admittedly they must have bought the media line and Nate Silver's forecast of a greater than 75% probability of a Hillary win. ..."
"... The purported "arms length" relationships don't make any sense. There's Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson playing a central role. They hire Nellie Ohr, a possible CIA asset and the wife of Bruce Ohr, the 4th highest ranking official at the DOJ. ..."
"... Glenn Simpson also hires Christopher Steele who he knows from previous "spook" associations. Steele had numerous and continuous communications including telephone, Skype, email and personal meetings with Bruce and Nellie Ohr during all this. ..."
"... Then there is Mifsud and Halper. Apparently both are CIA and FBI assets. ..."
"... You have Brennan ginning up concerns giving super secret and individual briefings to the Gang of 8 in Congress. There's Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the minority leader on the Senate Intelligence Committee texting and calling Adam Waldman, Deripaska's US attorney about setting up clandestine meetings with Steele. ..."
"... Not to be left behind there's Sen. McCain doing the same. His top aide even travels to London to meet Steele. And then there's Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page busily spending every waking moment texting each other about every twist and turn in all the political games being played. Of course there's Admiral Rogers investigating unusual searches by FBI officials and contractors on the NSA database. And he briefs President-elect Trump at Trump Tower which prompts the entire transition team to move to Trump's golf course in NJ. ..."
"... In fact the IG report on the Clinton "investigation" states that many at the FBI were accepting "gifts" from various media personalities for a quid pro quo ..."
"... There's Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr's direct boss who testifies he knew nothing about Ohr being a conduit to Strzok for Steele. Of course he knew nothing but signed the FISA application on Carter Page. ..."
"... At this point I don't buy that Christopher Steele dug up real intelligence from his contacts at the highest levels of the Russian government, which caught Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Lynch's pants on fire, who then launched a formal investigation of Russia collusion with Trump. Many things just don't pass the smell test. Now of course I have no qualifications nor experience in spookdom. ..."
"... I agree that it (and Skripalmania) are almost impossible to make sense of unless you think of a bunch of highly politicised not very bright people sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like a bright idea at the time. ..."
"... I ask because, if one tries to look at it in a non-partisan way, the Western IC seemed to be a failure when it came to predicting Russian reactions in the Donbass, the Crimea, and it seems in Syria. I link this to various comments from Colonel Lang indicating that true experts were replaced over the years by less experienced and knowledgeable people. Does being "highly politicised" mean that they're not up to much when it comes to minding the shop? ..."
"... I thought I detected a protest against the politicisation of the US in the world some years ago. And we must not forget that Gen Flynn (DIA) and Adm Rogers (NSA) acted strongly against this. Flynn was the first casualty of the Trump/Russia hysteria and the Clapper claque tried to fire Rogers. ..."
"... I was born in the Depression and have seen vitriolic politics but never have seen such a massive opposition by the media, the pundits and the establishment of both parties. Over 500 print publications endorsed Hillary. Only some 20 endorsed Trump. Yet he confounds the pundits by winning the election. Clearly many voters are at odds with the political media class. ..."
"... I think there is an ideological background to this, on which the piece by Alastair Crooke – himself former MI6 – to which Patrick Armstrong links, and the piece by James George Jatras to which Crooke links, are both to the point. The 'end of history' crowd thought they were inhabiting a realised utopia, and cannot cope with the fact that their dream is collapsing. ..."
"... In relation to the millenarian undercurrents on which Crooke focuses, however, it is also worth noting that a traditional conservative suspicion has been that millenarianism is naturally linked to antinomianism: the belief that the moral law is not binding on the elect. ..."
"... It is obviously possible that Ohr did not report up the chain of command, and if so, he and his wife become pivotal figures in the conspiracy. Alternatively, it could be that Rosenstein is lying – in which case, we have large questions about who else is implicated, and specifically whether the termination of Steele by the FBI was anything more than a ruse. ..."
"... 'Yet, Simpson allegedly acknowledged that most of the information Fusion GPS and British intelligence operative Christopher Steele developed did not come from sources inside Moscow. "Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.," Ohr scribbled in his notes.' ..."
"... And it confirms my strong suspicion that the dossier is actually a composite product, much of it assembled at Fusion, which could indeed contain material from a range of people from the former Soviet space, who could living in the United States, Britain, or elsewhere – Ukraine and the Baltics being obvious possibilities. ..."
"... So Sergei Skripal and Sergei Millian, neither of whom fit the description by Simpson, have been mentioned as possible sources, and there is also the very curiously ambiguous role of Rinat Akhmetshin. ..."
"... All these people, obviously, could simply have fabricated material or retailed gossip, and Steele himself was involved in fabricating material on an industrial scale to cover up what actually happened to Alexander Litvinenko. ..."
"... All this leads me back to the suspicion that Steele's involvement may have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it possible to conceal its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with Steele. ..."
"... Apparently that organisation is doing rather well in sustaining the claiming that 'fair report privilege' could circumvent any requirement to prove truth – and a key question now is whether documents which the DOJ is being forced to produce will establish that the dossier was being used by officials in ways that would trigger the privilege as of 10 January 2017. ..."
"... That said, what Ohr reports Simpson as telling him raises fundamental questions about how anyone could have relied upon the dossier for anything – and should push people back to actually asking hard questions about its origins. ..."
"... To add: Steele was on the FBI's payroll, in addition to being on Fusion GPS's payroll. And on the payroll of Her Majesty's Government. After he got caught leaking to the media he was apparently "fired" by the FBI. But he was continuing to communicate and brief through Bruce Ohr at the DOJ. ..."
"... I think the circle of Glenn Simpson. Chris Steele, Bruce & Nellie Ohr, Adam Waldman. Peter Strzok, and Sen. Mark Warner will be very interesting to pursue. ..."
"... The other circle that should be investigated is the Brennan, Clapper, Lynch, Comey, Yates, Susan Rice. ..."
"... No investigation can exclude the active participation of key people from the media complex including people like Comey's good friend Benjamin Wittes. ..."
"... In its original version, the 'Statement of Principles' explained, among other things, that the Society: 'Believes that only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate, and that any international organization which admits undemocratic states on an equal basis is fundamentally flawed.' ..."
"... Ironically, it was shortly after the publication of the dossier that Anatol Lieven published in the 'National Interest' an article entitled 'Is America Becoming a Third World Country?' (See https://nationalinterest.or... .) ..."
"... Also in June, Sergei Karaganov published a piece in 'Russia in Global Affairs', of which he is publisher, entitled 'Ideology of Eastward Turn.' ..."
"... I do not think Karaganov's article is simply a reflection of changes in Russian attitudes. The changes, it seems to me, are global. ..."
"... I do think that we in the West really blew it. In 1990, we could have said, in all humility, that our way of life (IMO the key word is pluralism) had proven more survivable. So we should welcome the others into the tent. Instead, we were right and that was that. ..."
"... Just as you're asking about the origins of the dossier I wonder if it was orchestrated or something that evolved organically? If it was orchestrated, then who was the mastermind? Did Brennan, Clapper and Come sit down and hatch it or was Simpson the brains? What is astounding is the scale. So many people involved. Were they all motivated by ideology or by the need to protect their racket? ..."
"... It seems there are many sub-plots. There's the Deripaska, Steele, Waldman, Mueller, Sen. Warner angle. Then there's the Simpson, Steele, Ohr, Strzok, Page, McCabe angle. There's also the Simpson, Steele, media reporters angle. Then there's the whole Mifsud, Halper, Carter Page, Papadopolous, Downer bit. There's the Comey, Rosenstein, Yates, Strzok FISA application piece. Then there's all the stuff happening in the UK including Hannigan's resignation as soon as Trump is elected. Of course the whole Mueller appointment and the obstruction of justice thread to tie Trump's hand. There are so many elements. Who initiated and coordinated? Was each element separate? ..."
"... Together, these methods are likely to have produced a mass of information. It is important to remember, for example, that at the time of his mysterious death on 23 March 2013 Boris Berezovsky was negotiating to return to Russia, and that his head of security, Sergei Sokolov did return, with a 'cache' of documents. ..."
"... The purpose was to demonstrate that Alexei Navalny was the instrument of a 'régime change' plot in which William Browder was acting as an agent of MI6. ..."
"... An important role in the Apelbaum piece is played by the private security company Hakluyt. A quick look at the entries on Wikipedia and Powerbase will make clear that, if there is a British 'deep state', this is likely to be at its core. ..."
"... It is against this background that on has to see a specific claim which Apelbaum makes, for which I do not think any evidence is produced, about two figures whose role in 'Russiagate' is clearly central. So Luke Harding is described as 'A Guardian reporter and a Hakluyt and Orbis contractor' (note word.) Meanwhile, Edward Baumgartner is described as 'Co-founder of Edward Austin. Contractor at Orbis and Hakluyt.' ..."
"... That Harding is corrupt, as also Sir Robert Owen's 'Inquiry' into the death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, I can prove. When Owen's report was published in January 2016, a preliminary response by me was posted here on SST, which among other things listed some of the evidence establishing that the interviews supposedly recorded with Litvinenko by Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt immediately before his death were blatant forgeries. ..."
"... In relation to that part of the evidence discussed in my January 2016 post which exposes the fumbling attempts by Steele and his colleagues to cover up the truth about when and how Litvinenko travelled into central London on the day he was supposedly killed, most of this had been among a mass of material submitted by me to the Inquiry Team, which I have e-mails to prove was read. ..."
"... Further study of Owen's report has confirmed my suspicion that a strong 'prima facie case' of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice exists against very many of those involved in it. ..."
"... At the same time, materials produced on the Russian side have confirmed my suspicion that the reason why Steele and others have been able to get away with their cover-up is that the Russian intelligence services are no more enthusiastic than their British counterparts about having anything like the whole truth about how Litvinenko lived and died made public. ..."
"... Additionally, the text itself displays an odd parallelism with his assertion regarding the Steele Dossier- that is, the likelihood of multiple authors, of diverse origins. ..."
"... My curiosity about who Apelbaum might be is reinforced by the fact that the intimations he gives about his background in his responses to comments, while not incompatible with what he has said in the past, do not sit so easily with it. ..."
"... So, questions naturally arise about Apelbaum's intelligence career, in particular, who he is likely to have been employed by, and associated with, in the past, and whether he is still involved with any of those agencies which have employed him. ..."
"... 'Also, there is a large Hakluyt/Orbis "commercial intelligence" network in the US that regularly services political and federal agencies and has the power to summon Nazgûls the likes of John Brennan. So Steele is not the new kid on the block, he has been doing this type of work long before 2016. This is also why he has such a cozy relationship with the brass at the DOJ and state.' ..."
"... This is that he, the Ukrainian nationalist former KGB person Yuri Shvets, the convicted Italian disinformation peddler Mario Scaramella, and quite possibly the sometime key FBI expert on Mogilevich, Robert 'Bobby' Levinson, were involved in trying to suggest that Mogilevich was an instrument of a plot by Putin to equip Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb.' ..."
"... In his prepared statement, Lugovoi claimed that his supposed victim used to say that everyone in Britain were ''retards', to use the translation submitted in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, or 'idiots', to use that by RT. And according to this version, the British believed in everything that 'we' – that is, the Berezovky group – said was happening in Russia. ..."
"... Whether or not Litvinenko expressed this cynical contempt, the credulity with which the claims of the 'information operations' people around Berezovsky have been accepted – well illustrated by Owen's report and perhaps most ludicrous in Harding's journalism – makes clear it is justified. ..."
"... Perhaps then, cartoons about Trump as a puppet, with the strings pulled by another puppet representing Manafort, whose strings are in turn pulled by Putin, should be replaced by ones in which Mueller is seen as a puppet manipulated by the ghost of Boris Berezovsky. ..."
"... But that is the irony. The relationship with Berezovsky blew up in the faces of all concerned, when in the wake of the successsful corruption of the investigation into the death of Litvinenko by him and his 'information operations' people, he attempted to recoup his fortunes by suing Roman Abramovich, and got taken to pieces by Lord Sumption. ..."
"... The 'Vesti Nedeli' piece uses what Elizaveta Berezovskaya says in support of the claim that Berezovsky was murdered by British 'special forces', because he was planning to return to Russia, and he 'knew too much about them.' ..."
"... One of the things I've never understood about the Trump Dossier story is the lack of any forensic analysis of its content and style anywhere in the media, even the alt media. Who was supposed to have actually written it? Steele? The style does not match someone of his background and education, and the formatting and syntax were atrocious. The font actually varied from "report" to "report." It certainly did not give me the impression of being the product of a high-end, Belgravia consultancy. ..."
"... I wonder whether it was produced by an American of one sort or another and then "laundered" by being accorded association with the UK firm. Given that Steele just happened to be hired by the USG to help in the anti-FIFA skulduggery, he and his firm seem very much to be a concern that does dirty little jobs that need discretely to be done, though in this case, the discretion was undermined. ..."
"... Most of the memos were issued before October and Fusion/Simpson authorized Steele to release information to the FBI starting in July. The question is why the memos were released after the election when a release before the election would have been enough to sink Trump. Instead the FBI and presumably those paying Fusion on Hillarys behalf sat on it, and Comey comes out days before the election ..."
"... Kind of looks like they all wanted Trump in office and the disclosure was to give Trump the excuse needed to back track on his promises to improve relations with Russia and blame that on pressure from the Deep State and Russia Gate. ..."
"... Looking at Trumps history with Sater (FBI/CIA asset) and his political aspirations that began following his Moscow visit in 1987 it seems likely Trump has been a Deep State asset for 30 years and fed intelligence to CIA/FBI on Russian oligarchs and mafia . Indeed he may well have duped Russians into believing he was working for them when in fact it was the CIA/FBI who had the best Kompromat with US RICO laws that could have beggared him ..."
"... One thing to remember about the FBI is Sy Hersh. Hersh claims the FBI has been sitting on a report for two years that fingers murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich as the Wikileaks DNC email leaker (or one of them, at least.) ..."
"... I suspect the decision to publish the dossier was political. It was required to enable Clapper, Brennan, and others to opine on national media and create further media hysteria prior to the vote as well as to justify the counter-intelligence investigations underway. They were throwing the kitchen sink to sink Trump's electoral chances. I don't think a lot of thought was given about the legal ramifications. ..."
"... This seems to be a pattern. Leak information. Then use the leaked story to justify actions like apply for a FISA warrant or fan the media flames. ..."
"... I find it incredulous that former leaders of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have gained paid access to powerful media platforms and they have used it to launch vicious attacks on a POTUS. ..."
"... I find it amazing that McCabe and Peter Strzok are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media platforms. ..."
"... If the GOP retains the House and Jim Jordan becomes speaker, then there may be a possibility that Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray may be fired and another special counsel appointed who will then convene a grand jury. ..."
Aug 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

My strong impression is that nobody on the British side vetted the dossier for publication. A striking feature of the early news coverage is that there appeared to be total confusion, with some of the reporting suggesting that the sources quoted wanted to hang him out to dry, others that they wanted to defend him.

An interesting aspect is that not only were anonymous sources linked to MI6 quoted on both sides of the argument -- which could have been explained by disagreements within the organisation: in different stories, not however far apart in date, its head, Sir Alex Younger, was portrayed as holding radically different views.

When CNN publicised the existence of the dossier on 10 January 2017, the same day that it was published by 'BuzzFeed', it suggested that the author was British. The following day, the WSJ named Steele.

On 13 January, Martin Robinson, UK Chief Reporter for 'Mail Online', published a report whose headlines seem worth quoting in full:

'I introduced him to my wife as James Bond': Former spy Chris Steele's friends describe a "show-off" 007 figure but MI6 bosses brand him "an idiot" for an "appalling lack of judgement" over the Trump "dirty dossier": Intelligence expert Nigel West says friend is like Ian Fleming's famous character; He said: "He's James Bond. I actually introduced him to my wife as James Bond'; Mr West says Steele dislikes Putin and Kremlin for ignoring rules of espionage; Angry spy source calls him 'idiot' and blasts decision to take on the Trump work; Current MI6 boss Sir Alex Younger is said to be livid about reputation damage.'

(See http://www.dailymail.co.uk/... . )

On 15 January, however, Kim Sengupta, Defence Editor of the 'Independent', produced a report headlined: 'Head of MI6 used information from Trump dossier in first public speech; Warnings on cyberattacks show ex-spy's work is respected.'

(See https://www.independent.co.... .)

A great deal of evidence, I think, suggests that practically all those involved in 'Russiagate' were caught totally unprepared by Trump's victory, that they then went rushing around like headless chickens, and that part of this process involved a decision being taken to publish the dossier, without consulting British intelligence. If people like Younger were not consulted, then it would seem to me unlikely that Steele was.

This leads me on to another puzzle about the dossier to which I have been having a difficulty finding a solution. Long years ago I was reasonably familiar with libel law in relation to journalism. Anyone who 'served indentures', as very many of us did in those days, had to study it. Later, I got involved in a protracted libel suit -- successfully, I hasten to add -- in relation to a programme I made, and had the sobering experience of having a top-class libel barrister requiring me to justify every assertion I had made.

In the jargon then, a crucial question when an article, or programme, was being 'vetted' before publication was whether it represented a 'fair business risk.' This involved both the technical legal issues, and also judgements as to whether people were likely to sue, and how if they did the case would be likely to pan out.

On the face of things, one would not have expected that people at 'BuzzFeed' would have gone ahead and make the dossier public, without having it 'vetted' by competent lawyers. And I have difficulty seeing how, if they did, the advice could have been to publish what they published.

I have some difficulty seeing how the advice could have been to include the memorandum with the claims about the Alfa Group oligarchs, unless either these could be seriously defended or it was assumed that contesting them effectively would involve revealing more 'dirty linen' than these wanted to see aired in public.

And I have immense difficulty seeing how any competent media lawyer would not have recommended, at the minimum, the redaction of the names of Aleksej Gubarev and his company from the final December 2016 memorandum. This would have made legal action unlikely, without greatly diminishing the effect of the claims.

Trying to make sense of why such an obvious precaution was not taken, I find myself wondering whether, in fact, the reason may have been that the people responsible for the dossier may have actually believed this part of it at least.

If that is so, however, the most plausible explanation I can see is that while other claims in the dossier may well be total fabrication, either by the people at Fusion and Steele or by some of their questionable contacts, this information at least did come from what Glenn Simpson, Nellie Ohr et al thought were reliable Russian government sources.

But if this was so, and if what they thought was accurate information was actually disinformation, the likely conduit would not have been through Steele, but from FSB cybersecurity people to their FBI counterparts.

I think that the cases involving Karim Baratov and Dmitri Dokuchaev and his colleagues may be much more complex than is apparent from what looks to me like patent disinformation put out both on the Western and Russian sides.

It it is I think material that intelligence agencies commonly include a great variety of people, ranging from very able analysts and operators to complete dolts. So, the CIA has employed both Philip Giraldi and John Brennan, MI6 both Alastair Crooke and also Christopher Steele and Alex Younger.

It is however somewhat revealing that one now finds Giraldi and Crooke appearing on a Russian site, 'Strategic Culture Foundation', while Brennan and Younger are treated as authoritative figures by the MSM.

If you want to get a clear picture of quite how low-grade the latter figure is, incidentally, it is worth looking at the speech to which Kim Sengupta refers.

(See https://www.sis.gov.uk/medi... .)

A favourite line of mine comes in Younger's discussion of the -- actually largely mythical -- notion of 'hybrid warfare': 'In this arena, our opponents are often states whose very survival owes to the strength of their security capabilities; the work is complex and risky, often with the full weight of the State seeking to root us out.'

Leaving aside the fact that this is borderline illiterate, what it amazing is Younger's apparent blindness to clearly unintended implications of what he writes. If indeed, the 'very survival' of the Russian state 'owes to the strength of [its] security capabilities', the conclusions, seen from a Russian point of view, would seem rather obvious: vote Putin, and give medals to Patrushev and Bortnikov.

My strong suspicion is that 'Russiagate' is a kind of nemesis, arising from the fact that key figures in British and American intelligence have, over a protracted period of time, got involved in intrigues where they are way out of their depth. The unintended consequences of these have meant that people like Brennan and Younger, and also Hannigan, have ended up having to resort to desperate measures to cover their backsides.

Posted at 01:19 PM in Habakkuk , Intelligence | Permalink

Jack , 4 days ago

David

There are many aspects to this story that don't make any sense to me if one looks at it from a rational perspective. One of course being concerns about libel litigation and the related legal discovery that you note. The second being no real contingency planning in the event Hillary loses the election. Admittedly they must have bought the media line and Nate Silver's forecast of a greater than 75% probability of a Hillary win.

The purported "arms length" relationships don't make any sense. There's Fusion GPS and Glenn Simpson playing a central role. They hire Nellie Ohr, a possible CIA asset and the wife of Bruce Ohr, the 4th highest ranking official at the DOJ.

Glenn Simpson also hires Christopher Steele who he knows from previous "spook" associations. Steele had numerous and continuous communications including telephone, Skype, email and personal meetings with Bruce and Nellie Ohr during all this. They even have discussions about Deripaska and about his visa application to visit the US. Bruce is a conduit to Strzok at FBI. Glenn Simpson also is part of these discussions with Steele and the Ohrs.

Simpson also arranges for Steele to brief "reporters" like David Corn and others at the NY Times, WaPo, WSJ, Politico and others. Then there is Mifsud and Halper. Apparently both are CIA and FBI assets. They are communicating with Carter Page and Papadopolous, who in turn is drinking and yapping with Aussie ambassador Downer.

You have Brennan ginning up concerns giving super secret and individual briefings to the Gang of 8 in Congress. There's Democratic Senator Mark Warner, the minority leader on the Senate Intelligence Committee texting and calling Adam Waldman, Deripaska's US attorney about setting up clandestine meetings with Steele. There's Sen. Harry Reid passing on the Steele "dossier" to Comey.

Not to be left behind there's Sen. McCain doing the same. His top aide even travels to London to meet Steele. And then there's Strzok and his mistress Lisa Page busily spending every waking moment texting each other about every twist and turn in all the political games being played. Of course there's Admiral Rogers investigating unusual searches by FBI officials and contractors on the NSA database. And he briefs President-elect Trump at Trump Tower which prompts the entire transition team to move to Trump's golf course in NJ.

Oh, there is also Nellie Ohr setting up ham radio to avoid detection in her communications with Steele. Then we have everyone leaking and spinning to their "cohorts" in the premier media like the NY Times, CNN and WaPo.

Comey even has his buddy a professor and ostensibly his legal counsel on the payroll of the FBI as a contractor with access to all the sensitive databases leaking to the media.

Andy McCabe has his legal counsel Lisa Page spin stories around his wife's huge campaign contributions from Clinton consigliere McAuliffe.

In fact the IG report on the Clinton "investigation" states that many at the FBI were accepting "gifts" from various media personalities for a quid pro quo.

As if all this was not enough there's AG Loretta Lynch, meeting with Bill Clinton on a tarmac ostensibly to discuss their grandkids. Not to forget there were these "unmaskings" of surveillance information by Susan Rice, Samantha Power.

There's Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr's direct boss who testifies he knew nothing about Ohr being a conduit to Strzok for Steele. Of course he knew nothing but signed the FISA application on Carter Page. Then there are the FISC judges who never believed their mandate required them to verify the evidence before issuing sweeping surveillance warrants. Now all this is what I as an old farmer and winemaker have read. Those more in tune would easily add to these convoluted machinations.

I don't know how to make sense of all this. All I see is the extent of effort to prevent Donald Trump from being elected and after he won from governing. The most obvious observation is that the leadership in our law enforcement and intelligence agencies are so busy politicking spinning and leaking they have neither the time or the inclination let alone competence to do their real job for which they get paid a handsome wage and sterling benefits.

At this point I don't buy that Christopher Steele dug up real intelligence from his contacts at the highest levels of the Russian government, which caught Brennan, Clapper, Comey and Lynch's pants on fire, who then launched a formal investigation of Russia collusion with Trump. Many things just don't pass the smell test. Now of course I have no qualifications nor experience in spookdom.

If you have any speculative theories that connects some of the dots it would be my great pleasure to read.

Patrick Armstrong -> Jack , 3 days ago

I agree that it (and Skripalmania) are almost impossible to make sense of unless you think of a bunch of highly politicised not very bright people sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like a bright idea at the time.

Confident that their horse is going to win the race and that the media will cover it all up and nobody will ever hear anything about anything. Now that the unexpected happened, they're just spinning and denying faster hoping the Dems win in Nov and stop all the investigations. And, they're getting nervous wondering who's going to sell out whom next. Up and down, around and around. Gerbils -- there really isn't anything very consistent, planned or thought-out.

In this respect, this piece attempts to make sense (on a very large scale) of their panic. https://www.strategic-cultu...

English Outsider -> Patrick Armstrong , a day ago

"I agree that it (and Skripalmania) are almost impossible to make sense of unless you think of a bunch of highly politicised not very bright people sinking deeper and deeper into what looked like a bright idea at the time."

I believe your summary of what's happening is more accurate than Alastair Crooke's as set out in the article linked to.

But bright or not, what are these people in the IC doing being "highly politicised"? Does that not render them considerably less efficient?

I ask because, if one tries to look at it in a non-partisan way, the Western IC seemed to be a failure when it came to predicting Russian reactions in the Donbass, the Crimea, and it seems in Syria. I link this to various comments from Colonel Lang indicating that true experts were replaced over the years by less experienced and knowledgeable people. Does being "highly politicised" mean that they're not up to much when it comes to minding the shop?

Patrick Armstrong -> English Outsider , 5 hours ago

I thought I detected a protest against the politicisation of the US in the world some years ago. And we must not forget that Gen Flynn (DIA) and Adm Rogers (NSA) acted strongly against this. Flynn was the first casualty of the Trump/Russia hysteria and the Clapper claque tried to fire Rogers.

https://russia-insider.com/...

Jack -> Patrick Armstrong , 3 days ago

Patrick

Usually the incumbent party loses the mid-term election. The Democrats lost big in Obama's first mid-term. The Republicans won the House and gained six senators. While the punditry claims a Blue Wave and Nate Silver is giving the Dems the odds. I'm not so sure. I think the GOP will increase their majority in the Senate putting any conviction of Trump out of question.

I was born in the Depression and have seen vitriolic politics but never have seen such a massive opposition by the media, the pundits and the establishment of both parties. Over 500 print publications endorsed Hillary. Only some 20 endorsed Trump. Yet he confounds the pundits by winning the election. Clearly many voters are at odds with the political media class.

Patrick Armstrong -> Jack , 2 days ago

Yeah. My bet is that the Repubs hold onto both. 1) the economy is getting better 2) what do the Dems have to offer other than this crazy Trump/Russia thing?

Rob -> Patrick Armstrong , a day ago

Economy will slow down sharply in 2019 but there should be enough momentum to help with the mid-terms. Trump needs to stop with the endless sanction stuff. The House does look like a close one.

Pat Lang Mod -> Rob , a day ago

what is the evidence for a slowdown in 2019?

Rob -> Pat Lang , a day ago

With all the caveats that apply to financial forecasting copper, monetary indicators and equity markets are all flagging a slowdown is upon us.

David Habakkuk -> Jack , 3 days ago

Jack,

At a very general level, a 'speculative theory' which I have been mulling over for some time was rather well set out in a commentary in 'The Hill' on 9 August by Sharyl Attkisson, which opens:

'Let's begin in the realm of the fanciful.

'Assume, for the sake of argument, that powerful, connected people in the intelligence community and in politics worried that a wildcard Trump presidency, unlike another Clinton or Bush, might expose a decade-plus of questionable practices. Disrupt long-established money channels. Reveal secret machinations that could arguably land some people in prison.

'What exactly might an "insurance policy" against Donald Trump look like?'

And Attkisson goes on to outline precisely the developments that appear to have happened.

(See http://thehill.com/opinion/... .)

I think there is an ideological background to this, on which the piece by Alastair Crooke – himself former MI6 – to which Patrick Armstrong links, and the piece by James George Jatras to which Crooke links, are both to the point. The 'end of history' crowd thought they were inhabiting a realised utopia, and cannot cope with the fact that their dream is collapsing.

In relation to the millenarian undercurrents on which Crooke focuses, however, it is also worth noting that a traditional conservative suspicion has been that millenarianism is naturally linked to antinomianism: the belief that the moral law is not binding on the elect. And in turn, according to a familiar skeptical view, antinomianism can easily end up in in straightforward rascality.

On the rascality – to which Attkisson is pointing – I am working on how parts of the picture can be fleshed out. A few preliminary points raised by your remarks.

As you note, 'There's Rod Rosenstein, Bruce Ohr's direct boss who testifies he knew nothing about Ohr being a conduit to Strzok for Steele.' So, we know that Ohr and Steele were conspiring together to ensure that the latter could continue to be intimately involved in the Mueller investigation, despite the FBI termination,

It is obviously possible that Ohr did not report up the chain of command, and if so, he and his wife become pivotal figures in the conspiracy. Alternatively, it could be that Rosenstein is lying – in which case, we have large questions about who else is implicated, and specifically whether the termination of Steele by the FBI was anything more than a ruse.

If, as seems to me likely, although not certain, the second possibility is closer to the truth than the former, then before Ohr testifies on 28 August before the House Judiciary and Oversight Committees he will have to consider whether he is prepared to 'take the rap' for his superiors, or 'sing sweetly.'

The fact that in a report in 'The Hill', I think on the same day as the Attkisson piece, John Solomon was quoting from Ohr's handwritten notes of a meeting with Glenn Simpson in December 2016 makes me wonder whether he may not already have made a decision. A key paragraph from the report:

'Yet, Simpson allegedly acknowledged that most of the information Fusion GPS and British intelligence operative Christopher Steele developed did not come from sources inside Moscow. "Much of the collection about the Trump campaign ties to Russia comes from a former Russian intelligence officer (? not entirely clear) who lives in the U.S.," Ohr scribbled in his notes.'

(See http://thehill.com/hilltv/r... .)

There is I think a need for caution here. There is no guarantee that Simpson was telling the literal truth to Ohr, or indeed the latter reproducing with absolute accuracy with he was told (handwritten notes can be disposed of easily, but they can also be rewritten.)

One is I think on firmer ground in relation to what it suggests was not the case – that there is any substance whatsoever in the ludicrous story of someone running a private security company in London sending out hired employees who then gain access to top Kremlin insiders, with these, of course, telling them precisely what they actually think.

And it confirms my strong suspicion that the dossier is actually a composite product, much of it assembled at Fusion, which could indeed contain material from a range of people from the former Soviet space, who could living in the United States, Britain, or elsewhere – Ukraine and the Baltics being obvious possibilities.

So Sergei Skripal and Sergei Millian, neither of whom fit the description by Simpson, have been mentioned as possible sources, and there is also the very curiously ambiguous role of Rinat Akhmetshin.

All these people, obviously, could simply have fabricated material or retailed gossip, and Steele himself was involved in fabricating material on an industrial scale to cover up what actually happened to Alexander Litvinenko.

That said, I continue to think it possible that both the second and final memoranda may incorporate some 'glitter', as well as 'chickenfeed' fed from FSB cybersecurity people to their FBI counterparts, to hark back to George Smiley says to the Minister, quite possibly included in the hope that the BS involved would be reproduced in contexts where it could provoke legal action.

All this leads me back to the suspicion that Steele's involvement may have been less in crafting the dossier, than making it possible to conceal its actual origins while giving it an appearance of credibility. It could also be the case that Nellie Ohr's sudden interest in radio transmissions had to do with communications inside the United States, rather than with Steele.

It could then be that Steele has been, in effect, hoist with his own petard, in that he is having to sustain the fiction that he had some kind of grounds for making the claims about Aleksej Gubarev and XBT. How far this matters, at least in relation to the action bought against 'BuzzFeed' in Florida, remains moot at the moment.

Apparently that organisation is doing rather well in sustaining the claiming that 'fair report privilege' could circumvent any requirement to prove truth – and a key question now is whether documents which the DOJ is being forced to produce will establish that the dossier was being used by officials in ways that would trigger the privilege as of 10 January 2017.

That said, what Ohr reports Simpson as telling him raises fundamental questions about how anyone could have relied upon the dossier for anything – and should push people back to actually asking hard questions about its origins.

fanto -> David Habakkuk , 2 days ago

Mr Habakkuk, you mention "ambiguous role of Rinat Akhmetshin" - I am not sure if you meant Akhmetov.

I am surprised and curious about you mentioning him - if you meant Akhmetov - because that is one name among all the oligarchs which has so far not been prominent. Thank you for your posts, these posts and the SST comments could and should serve as help to the congressional investigations and hearings.

blue peacock -> Jack , 4 days ago

Jack

To add: Steele was on the FBI's payroll, in addition to being on Fusion GPS's payroll. And on the payroll of Her Majesty's Government. After he got caught leaking to the media he was apparently "fired" by the FBI. But he was continuing to communicate and brief through Bruce Ohr at the DOJ.

I think the circle of Glenn Simpson. Chris Steele, Bruce & Nellie Ohr, Adam Waldman. Peter Strzok, and Sen. Mark Warner will be very interesting to pursue.

The other circle that should be investigated is the Brennan, Clapper, Lynch, Comey, Yates, Susan Rice.

No investigation can exclude the active participation of key people from the media complex including people like Comey's good friend Benjamin Wittes.

Patrick Armstrong , 3 days ago

Younger isn't the brightest bulb in the box, is he?

"If you doubt the link between legitimacy and effective counter-terrorism, then – albeit negatively – the unfolding tragedy in Syria will, I fear, provide proof. I believe the Russian conduct in Syria, allied with that of Assad's discredited regime, will, if they do not change course, provide a tragic example of the perils of forfeiting legitimacy. In defining as a terrorist anyone who opposes a brutal government, they alienate precisely that group that has to be on side if the extremists are to be defeated. Meanwhile, in Aleppo, Russia and the Syrian regime seek to make a desert and call it peace. The human tragedy is heart-breaking"

David Habakkuk -> Patrick Armstrong , 3 days ago

Patrick,

Those were indeed some of the most inane comments in an inane piece.

But then, if you read an interview given to Jay Elwes of 'Prospect' magazine in May last year by Younger's predecessor Sir Richard Dearlove, who looks to have been a significant background presence in what has been going on, you will find that, although he is much more coherent than than his successor, it is almost as inane.

(See https://www.prospectmagazin... . )

As it happens, Dearlove was one of the signatories of the 'Statement of Principles' of something called the 'Henry Jackson Society.'

This was founded in 2005, in Cambridge, by a group in whom acolytes of an historian called Maurice Cowling were prominent – Dearlove is himself a graduate in history from that university.

In its original version, the 'Statement of Principles' explained, among other things, that the Society: 'Believes that only modern liberal democratic states are truly legitimate, and that any international organization which admits undemocratic states on an equal basis is fundamentally flawed.'

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... .)

Ironically, it was shortly after the publication of the dossier that Anatol Lieven published in the 'National Interest' an article entitled 'Is America Becoming a Third World Country?' (See https://nationalinterest.or... .)

Among other things, he harked back to the way that, in 1648, a century and a half of bloody ideological strife in Europe had been ended with a recognition that the legitimacy of different state forms had to be accepted, if a kind of 'war of all against all' was to be avoided.

And Lieven went on to reflect on the way that, at what was then widely seen as the end of the Cold War, the abandonment of universalisitic pretensions by Russia and China was interpreted as justifying an embrace of these by the the West.

This, he went on to argue, had actually had the paradoxical effect of relegitimising 'régimes' which do not conform to Western 'democratic' models, concluding by noting what appears to our new, quasi-Soviet, preference for not letting experience interfere with ideological dogma:

'Finally – even after the catastrophes of Iraq and Libya – there is almost no awareness among US policymakers of the fact that US attempts to change the regimes of other countries are likely to be seen not only by the elites of those countries but also by their populations as leading to – and intended to lead to – the destruction of the state itself, leading to disaster for its society and population. When the Communist regime in the USSR collapsed (though only in part under Western pressure), it took the Soviet state with it. The Russian state came close to following suit in the years that followed, Russia was reduced to impotence on the world stage, and large parts of the Russian and other populations suffered economic and social disaster. Remembering their own past experiences with state collapse, warlordism, famine and foreign invasion, Chinese people looked at this awful spectacle and huddled closer to the Chinese state – one that they may dislike in many ways, but which they certainly trust more than anything America has to offer – especially given the apparent decay of democracy throughout the West.'

( https://nationalinterest.or... .)

I read with interest your piece back in June entitled 'Putin Once Dreamed the American Dream', reprinting Charles Heberle's account of the 'Transforming Subjects Into Citizens' project, and the attitude of some people close to Putin to it.

(See https://patrickarmstrong.ca... .)

One of the things which struck me was that the question why the American Revolution succeeded, and so many others failed, which was concerning the intellectuals to whom Heberle talked, is one of the central questions of modern political thought, from Tocqueville on.

(Indeed, the question of the preconditions for what might be called 'constitutional' government, has been central to 'republican' thought, ever since it was revived by Italian thinkers, including prominently Machiavelli, when the 'Renaissance' made them reactivate and rework debates from ancient Rome and Greece.)

However, to hark back to the anxieties expressed by Lieven, nothing in the analysis of the great French thinker necessary guarantees that the success of 'Democracy in America' is stable and permanent, or indeed that the relatively civilised order of the post-war 'Pax Americana' is necessarily durable in Western Europe.

Also in June, Sergei Karaganov published a piece in 'Russia in Global Affairs', of which he is publisher, entitled 'Ideology of Eastward Turn.' A paragraph that struck me:

'Russian society should by no means abdicate from its mostly European culture. But it should certainly stop being afraid, let alone feel ashamed, of its Asianism. It should be remembered that from the standpoint of prevailing social mentality and society's attitude to the authorities Russia, just as China and many other Asian states, are offspring of Chengiss Khan's Empire. This is no reason for throwing up hands in despair or for beginning to despise one's own people, contrary to what many members of intelligencia sometimes do. It should be accepted as a fact of life and used as a strength. The more so, since amid the harsh competitive environment of the modern world the authoritarian type of government – in the context of a market economy and equitable military potentials – is certainly far more effective than modern democracy. This is what our Western partners find so worrisome. Of course, we should bear in mind that authoritarianism – just like democracy – may lead to stagnation and degradation. Russia is certainly confronted with such a risk.'

Unlike you, I cannot claim serious expertise on Russia. But, as a reasonably alert generalist television current affairs producer, I took note of the indications which were emerging in the course of 1987 that the Gorbachev 'new thinking' was underpinned by a realisation that Soviet institutions and ideas had become fundamentally dysfunctional, to which you have referred repeatedly over the years.

And, after long tedious months trying interest the powers that were in British broadcasting in what was happening, I ended up producing a couple of programmes for BBC Radio in February/March 1989 in which we interviewed some of the leading 'new thinkers', among them Karaganov's then immediate superior at the Institute of Europe, Vitaly Zhurkin.

At the Institute for the USA and Canada, by contrast, we did not interview its head, Georgiy Arbatov, but his deputy, Andrei Kokoshin, and one of the latter's mentors on military matters and collaborators General-Mayor Valentin Larionov, who I later realised had earlier been one of the foremost Soviet nuclear strategists. (At the Institute for World Economy and International Relations, we interviewed Arbatov's son, Alexei.)

Talking to these people we got a sense, although it had to be fleshed out later, of the scale of the disillusion with Soviet models, and indeed – which began to frighten me not long after – of the way many of them were romanticising the West.

What Karaganov now writes is I think a hardly very surprising reaction to the way that the Western powers responded to the 'new thinking.' Moreover, it seems to me that the disillusionment involved is in no sense particular Russian, but rather global.

If one regards 'democracy' as though it were quoted on the stock exchange, before 1914 there were very many buyers, including among the Russian élite. By 1931, in very many places, including large sections of the 'intelligentsia' in Western countries, it was a sellers' market, to put it mildly.

After 1945, a kind of long 'bull market' in 'democracy' started: for very good reasons.

The – largely but very far from entirely – peaceful retreat and collapse of Soviet power was to a very significant extent the product of this. The subsequent behaviour of Western élites has generated a vicious 'bear market', a fact they appear unable to understand.

I do not think Karaganov's article is simply a reflection of changes in Russian attitudes. The changes, it seems to me, are global.

Patrick Armstrong -> David Habakkuk , 3 days ago

I do think that we in the West really blew it. In 1990, we could have said, in all humility, that our way of life (IMO the key word is pluralism) had proven more survivable. So we should welcome the others into the tent. Instead, we were right and that was that.

PS, in light of the Henry Jackson society and all Younger's references to "values" this one rather stands out "A vital lesson I take from the Chilcot Report is the danger of group think."

Yeah. Group think, the very opposite of what I mean by pluralism.

Jack -> David Habakkuk , 3 days ago

David,

Sharyl Atkinson describes well the conspiracy. When one steps back and look at all the machinations we know now, it seems incredible.

Just as you're asking about the origins of the dossier I wonder if it was orchestrated or something that evolved organically? If it was orchestrated, then who was the mastermind? Did Brennan, Clapper and Come sit down and hatch it or was Simpson the brains? What is astounding is the scale. So many people involved. Were they all motivated by ideology or by the need to protect their racket?

It seems there are many sub-plots. There's the Deripaska, Steele, Waldman, Mueller, Sen. Warner angle. Then there's the Simpson, Steele, Ohr, Strzok, Page, McCabe angle. There's also the Simpson, Steele, media reporters angle. Then there's the whole Mifsud, Halper, Carter Page, Papadopolous, Downer bit. There's the Comey, Rosenstein, Yates, Strzok FISA application piece. Then there's all the stuff happening in the UK including Hannigan's resignation as soon as Trump is elected. Of course the whole Mueller appointment and the obstruction of justice thread to tie Trump's hand. There are so many elements. Who initiated and coordinated? Was each element separate?

There's no doubt a political thriller movie could be made.

FB -> Patrick Armstrong , 3 days ago

Thanks for the quote...LOL

I guess the comedy part is that there actually exist people with medically functioning brains, who are somehow able to contort such a worldview...Aleppo as peaceful 'desert' indeed...who knew that having bearded fanatics in charge is somehow 'better'...[and not 'heart-breaking']...

Michael Regan , 2 days ago

Some here may find blogpost from March of this year interesting as it speaks to the production of the Steele dossier. I have not seen it mentioned here before and a site search produced no results. https://apelbaum.wordpress.... Some sections seem to have gotten David Cay Johnston's hackles up.

David Habakkuk -> Michael Regan , a day ago

Michael Regan,

I had seen Yaacov Apelbaum's piece referred to by Clarice Feldman in a post on the 'American Thinker' site a few days back, but not looked at it properly.

It is indeed fascinating, and clearly repays a closer study than I have so far had time to give it. I was however relieved to find that what Apelbaum writes 'meshes' quite well with my own views of the likely authorship of the dossier.

A question I have is whether the monumental amount of labour involved in producing it can really be the work of a single IT person – however wide-ranging his abilities and interests. My suspicion is that there may be input from Russian intelligence.

This is not said in order to discredit Apelbaum's work. In matters where I have had occasion critically to examine claims from official Russian sources, I have found several unsurprising, but recurring, patterns. Sometimes, the information provided can be shown to be essentially accurate, and it is reasonably clear how it has been obtained.

At other times, claims are made which information from other sources suggests either are, or may well be, true, but the 'sources and methods' involved are deliberately obscured, making evaluation more difficult.

And then, there are many occasions when what one gets is quite patently a mixture of accurate information and disinformation. Analysing these can be very productive, if one can both sift out the accurate information, and attempt to see what the disinformation is designed to obscure.

One thing of which I am absolutely certain is that the networks which are outlined by Apelbaum are precisely those which Russian intelligence will have spent a great deal of time and ingenuity penetrating.

This will have been attempted by 'SIGINT' and surveillance methods, and also through infiltrating agents and turning people. (There are often grounds to suspect that some of those most vociferously denouncing Putin are colluding with Russian intelligence.)

Together, these methods are likely to have produced a mass of information. It is important to remember, for example, that at the time of his mysterious death on 23 March 2013 Boris Berezovsky was negotiating to return to Russia, and that his head of security, Sergei Sokolov did return, with a 'cache' of documents.

Some of these were used back in April 2016 in a 'Vesti Nedeli' edition presented by Dmitry Kiselyov, who manages Russia's informational programming resources, and an accompanying documentary on the 'Pervyi Kanal' station.

The purpose was to demonstrate that Alexei Navalny was the instrument of a 'régime change' plot in which William Browder was acting as an agent of MI6.

There is a good discussion of this, which highlights some of the problems with the documents, by Gilbert Doctorow, and Sokolov appears to have been involved in some murky activities since.

(See https://russia-insider.com/... ; https://en.crimerussia.com/... .)

But whatever the credibility or lack of it of the material, its appearance illustrates a general pattern, where the political disintegration of the London-based opposition to Putin has meant that more and more people involved in it have been supplying information to the Russians.

If, as I strongly suspect, there is fire beneath the smoke in those Russian television programmes, and if a great part of a series of projects of a related kind orchestrated in conjunction by elements in American and British intelligence were actually large run from this side, this will be creating headaches for people in Washington, as well as London.

An important role in the Apelbaum piece is played by the private security company Hakluyt. A quick look at the entries on Wikipedia and Powerbase will make clear that, if there is a British 'deep state', this is likely to be at its core.

(See https://en.wikipedia.org/wi... ; http://powerbase.info/index... .)

It is against this background that on has to see a specific claim which Apelbaum makes, for which I do not think any evidence is produced, about two figures whose role in 'Russiagate' is clearly central. So Luke Harding is described as 'A Guardian reporter and a Hakluyt and Orbis contractor' (note word.) Meanwhile, Edward Baumgartner is described as 'Co-founder of Edward Austin. Contractor at Orbis and Hakluyt.'

That Harding is corrupt, as also Sir Robert Owen's 'Inquiry' into the death of the late Alexander Litvinenko, I can prove. When Owen's report was published in January 2016, a preliminary response by me was posted here on SST, which among other things listed some of the evidence establishing that the interviews supposedly recorded with Litvinenko by Detective Inspector Brent Hyatt immediately before his death were blatant forgeries.

If this is the case, then questions are raised about how much of the apparently compelling forensic evidence is forged – and close examination suggests that key parts of it are.

(See http://turcopolier.typepad.... .)

In relation to that part of the evidence discussed in my January 2016 post which exposes the fumbling attempts by Steele and his colleagues to cover up the truth about when and how Litvinenko travelled into central London on the day he was supposedly killed, most of this had been among a mass of material submitted by me to the Inquiry Team, which I have e-mails to prove was read.

Likewise, also in January 2016, I sent the key relevant evidence on this crucial matter to Harding and senior figures at the 'Guardian', and have reason to believe it was read.

Further study of Owen's report has confirmed my suspicion that a strong 'prima facie case' of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice exists against very many of those involved in it.

At the same time, materials produced on the Russian side have confirmed my suspicion that the reason why Steele and others have been able to get away with their cover-up is that the Russian intelligence services are no more enthusiastic than their British counterparts about having anything like the whole truth about how Litvinenko lived and died made public.

Given the central role which Steele has now assumed in what looks like one of the biggest political scandals in American history, and the fact that in his book 'Collusion' Harding was again coming out in support of him, it would be of the greatest possible interest if indeed the latter had combined being a senior 'Guardian' correspondent with being paid by both Orbis and – even more important – Hakluyt.

And, particularly given the peculiar ambiguities of the role both of Fusion GPS and Baumgartner in the 'Trump Tower' meeting, it would be of great interest if the latter could be tied not only to Fusion, but to Orbis and – again even more important – Hakluyt.

This in turn might be relevant in trying to make sense of whether the fact that he and Simpson appear to have been working against Trump and Browder at the same time was or was not part of an elaborate ploy to give credibility to 'information operations' against the former.

There are accordingly two possibilities. It may be that, while much else in the Apelbaum material can be shown to be accurate, such accurate information is being used to give credibility to disinformation.

Alternatively, he is being used as a conduit for accurate and really explosive information about the British end of 'Russiagate', which he is unlikely to have unearthed all by himself, and the actual sources of which are – for very understandable reasons – being obscured.

Michael Regan -> David Habakkuk , a day ago

Mr Habakkuk-

Thank you for your reply. You have given me much to think about and I am very grateful that you took the time to respond in such a comprehensive manner, and that you have provided me and others here with some really compelling information and notions.

In particular, the issue of sources and methods you note seems spot on. The author(s)'s information gathering methodologies and expertise are certainly not those of the laiety. In fact in the comments below his post YA mentions intelligence work.

Additionally, the text itself displays an odd parallelism with his assertion regarding the Steele Dossier- that is, the likelihood of multiple authors, of diverse origins.

One thing that did catch my eye was a response he made to David Cay Johnston's pissy request for a retraction about Jacoby involvement. YA included a quote in Latin from Cicero's accusations against Cataline. Here is the English: What is there that you did last night, what the night before -- where is it that you were -- who was there that you summoned to meet you -- what design was there which was adopted by you, with which you think that any one of us is unacquainted?

While this sort of riposte isn't exactly hyper-erudite, it ain't chopped liver either. What I mean to say is that exceptional cyber skills, algorithm coding (I'm guessing crawlers) are not commonly coupled with that sort of classical formation. His recourse to various biblical quotes suggests an unusual level of education as well. And no way is he younger than 38 or so.

At any rate, thank you for the article and your kind and informative reply.

David Habakkuk -> Michael Regan , a day ago

Michael Regan,

Thanks. I have now read both a good few of Apelbaum's earlier posts, and also the comments on his discussion of the dossier. Given the importance of his analysis of that document closer study is clearly needed of all this material, but I have some preliminary reactions.

My curiosity about who Apelbaum might be is reinforced by the fact that the intimations he gives about his background in his responses to comments, while not incompatible with what he has said in the past, do not sit so easily with it.

In a July 2010 post, he explained that: 'In my previous life, I was a civil engineer. I worked for a large power marine construction company doing structural design and field engineering.' According to the account he gave then, he subsequently shifted to software development.

(See https://apelbaum.wordpress.... .)

What he now tells us is that: 'As far as how I first started, I do have an intelligence background and have been developing OSINT/cyber/intelligence platforms for many years.'

That makes sense in terms of the analysis, which – whatever other inputs there may or may not have been – looks to me like the work of someone who has a serious background in these kinds of methodology, and moreover, is clearly not any kind of 'Fachidiot.'

So, questions naturally arise about Apelbaum's intelligence career, in particular, who he is likely to have been employed by, and associated with, in the past, and whether he is still involved with any of those agencies which have employed him.

Even if he is not, questions would obviously rise about present connections arising from past work. This is in addition to the possibility that the logic of events may have provoked him to collaborate with those who might earlier have been his adversaries.

Reading Apelbaum's work, I am reminded of another interesting intervention in an embittered argument relating to the Middle East and the post-Soviet space, from what turned out to be an unexpected source.

In the period following the 'false flag' sarin attack at Ghouta on 21 August 2013 an incisive demolition of the conventional wisdom was provided in the 'crowdsourced' investigation masterminded by one 'sasa wawa' on a site entitled 'Who Attacked Ghouta?'

(See http://whoghouta.blogspot.com .)

And then, in December 2016, an Israeli high technology entrepreneur called Saar Wilf, a former employee of Unit 8200, that country's equivalent of the NSA or GCHQ, who had subsequently made a great deal of money when he and his partner sold their company to Paypal, co-founded a site called 'Rootclaim.'

(See https://www.rootclaim.com .)

The site, it was explained, was dedicated to applying Bayesian statistics to 'current affairs' problems. This is a methodology, whose modern form owes much to work done at Bletchley Park in the war, which is invaluable in 'SIGINT' analysis and also combating online fraud.

At the outset, 'Rootclaim' posted a recycled version of some of the key material from the 'Who Attacked Ghouta?' investigation. So, it seems likely, if not absolutely certain, that Saar Wilf and 'sasa wawa' are one and the same.

Following the Salisbury incident on 4 March, a blogger using the name 'sushi' produced a series of eleven posts under the title 'A Curious Incident' on the 'Vineyard of the Saker' blog.

(See https://thesaker.is/tag/sushi/ .)

Again, there are some very clear resemblances to 'sasa wawa' and Saar Wilf, which made me wonder whether the same person may be reappearing under yet another 'moniker.'

While the 'flavour' of Apelbaum seems to be different, the combination of what looks like serious technical expertise in IT techniques relating to intelligence with broad general intellectual interests looks to me similar.

I was amused by the combination of his quotation of the words from John 8:32 etched into the wall of the original CIA headquarters – 'And you shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free' – and the following remarks:

'The June 2016 start date of Steele's contract with Fusion GPS is the start of the "billable" activity, not the beginning of the research. Steele and Simpson/Jacoby have been collaborating on Trump/Russia going back to 2009.

'Also, there is a large Hakluyt/Orbis "commercial intelligence" network in the US that regularly services political and federal agencies and has the power to summon Nazgûls the likes of John Brennan. So Steele is not the new kid on the block, he has been doing this type of work long before 2016. This is also why he has such a cozy relationship with the brass at the DOJ and state.'

As it happens, I think that many of the collaborations involved may have started significantly earlier than this. In his response to David Cay Johnston, Apelbaum links to an April 2007' WSJ' article by Simpon and Jacoby which, among other things, deals with Semyon Mogilevich.

This is behind a paywall, but, fortunately, the fact that Ukrainian nationalists have had an obvious interest in treating it as a source of reliable information has meant that it is easily accessible.

(See www.madcowprod.com/wp-conte... )

It should I think be clear from my January 2016 post why I find this particularly interesting, in that it has to be interpreted in the context of a crucial 'key' to the mystery of the death of Alexander Litvinenko.

This is that he, the Ukrainian nationalist former KGB person Yuri Shvets, the convicted Italian disinformation peddler Mario Scaramella, and quite possibly the sometime key FBI expert on Mogilevich, Robert 'Bobby' Levinson, were involved in trying to suggest that Mogilevich was an instrument of a plot by Putin to equip Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb.'

So, I then come back to the question of whether this notion of a 'large Haluyt/Orbis "commercial intelligence" network in the US', playing the role of Sauron with Brennan, perhaps, as the 'Witch-king of Angmar', does or does not have substance.

If it does, there would be very good reasons for a variety of people, with a range of different attitudes to events in the post-Soviet space and the Middle East, to think that they had an interest in collaborating with Russian intelligence against a common enemy.

If it does not, then there is a real possibility that Apelbaum may be involved in using accurate intelligence to disseminate inaccurate. (It seems to me that he is much too intelligent to be a plausible candidate for the role of 'useful idiot.')

One further point that may, or may not, be relevant. Many of the most influential American and British Jews, for reasons which I find somewhat hard to understand, seem to have decided that the heirs of the architects of the Lvov pogrom are nice and cuddly.

So, for example, Chrystia Freeland, the unrepentant granddaughter of the notorious Nazi collaborator Michael Chomiak, has been able to end up as Canadian Foreign Minister because made a successful journalistic career on the London 'Financial Times', a paper with a strong Jewish presence.

That the editorial staff of such a paper thought it appropriate to have someone like Freeland as their Moscow correspondent gives you a good insight into how moronic British élites have become. This may well be relevant, in trying to evaluate claims about Hakluyt and other matters.

In relation to Apelbaum, it may be quite beside the point that other Jews from a Russian/East European background, both in Russia, Israel, and the United States, have very different views on Ukraine, Russia, and the dangers posed – not least to Israel – by jihadists. It is however a fact which needs to be born in mind, when one comes across people whose views cut across conventional dividing lines in the United States and Britain.

Beside the point in relation to Apelbaum, I am confident, but also needing to be kept in mind, is the possibility that elements in the United States 'intelligence community', seeing the 'writing on the wall', may think it appropriate to shift from trying to pass the buck by blaming the Russians to doing so by blaming the Brits.

Michael Regan -> David Habakkuk , a day ago

It seems apparent that Putin's reordering of the Russian economy after the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management, Republic Bank's difficulites and the death of Edmund Safra left a bitter taste in the mouths of many who had hoped to exercise rentier rights over the Russian economy and resources. Why so much US resources and energy have been committed to recovering a contested deed is a real conundrum.

I was unaware of Freeland's grandfather and his lamentable CV. Thank you. It's funny that you mentioned both the Ghouta post and the Vineyard of the Saker. I recall reading those and thinking- this is not like common fare on the intertubes.

Your last points about failings in the quality of elite decision-making is extremely important. This dynamic of the dumb (US, UK, EU) at the wheel is, for me, the most frightening feature of the current state of play. In the worst moments I fear we are all on a bus driven by a drunk monkey, careening through the Andes. It's going to hurt all the way to the bottom.

Again, I am very grateful for your replies and all the great information and thought.

David Habakkuk -> Michael Regan , 2 hours ago

Michael Regan,

I think the question of why large elements in both American and British élites got so heavily invested, in essence, in supporting the oligarchs who refused Putin's terms in what turned into a kind of 'bare knuckles' struggle they were always likely to lose is a very interesting one.

It has long seemed to me that, even if one looked at matters from the most self-interested and cynical point of view, this represented a quite spectacular error of judgement. And, viewing the way in which 'international relations' are rearranging themselves, I am reasonably confident that this was one matter on which I got things right.

A central reason for this, I have come to think, is that Berezovsky and the 'information operations' people round him – Litvinenko is important, but the pivotal figure, the 'mastermind', if you will, was clearly Alex Goldfarb, and Yuri Shvets and Yuri Felshtinsky both played and still play important supporting roles – were telling people in the West what these wanted to hear.

It is a truth if not quite 'universally acknowledged', at least widely recognised by those who have acquired some 'worldly wisdom', that intellectually arrogant people, with limited experience of the world and a narrow education, can commonly be 'led by the nose' by figures who have more of the relevant kinds of intelligence and experience, and few scruples.

This rather basic fact is central to understanding the press conference on 31 May 2007 where the figure whom the Berezovsky group and Christopher Steele had framed in relation to the death of Litvinenko, Andrei Lugovoi, responded to the Crown Prosecution Service request for his extradition.

In his prepared statement, Lugovoi claimed that his supposed victim used to say that everyone in Britain were ''retards', to use the translation submitted in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, or 'idiots', to use that by RT. And according to this version, the British believed in everything that 'we' – that is, the Berezovky group – said was happening in Russia.

(For the RT translation, see https://www.rt.com/news/and... .)

Whether or not Litvinenko expressed this cynical contempt, the credulity with which the claims of the 'information operations' people around Berezovsky have been accepted – well illustrated by Owen's report and perhaps most ludicrous in Harding's journalism – makes clear it is justified.

What moreover became very evident, when Glenn Simpson testified to the House Intelligence and Senate Judiciary Committees, was that he was once again recycling the Berezovsky's group's version of Putin 'sistema' as the 'return of Karla.'

Given what has been emerging on the ways in which Fusion GPS and Steele were both integrated into networks involving top-level people in the FBI, DOJ, State Department and CIA, it seems clear that the 'retards'/'idiots' label is as applicable to people on your side as to people on ours.

Perhaps then, cartoons about Trump as a puppet, with the strings pulled by another puppet representing Manafort, whose strings are in turn pulled by Putin, should be replaced by ones in which Mueller is seen as a puppet manipulated by the ghost of Boris Berezovsky.

But that is the irony. The relationship with Berezovsky blew up in the faces of all concerned, when in the wake of the successsful corruption of the investigation into the death of Litvinenko by him and his 'information operations' people, he attempted to recoup his fortunes by suing Roman Abramovich, and got taken to pieces by Lord Sumption.

As to what happened next, a recent item on 'Russian Insider', providing a link to and transcript of a more recent piece presented by Dmitry Kiselyov on 'Vesti Nedeli is a good illustration of where accurate information and disinformation can be mixed in material from Russian sources.

(See https://russia-insider.com/... .)

The piece, which appeared in July, discusses, and quotes from, an interview given the previous month to Dmitry Gordon, who runs a Ukrainian nationalist site, by Berezovsky's daughter Elizaveta. Among other things, this deals with Berezovsky's death.

(See https://gordonua.com/public... . A little manipulation will get you a reasonably serviceable English translation, although it becomes comic because Berezovsky is referred to as 'pope'.)

The 'Vesti Nedeli' piece uses what Elizaveta Berezovskaya says in support of the claim that Berezovsky was murdered by British 'special forces', because he was planning to return to Russia, and he 'knew too much about them.'

As it happens, this is a patently tendentious reading of what she says. However, interesting features of the actual text of the interview are 1. that it does provide what to my mind is compelling evidence that her father was murdered, and 2. while she clearly suggests that this was covered up by the British, she is not suggesting that they were responsible – but also not making Putin 'prime suspect.'

Whether the suggestion by his daughter that her father might have been murdered by people who knew that by so doing they might get control of assets he might otherwise recoup has any merit I cannot say: I doubt it but cannot simply rule the possibility out.

What remains the case is that at that point there were very many people, including but in no way limited to elements in Western intelligence agencies, who had strong interests in avoiding a return by Berezovsky to Russia.

And the same people had the strongest possible interest in avoiding his being treated at the Inquest into Litvinenko's death by a competent barrister representing the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation in the way he had been treated by Lord Sumption.

Ironically, it may have been partly because Lugovoi had made a dramatic announcement that he was withdrawing from the proceedings less than a fortnight before Berezovsky's death that before this happened a lot of people were staring at an absolutely worst-case scenario.

Time and again, in Owen's report, one finds matters where he recycles patent disinformation, which a well-briefed barrister acting for the ICRF could have easily ripped to shreds. At the same time, in this situation, the Russians could most probably have made a reasonable fist of coping with the multiple contradictions in claims made on their own side.

And, crucially, their patent weak suit – the need to obscure the actual role of Russian intelligence in the smuggling of the polonium into London, which had nothing to do with any murder plot – could have been reasonably well 'covered.'

Precisely because of these facts, the one scenario which can very easily be completely ruled out is that which is basic to the 'information operations' now coming out of London and Washington. In this, Berezovsky's death is portrayed as a key element in a systematic attempt by the Putin 'sistema' to eradicate the supposedly heroic opposition, much of it located in London.

That sustaining this fable is critical to defending the credibility of Steele, and therefore of the whole 'Russiagate' narrative, is quite evident from the 'From Russia With Blood' materials published by 'BuzzFeed' in July last year.

(See https://www.buzzfeed.com/he... .)

This, however, leads on to a paradox, which is highlighted by a piece posted by James George Jatras on the 'Strategic Culture Foundation' site on 18 August, entitled 'Have You Committed Your Three Felonies Today?'

(See https://www.strategic-cultu... .)

Among the points Jatras – who I think is an Orthodox Christian – makes is that the logic of contesting the 'Russiagate' narrative has had some strange consequences. Among these, there is one on which the actual history of the activities of Berezovsky and his 'information operations' people bears directly:

'Flipping the "Russians did it" narrative: Among the President's defenders, on say Fox News, no less than among his detractors, Russia is the enemy who (altogether now!) "interfered in our elections" in order to "undermine our democracy." Mitt Romney was right! The only argument is over who was the intended beneficiary of Muscovite mendacity, Trump or Hillary – that's the variable. The constant is that Putin is Hitler and only a traitor would want to get along with him. All sides agree that the Christopher Steele dossier is full of "Russian dirt" – though there's literally zero actual evidence of Kremlin involvement but a lot pointing to Britain's MI6 and GCHQ.'

(See https://www.strategic-cultu... .)

For reasons I have already discussed, I think what while Jatras is substantially right, 'zero evidence' is only partially correct: It seems to me that disinformation supplied by elements in Russian intelligence could quite possibly have found its way into the second and final memoranda.

That said, Jatras has pointed to a fundamental feature of the current situation, which involves multiple ironies.

The total destruction of Steele's credibility could easily be achieved by anyone who was interested in looking at the evidence about the life and death of the late Alexander Litvinenko seriously. However, because a central tactic of most of those who are attacking the 'Russiagate' narrative has generally been 'Flipping the "Russians did it" narrative', they are like people who ought to be able to see Steele's 'Achilles' heel', but in practice, often end up attacking him where his armour is, without being, not at its weakest.

Meanwhile, as I have already stressed, the ability of the Russian authorities to undermine the 'narrative' produced by the 'information operations' people around Berezovsky, of whom the most important are Alex Goldfarb and Yuri Shvets, is compromised by their fear of having to 'own up to' their actual role in the smuggling of the polonium into London in October-November 2007.

The person who had a strong interest in blowing this structure of illusion to pieces was actually Lugovoi. But it seems to me at least possible that there has been a kind of disguised covert conspiracy by elements in Western and Russian intelligence to ensure there was no risk of him doing so.

Steve Smith , 3 days ago

One of the things I've never understood about the Trump Dossier story is the lack of any forensic analysis of its content and style anywhere in the media, even the alt media. Who was supposed to have actually written it? Steele? The style does not match someone of his background and education, and the formatting and syntax were atrocious. The font actually varied from "report" to "report." It certainly did not give me the impression of being the product of a high-end, Belgravia consultancy.

I wonder whether it was produced by an American of one sort or another and then "laundered" by being accorded association with the UK firm. Given that Steele just happened to be hired by the USG to help in the anti-FIFA skulduggery, he and his firm seem very much to be a concern that does dirty little jobs that need discretely to be done, though in this case, the discretion was undermined.

Paul M , 3 days ago

Most of the memos were issued before October and Fusion/Simpson authorized Steele to release information to the FBI starting in July. The question is why the memos were released after the election when a release before the election would have been enough to sink Trump. Instead the FBI and presumably those paying Fusion on Hillarys behalf sat on it, and Comey comes out days before the election

Saying he was reopening the HC email investigation.

Kind of looks like they all wanted Trump in office and the disclosure was to give Trump the excuse needed to back track on his promises to improve relations with Russia and blame that on pressure from the Deep State and Russia Gate.

Looking at Trumps history with Sater (FBI/CIA asset) and his political aspirations that began following his Moscow visit in 1987 it seems likely Trump has been a Deep State asset for 30 years and fed intelligence to CIA/FBI on Russian oligarchs and mafia . Indeed he may well have duped Russians into believing he was working for them when in fact it was the CIA/FBI who had the best Kompromat with US RICO laws that could have beggared him

richardstevenhack , 3 days ago

One thing to remember about the FBI is Sy Hersh. Hersh claims the FBI has been sitting on a report for two years that fingers murdered DNC staffer Seth Rich as the Wikileaks DNC email leaker (or one of them, at least.)

Now can we imagine that not everyone in a senior position at the FBI knows about that report? I can't. Literally everyone from the supervisor of the Special Agent or computer forensic investigator who examined Rich's computer right up to the Director HAD to know that report exists - and covered it up.

That right there is obstruction of justice and conspiracy. Literally everyone at the FBI who can't PROVE he didn't know about that report will be going to jail. The entire top administration of the FBI is going to go down.

And how many people at the Department of Justice are aware of that report? Did Rosenstein know? Who else in the Obama administration knew?

That would be motivation for a lot of desperate maneuvering. Add to that who was really behind the Steele Dossier and even more people are likely to end up in jail.

Pat Lang Mod -> richardstevenhack , 3 days ago

What is the link for Hersh saying that?

richardstevenhack -> Pat Lang , 3 days ago

You haven't heard that yet? It's the infamous audio tape that Hersh was caught on discussing it. He's since obfuscated what he said, but the tape stands on its own, and he has never said that anything he said on the tape wasn't true, despite that a lot of Democrats and Trump-bashers claim he has.

Here's one source on Youtube:

Seymour Hersh discussing Wikileaks DNC leaks Seth Rich & FBI report

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2FgYzB96_EK7s%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DgYzB96_EK7s&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2FgYzB96_EK7s%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

Pat Lang Mod -> richardstevenhack , 3 days ago

I have told you several times and I will tell you again probably hopelessly that Hersh PERSONALLY has told me that the "tape" was made without his permission or knowledge when he was aimlessly speculating on possibilities.

richardstevenhack -> Pat Lang , 3 days ago

I am unaware of your explicitly telling me that he personally told you that the tape was "aimless speculation." My apologies if I missed that response.

Of course the tape was made without his permission. We all know that. It's irrelevant to what he said on the tape.

What I'm saying is that despite what he may have told you, nothing on that tape sounds like "aimless speculation".

When you consider that he has four good reasons for dissembling about the tape, I view it as far more likely that everything he said was true.

1) If what he said is true, he may have compromised his FBI contact. Not good for his line of work.

2) If what he said is true, compromising that contact may well make all his other contacts wary about talking to him in the future - a bad deal for a journalist who relies on his contacts.

3) If what he said is true, he may have compromised his ability to get his "long form journalism" article published - a problem he already has had in the past.

4) If what he said is true, he's accusing the FBI of sitting on that report for two years, which might well make him a target of retaliation in some way.

If you believe that everything he said on the tape is untrue and that is what he explicitly told you, fine. I'm waiting for his "long form journalism" report to explain it. So far everything he has said publicly about it has not contradicted what he said on the tape, but merely waved his hands about it.

Pat Lang Mod -> richardstevenhack , 3 days ago

Sy Hersh talks a lot both loudly and profanely. He never intended to tell Buttowski that there was more than a possibility that the FBI held more than a rumor that this might be true. He talked to Buttowski because a mutual friend of him and me asked him to do so for no good reason. Please go talk to all the other people you pester and not on SST. You are an argumentative nuisance.

Aukuu Makule -> Pat Lang , 3 days ago

I have no stake in the debate about Rich, DNC, wikileaks.
But I do notice some loose ends. Hersh may well have engaged in speculation, but it is interesting speculation:
quote:
55. During his conversation with Butowsky, Mr. Hersh claimed that he had received information from an "FBI report." Mr. Hersh had not seen the report himself, but explained: "I have somebody on the inside who will go and read a file for me. And I know this person is unbelievably accurate and careful. He's a very high level guy."

56. According to Mr. Hersh, his source told him that the FBI report states that, shortly after Seth Rich's murder, the D.C. police obtained a warrant to search his home. When they arrived at the home, the D.C. police found Seth Rich's computer, but were unable to access it.The computer was then provided to the D.C. police Cyber Unit, who also were unable to access the computer. At that point, the D.C. police contacted the Cyber Unit at the FBI's Washington D.C. field office. Again, according to the supposed FBI report, the Washington D.C. field office was able to get into the computer and found that in "late spring early summer [2016], [Seth Rich][made] contact with Wikileaks." "They found what he had done. He had submitted a series of documents, of emails. Some juicy emails from the DNC." Mr. Hersh told Butowsky that Seth Rich "offered a sample [to WikiLeaks][,] an extensive sample, you know I'm sure dozens, of emails, and said I want money."
. . .
"I hear gossip," Hersh tells NPR on Monday. "[Butowsky] took two and two and made 45 out of it."
. . .
The clip is definitely worth listening to in its entirety if you haven't already. Hersh is heard telling Butowsky that he had a high-level insider read him an FBI file confirming that Seth Rich was known to have been in contact with WikiLeaks prior to his death, which is not even a tiny bit remotely the same as having "heard rumors". Hersh's statements in the audio recording and his statement to NPR cannot both be true.
endquote
https://medium.com/@caityjo...

blue peacock , 3 days ago

All

An interview of Rep. John Ratcliffe who will lead the questioning of Bruce Ohr.

https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fembed%2Fqn23H0vMCsM%3Ffeature%3Doembed&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3Dqn23H0vMCsM&image=https%3A%2F%2Fi.ytimg.com%2Fvi%2Fqn23H0vMCsM%2Fhqdefault.jpg&key=21d07d84db7f4d66a55297735025d6d1&type=text%2Fhtml&schema=youtube

Rob , 3 days ago

I suspect Buzzfeed were in the grip of Trump Derangement Syndrome, and perhaps you overestimate their professionalism.

David Habakkuk -> Rob , 3 days ago

Rob,

You may very well be right. There may be a large element of 'amateur night out' about this.

But then I come back to the question of who decided that the dossier be published, and who, if anyone, was consulted before the decision was made. For the reasons I gave, I am reasonably confident that those on this side who had been in one way or another complicit in its production and covert dissemination were taken aback by the publication.

It is not clear to me whether anything significant can be inferred from the publicly available evidence about whether those on your side who had been complicit were involved in the decision to publish without taking even elementary precautions, or whether the 'Buzzfeed' people just had a rush of blood to the head.

blue peacock -> David Habakkuk , 3 days ago

David

I suspect the decision to publish the dossier was political. It was required to enable Clapper, Brennan, and others to opine on national media and create further media hysteria prior to the vote as well as to justify the counter-intelligence investigations underway. They were throwing the kitchen sink to sink Trump's electoral chances. I don't think a lot of thought was given about the legal ramifications.

This seems to be a pattern. Leak information. Then use the leaked story to justify actions like apply for a FISA warrant or fan the media flames.

Cynthia Anne , 4 days ago

And now they are turning on one another. Hayden just slammed Clapper for making too much of losing the security clearance the he abuse for political reasons.

Pat Lang Mod -> Cynthia Anne , 4 days ago

Looks like both Clapper and Haydon made the same comment about Brennan. they said "his rhetoric was becoming a problem. Ah, the USAF intel rats are swimming for the shore. Lets see how many others (not all USAF) decide to try to save themselves.

blue peacock -> Pat Lang , 4 days ago

Col. Lang

I find it incredulous that former leaders of the intelligence and law enforcement agencies have gained paid access to powerful media platforms and they have used it to launch vicious attacks on a POTUS.

I find it amazing that McCabe and Peter Strzok are raising hundreds of thousands of dollars on social media platforms.

IMO, everyone on the list that Sarah Sanders noted, should not just lose their clearance but should be testifying to a grand jury.

MP98 -> blue peacock , 3 days ago

Not really incredulous. Just expected behavior from swamp creatures whose self-assumed importance and "rights" (that the rest of us peasants don't have) are coming under threat.

David Habakkuk -> blue peacock , 3 days ago

blue peacock

It seems to me absolutely appalling, and I am also appalled that people on this side appear to have been playing a central role in all this.

One question. It seems to me that if what seems likely to be true does prove true, a range of these people must have committed very serious offences indeed.

However, I am too ignorant to know what precisely those offences might be. If you, or anyone else, had a clear understanding, I would be interested.

English Outsider -> David Habakkuk , 3 days ago

"It seems to me absolutely appalling, and I am also appalled that people on this side appear to have been playing a central role in all this."

That says it all. We got the more discreditable side of the affair outsourced to us. Ugh. Is that all we're fit for now in the UK? White helmets and Khan Sheikhoun and Steele, all the scrubby stuff? Is that what the famous "Special Relationship" now consists of? We get to do the scrubby stuff because it's what we're fit for and we can be relied upon to keep it quiet?

Because at least on the American side there are people concerned about the political/PR involvement of parts of their own Intelligence Community, and seeking to have it looked into. Here - am I right? - it's dead silence.

I've been permitted to say before on SST that I don't think the Americans are going to resolve this affair satisfactorily until more light is cast on the UK side. But I also think that, for our own sakes, we should be looking at what exactly our IC does, and in particular, how much UK political involvement there was in what is now clear was a direct PR attack on an American President.

Pat Lang Mod -> English Outsider , 3 days ago

I strongly suspect that Steele has a future as a novelist.

blue peacock -> David Habakkuk , 3 days ago

David

I'm not a lawyer and have no experience with the federal criminal statutes. Having said that I suspect that the following could be considered crimes:

There may also be certain professional agreements with the government that may have been violated. The only way any of these people will face a grand jury is if Donald Trump chooses to take action. Left to the natural devices of the law enforcement institutions nothing will happen and they will sweep everything under the rug. The intensity of Trump's tweets and the accusations therein are rising. If the GOP retains the House and Jim Jordan becomes speaker, then there may be a possibility that Sessions, Rosenstein and Wray may be fired and another special counsel appointed who will then convene a grand jury.

Considering what has been uncovered by Congressional investigators and the DOJ IG, I am truly surprised that Sessions has resisted the appointment of a special counsel. But of course that could go the way of the Owens inquiry in your country.

[Sep 16, 2018] The Guardian is a blatant example of the turnaround from "reasonably reliable" to "paid shill"

Notable quotes:
"... Another example is the Danish newspaper "Information" founded during WWII, as very leftist it has today morphed, in the dark, into a center right neo- liberal rag, full of no- news and idiotic scribbles by irrelevant formerly known peoples talent-less sons and daughters. ..."
"... Wel thanks b, for telling the truth and letting me start my Sunday moderately depressed, I guess news that Washington D.C had been swallowed by a giant sink-hole, would cheer me partly up. ..."
Sep 16, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Den Lille Abe , Sep 16, 2018 12:47:49 AM | 49 ">link

Thank you b, for yet another good article!

Your article made me reflect the situation in general. While it is good the The White Frauds have been called out as an Empire front and as Western propaganda psy-op, I do thing the real Enemy is the MSM. These crimes by our governments, the White Frauds, Isil, ect,ect, would not be possible without the control of the MSM. But I am completely at a loss how to fight them, or just diminish their influence.

The Guardian s a blatant example, and its turnaround from "reasonable reliable" to "paid shill" was clumsily and obviously executed. Looking at the UK for real news , there is only the blogoshere left, all opposition has been subverted. And it is not only in the UK.

Another example is the Danish newspaper "Information" founded during WWII, as very leftist it has today morphed, in the dark, into a center right neo- liberal rag, full of no- news and idiotic scribbles by irrelevant formerly known peoples talent-less sons and daughters.

The situation in Sweden is even more depressing (it is!) the newspapers here are on level with the Sun and the Daily Heil.

Wel thanks b, for telling the truth and letting me start my Sunday moderately depressed, I guess news that Washington D.C had been swallowed by a giant sink-hole, would cheer me partly up.

[Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries ..."
"... Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.) ..."
"... I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. ..."
"... The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident. ..."
"... Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal. ..."
"... I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players. ..."
"... With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes). ..."
"... Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc. ..."
"... Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled. ..."
"... Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said: ..."
"... No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear. ..."
"... I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals. ..."
"... All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this. ..."
"... I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time. ..."
"... When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy. ..."
Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

Dave , August 28, 2018 at 17:41

BBC is skanky state propaganda. The myth of BBC being some standard for news reporting died with the advent of the availability of international and independent news in Western countries. The main thing that BBC used to have which propped up the illusion of it being a respectable news source is that there was no competition or alternative to compare its narratives against. Since that time is over, so is BBC's masquerading as an impartial or accurate news source.

Xavi , August 28, 2018 at 18:40

Agree, Dave. That's what's informing the push to rubbish dissenting sites as fake news and eventually have them removed.

Ironic when the BBC has been ceaselessly pushing fake news for at least 15 years, with disastrous results. (Iraq; Libya; what caused the deficit and who should be forced to pay it down; Russia/Syria false flags; Corbyn A/S.)

Ken Kenn , August 28, 2018 at 21:49

Well I was convinced of fake BBC news during 9/11 and not for the reasons of building 7 coming down too early but the fact that the female journalist was facing a camera standing in front of a glass window and there was no reflection of her or the camera person from the glass. Not even a faint shadow.

That's when I knew the BBC were employing vampires and have been ever since.

Green Screen technology I discovered later. All the On the spot reporters are at it apparently. Or repeating Reuters or PA.

Deb O'Nair , August 28, 2018 at 00:52

I find it impossible to watch BBC News, primarily because most of the editorial staff and senior correspondents seem to be working for MI5/6 and are more interested in disseminating Geo-political propaganda than upholding their journalistic responsibilities as defined in the BBC charter. People should not only boycott the BBC but refuse to pay the license fee on the grounds that it's a compulsory political subscription.

frankywiggles , August 28, 2018 at 09:48

Careful, Craig

BBC world affairs editor 'fed up' with complaints directed at the corporation's news output

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2018/aug/28/bbc-news-is-not-biased-in-brexit-reporting-says-john-simpson

D_Majestic , August 28, 2018 at 14:35

Of course BBC News is not biased. Most of the time it is not even factual.

Brendan , August 28, 2018 at 10:34

Dear Mark,
In a BBC article on 4 July 2018, you wrote: "I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion."

Could you please explain that comment? I do not see why your acknowledgement of your meetings with Sergei Skripal should be delayed until your book is nearing completion.

If you felt that it was right to reveal those meetings in July, then why was it not right to do so in March, soon after the poisoning occurred? What difference would it have made if you had done so four months earlier?

I cannot think of any negative consequences of an earlier acknowledgement of the meetings. In fact, disclosures of any possible conflict of interest are generally considered to be desirable in journalism, regardless of whether the conflict of interest is real.

ADHD , August 28, 2018 at 11:00

The book is obviously part of a propaganda campaign. It seems hugely fortuitous that Mark Urban should have had "hours" of interviews with Skripal before the poisoning incident.

Isn't it much more likely that the Urban "interviews" would have happened after the event? But Urban can't say that because that would lead to demands from other journalists or news bodies to have access to Skripal.

And that can't happen because either Skripal would be asked about what happened on the day of the poisoning, or can't be guaranteed to stick to the script, or is no longer alive. And that leads to a suspicion that whatever Skripal is supposed to have said in his interviews with Urban has really just been made up by the British security services.

Kay , August 28, 2018 at 14:42

I'm open to alternative hypotheses but right now I think the most likely explanation for Urban's pre-poisoning contact with Sergei Skripal is that, at the time, it was assumed the Orbis dossier would be a key component of the successful takedown of Trump and Urban was putting together a mutually flattering account by interviewing the main players.

Tongue in cheek, it'd be worth asking Urban if his decision to cover the Skripal poisoning in his new book was made before or after the Skripals were actually poisoned.

ADHD , August 28, 2018 at 15:59

The consensus seems to be that it was an anti-Russia book, but that doesn't conflict with what you say (there is overlap, your view is just more specific). But, I just find it hard to believe that Urban and the conspirators would waste their time "counting their chickens ". Not least because such a book would form a handy list of traitors (together with confessions) if Trump were to prevail and it fell into the right hands. This is "101 – How to Organise a Revolution" (secrecy / don't put anything in writing); surely British security services know that?

With regard to your tongue-in-cheek point. Urban could have interviewed Skripal anytime after Trump was gone, unless he believed Skripal might be unavailable (for some reason). The fact he interviewed Skripal before does indicate foresight. If Urban really did interview Skripal before the event then he would be wiser to pull the book and burn every copy in existence (as well as all his notes).

Regardless, it looks like the master of the universe are losing their ability to create reality.

Brendan , August 28, 2018 at 10:37

Last month, Mark Urban was promoting the reports that the Russian assassins had been identified from CCTV footage:

"There are now subjects of interest in the police Salisbury investigation. ( ) analytic and cyber techniques are now being exploited against the Salisbury suspects by people with a wealth of experience in complex investigations."
https://twitter.com/MarkUrban01/status/1020366761848385536

That story originated with a report by PA, which Security Minister Ben Wallace called "ill informed and wild speculation". https://mobile.twitter.com/BWallaceMP/status/1019906962786484225

Or as Craig Murray put it, "Unnamed source close to unnamed British police officers tells unnamed Press Association journalist Britain knows the unnamed Russian agents ".
https://twitter.com/CraigMurrayOrg/status/1019854966327005184

Even Urban's colleagues had to admit that "The BBC has not been able to independently confirm the story."
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44883803

Still, that didn't stop Mark Urban from reporting the story almost as fact.

Tom , August 28, 2018 at 10:38

The BBC relies on it's interpretation of the Act because it is held for the purposes of 'journalism, art or literature.' but this relies on a usually unrelated precedent and the opinions of a number of Judges which contradict this view. I'm in the process of challenging this with ICO but don't expect anything will change until another supreme court ruling:

https://medium.com/@tomcoady/bbc-foi-exemption-for-the-purposes-of-art-journalism-or-literature-c39e4fa3e36

Ian Fantom , August 28, 2018 at 10:41

I've put in a Freedom of Information request regarding meetings with Skripal other than any that were for the purpose of BBC news journalism. (https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/mark_urbans_non_journalistic_mee )

Made By Dom , August 28, 2018 at 11:04

Can I play Devil's Advocate ?

I can see the value in asking writers, journalists and artists to pose exactly the same questions as Eccles' original letter but I'm not convinced about Craig's email.

A quick google shows me that a man named Mark Urban has written a book on the Skripals. Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?

It wouldn't surprise me if Urban cares far more about his writing career than his job at the BBC. I'm sure most journalists would rather be authors. He's written a number of books on war and military intelligence. If his sources have nothing to do with the BBC then why should he answer to an on line mob?

craig Post author , August 28, 2018 at 11:18

" Isn't it likely that Urban was keeping the interviews to himself in order to keep his book alive?"
No, entirely unlikely. a chance to plug his forthcoming book and his Skripal contacts to a massive worldwide televion audience was eschewed.
The book is now about the Skripal attack. Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet. The book will just be a rehash of the "noble defector – Putin revenge" line and none of the questions I asked about the genesis of his involvement will be answered in it.

SA , August 28, 2018 at 11:29

"Presumably that was not the original subject he was researching, as it hadn't happened yet." Or it was prescience ie that it was part of the planning for the incident?

Chris Hemmings , August 28, 2018 at 14:41

@BBC, Summer 2017, in an executive office:
"Hey Mark, why don't you go down to have a chat with this guy in Salisbury. I have a hunch that a story might be going to happen involving him, you know, as an ex-Soviet spy. Spend time with him, get to know him, be able to write in depth about him. Say it's for a book ."

giyane , August 28, 2018 at 11:46

Urban is never one-sided in his BBC reports on the Middle East. I would rather have him as Foreign Secretary than a bumbling idiot like Hubris Johnson or a Tory racketeer Hunt, because however clunky the formula of BBC balance Urban is at least pretending to be governed by normal rules. After Thatcher went anyone with half a brain left the Conservative party, leaving dolts like Johnson and nasties like May and Cameron to pick up the pieces after Blair and Brown.

There's money to be made from Russian billionaires and tory shit will follow the money like flies on d**t**d.

Urban pretends to research a book exposing Russia and part of his research is to interview Skripal. His objective is to find dirt on Putin in order to swing the war in Syria in favour of USUKIS bombing Assad to smithereens, bayonets bums etc.

Tory shit Hubris Johnson finds this political research floating around the Foreign Office and decides to twist it into Russia murders Skripal by Novichok. Unfortunately Johnson is already known to be a liar and gravy-trainer Tory and nobody believes him at all. Mrs May , realising that Johnson, Fox, Rees-Mogg and Hunt are completely bonkers, does Chequers her own way.

ZigZag Wanderer , August 28, 2018 at 12:26

Interestingly Mark Urbans' book on Sergei Skripal was available to purchase on Amazon in July. I added it to my Amazon wishlist on 28/7/18. I've just looked at my wishlist and was rather surprised to find it is no longer available. It has been pulled.

From memory the books description said that Mark had interviewed Skripal 'extensively' during 2017 and also mentioned the 'new' spying war now happening between Britain and Russia.

A quick search revealed a new version of the book ( with an altered title ) will be available in early October .. details here. https://www.panmacmillan.com/authors/mark-urban/the-skripal-files

Oh dear . panic stations !

Sharp Ears , August 28, 2018 at 11:16

Salisbury poisoning: Skripals 'were under Russian surveillance'
Mark Urban Diplomatic and defence editor, Newsnight

4 July 2018

'My meetings with Sergei Skripal

I met Sergei on a few occasions last summer and found him to be a private character who did not, even under the circumstances then prevailing, wish to draw attention to himself.

He agreed to see me as a writer of history books rather than as a news journalist, since I was researching one on the post-Cold War espionage battle between Russia and the West.

Information gained in these interviews was fed into my Newsnight coverage during the early days after the poisoning. I have not felt ready until now to acknowledge explicitly that we had met, but do now that the book is nearing completion.

As a man, Sergei is proud of his achievements, both before and after joining his country's intelligence service.

He has a deadpan wit and is remarkably stoical given the reverses he's suffered in his life; from his imprisonment following conviction in 2006 on charges of spying for Britain, to the loss of his wife Liudmila to cancer in 2012, and the untimely death of his son Alexander (or Sasha) last summer.'

...

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-44717835

Agent Green , August 28, 2018 at 12:27

Laughable given that the whole world and virtually all heads of State were under US surveillance by the NSA – at least until Edward Snowden made all his revelations.

KEVIN GLENNIE , August 28, 2018 at 11:18

I have pasted and copied your Email regarding the above with a few slight alterations, it will be interesting to see the response I receive if any being just a concerned citizen of the U.

Niki Henry , August 28, 2018 at 11:21

Is this not a matter for the Police? (Even if you're not too sure if they'd do anything about it) These would be files that are to do with an attempted murder case. And definitely not Journalism if the story is fabricated.

Paul Baker , August 28, 2018 at 11:28

It feels as if you are moving in the right direction in linking Sergei to Steele. I'm intrigued by the very early media references to Sergei wanting to return home to see his elderly mother for perhaps the last time. He had apparently written to Putin making his request but again according to newspapers hadn't received a reply.

I would suggest Julia was bringing the answer via her own secret services contacts, her boyfriend and his mother, apparently Senior in the Russian Intelligence Agency. Perhaps a sentimental man Sergei was aware his mother couldn't travel so the plea to Putin was his best bet.

Such a request must have disturbed MI6 if Sergei had anything at all to do with the Steele dossier because inevitably if he returned to Russia he'd be debriefed by his old colleagues. But how can you rely on a mercenary double agent? If he decided he might want to stay in Russia with his family that might well have been attractive, away from the lonely existence in a Salisbury cul de sac with only spies for company. But the Steele dossier has great potential to turn sour on the British.

It's author was a Senior spy and Head of the Russian Desk for some years. It is – perhaps you'd agree? – inconceivable that he didn't require permission to prepare it, especially as much of it was based on his experience as a spy in Russia. Yet it's equally inconceivable that the Agency bosses didn't know the identity of the commissioners or the use to which it would be put in the US election – to boost Clinton's bid. If she'd won everything would have been fine but as it is any discussion of foreign interference in that election would have to include MI6 leading the list (they probably didn't tell any politician?) To have Sergei supporting and highlighting that embarrassment would be problematic for US-UK relations. Of course Sergei may have had other nuggets to expose as well as Steele.

Soon after Julia's arrival the pair fell ill. They both survived but are now locked away, presumably for life and never able to explain their side of the story.

It was a bodged job with a poor cover story from the start and could only be carried because of D Notices and media complicity. Is his mother still alive? Would he still like to see her before she dies? Would Russia allow it? Would MI6 allow it? I think that's 3 yeses and a resounding No.

Sharp Ears , August 28, 2018 at 11:39

Following the deaths of 55 Palestinians on the Gaza 'border' and the wounding of thousands, in this video, Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas.

Gaza deaths: Who's to blame? – BBC Newsnight
Published on 15 May 2018
Subscribe 256K
Fresh protests against Israel are expected in the Palestinian territories, a day after Israeli troops killed 58 people in the Gaza Strip.
David Keyes is the spokesman for the Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Mark Urban asked him whether it was appropriate for the US to open their embassy on the 70th anniversary of Israel's creation, a day that is hugely controversial for the Palestinian people.

Newsnight is the BBC's flagship news and current affairs TV programme – with analysis, debate, exclusives, and robust interviews.
Website: https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsnight
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V1dec5XO53k

Mr Keyes' pronounced American accent was heard. The Occupation was not mentioned. A Palestinian voice was not heard.

This is another of his videos. On the same subject and on the opening of the Israeli Embassy in Jerusalem. This time, Jonathan Conricus spoke for the IDF.

Israel says. Same old. Same old. BBC. ZBC.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-WdqoPKKkD8

Charles Bostock , August 28, 2018 at 15:58

"Urban asks the questions but the Israeli government spokesman, David Keyes, is allowed to spout all the usual propaganda against Hamas."

Yes indeed : Urban asked the questions and allowed the interviewee to answer. Perhaps you would have preferred him to interrupt the interviewee continually 'a la Today programme, or to have shouted at him similarly to the way I understand some people shout at customers inside or outside supermarkets?

Peter , August 28, 2018 at 11:39

This may or may not be relevant regarding Russia, chemical weapons and BBC/MSM bovine effluent:

"US Poised to Hit Syria Harder: The Russian Defense Ministry issued a statement on Aug. 25 stating that the Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham militants had brought eight containers of chlorine to Idlib in order to stage a false-flag attack with the help of UK intelligence agencies. A group of Tahrir al-Sham fighters trained to handle chemical warfare agents by the UK private military company Olive arrived in the suburbs of the city of Jisr ash-Shugur, Idlib, 20 km. from the Turkish border."

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/08/27/us-poised-to-hit-syria-harder.html

Jeremn , August 28, 2018 at 11:42

Can't help thinking that the answer to all this lies in Estonia. Sergei went to Estonia in June 2016, Pablo was in Estonia, the Estonians passed on sigint about Trump-Russian collusion in the summer of 2016. A Guardian article of 13 April 2017 said:

"Over the next six months, until summer 2016, a number of western agencies shared further information on contacts between Trump's inner circle and Russians, sources said. The European countries that passed on electronic intelligence – known as sigint – included Germany, Estonia and Poland."

Perhaps not the Dossier, as such, but some material on collusion?

Paul Greenwood , August 28, 2018 at 12:00

John Paul Jones also fought for the Russians and was a Rear-Admiral. He was buried in Paris 1792 and disinterred 1905 and relocated to USA

wonky , August 29, 2018 at 10:29

..then he met Jimmy Page in the 1960s and the rest is history..

Agent Green , August 28, 2018 at 12:11

No doubt in my mind that the Skripal affair is a planned operation carried out by US/UK intelligence. What has actually taken place is still to be determined, but the propaganda operation itself is clear.

Paul Carrom , August 28, 2018 at 12:12

Definitely done by the UK.

Doodlebug , August 28, 2018 at 14:53

What did the UK have against Dawn and Charlie? (Please don't say you subscribe to all that bottle-finding bullshit).

mark golding , August 28, 2018 at 17:40

Catch my last post Doodlebug, sadly MI6 diabolical elements can be traced back to Ireland in the 70's early 80's assassinations theRealTerror (theRealElvis) understands.

Doodlebug , August 28, 2018 at 18:06

I know about Ireland, and I agree, it was NOT a nerve agent. That said, I don't believe anyone was 'attacked', including the Skripals.

Jo , August 29, 2018 at 11:59

Being used as practice and to establish more "evidence"

N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:24

Often it's been open. There was the BBC monitoring station at Caversham Park. The BBC's Foreign Broadcast Information Service split the world into two parts with the CIA.

All foreign correspondents of major newspapers too work with MI6. Nobody who is close to them has any kind of doubt about this.

N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:20

Theresa May says a no deal Brexit "wouldn't be the end of the world".

  1. This is not a negotiating strategy. This is not a pantomime where one giant on the stage can wink to his supporters (using the British media) without his opponent (EU27) noticing.
  2. The subconscious doesn't work well with negation. Whatever you do, please DON'T imagine an elephant at this time.
  3. I would love to know what the preparations are at Trinity College, Cambridge, for food shortages. They own the port of Felixstowe, which handles more than 40% of Britain's containerised trade. They also own a 50% stake in a portfolio of Tesco stores. Soon food distribution will be what everyone is talking about. I am never going to stop making the point that the god of the Tory party is Thomas Malthus.
N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:38

Oh dear.. Theresa May in Africa:

" As a Prime Minister who believes both in free markets and in nations and businesses acting in line with well-established rules and principles of conduct, I want to demonstrate to young Africans that their brightest future lies in a free and thriving private sector. "

I despise everyone who says that free markets are the solution for the problems of the third world. What they mean is mass starvation and an enormous population cull. There are international "foundations" that pay academics and politicians large amounts of money to spout this obscene line. One of them is called the John Templeton Foundation. They have had their fangs in to British universities for a long time.

They are keen on Prince Philip, the guy who said he wanted to come back as a virus so he could kill a large part of the population. Never trust anyone who has received a Templeton scholarship or prize or who has anything to do with these people or with the message that free markets and the private sector are the key to "development"

Nuno Strybes , August 28, 2018 at 12:43

When the Tories talk about 'free markets', they are talking about markets free from democracy.

May's rhetoric is laughable .basically all her speeches read : 'the sky is green, the snow is black etc etc' -- totally detached from reality and a spent political force, as their recent membership numbers showed, with more revenues from legacies left in wills than from actual living members.

Ros Thorpe , August 28, 2018 at 12:30

I agree with the Skripal relatives that Sergei is dead. He hasn't been seen or heard of and would have called his mother. Mind boggling deception at all levels and I struggle to believe any of it.

N_ , August 28, 2018 at 12:47

Sergei Skripal could be in US custody, either in the US itself or in a US facility somewhere.

If he is dead, then the rehospitalisation of Charlie Rowley may be to assist with the narrative. "Once you've had a drop of Novvy Chockk, you may recover but you can fall down ill at any time, and here's an Expert with a serious voice to confirm it."

Nuno Strybes , August 28, 2018 at 12:38

I follow this blog closely, particularly in relation to the Skripal case, but this is my first comment. I just watched Sky News piece on 'super recognisers' and couldn't help but wonder why, in an age of powerful facial recognition technology, the police and security services seem to have drawn such a blank. The surveillance state in the UK is known to be one of the most advanced in the world but when it comes to this highly important geopolitical crisis our technological infrastructure seems to be redundant to the point where 'human eyes' are deemed to be more accurate than the most powerful supercomputers available. Psychologically, all humans have an inherent facial recognition ability from a very young age, but the idea that some police officers have this ability developed to such an extent that they supercede computer recognition is, i feel, laughable. To me this announcement through the ever subservient Sky News reeks of desperation on the part of the ;official story'. Are we about to be shown suspects who, although facial recognition technology fails to identify them, a 'super recogniser' can testify that it actually is person A or person B and we are all supposed to accept that? Seems either a damning indictment of the judicial process, or a damning indictment of the £££££'s of taxpayers money that is spent on places like GCHQ etc whose technology is now apparently no better than a highly perceptive human brain. Give me a break !

Trowbridge H. Ford , August 28, 2018 at 13:08

Why no interest in how the Coopers died in Egypt? We will soon be told by HMG that the Russians somehow dd it too., thanks to Urban's research?

giyane , August 28, 2018 at 13:49

People do die Trowbridge. I know you haven't, but you have the motivation of outliving your persecutors. With Muckin about with Isis gone and covert operations isn't social work Kissinger looking as though he's on daily blood transfusions, you have rejected Trump for some reason. But Trump has undone much of John McCain's worst mischief in one year. If McCain was an example of a politician, we don't need politicians.

Trowbridge H. Ford , August 28, 2018 at 14:16

Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals.

And while i tried on another site to be generous about McCain. he got Navy Secretary John Lehman, Jr. to scare the Soviets for prevailing in the Vietnam War so much about what NATO was up to in the fallout from shooting Swedish PM Olof Palme that Moscow gave up the competition for fear that it would blow up the world, helping bring on the crappy one we have.

McCain was a continuing Cold Warrior who we don't need since we still have Trump who is just trying to do it another way.

Trowbridge H. Ford , August 28, 2018 at 15:03

Oh, I forget that couple in Amesbury. Looks like the Porton Down Plague is spread overseas.

Posting on this site in like playing bridge online – the cards are stacked against you.

Doodlebug , August 28, 2018 at 15:26

"Give me an example, other than the Coopers. of a healthy couple one day that is found dying the next day like the Skripals."

Will a 17 year old and his step-father do?

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/6918378/brit-lad-17-in-a-coma-on-family-holiday-in-spain-may-have-been-poisoned-by-cockroach-pesticide/

They both survived, but one or other (quite possibly both) would have died without medical intervention.

[Sep 14, 2018] English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte s Bought Journalists Suppressed

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... My guess is that this book is just too dangerous to allow it to become part of the debate on "fake news" and "Russiagate." Of course now the CIA doesn't even have to exclusively – "own"- journalists as fronts when ex-CIA heads are being hired outright by MSM as pundits. I just wish someone with access would post an English language PDF version online. It would be a real contribution to free thought and free speech to do so. ..."
"... Western elites realize what they could have, what they could do and what they could get away with, but only if they reinvent the political system Hitler created. If they defeat every enemy abroad who might stop them, next they'll do to their own people what the Nazis did to those they didn't want alive ..."
"... Journos have long been pliant enablers for Intel agencies. It's strange how Dr. Ulfkotte's revelations have been taken as some signifier of further Western moral decay/decadence. ..."
"... The real story here, which the media pretends not to notice, is that if Intelligence services and corporations did not finance newspapers they would cease to exist. The old business model whereby newspapers covered their costs by selling advertising and paid circulation is finished. Under that model there were, to an extent, incentives for the publisher to preserve a modicum of credibility in order to keep readership, as well as reasons to publish sensational stories to beat competition. ..."
"... The days that Ulfkotte recalled were times when it took lots of money and careful preparation to put spooks into the newsroom, nowadays the papers are only too happy to publish the CIA's PR and very grateful if the government pays their journalists' salaries. ..."
"... To understand how journalism is bought, go analyze the output of the Uk's Daily Telegraph. They literally sell space to lobbyists and for several years outraged BTL comment would tear the articles to shreds. The whole UK Press prostitutes itself whenever there is a US war on i.e. all the time. It really is about time the CIA were unmasked – they do not serve our interests, they serve only their own . ..."
Sep 14, 2018 | off-guardian.org

intergenerationaltrauma says February 11, 2018

The rather obvious suppression of the English version of what was a "best seller" in Germany suggests that the Western system of thought manipulation and consent manufacture sees itself as weaker and more vulnerable than one might at first imagine.

We can see from a year+ of "Russiagate" that Western media is a clown-show, much of so called "alternative media" included.

My guess is that this book is just too dangerous to allow it to become part of the debate on "fake news" and "Russiagate." Of course now the CIA doesn't even have to exclusively – "own"- journalists as fronts when ex-CIA heads are being hired outright by MSM as pundits. I just wish someone with access would post an English language PDF version online. It would be a real contribution to free thought and free speech to do so.

Google Talpiot Program says January 30, 2018
Just like "200 years together" by Solzhenitsyn which was never officially published in English despite Andrei having authored many works which were big sellers. Just an example of other private business and corporations are often fully responsible for pro-establishment censorship.
Harry Stotle says January 15, 2018
The treatment of the book aroused suspicion because of its content – ie supine news outlets forever dancing to the tune of western military imperatives.

Ongoing support for illegal wars tell us that the MSM has hardly been at the forefront of informing readers why war criminals like Hilary and Obama keep getting away with it. In fact Obama, just like Kissinger was awarded a peace prize – so obviously something has gone very wrong somewhere.

It may be, although it seems unlikely that the mis-handling of an important theme like this is simply due to oversight by the publisher (as Matt claims) but neither is it beyond the realms of possibility that somebody has had a word with someone in the publishing world, perhaps because they are not overly keen on the fact Udo Ulfkotte has deviated from the media's mono-narrative about why it is necessary for the US to destabilise countries and kill so many of their citizens.

Lets face it – it would be harder for the pattern to be maintained if the MSM was not so afraid of telling the truth, or at least be more willing to hold to account politicians as the consequences of their disastrous policies unfold for all to see.

Maybe you want to have a go at answering the obvious question begged by such self evident truths – why are the MSM usually lying?

Marcus says January 20, 2018
The book was never published in English. It was advertised, and then withdrawn. That is suppression...
Michael McNulty says January 14, 2018
Somebody said banning books is the modern form of book burning, and like Heinrich Heine said two centuries ago, "Where they burn books, in the end, they start burning people."

Western elites realize what they could have, what they could do and what they could get away with, but only if they reinvent the political system Hitler created. If they defeat every enemy abroad who might stop them, next they'll do to their own people what the Nazis did to those they didn't want alive. If enough water sources are lost to fracking, and enough food sources lost through poisoned seas and forest fires, many people will go to their camps as refuge but few will survive them. This ecological destruction is for future population reduction.

In the US they use newspeak to say what the Nazis described with more honesty. Their master race became the indispensable nation, their world domination became full spectrum dominance, and Totalerkrieg became the global war on terror. There will be others.

jones says January 12, 2018
Farzad Basoft anyone ? Journos have long been pliant enablers for Intel agencies. It's strange how Dr. Ulfkotte's revelations have been taken as some signifier of further Western moral decay/decadence.
summitflyer says January 15, 2018
Maybe I am taking what you wrote out of context but I don't find it strange at all .It is just that someone, Udo, on the inside has become a whistle blower , and confirmed what most suspected .The establishment can't have that.

See John Swinton on the independence of the press at http://constitution.org/pub/swinton_press.htm

Connect says January 12, 2018
As the economy growth has this so-called invisible hand, journalism also has an 'invisible pen'. One of the questions that need an answer: how come feminists are so anti-Putin and anti-Russia? Easy to connect to dots?
bevin says January 11, 2018
The real story here, which the media pretends not to notice, is that if Intelligence services and corporations did not finance newspapers they would cease to exist. The old business model whereby newspapers covered their costs by selling advertising and paid circulation is finished. Under that model there were, to an extent, incentives for the publisher to preserve a modicum of credibility in order to keep readership, as well as reasons to publish sensational stories to beat competition.

Those days are gone: none of the newspapers make financial profits, they now exist because they have patrons. They always did, of course, but now they have nothing else- the advertisers have left and circulation is diminishing rapidly.

The days that Ulfkotte recalled were times when it took lots of money and careful preparation to put spooks into the newsroom, nowadays the papers are only too happy to publish the CIA's PR and very grateful if the government pays their journalists' salaries.

As to competition that is restricted to publishers competing to demonstrate their loyalty to the government and their ingenuity in candy coating its propaganda.

Anyone doubt that Luke Harding will be in the running for a Pulitzer? Or perhaps even the Nobel Prize for Literature?

Serge Lubomudrov says January 11, 2018
For those whose German is not good enough (like me, unfortunately), but know Russian, there's a Russian translation: https://www.litres.ru/udo-ulfkotte/prodazhnye-zhurnalisty-lubaya-pravda-za-vashi-dengi/
vexarb says January 9, 2018
For what it's worth, I skimmed through this very long link by Matt, and could find no mention of poison gas -- certainly no denunciation -- just horrific conventional arms : Der Spiegel 1984: http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/print/d-13508659.html

Also for what it's worth, the German publisher's blurb which I got Google to translate above, says there is much more to the book than old Soddem: the author names names and points to organizations.

Now, without any evidence, based only on my faulty memory and highly biased interpretation of events strung together on a timeline, here is my conspiracy story about a very nice country called Iraq and a very nasty Iraqi called Saddam who came to a very nasty end at the hands of his much more nasty friends, who first gave him a boost and then put in the boot.

George Cornell says January 9, 2018
That is more than plausible. Unfortunately. Hard not to sympathize with the Iraqis and feel shame for what has been done in the name of the US and UK. Rotten to the core, and sanctimonious to boot.
rtj1211 says January 9, 2018
To understand how journalism is bought, go analyze the output of the Uk's Daily Telegraph. They literally sell space to lobbyists and for several years outraged BTL comment would tear the articles to shreds. The whole UK Press prostitutes itself whenever there is a US war on i.e. all the time. It really is about time the CIA were unmasked – they do not serve our interests, they serve only their own .
Carrie says January 9, 2018
The Guardian sells space to lobbyists too. Not ad space – article space. It's literally hiring itself out to whomever wants to buy the right to publish an article under its name.
Brian Steere says January 8, 2018
Well one things stands out in bold and that is the fear that such a revelation is associated with. 'Broad spectrum dominance' of a central intelligent agency is a reversal of the wholeness of being expressing through all its parts.

Fake intelligence is basically made up to serve a believed goal. The terrorism of fear generates the goal of a self-protection that sells true relationship to 'save itself'.

This goes deep into what we take to be our mind. The mind that thinks it is in control by controlling what it thinks.

If I can observe this in myself at will, is it any surprise I can see it in our world?

What is the fear that most deeply motivates or drives the human agenda?
I do not ask this of our superficial thinking, but of a core self-honesty that cannot be 'killed' but only covered over with a thinking-complex.

And is it insane or unreal to be moved by love?

We are creatures of choice and beneath all masking, we are also the creator of choice.
But the true creative is not framed into a choosing between, but feeling one call as the movement of it.

When the 'intelligence' of a masking narrative no longer serves, be the willingness for what you no longer claim to have, and open to being moved from within.

candideschmyles says January 8, 2018
I am so tired of the simmering fury that lives inside me. This bubbling cauldron brim full of egregious truths, images and accounts accumulated over nearly 40 years of looking behind the headlines. I disagree that the usurpation of journalists and media organisations is in any way a recent phenomena. It certainly predates my emergent mind. And even the most lauded of anti-establishment hacks and film makers self-censored to some degree. True, the blatant in your face propaganda and thought control agenda has accelerated, but it was always there. I do not believe Chomsky, Oliver Stone, Pilger and their like could have done much more than they have, that is to guide us in a direction counter to the official narrative. And to insinuate they are gatekeepers, when our heads never stretch above the parapet, is really just a reflection of our own frustration that despite their work the only change remains for the worse.
Yet I fear worse is to come. Our safe bitching in glorious anonymity has been all that we have had as solace to the angst that pervades us, the other 1%. But the the thumbscrew is tightening. We may be as little as months away from any dissent being entirely removed from the internet by AI algorithms. I have already been receiving warnings on several sites anyone here would call legitimate that have had their security certificates removed and the statement that the site may contain malicious code etc. How prepared are we for blackout?
Serge Lubomudrov says January 8, 2018
The publisher even removed the 2 year old news announcement about the book! Though the twit is still there. Probably, overlooked.

https://twitter.com/saumacus/status/950468330086858757

summitflyer says January 8, 2018
A foundation should be set up in remembrance of Udo and sponsored by all true journalists and truth seekers. Maybe some day there will be a Udo Ulfkotte award to the bravest journalist of the year .Wouldn't that be something .Udo's work would not have been in vain . That would throw a monkey wrench into orgs like the Guardian and their ilk .Just dreaming out loud maybe , but with good intentions.
Alun Thomas says January 8, 2018
Original German version can be found here: http://gen.lib.rus.ec/book/index.php?md5=ABA05365ABE35FD446D6F83B149A32A2
Unfortunately no english version, but other controversial texts have sometimes been crowd-translated, maybe something like this may happen
Chris G says January 8, 2018
Thank you Alun for the link to the German edition, which I have managed to download (naughty me!) I think the suggestion of retranslating important sections and dressing these in some commentary for (presumably legitimate) publication on e.g. Off-G would be a good idea. I'm quite fluent in German and would be glad to help.
Mods: do you see any legal pitfalls?
Admin says January 8, 2018
That depends on who holds the rights to the English language version and the original and whether they would want to take issue. If it's Ulfkotte's family they may be happy to see his work get some sort of airing in English. If it's his publishers we can imagine they will see things differently – as indeed would whoever it is that seems to want the book buried.
Martin Read says January 8, 2018
Tried to get to that site and was told that I couldn't via my Virgin provider because of a High Court order. Somebody moved a bit quickly.
Carrie says January 8, 2018
Me too! My Broadband provider is blocking access due to a High Court injunction.

@ChrisG & @Alun Thomas – can you guys still get there? It might be a country or region thing.

Alun Thomas says January 8, 2018
I heard it is blocked in many western countries, as the site is well known for its disregard for copyright. Fortunately not the case where I am (NZ). If you're technically inclined, a VPN or anonymising application may help, although a VPN that 'exits' in a western area won't get you any further ahead.
George Cornell says January 8, 2018
I had no problem, but provider in Canada
Arrby says January 11, 2018
One hopes. I also hold out hope for F. William Engdahl's "Geheimakte NGOs." Here's a Dissident Voice article in which Engdahl discusses the role of NGOs in aiding and abetting the US regime change program:

https://dissidentvoice.org/2017/07/the-us-empire-the-cia-and-the-ngos/

I also recommend, highly, Stephen Gowans's article about social networking in the service of the US regime change program:

"Overthrow Inc.: Peter Ackerman's quest to do what the CIA used to do, and make it seem progressive" by Stephen Gowans
https://gowans.wordpress.com/2009/08/06/overthrow-inc-peter-ackerman%E2%80%99s-quest-to-do-what-the-cia-used-to-so-and-make-it-seem-progressive/

Frank says January 8, 2018
Yes, it has also been interesting to note that in 2015 the Guardian published a review of Richard Sakwa's book 'Frontline Ukraine' in which the author was critical of both NATO and the EU, in fomenting this crisis. The 2014 'coup' which was carried out in February 2014 was, according to the independent geopolitical publication, Strator, 'the most blatant in history.' The appraisal which was carried out by Guardian journalist Jonathon Steele was generally favourably disposed to Sakwa's record of events; however, Mr Steele now rarely publishes anything in the Guardian. Read into this what you like.

As to Sakwa's latest book,'' Russia Against the Rest'', – nothing, not a peep, it doesn't exist, it never existed, it never will exist. It would appear to be the case that the Guardian is now fully integrated into the military/surveillance/media-propaganda apparatus. The liberal gatekeeper as to what is and what isn't acceptable. Its function is pure to serve the interests of the powerful, in much the same way as the church did in the middle ages. The media doesn't just serve the interests power it is also part of the same structure of dominance, albeit the liberal wing of the ruling coalition.

During the British war against the Boers in South Africa, at the turn of the 19/20 century, the then Manchester Guardian took a brave and critical stand against the UK government. This lead to its offices in Manchester being attacked by jingoistic mobs, as was the home of the then editor C.P.Scott, whose family needed police protection. In those days 'Facts were Sacred', unlike the present where opposing views are increasingly ignored or suppressed.

Hugh O'Neill says January 8, 2018
Having just watched the documentary film tribute to I.F. Stone, "All Governments Lie", I was struck by the fact that no-one mentioned Michael Hastings, the Rolling Stone journalist (who outed General McChrystal, but whose Mercedes went mysteriously out of control, hit a tree and exploded, throwing the engine 200 yards clear of the wreck ). Here was a film about control and self-censorship, yet no-one even breathed the acronyms C.I.A. or FBI. Matt Taibbi referred to a silent coup, but none dared to mention the assassinations of JFK, MLK and RFK. These doyens of Truth included the thoroughly dodgy Noam Chomsky. Finally, the Spartacus website suggests that the saintly I.F. Stone was in the pay of the CIA. Other terms unspoken were CIA Operation Mockingbird or Operation Northwoods. There was a clip of 9/11, but zero attempt to join up all the dots.
RIP Udo Ulfkotte. CIA long ago developed a dart to induce all the signs of a heart attack, so one is naturally somewhat suspicious. Lies and assassinations are two sides of the same coin.
Harry Stotle says January 8, 2018
The only thing harder to find than Udo Ulfkotte's book is a Guardian review of it.

I daresay any mention of this book, BTL, would immediately be moderated (i.e censored) followed by a yellow or red card for the cheeky commentator.
The level of pretence on this forum has now reached epic proportions, and seems to cuts both ways, ie. commentators pretending that there are not several subjects which are virtually impossible to discuss in any depth (such as media censorship), and moderators pretending that 'community standards' is not simply a crude device to control conversational discourse, especially when a commentators point of view stray beyond narrow, Guardian approved borders.

Books, such as 'Bought Journalists' (which expose the corruption at the heart of western media) are especially inconvenient for the risible 'fake news' agenda currently being rammed down the readerships throat – some of these people at the Guardian have either absolutely no insight, or no shame.

Harry Stotle says January 8, 2018
This piece put me in mind of Daniele Gansers seminal book, 'NATOs secret armies' Of course Off-G picked up on it but I can't find any commentary from the Guardian
https://off-guardian.org/2015/07/17/natos-secret-armies-gladio-in-western-europe/

Ulfkotte and Ganser in their ways are both telling a similar story – NATO, i.e an arm of the US military industrial complex are mass murderers and sufficiently intimidating to have most western journalists singing from the same hymn sheet.

Since the Guardian follows the party line it is only possible to send coded or cryptic messages (BTL) should commentators wish to deviate from the approved narrative.
For example, I was 'pre-moderated' for having doubts about the veracity of the so called 'Parsons Green tube bomb', especially the nature of the injuries inflicted on a young model who looked like she was suffering from toothache.
https://www.thenational.ae/image/policy:1.628812:1505494262/wo16-web-parsons-green.JPG?f=16×9&w=1024&$p$f$w=e135eda

My guess is NATO's secret army are still in full swing but there is no chance the Guardian will pick up on it – they're too busy whipping up antipathy towards Iran.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/05/west-ignores-iranian-people-power-peril#comments

George Cornell says January 8, 2018
Been there, done that. What ordinarily happens if the submission is proper and cannot be censored on the basis of impropriety or foulmouthedness or any other good reason, but exposes a Guardian sacred cow in an embarrassing light, is that it is said to be off topic. Now this is really unaccountable, and truly subjective.

The community in community standards is "them" and has close ties to the 1%, if I hazard a guess.

[Sep 14, 2018] British Are In Flight Forward, Frantic to Save the Empire

Sep 06, 2018 | larouchepac.com
Prime Minister Teresa May took to the floor of the Parliament today to report that the Crown Prosecution Service and Police had issued warrants for two Russian GRU officials who, they claim, had carried out the Skripal attacks last March. "We were right," she said with a stiff upper lip, "to say in March that the Russian State was responsible." Mugshots were released of two people whose names, she declared, were aliases (how they know they are GRU officials if they don't know their names was not explained). "This chemical weapon attack on our soil was part of a wider pattern of Russian behavior that persistently seeks to undermine our security and that of our allies around the world," she intoned.

At the same time, dire warnings have been issued to Syria and Russia that there will be a major military response if Syria uses chemical weapons in Idlib. This is despite the fact that Russia has presented the proof to the OPCW and to the UN that the British intelligence-linked Olive security outfit and the British-sponsored White Helmet terrorists have prepared a false flag chlorine attack in Idlib, to be blamed on the Syrian government, to trigger such a military atrocity by the US and the UK.

Also at the same time, in the US, Washington Post fraudster Bob Woodward released a book claiming that numerous Trump cabinet officials made wildly slanderous statements about Trump -- all third hand from anonymous sources, of course. Chief of Staff John Kelly called the claims "total BS," while Secretary of State Jim Mattis called it typical Washington DC fiction, adding that "the idea that I would show contempt for the elected Commander-in-Chief, President Trump, or tolerate disrespect to the office of the President from within our Department of Defense, is a product of someone's rich imagination."

Worse, the New York Times, apparently for the first time, printed an "anonymous" op-ed by someone claiming to be a "senior official in the Trump administration whose identity is known to us," under the title: "I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration -- I work for the president but like-minded colleagues and I have vowed to thwart parts of his agenda and his worst inclinations." Whether this person is or is not who they claim to be, it is clearly part of the British coup attempt, as proven in the op-ed itself. After calling Trump amoral, unhinged, and more, and claiming there is discussion within the Administration of using the 25th Amendment to remove him for mental incompetence, it then states: "Take foreign policy: In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations [read: the United Kingdom - ed.]. Astute observers have noted, though, that the rest of the administration is operating on another track, one where countries like Russia are called out for meddling and punished accordingly, and where allies around the world are engaged as peers rather than ridiculed as rivals. On Russia, for instance, the president was reluctant to expel so many of Mr. Putin's spies as punishment for the poisoning of a former Russian spy in Britain. He complained for weeks about senior staff members letting him get boxed into further confrontation with Russia, and he expressed frustration that the United States continued to impose sanctions on the country for its malign behavior. But his national security team knew better such actions had to be taken, to hold Moscow accountable."

And, while news about the British drive for war with Russia and their attempted coup against the government of the United States fills the airwaves and the press, not a single word -- repeat, not a single word -- has been reported in the US or British media about the truly historic conference which took place on Monday and Tuesday in Beijing, the Forum on China-Africa Cooperation (FOCAP). Helga Zepp-LaRouche declared this week that this event will be recognized in history as the end of the era of colonialism and neo-colonialism. Every African nation except one was represented at the conference in Beijing (the "one" was Swaziland, the last holdout on the African continent which still maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan rather than Beijing).

All but six were represented their head of state. They reviewed the transformation taking place across Africa due to the Belt and Road Initiative since the last FOCAP meeting in 2015, and laid out plans for the even more rapid development over the next three years, and on to 2063 -- the target year for full modernization over 50 years, adopted by the African Union in 2013. One after another the leaders of the African nations described the actual liberation taking place, finally seeing in China the example that real development and the escape from poverty is possible. The program launched at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, where the formerly colonized nations met for the first time without their colonial masters, has finally been realized.

But no one reading the western press would even know that this transformative event had taken place.

Rather, there is only the new McCarthyism, trying to demonize Russia and China, to revive the "enemy image" which should have been eliminated with the fall of the Soviet Union and the recognition of the People's Republic of China.

Trump threatens this new McCarthyism, insisting that America should be friends with Russia and China. No longer will the U.S. accept Lord Palmerston's imperial dictate for the Empire, that "nations have no permanent friends or allies, only permanent interests." The "special relationship" is to be no more.

This is the cause of Theresa May's hysterical rant today in the Parliament. Better war, led by the "dumb giant" America, than to see the Empire destroyed in a world united through a shared vision of universal development.

Britain's drive for war must be exposed and stopped, along with their Russiagate coup attempt in the US. A victory for the common aims of mankind is within our grasp, but the danger is great, and the time is short.

[Sep 12, 2018] UK ruling elite looks evil and stupid: Skriplas affair as a new Zinoviev letter forgery

UK neoliberal press like Guardian looks evil and stupid as well...
Sep 12, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

jayc , Sep 12, 2018 5:33:25 PM | link

... hilariously, UK security minister Wallace asserted the Novichok was assuredly in a perfume bottle, got into the country because of poor baggage checks, had the capability "to kill or injure hundreds and hundreds of people", but was not a health risk to persons on the plane or public transit used by the suspects. ????

TJ , Sep 12, 2018 6:10:54 PM | link

@jayc 28

...yes, HMG is a source of continuing amusement, assuming they don't get us all killed in a Global Thermonuclear war.

Tom , Sep 12, 2018 8:28:39 PM | link
Article over at the Stalker Zone on the forged letter that brought down the first UK Labour government of Ramsey McDonald in 1924.

"The frank forgery that is the "Zinoviev's letter" came to London from the Riga department of the Secret Intelligence Service of the Foreign & Commonwealth Office of Britain (or SIS, nowadays better known as MI-6) with an assurance that the authenticity of the document "does not raise doubts" (the most ancient form of "highly likely") The Labour government was doomed. Rectifying the situation in such a short period of time before elections didn't seem to be possible."

Mark Twain's truism still holds today, "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." And the media is little different except for sites like this. Thanks B and keep up the good fight. Don't let the bastards get you down.

Vladimir Kornilov: The Prequel to the Skripal Affair – Britain Investigates the "Great Forgery"

[Sep 10, 2018] Should Assad subsequently fall - and that is the actual aim of intervention - then Syria will become another anarchic wasteland ruled over by fundamentalist warlords.

Notable quotes:
"... We know the proceeds will go unmentioned into offshore havens and the London property market. Britain would derive no geopolitical benefit as a whole. The benefits would accrue only to a kleptocracy who think they have a right to use our country as a loan shark's leg-breaker. ..."
Apr 20, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Vermithrax , 13 Apr 2018 15:39

Freedland recently put this argument on Newsnight.

It is flawed to the point of dishonesty.

He talks of removing assets as if the process was being conducted under laboratory conditions. There are ten nations enmeshed in a warzone with numerous factions under no one's control. It is magical thinking that cannot be achieved and will only result in rapid, uncontrolled escalation. The idea that there will be no collateral damage is laughable and I regret to suggest that it is deliberately misleading.

Moreover, in engaging Assad when he is on the brink of victory, the Syrian Civil War will be extended. The Syrian people will then pay the price.

Should Assad subsequently fall - and that is the actual aim of intervention - then Syria will become another anarchic wasteland ruled over by fundamentalist warlords. The spiral of migration will be renewed bringing loons wrapped in the dispossessed to our own streets. Worse, the militants next stop will be Lebanon and then Israel will be directly involved. Freedland advocates acting against Assad without even attempting to predict the consequences. At the very least I would expect the usual misdirection 'of course this time we must have a plan for rebuilding Syria', secure in the knowledge that by that time there will be another crisis and Syria can be left in entropy.

No good can come from military intervention. The satisfaction of commentators that the right thing has been done is an irrelevance. The right thing is always just public relations. Every bit of ruthless geopolitics has to have a casus belli to make the killing all righteous and unavoidable. It has always been thus. For resources to be expended on this kind of scale there has to be a rock solid bit of bankable realpolitik. In this case its the struggle for regional hegemony between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Syria can either be part of a supply chain selling Sunni gas/oil to Europe or Shi'a gas/oil to Europe. This is about killing Syrians for the glory of Saudi Arabia. You can see why there has to be a casus belli because thats not something that can be sold. We know the proceeds will go unmentioned into offshore havens and the London property market. Britain would derive no geopolitical benefit as a whole. The benefits would accrue only to a kleptocracy who think they have a right to use our country as a loan shark's leg-breaker.

It is therefore my contention that Freedland is promoting an immoral act that will have serious consequences without offering any serious improvement in the situation. This is arguably the most dangerous situation since the Cuban Missile crisis and an analysis that advocates pouring oil on the flames is either ridiculously stupid or calculatedly duplicitous.

thousandautumns -> balancedman , 13 Apr 2018 15:39
"Up to" 13,000 "opponents" killed over five years during a period of war. I'm assuming that number of "opponents" includes a large number of out and out terrorists who have thrown the country into chaos.
Brianto , 13 Apr 2018 15:39
What is Porton Down manufacturing?
oldeborr , 13 Apr 2018 15:38
The UK and France bares a heavy responsibility for the current situation in Syria. The cavalier attitude that the ConDems took to international law during the Arab spring encouraged the Saudi s and their proxies to distablise the recognised Govt. Assad is no paragon of virtue, but prior to the insurgency steps were in place to make the country a better place for its citizens, and whilst its true political dissent was not allowed, people could live their lives and go about their business in safety.

[Sep 09, 2018] Why the British Hate Donald Trump

This is too simplistic, but has some good points. Also it is unclear if Trump rejects regime change now. He acts as a neocon and his cabinet is full of neocons. That does not bring him love of the deep state, though ;-)
Sep 03, 2018 | larouchepac.com
With only two months before the crucial midterm Congressional elections in the U.S., President Trump is spending about half his time holding rallies around the country, backing candidates who support his program, while denouncing the Democratic Party's effort to make the election into a referendum for Trump's impeachment. Candidates whom Trump has endorsed in the Republican primaries have won, even when they were behind in the polls to their Republican opponents before the endorsement, but the outcome of the November elections is unclear.

It can not be overstated how crucial it is for the future of the human race that the Democratic Party effort (backed by a number of neo-con Republicans and almost all the fake-news press) be crushed. The impeachment drive was born in the U.K., by leading elements of British intelligence -- former MI6 agent Christopher Steele, former MI6 Chief Richard Dearlove, and former GCHQ Chief Robert Hannigan (who resigned only last year).

Hannigan's meetings with the unstable CIA chief John Brennan launched the frantic effort to prevent Trump from getting the nomination, while Steele prepared the fake dossier to launch the Russiagate hoax, working directly with the Comey-McCabe-Strzok-Ohr-Mueller traitors in the DOJ and FBI, to carry out a coup against the elected government of the United States -- the culmination of a nearly 250-year British campaign to take back their colony.

Consider why the British imperial set hates Trump:

Each of these concepts have been core issues of the LaRouche movement over the past half-century. Fighting essentially alone for most of this time, but depending on the fundamental truth that history is driven by the power of great ideas which are coherent with the laws of the universe, this movement is now poised to bring about a new paradigm for mankind. The framework for this new paradigm exists in the spirit of the New Silk Road -- another concept introduced and fought for by LaRouche and his movement -- which is now bringing the nations of Asia, Africa, Ibero-America, and even several European nations together under the Chinese-initiated Belt and Road Initiative.

The U.S. economy -- the real economy -- has begun to move forward again for the first time in decades. The financial system could explode, especially if this progress is derailed, which can only be prevented by adopting LaRouche's Four Laws for restoring the American System.

This requires bringing Russia, China, India and the United States together for a new Bretton Woods symposium, to replace the dying, but dangerous, British Empire system.

If Trump is removed from office, the U.S. will almost certainly return to its status of a "dumb giant" servant to the British Crown, which we witnessed so blatantly under Bush and Obama. The moment is pregnant with the potential for a new, positive future for mankind, if the patriots of our nation, and the citizens of the world, rise to the task.

[Sep 09, 2018] DNC Papadopoulos s UK contact may be dead

Highly recommended!
Dead men tell no tales, especially about their role in trying to set up and take down U.S. President Donald Trump.
Notable quotes:
"... DNC lawyers wrote in court filings Friday that Joseph Mifsud, who spoke to Papadopoulos during the 2016 presidential election, "is missing and may be deceased," Bloomberg News reported. The lawyers did not elaborate. ..."
"... "The DNC's counsel has attempted to serve Mifsud for months and has been unable to locate or contact him. In addition, public reports have said he has disappeared and hasn't been seen for months," DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said. ..."
Sep 09, 2018 | thehill.com
The Democratic National Committee (DNC) on Friday raised the prospect that the London-based professor who told former Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton may be dead.

DNC lawyers wrote in court filings Friday that Joseph Mifsud, who spoke to Papadopoulos during the 2016 presidential election, "is missing and may be deceased," Bloomberg News reported. The lawyers did not elaborate.

The DNC stood by its claim in a statement to The Hill on Friday. The committee indicated that an investigator had been used to find Mifsud, who has been missing for months, and was told the Maltese professor may be dead.

"The DNC's counsel has attempted to serve Mifsud for months and has been unable to locate or contact him. In addition, public reports have said he has disappeared and hasn't been seen for months," DNC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said.

Mifsud was reportedly teaching at a private university in Rome before he vanished late last year , shortly after his name emerged as a key figure in the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election.

The professor had reportedly not been in contact with prosecutors in Italy seeking to question him over allegations of financial wrongdoing and his fiancée told Business Insider earlier this year that she could not reach him.

The DNC's revelation came in court filings Friday in their lawsuit against Russia, the Trump campaign and WikiLeaks for interfering in the 2016 presidential election. According to Bloomberg, the DNC said it believed all of the defendants in the case had been served, with the exception of Mifsud.

[Sep 08, 2018] The Manafort and Cohen Convictions

Notable quotes:
"... Mueller's problem is that his entire investigation has been revealed to be permeated with illegality and dubious Constitutional premises. As the result of investigations by Congress, we know that as of December, 2015 British intelligence agencies were frantically signaling their fears about Donald Trump to Obama Administration intelligence officials, primarily the CIA of John Brennan. ..."
"... The British were demanding that Trump be taken out by whatever means because he was "soft on Russia." They were demanding that Trump be taken out by criminalizing the idea for which the American people ultimately voted, a rational relationship, rather than war, between the U.S. and Russia. ..."
"... By the early Spring, we now know Brennan was operating out of the CIA with a taskforce investigating Trump based on British "leads," despite multiple legal prohibitions against just such domestic activity by the CIA. ..."
"... That task force included Peter Strzok, the fired FBI agent who said he would do anything to prevent Trump's election. This operation included sending informants to plant fabricated evidence on peripheral figures in the Trump campaign, including George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. ..."
Sep 08, 2018 | larouchepac.com

The media posited that these two events, one by trial, one by plea, gave Robert Mueller new found credibility and "momentum' at a point where both were dissipating extremely rapidly. This claim, like the others we have examined here, has no relation to reality.

Mueller's problem is that his entire investigation has been revealed to be permeated with illegality and dubious Constitutional premises. As the result of investigations by Congress, we know that as of December, 2015 British intelligence agencies were frantically signaling their fears about Donald Trump to Obama Administration intelligence officials, primarily the CIA of John Brennan.

The British were demanding that Trump be taken out by whatever means because he was "soft on Russia." They were demanding that Trump be taken out by criminalizing the idea for which the American people ultimately voted, a rational relationship, rather than war, between the U.S. and Russia.

By the early Spring, we now know Brennan was operating out of the CIA with a taskforce investigating Trump based on British "leads," despite multiple legal prohibitions against just such domestic activity by the CIA.

That task force included Peter Strzok, the fired FBI agent who said he would do anything to prevent Trump's election. This operation included sending informants to plant fabricated evidence on peripheral figures in the Trump campaign, including George Papadopoulos and Carter Page. The fake evidence suggested that Trump was using Russian obtained "dirt" against Hillary Clinton. The evidence planting operations, mostly conducted on British soil, were designed to back up the bogus and otherwise evidence free and indefensible dossier authored by MI-6's Christopher Steele, paid for by the Clinton campaign, and promoted by the Department of State, Department of Justice, the FBI, and select reporters. The dirty British Steele dossier claimed that Trump had been compromised by Putin. Based on this, Trump was targeted in a full-set counterintelligence investigation by the FBI including surveillance of his campaign and anyone associated with it. The goal of this surveillance was to put those who were around Trump under an investigative microscope stretching back years to find any crime or misdeed for which they could be prosecuted. That is the illegal and unconstitutional backdrop to everything Robert Mueller has produced thus far. Nothing produced by Mueller has shown Trump to be a puppet of Putin as claimed by the British, the Clinton campaign, and the national news media. Nonetheless, the entire episode has damaged relations between the U.S. and Russia and between the U.S. and China, which was the British strategic goal in the first instance, continuing the dive into a new and dangerous Cold War. Trump has fought this at every step.

Paul Manafort was hired to handle delegate selection at the Republican National Convention and then as campaign manager. He worked for Trump for six months total until his legal problems became known and he resigned. He was charged by Mueller with tax, foreign agent registration act, and bank fraud offenses for his lobbying activities on behalf of the deposed government of Ukraine. That government was overthrown in coup in which John McCain played a critical role, a coup which empowered outright neo-Nazis. Christopher Steele, British intelligence, and the U.S. State Department also played major roles in the Ukraine regime change operation. Manafort was targeted by both Ukrainian and British intelligence because he, in effect, backed the perceived Russian side in the coup. For this, he was being investigated by the Obama Justice Department well prior to any campaign association with Donald Trump. Mueller simply adjusted the focus of this already political investigation, a focus aimed at turning Manafort into an asset against Trump by means of the terror of potential prison sentences numbering in the hundreds of years as the result of overcharged and duplicative indictments.

Michael Cohen, who worked with Trump as a lawyer, also had his share of prior legal problems, primarily related to taxes concerning his taxi medallion business in New York City. For months, the mainstream media has featured the claims of porn star Stormy Daniels claiming a one night stand with the future President, ten years ago, as if the nation could draw some lesson from Daniels about public virtue. Cohen apparently arranged to pay off Daniels and another woman concerning their allegations about sex with the President. Among other suspicious dealings, Cohen tape recorded conversations with his client, Donald Trump, during the campaign, a complete and total violation of legal ethics which would independently cost him his law license. For many months prior to his plea deal, Cohen has been a target of intense investigative interest based on his tax problems. In recent months, Cohen has repeatedly signaled that he was willing to betray the President and say whatever prosecutors in the Southern District of New York wanted him to say about Donald Trump in order to avoid jail. The problem is that prosecutors thought Cohen an obvious desperate liar and were not buying. Ultimately, the deal which Cohen struck has him claiming that candidate Trump asked him to pay hush money to the women, resulting in Federal Election Campaign Act violations. This is what the Justice Department claimed against John Edwards in a widely ridiculed and failed prosecution. It is exactly the type of claim by which the British and our Establishment impeached Bill Clinton.

Cohen hired long-time Clinton operative Lanny Davis to represent him in recent months and to make a deal. Following his plea, Davis claimed that Cohen had two made-up morsels to offer Mueller, in return for a reduced sentence, a claim that Trump knew about the June 2016 Trump Tower meeting with a Russian lawyer, and a claim that Cohen knew about Russian hacking of Hillary Clinton's emails. Davis has since admitted that both these claims were totally false and has had to walk them back publicly.

So, if you are tempted by the media t think that either of these "convictions" are germane to the President's fitness for office, or Robert Mueller's credibility, please, seek medical attention. The madness which now infects much of official Washington may have claimed you.

[Sep 07, 2018] The Russian minority in the Baltics live under 'apartheid' states OffGuardian by Admin

off-guardian.org
Max Parry

An 'Immortal Regiment' march celebrating Victory Day in Riga, Latvia.

It has been nearly three decades since the dissolution of the Soviet Union. Despite Russia's reemergence on the world stage as a respected power after market-oriented 'reforms' destroyed its economy for the duration of the nineties, the breakup of the USSR is an event regarded by an increasing amount of Russians as a catastrophic tragedy rather than a triumph of 'freedom and democracy.'

In recent years, there have been numerous polls showing that more than half of Russians not only regret the collapse of the Soviet Union but would even prefer for its return . However, the nostalgia only comes as a surprise to those who have forgotten that not long before the failed August Coup that led to its demise, the first and only referendum in its history was held in March of 1991 which polled citizens if they wished to preserve the Soviet system.

The results were more than three quarters of the population in the entire socialist federation (including Russia) voting a resounding yes with a turnout of 80% in the participating republics. In Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan the outcome was more than 90% voting for renewal. Even the country with the lowest amount of support, the Ukraine, was still 70% in favor. While the measure was officially banned in six republics -- Moldova, Georgia, Armenia, and the three Baltic states -- despite being unrecognized by their local governments the vote was still organized and the outcomes were all over 90%.

Ironically, the union dissolved five months later under the pretext of establishing 'democracy' in Eastern Europe just as it ignored the very wishes of Soviet citizens. After more than 25 years of suffering at the hands of economic and trade liberalization, gutting of state subsidies and mass privatization of the former state-run industry, is it any wonder that Russians are yearning for a return to socialism?

The consequences of the disintegration are still felt in the relations with the United States today. It planted the seeds for the carefully arranged revival of the Cold War that was hiding in plain sight until it surfaced with 'color revolutions', proxy wars and dubious spy poisonings. One source of the strained relations between the West and Russia has been the Baltic states, which burgeoned following their integration into the European Union and enrollment in NATO membership in 2004 during its enlargement. NATO continues its provocations with massive war games bordering Kaliningrad, while Moscow is painted as the aggressor even though the U.S. defense spending increase this year alone surpasses Russia's entire military budget.

The antagonism between Latvia, Estonia and(to a lesser degree) Lithuania with Moscow stems partly from from the cessation of the USSR itself. The conclusion of the Cold War resulted in more than 25 million Russians instantly discovering themselves living abroad in foreign countries. For seventy years, fifteen nations had been fully integrated while Russians migrated and lived within the other republics. The Soviet collapse immediately reignited national conflicts, from the Caucasus to the Baltics. While the majority of the ethnic Russian diaspora live in Ukraine and Kazakhstan, nearly 1 million reside in the post-Soviet Baltics and since 1991 they have been subjected to a campaign of forced assimilation, discrimination and exclusion.

The Baltic republics made nationalism their official state policy while moving away from Russia's sphere of influence into a closer relationship with the West. Boris Yeltsin's subservience to Washington eclipsed any concern for the fate of captive Russians as the Soviet Bloc was herded into the EU, but his administration did quarrel with the new Baltic authorities and accused them of creating an anti-Russian 'apartheid.'

As geopolitical tensions have increased under his successor, Vladimir V. Putin, who has embarrassed Western imperialism in the international arena, so has Moscow's disapproval of the treatment of its minority held hostage in the Baltic Rim. Is a comparison to South Africa warranted? Even if the similarities are only partial, the three states show evidence of deep ethnocracy.

While less than 10% of Lithuania is ethnically Russian, in Latvia and Estonia the number is much higher at a quarter of their entire populations. The three governments have passed laws promoting their official languages and restored citizenship requirements that existed up until 1940, demanding that their Russian minorities apply or risk losing basic rights and guarantees. Russia has interpreted these measures as a form of slow-motion ethnic cleansing intended to coerce Russians to immigrate elsewhere.

When the three states first became independent, in an act of systematic discrimination they distributed non-citizen 'alien' passports to ethnic Russians and excluded them from obtaining citizenship automatically, even if they had lived and worked in a Baltic state for their entire life. In fact, citizenship was not immediately granted to anyone whose ancestry arrived after 1940, a policy that specifically targeted ethnic Russians who without naturalization are left stateless.

For example, when Estonia first declared its independence more than 30% of its population (or every third person) did not have citizenship of the country of residence. This inscribed ethnic division into their society and although many Russians have become naturalized over the last two decades, there are still more than 80,000 in Estonia without determined status who are mostly former Soviet citizens and their descendants. In Latvia, segregation runs even deeper where more than 250,000 Russians (15% of the population) remain stateless. Even when they do become citizens, the parliaments have attempted to pass laws banning non-EU immigrants (predominantly Russians) from possessing voting rights on several occasions. Polls also show the prejudice within their societies, with many Balts indicating they would prefer their Russian-speaking neighbors to repatriate.

Meanwhile, the Russian population has expressed concern about the reemergence of neo-Nazism. The authorities have nurtured holocaust denial, such as the Latvian government objecting to an UNESCO Holocaust exhibition of the Salaspils concentration camp on the basis it would 'tarnish the country's image.' No kidding.

Children held in Salaspils concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Latvia during WWII.

One criteria for the naturalization exams is based on language where in order to become citizens Russians must become fluent in Latvian and Estonian, even though they are such a large minority that in larger cities they often constitute 50% of the population and Russian may be the most spoken language. Simultaneously, any attempt to make Russian a second official language have been struck down. It is a deliberate effort to assimilate the Russian-speaking minority and erase remnants of Soviet culture.

In order to obtain basic entitlements, Russians have to pass the tough naturalization tests which many fail several times (especially the elderly), facing fines and risking losing their employment in the process. The tests are notoriously difficult as Latvian and Estonian languages bear little resemblance to Slavic Russian and are much closer to Finnish.

Apart from ethnicity, 40% of Latvia as a whole identifies as Russian-speaking and have been accustomed to schooling in their native tongue where they already have low career prospects and income rates. Rather than inclusion, they have been mandated to adopt the Baltic languages. Beginning in 2019, the Russian language education options in Latvia will be discontinued altogether in higher education at colleges and universities as well as many secondary schools, which has sparked demonstrations in protest .

Russian-speakers protesting Latvia's language reform laws

It should be made clear that what ethnic Russians experience in the Baltics has its own particularities that make it significantly different from the institutionalized racism and violently enforced segregation that existed in South Africa (or what many believe is applicable to the Palestinians under Israeli occupation). The word apartheid itself originates from the Afrikaans word for 'separateness' (or apart-hood), but an exact comparison is not the real issue. There are many overlapping characteristics that make an analogy arguable.

For instance, the use of an ID system denoting ethnicity and alien status with the inability of Russians to participate in the democratic process or politics. Their reduced standing contributes to a society where ethnic groups often do not intermingle and are concentrated in particular areas with Russians mostly residing in urban cities. Yet even Israel recognized Arabic as a second official language (until 2018), while none of three Baltic states do so for Russian. When referendums have been held on whether to adopt Russian as a second language, the non-citizen communities are excluded from voting, ensuring its inability to pass.

The exams also coerce Russians to accept a nationalist and historically revisionist account of the last century where the Soviet Union is said to have "occupied" the Baltics. A history lesson is needed to understand how this is untrue and based on pure Nazi mythology. During the Romanov dynasty, the Baltic states had been part of the Russian Empire but became independent for the first time in centuries following the February Revolution in 1917.

Along with Belarus and Finland, the Bolsheviks were unable to regain the three republics during the Russian Civil War. During the 1930s, the three nations were officially sovereign states but under their own brutal nationalist regimes. The Soviet liberation of the Baltics can hardly be seen as a 'forceful incorporation' considering what they replaced were not democracies themselves and they were absorbed in order to block Hitlerite expansionism.

Since the restoration of capitalism in Eastern Europe, the Baltic states have waged a campaign of diminishing and obscuring the Holocaust into a 'double genocide' of equal proportions , conflating the Nazis and the Soviets as twin evils. Western 'democracies' have helped obfuscate the truth about the widely misunderstood Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, the treaty of non-belligerence between Germany and the USSR. The 1939 non-aggression pact has been painted as a 'secret alliance' between the Nazis and the Soviets, disregarding that France and Great Britain had done the same with the Germans the previous year with the Munich Agreement.

Only the Soviets are said to have 'conspired' with Hitler, just as when the West fought the Germans it was for 'liberal values' but when the USSR did so it was for competing 'dominion' over Europe. In order to mask their own fascist sympathies, the West has falsified the historical reasons for the accord. In reality, there were measures incorporating the Baltic states into the USSR as part of a mutual defense and assistance against German imperialism and their 'master plan' for the East.

The truth is that the ruling class in the West feared the spread of communism much more than fascism, and actually viewed the rise of Hitler and Mussolini in Europe as an opportunity to crush the Soviet Union. Leading up to WWII, not only was it Western capital investment which financed the rapid buildup of Germany's armed forces, but the U.S., Britain and France did everything within their power to encourage Hitler's aggression toward the USSR. More than once they collectively refused to sign any mutual security alliance with Moscow while appeasing Hitler's expansionism in Czechoslovakia, with the British in particular guilty of sabotaging negotiations to isolate the Soviets and pit them into a war against Germany.

Stalin was well aware the Nazis planned to expand the Lebensraum further East, but the Soviets were in the midst of a rapid industrialization process that accomplished in a single decade what took the British more than a century. They needed time to guarantee they could defeat an offensive by the Wehrmacht, the most powerful and developed military force in the world at the time. It provided an additional year and ten months of further buildup of Soviet armaments  --  if not for this move, it is possible the Germans would never have been stopped twenty kilometers short of Moscow and turned the outcome of the war in their favor. The real reason the pact infuriated the West was because it obligated them into having to fight the Germans, something the imperial powers had hoped to avoid altogether.

More disturbingly, the Baltic governments have drawn from the traditions of the far right by whitewashing the local nationalists that sided with Germany during their invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 which broke the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact. The Nazi collaborators have been restored and normalized as 'freedom fighters' who fought solely for Baltic independence.

The Estonian parliament has even adopted resolutions honoring the Estonian Legion and 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) without any such equivalent measure for the more than 30,000 Estonians who courageously fought in the Red Army.

To most Russians, it is an absolute insult to the 27 million Soviets who died defeating the Nazis, including the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who did so as well. Today, if they wish to become citizens they must swear an oath of allegiance to this rewriting of history which has been made a precondition for obtaining citizenship. The three states also do not recognize the May 9th Victory Day as a holiday, forcing the Russian minority to celebrate it informally.

20th Estonian SS Division

The rehabilitation of the local nationalists who fought alongside the Germans has been done under the false premise that the collaboration was a purely strategic alliance. The Soviets are portrayed as equal to or worse than Nazi Germany, a false equivalency between fascism and communism that is a ubiquitous trait among ultra-rightists today. Tens of thousands of Latvians and Estonians volunteered and were conscripted into legions of the SS which participated in the Holocaust, as did Lithuanians in the Nazi-created Territorial Defense Force and their Security Police.

They did not simply coordinate on the battlefield with the Germans, but directly participated in the methodical slaughter of Jews, Roma and others because they shared their racism. In Lithuania, for example, quislings welcomed the Wehrmacht as liberators and for the next three years under Nazi occupation helped murder 200,000 Jews, nearly 95% of the country's Jewish population, a total which exceeded every other European country in terms of percentage of extermination. It is certain that the only thing that prevented Lithuania's Jews from extinction was the heroism and sacrifice of the Red Army.

Latvians greeting the Red Army after the liberation of Riga

During the Cold War, the US and NATO sought to whitewash certain Nazi war criminals when it suited its strategic interests against the Soviets. This went beyond the Germans themselves, whether it was recruiting their spies for espionage, atomic scientists in Operation Paperclip , or making Hans Speidel the Supreme Allied Commander of NATO in Central Europe.

The Nuremberg Trials had ruled the entire Waffen SS as an organization to be guilty of war crimes during the holocaust, but the US chose to make a distinction between the 15th and 19th SS divisions in Latvia (Latvian Legion) and 20th division in Estonia from the German divisions of the SS. In 1950, the US Displaced Persons Commission determined:

The Baltic Waffen SS Units are to be considered as separate and distinct in purpose, ideology, activities, and qualifications for membership from the German SS, and therefore the Commission holds them not to be a movement hostile to the Government of the United States under Section 13 of the Displaced Persons Act, as amended."

While the displaced persons laws let Jewish refugees into the United States, it also provided cover for the reserved spaces for thousands of Nazi collaborators in an open-door policy providing them safe harbor. Following the end of WWII, many of the former members of the Baltic SS units became anti-Soviet partisans known as the Forest Brothers who carried on a guerilla campaign against the Soviets with the assistance of the CIA and MI6 until it was defeated in mid-50s. Unfortunately, Nikita Khruschev then made one of a series of colossal mistakes by permitting the exiled Baltic nationals to return as part of the de-Stalinisation thaw.

Latvian Legion

The idea that regiments of the Schutzstaffel were fighting purely for Estonian and Latvian independence is a horrifying fabrication in defiance of the overwhelming evidence documented by holocaust historians. The West has exploited this sanitizing of history that reappeared following the reinstatement of free enterprise in eastern Europe which has proliferated the far right in the EU as a whole. Why? It serves their cynical immediate interests in undermining Moscow. The same manipulations are occurring in the Cold War's sequel. Last year, NATO even produced a short film and a-historical reenactment entitled Forest Brothers: Fight for the Baltics , glorifying the anti-Soviet partisans as part of its propaganda effort against Russia.

Any crimes that were committed by the Soviet NKVD during the war are dwarfed by the tens of thousands of Jews and Roma which were exterminated on an industrial level by the Nazis and their co-conspirators using the race theory  --  there is no comparison. Not to mention that the reintroduction of the free market to Eastern Europe killed more people than any period in Soviet history, reducing life expectancy by a decade and undoing seventy years worth of progress. We only ever hear of the faults of socialism and the inflated numbers of losses of life attributed to its failure, never the daily crimes of capitalism or the tens of millions lost in the wars it produces.

he Soviet brand of socialism was far from perfect, but nevertheless a model for what humanity can achieve in the face of tremendous adversity without being shackled by the contradictions of capitalism  --  an industrial society with relative equality in education, wealth, employment and basic necessities. Now that Western capitalism is once again collapsing, it is making friends with nationalists to revise its ugly history and the Russian minority in the Baltics are suffering the consequence. It will continue to apportion blame on the up-and-coming power in Moscow, no longer the quasi-colony of the Yeltsin era, for its soon-to-be expiration. Let us hope it does not start another World War in the midst of it  --  for all our sake.

Max Parry is an independent journalist and geopolitical analyst. His work has appeared in publications such as The Greanville Post, Global Research, CounterPunch and more. Read him on Medium . Max may be reached at [email protected]

20 Comments

Thomas Prentice says September 7, 2018

I did not know about the vote in 1991. Thank you for exposing yet another example of US meddling in elections, i.e. not recognizing the results and essentially forcing a coup via Yeltsin. The war crimes of the US and Israel are beyond comprehension. Loading...
Francis Lee says September 7, 2018
Yes, the Baltics, like the western Ukraine, rolled out the red carpet to the German invaders in 1941. The Nazi genocide was outsourced from Waffen SS and Einsatzgruppen to Baltic Nazis since the numbers involved were too big to handle for the Germans alone.

The Arajs Kommando death squad (also: Sonderkommando Arajs), was led by local SS and collaborators Viktors Arājs, Franz Stahlecker and Robert Stieglitz and a unit of Latvian Auxiliary Police (Lettische Hilfspolizei) which was subordinated to the German Sicherheitsdienst (a special security branch of the German SS). It was a notorious killing unit during the Holocaust. Stahlecker instructed Arajs to set up a commando unit that obtained an official name Latvian Auxiliary Security Police or Arājs Kommando.

The following day on July 2 1941 Arajs learned from Stahlecker during a conference that the Arajs commando had to unleash a pogrom that looked spontaneous and these pogrom-like disorders were to break out before German occupation authorities had been properly established. The Einsatzkommando a sub-group of the SS death squads, belonging to the larger Einsatzgruppen) influenced mobs of former members of Pērkonkrusts (Latvian ultra-nationalists and other extreme right-wing groups) began mass arrests, pillaging and murders of Jews in Riga, which led to death of between 300 to 400 Jews.

Killings continued under the supervision of SS Brigadeführer Walter Stahlecker and ended when more 2,700 Jews had been murdered. The activities of the Einsatzkommando were constrained after the full establishment of the German occupation authority, after which the SS made use of select units of native recruits. German General Wilhelm Ullersperger and Voldemar Weiss, a well known, Latvian nationalist, appealed to the population via a radio address to attack "internal enemies".

During the next few months, activities of the Latvian Auxiliary Security Police was primarily focused on killing Jews, Communists and Red Army stragglers in Latvia as well as in neighbouring Belorussia. The group alone murdered almost half of Latvia's Jewish population, about 26,000 Jews, mainly in November and December 1941. The creation of the Arajs Kommando was "one of the most significant inventions of the early Holocaust", that marked a transition from German organised pogroms to systematic killing of Jews by local volunteers (former army officers, policemen, students, Aizargi).

This helped resolve a chronic problem with German personnel shortages, and provided the Germans with relief from the psychological stress of routinely murdering civilians. By the autumn of 1941, the SS deployed Latvian 'Police Battalions' to Leningrad, where they were consolidated as Latvian Second SS Volunteer Brigade.

In 1943, this brigade, which would later become the Latvian Nineteenth SS Volunteer Division, was consolidated with the Latvian Fifteen SS Volunteer Division to become the Latvian Legion. Although formally the Latvian Legion (Schutzmannschaft or Schuma) was a volunteer Waffen-SS military formation; it was voluntary only by name, because approximately 80-85% of personnel were conscripted into the legion.

Yes lovely people these Batlics. They are now among the poorest countries in Europe and are suffering massive demographic problems as anyone who can, leaves. As my old mother used to say. "God pays debts without money..
"

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mark says September 7, 2018
People of Russian heritage are denied passports, the right to vote, and any official employment, amongst other forms of discrimination and persecution.
These are sh***y little Nazi countries, with their big annual SS parades. They desecrate war memorials and the graves of Russian soldiers who died liberating the Baltic countries in the war. Many Baltic politicians are US dual citizens, neocons parachuted in after 1991 by the State Department. They are ideologically driven and lose no opportunity to vent their spleen against Russia. They are constantly foolishly provocative towards a neighbour that could be a valuable economic partner. We see the same pattern in Ukraine. The US pulled off a stunt where 10,000 US troops in 1,000 tanks and vehicles drove up and down the Latvian border just a few yards from Russian territory, through communities of predominantly Russian heritage.
Part of this hostility to Russia is probably contrived by the political class to cover up their abject failures since independence. Their economies were looted and hollowed out by western finance capital over the past few decades. They were previously highly developed parts of the Soviet Union with industries like machinery, vehicles and shipbuilding. That is now ancient history. The economy has collapsed, and 25% of the population of Latvia has emigrated, scratching a living doing menial jobs or working as prostitutes in the EU, the only future those countries have. Riga was a natural transit hub for Russia, but faced with official visceral hatred from that quarter, the Russians expanded and developed their own port facilities in the Baltic. Riga has been left as a ghost town. That is why Nordstream has been developed, to replace unreliable partners in neighbouring countries who are always ready to cut off their noses to spite their face and please their US neocon masters. Their loss – they could have made billions from energy transit fees. It's the same story with sanctions, for which the Baltic states were enthusiastic cheerleaders. Russia's counter sanctions against agricultural imports have hit them hard. In the course of events, these countries and Russia would be economic partners for their mutual benefit.
As NATO members, these countries believe they can be as foolishly provocative and offensive to Russia as they wish, like the obnoxious kid in the school playground who spits in somebody's face and runs and hides behind his big brother. Small countries like this can cause a disaster, like Serbia and WW1. They are now failed states, like Ukraine. They are just pawns in a neocon game against Russia. They have no future. Loading...
kevin morris says September 7, 2018
'The Baltic republics made nationalism their official state policy while moving away from Russia's sphere of influence into a closer relationship with the West.'

I strongly supported the Soviet Union and likewise I support the CIS, but this article, frankly, is so partial that it misrepresents the reasons why the Baltic States behaved as they did following the Nazi invasion of 1941 and following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

There is no mention of Staln's takeover of the Baltic States in 1940. It is clear that Stalin needed those states as a buffer against Germany, but that said, it is fully understandable that many Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians would see the Nazis as liberators and would resent their countries' reabsorption into the Soviet Union in 1944, followed by settlement by Russian nationals including members of the Soviet state apparatus including the KGB. Of course, we may all deplore collaboration with Nazi race policies, especially in Lithuania, but to ignore factors such as Russia's takeover of the Baltic states ignores a major factor at the heart of those countries' treatment of Russians to this day.

The author explains Stalin's wish to forestall the inevitable war with Nazism because the Soviet Union was involved in industrialisation. This is true, but the article ignores the purges that had led to the Red Army being so ineffectual in its war with Finland that Hitler believed that Barbarossa would be a pushover. When one considers that when the Baltic States became part of the Soviet Union, this will have included the apparatus of state terror that Stalin had been visiting upon the rest of the Soviet Union for several years. Contrary to the above whitewashed view of history, Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians had strong grounds for resenting the presence of Russians in their erstwhile independent nations.

I deplore the Baltic States' treatment of ethnic Russians since they gained their independence in September 1991, but ignoring the follies of their Soviet past will do nothing to alleviate their plight.

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manfromatlan says September 7, 2018
I appreciate the historical background, but the treatment of Ukrainians, Latvians, Estonians and Lithuanians by Stalin might explain their actions in WWII; doesn't excuse them, sorry. Loading...
bevin says September 7, 2018
"erstwhile independent nations."
To be clear these former provinces-highly favoured provinces- in the Russian Empire had been 'independent' since 1921.And thanks in part too to the Bolshevik doctrine that the Czarist Empire was a 'prison house of peoples.'
No doubt many in the Baltic states resented the invasion of the Red Army but it was only a small minority which celebrated by killing Jews and enrolling in the siege of Leningrad.
In more modern terms there is no reason why these three states, and Ukraine, could not thrive independently without setting themselves up as bases for provocations against Russia and convenient locations for US torture chambers.
The people of Ireland suffered far more under the British Empire than the Balts did under St Petersburg but that did not lead to more than a handful of Irishmen, if that many, in the Second World War joining the SS. Loading...
Big B says September 7, 2018
This article takes no account of the threat posed to our allies in NATO, Eastern Europe, and to the security of the world due to the rising tensions of recent years. Now, more than ever, in the wake of Salisbury attack, we need to stress to our European counterparts in the governments of the Baltic States, that we wish to work with them to maximise the power of collective sanctions against violations of international law – whether by Russia or anyone else. I think we should make clear that our UK commitment to such collective action will not be diminished by Brexit. Similarly, now more than ever, it is vital that the UK and all other NATO members make it clear to all our allies in the Baltic States, and elsewhere, that we want to protect peace and security on the borders, without ramping up tensions unnecessarily, and that such a commitment is not conditional on their levels of defence spending.

Tory defence spending cuts have put Britain's security at risk.. I think the next Labour government should commit to boost our military obligations, above the benchmark of 2% GDP, in line with the last Labour government's commitment to NATO.

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FS says September 7, 2018
Who are you and what have you done with Big B? Loading...
vexarb says September 7, 2018
This is the second parody posted by BigB. A parody so skilful, such inane stringing together of non-sequiturs to an insane c,nclusion, it might have come from the very lips of blessed Theresa of Westminster. Loading...
Big B says September 7, 2018
Very close, Vex: St Jeremy of Islington North. Most of it is verbatim, with some reworded conjunctions. The source text is from Hansard 26/03/18. The last para is a reword taken from quote in John Pilger's excellent article about Labour's non-existent foreign policy which would likely be imperialistic. Or the vague platitude of a return to 'Robin Cook ethical diplomacy' of starting three wars in two years and selling Hawk aircraft to Mugabe.

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/10/06/the-rise-of-britains-new-politics/

It struck me recently when I point out the actual words that JC says, I take the flak. To prove a point (if only to myself) I posted his own (disguised) words to see how people would react. The source text for yesterday was his reply to Treason May, when she announced the two counterfeit suspects for the fabricated Novijoke crime against the intelligence.

It is my supposition that very few know the full context of what is said, relying on media soundbites instead. The media pick a single phrase – such as only saying "evidence points strongly" – and contrast with Bojo's "weaselly words" to construct an entirely inauthentic narrative. It is a pseudo-oppressor/oppressed narrative that creates a false sense of pity and invokes an invented victim mentality (we all know how Brit's love an underdog!).

Anyway, I surmised his words were weaselly, though not in the context of the received culture machine narrative but in themselves, taken in their given context (in Parliament and later in Hansard). They amount to a servile connivance with power (a power that provides the testimony and meaning to the hollow phonemes).

I could have just said that, but I decided to post the slightly disguised text to make a point. Point made.

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mog says September 7, 2018
we don't see things as they are, we see things as we are. Loading...
manfromatlan says September 7, 2018
I thought I recognized those words from JC. In fact, I tweeted it! Big disappointment then https://twitter.com/manfromatlan/status/1033028635651788800 Loading...
JudyJ says September 7, 2018
Karen Pierce's utterances could come across as masterful parody but unfortunately she's deadly (literally and metaphorically) serious. Loading...
Frankly Speaking says September 7, 2018
Do they pay you per comment or per word? Loading...
Big B says September 7, 2018
Both! And I get a double for replying to replies! Loading...
curri says September 7, 2018
Soviet "Communism" was de facto never more than a branch of Anglo-American bourgeois progressivism. A geopolitical rivalry developed between the two factions after the defeat of Germany. Note that Western capitalists built the Soviet industrial base in the 1920s and 1930s, so it was obvious they were not seen as a threat then:
http://www.thebirdman.org/Index/Others/Others-Doc-ConspiracyTheory&NWO/+Doc-ConspiracyTheory-FalseEnemies/TheWestFinancedSoviets.htm
( )
American technical leadership began to replace German leadership in rebuilding the Soviet Union.

"Of the agreements in force in mid-1929, 27 were with German companies, 15 were with United States firms and the remaining ones were primarily with British and French firms. In the last six months of 1929, the number of technical agreements with U.S. firms jumped to more than 40." (Sutton, Western Technology and Soviet Economic Development, 1917-1930, pp. 346-347).
The new program was announced, however, only "after a sequence of construction and technical-assistance contracts with Western companies had been let. The Freyn-Gipromez technical agreement for design and construction of giant metallurgical plants is economically and technically the most important." (Ibid., p. 347).

EXTENT OF AID "ALMOST UNBELIEVABLE"
During the early thirties, the amount and type of "aid and comfort" to the Soviet Union was almost unbelievable. In 1930 the Ford Motor Company established the Russian motor car industry by constructing a factory "capable of turning out 140,000 cars a year." By the end of the decade the factory, at Gorki, was one of the largest in the world. Ford also provided training for the Russians in assembling automobiles "plus patent licenses, technical assistance, and advice," and "an inventory of spare parts." (Keller, East Minus West Equals Zero, pp. 208-209, 215-216). Americans also built, in the Soviet Union, the largest iron and steel works in the world; patterned after the city of Gary, Indiana. The huge steel complex, built at Maginitogorsk, was constructed by a Cleveland firm. (Ibid., pp. 209-210).

LARGEST TRACTOR FACTORY IN THE WORLD
The largest tractor factory in the world was another American contribution to Soviet technology.

"Tractors were a necessity to modernize Soviet agriculture. A Detroit engineer designed and constructed a tractor factory without parallel in any other country. The assembly works were 2,000 feet long and 650 feet wide, covering an area of thirty acres. Twenty-one American football fields would fit into just one building, with locker rooms for the players. The tractors produced were copies of the American Caterpillar Company, but there were no arrangements made for payment for use of the patent. Russia merely bought one sample and copied it. The factory was so designed that production could be adopted almost overnight to the production of another less innocuous commodity – tanks." (Ibid., p. 213).
( )

Russia today is clearly not seen as a partner of Western neoliberalism/progressivism. Therefore, Putin (along with Trump) has become the new Hitler.

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vexarb says September 7, 2018
Curri, thank you for presenting that healthy corrective to my previous one-sided view; up till now I had read only of US aid to Nazi Germany. Loading...
bevin says September 7, 2018
To put these observations into context it must be understood that the Soviet government-obsessed with a crude mechanistic theory of economic development and desperately trying to reproduce all of the 'stages' of economic progress into a succession of Five Year Plans- bled the peasantry and working class dry in order to pay for what Curri calls a partnership. The industrialists, largely Anglo Saxon, who jump started Russian industry after the catastrophes of war and civil war extorted a heavy price, in hard currency, for their 'aid.'
The notion that the Soviet Union, even under Stalin, was accepted as a partner by the west is historically illiterate. The record is clear. And clarified further by the continuity in Foreign Policy which was (and is) the Cold War. Loading...
candideschmyles says September 7, 2018
200,000 Jews in Lithuania alone! And they give all this fuss over Corbyns reluctance to conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism.
I knew there was prejudice in these northern Baltic states but this piece has shocked me. I now understand the self deprecating remarks made to me recently by a supermarket cashier over her being a Russian speaking Lithuanian. Next time I see her I will make a point of offering her my solidarity.
I meet many of these northerners in my work. Now I have some of this background I can ask pertinent questions. Loading...
bevin says September 7, 2018
It would be a mistake to discover the cause for this discrimination in popular prejudice. The actual reason lies in the determination of the ruling class to maintain fascist-collaborationist successor politicians in power.
These politicians, many of whom had origins in expatriate communities in the west, after fleeing their homelands in the baggage of the Wehrmacht and SS, have been finding it very difficult to survive after leading their countries into economic disaster mitigated only by the welcome boost that NATO bases bring to countries in which unemployment rates are at levels not seen since the 1930s.
Like their predecessors they have turned to racism and fascism to prop themselves up.
What is true of the Baltic states is even truer of Ukraine, where Russian speakers constitute a persecuted majority, and where the Speaker of the Rada is on record, this past week, as being inspired by the Fuhrer who he sees as the greatest democrat of the C20th.
As racism and fascism spread westwards into Austria, Germany and elsewhere the complacence of western 'liberals' in cosseting and subsidising the sources of infection is largely to blame. It is of course history repeating itself: the fascism of eastern europe in the 1930s was also sponsored and armed by the 'democracies' of the west. And for the same reason: to keep Russia at bay.

[Sep 07, 2018] Guardian continues to push Woodward book linking it to NYT anonymous op-ed

Whoever it was, this "gutless" person seems pretty craven, opportunistic neocon of McCain flavor. Most neocons are chickenhawks. And there are plenty of neocons in Trump administration.
It might well be that anonymous "resistance" op-ed in NYT is CIA operation to promote Woodward's book ( Woodward is definitely connected to CIA from the time of Nixon impeachment)
Notable quotes:
"... You are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions ..."
Sep 07, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

During an interview with Fox and Friends, conducted onstage prior to Trump's rally and set to air on Friday, the president called the paper's decision to publish the column "very unfair".

"When somebody writes and you can't discredit because you have no idea who they are," Trump said. "It may not be a Republican, it may not be a conservative, it may be a deep state person that's been there a long time.

It's a very unfair thing, but it's very unfair to our country and to the millions of people that voted really for us."

Since the editorial was published, the highest-ranking officials in Trump's administration have come forth to publicly deny any involvement. Those distancing themselves from the column have included the vice-president, Mike Pence, and the secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, along with much of Trump's cabinet. The first lady, Melania Trump, also condemned the author and called on the individual to come forward.

"You are not protecting this country, you are sabotaging it with your cowardly actions," she wrote.

The editorial was published as the White House was contending with yet another firestorm.

A book authored by the famed journalist Bob Woodward , poised for release next week, chronicles the chaos and dysfunction within the Trump administration.

Excerpts released on Tuesday provided an unflattering portrait of the president, who was described by aides in disparaging terms that included being likened to a schoolchild.

[Sep 07, 2018] Harding book is an indirect proof the UK government did it

Sep 07, 2018 | off-guardian.org

Originally from: Skripal Case Luke Harding's latest work of fiction OffGuardian

uke Harding likes writing books about things that he wasn't really involved in and doesn't really understand. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, that covers pretty much everything. His book about Snowden, for example, was beautifully taken down by Julian Assange – a person who was actually there.

He's priming the traumatised public for another of his works, this time about Sergei Skripal. This one will probably be out by Christmas, unless he can find someone else's work to plagiarise , in which case he might get it done sooner.

It will have a snide and not especially clever title, perhaps a sort of pun – something like "A Poison by Any Other Name: How Russian assassins contaminated the heart of rural England" . It will relate, in jarring sub-sub-le Carre prose, a story of Russian malfeasance and evil beyond imagining, whilst depicting the whole cast as bumbling caricatures, always held up for ridicule by the author and his smug readership.

There's an extract in The Guardian today. It's not listed as one, but trust me, it will be in the book. It's title, as predicted above, is sort of a pun (and will probably be a chapter heading):

Planes, trains and fake names: the trail left by Skripal suspects

You see? Like that film? I don't really get it either but until someone else comes up with something clever he can copy, Luke is left to his own rather meagre devices.

It starts off surprisingly strong, waiting three whole sentences before lurching violently into totally unsupported conjecture:

The two men were dressed inconspicuously in jeans, fleece jackets and trainers as they boarded the flight from Moscow to Gatwick. Their names, according to their Russian passports, were Alexander Petrov and Ruslan Boshirov. Both were around 40 years old. Neither looked suspicious.

This is, as far as we know so far, true.

The plane trundled down the icy runway. In Moscow the temperatures had fallen below -10C, not unusual for early March. In Britain it had been snowing.

and so is this. In fact, in googling "Moscow weather March 2018" Harding has displayed an uncharacteristically thorough approach to research that was rarely (if ever) evidenced in his previous works.

They had also packed a bottle of what appeared to be the Nina Ricci perfume Premier Jour. The box it came in was prettily decorated with flowers, it listed ingredients including alcohol and it bore the words "Made in France".

This is where truth ends and guesses take over: there is no evidence, at all, that these two men had anything to do with the "perfume bottle" allegedly found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th and allegedly containing a powerful nerve agent. There is (as far as we know) no fingerprint or DNA evidence on the bottle, nobody saw them with the bottle, and there's no released CCTV footage of them holding or carrying the bottle. Saying "it's in their backpack" is meaningless without any evidence to back it up.

According to the Metropolitan police, the bottle in fact contained novichok, a lethal nerve agent developed in the late Soviet Union. The bottle had been specially made to be leakproof and had a customised applicator.

Note he doesn't feel the need to examine, question or even verify the words of the Metropolitan Police. This is a recurring theme in Harding's works – there are people who tell the truth (US) and people who lie (RUSSIANS). Evidence is a complication you can live without.

Moscow's notorious poisons factory run by the KGB made similar devices throughout the cold war.

Did they? Because he doesn't show any evidence this is true. One thing you can be sure of, if there had ever been even a whisper about a "modified perfume bottle" in any Soviet archive or from any "whistleblower currently living in the United States", it would be on the front page in big black letters.

Petrov and Boshirov were aliases, detectives believe. Both men are suspected to be career officers with the GRU, Russia's powerful and highly secretive military intelligence service.

Note use of the word "believe", it makes regular appearances alongside it's buddies: "suspect" and "probably".

And yes, they "believe" they are aliases because IF they were assassins then obviously they used aliases. There's no evidence taken from their (currently totally theoretical) visa applications that point to forgery, nobody at the time questioned their passports. As of today, we have been given no reason to think they were aliases, except reasoning backwards from assumed guilt which isn't how deduction works.

In fact, there's more than enough reason to assume they aren't aliases – Firstly, they passed the visa check, secondly their passports were never questioned, thirdly they've used them before (see below), and finally just WHY would a Russian spy-come-assassin use a fake Russian name and a fake Russian passport? That's ridiculous.

The officers' assignment was covert. They were coming to Britain not as tourists but as assassins.

[citation needed]

Their target was Sergei Skripal, a former GRU officer who spied for British intelligence, got caught and was freed in a spy exchange in 2010. They were heading for his home in provincial Salisbury.

Luke doesn't feel the need to dig down into the nitty gritty here – motive is a trifle, to be added in the footnotes or made up on the spur of the moment when asked at a book signing. I'm a bit more fussy than that – I feel the need to ask "Why did they release him in 2010 and then try to kill him in 2018?" If they had wanted to kill him, why not just do it when he was in prison in Russia between 2006 and 2010? If they wanted to kill him why do it just weeks before the World Cup? What could they possibly have to gain?

Luke doesn't know, and neither do I.

Their Aeroflot flight SU2588 touched down at 3pm on Friday 2 March. They were recorded on CCTV going through passport control, Boshirov with dark hair and a goatee beard, Petrov unshaven and wearing a blue gingham shirt. Both were carrying satchels slung casually over the shoulder.

This is all true, and completely unnecessary. It's what we in the industry call "filler" or "padding". Totally meaningless and useless words that do nothing but take up space. Without it, a lot of Luke's books would only be about 700 words long.

According to police, the pair had visited the UK before.

Way to bury the lead there, Luke.

This is actually quite important isn't it? I mean, when did they visit the UK before? Did they visit Salisbury then too? Did they have any contact with Sergei Skripal? Were they travelling under the same names? Were these visits linked with other intelligence work? Were they just holidays? What kind of assassins would use the SAME FAKE IDS ON TWO DIFFERENT OCCASIONS?

These are all very important questions, but Luke doesn't ask them. Because Luke is a modern journalist, and they don't interrogate the claims of the state, just report them. To Guardian reporters a question mark is just that funny squiggle next to the shift key.

From Gatwick they caught the train to London Victoria station and then the tube to east London, where they checked in to the City Stay hotel in Bow. It was a low-profile choice of accommodation. The red-brick Victorian building is next to a branch of Barclays bank, a busy train line and a wall daubed with graffiti. Across the road is a car pound and a Texaco garage.

This just more filler. Totally meaningless packaging material. The prose equivalent of All-Bran.

On hostile territory, Boshirov and Petrov operated in the manner of classic intelligence operatives.

In this instance "the manner of classic intelligence operatives" means, flying direct to London from Moscow, using Russian names and Russian passports (which you've used before), checking into a hotel with a CCTV camera on the front door, going straight to the hometown of an ex-double agent, leaving a Russian poison his front door even though he's already gone out, dumping your unused poison in a charity bin on the high street, going back to your hotel, smearing poison around that too even though you already dumped it, and then flying directly back to Moscow without even waiting to see if the plan worked and the target is dead.

This, in Luke's head, is ace intelligence work.

On the day of the hit, according to detectives, the pair made a similar journey, taking the 8.05am train from Waterloo to Salisbury and arriving at 11.48am.

Yes, they arrived at 11.48, making it absolutely pointless to put poison on the Skripal's door, as they had already gone out.

The perfume bottle was probably concealed in a light grey backpack carried by Petrov.

It was "probably concealed" in that backpack because, as I said above, there's no evidence either of those men ever knew the perfume bottle existed. You never see it in their possession.

Oh, and the backpack would have to contain TWO bottles of perfume – because the police aren't sure the bottle Rowley found 3 months later was the same bottle, and Rowley reported it was unopened and wrapped in cellophane. Perhaps Luke should have read the details of the case instead of trolling IMDB looking for movie titles with "plane" in them or googling "insouciant" to see if he was using it right.

From Salisbury station the two men set off on foot. It was a short walk of about a mile to Skripal's semi-detached home in Christie Miller Road.

which doesn't matter, because the Skripals weren't there. They left at 9.15 and there is no evidence they ever returned.

At Skripal's house the Russians smeared or sprayed novichok on to the front door handle, police say.

which doesn't matter, because the Skripals weren't there. They left at 9.15 and there is no evidence they ever returned.

It doesn't matter if Borishov and Petrov re-tiled the bathroom with novichok grouting or hid novichok in the battery compartment of Sergei's TV remote or replaced all his lightbulbs with novichok bombs that explode when you use the clapper .according to everything we've been told so far Sergei and Julia were literally never in that house again.

Luke seems to write a lot about this case, considering he is barely acquainted with the most basic facts of it.

The moment went unobserved

True. There is not a single piece of footage, photograph or eyewitness placing these men within a hundred feet of the Skripals, or their house. The "moment went unobserved" is an incredibly dishonest way of phrasing this, "the moment is entirely theoretical" is rather fairer. Or, if you want to be honest "it's possible none of this happened".

At some point on their walk back they must have tossed away the bottle, which at this point was too dangerous to try to smuggle back through customs.

It's all falling into place perfectly isn't it?

At some point the two men, who we never see holding or carrying the bottle, must have thrown it away because three months later someone else found it.

They took it through customs once but couldn't a second time, because reasons.

Also one of them was smiling a sort of "I just poisoned somebody" smile:

At 1.05pm the men were recorded in Fisherton Street on their way back to the station. They appeared more relaxed, Petrov grinning even.

Those evil bastards.

By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a park bench in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the poisoners were gone.

No Luke: By the time Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, were found collapsed on a park bench in the centre of Salisbury later that afternoon, the ALLEGED poisoners were gone.

Alleged is an important word for example, there is a marked difference between being an ALLEGED plagiarist, and being a plagiarist .

The visitors were captured on CCTV one more time, at Heathrow airport. It was 7.28pm and both men were going through security, Petrov first, wheeling a small black case. In his right hand was a shiny red object, his Russian passport. Police believe the passport was genuine, his name not. In other words, that it was a sophisticated espionage operation carried out by a state or state entities.

You see? Nobody thought the passport was fake, which means it was a really good fake . So the Russian state must have been in on it. This is known as an unfalsifiable hypothesis. If the passport did look fake, that would be evidence that the men were spies and therefore the Russian state was in on it.

Harding has created a narrative where there is literally no development that could ever challenge his conclusions.

Seemingly, the GRU plan – executed two weeks before Russia's presidential election – had worked perfectly.

This is an example of the cum hoc ergo propter hoc logical fallacy – two things happen at the same time, therefore they happen for the same reason. It's a maneuver we at OffG refer to as "the Harding", where you state two separate assertions or facts one after the other in such a way as to imply a relationship, without ever making a solid statement. I'll give you an example:

Luke Harding was born in 1968, mere weeks before the brutal assassination of Robert Kennedy.

Harding is suggesting some sort of connection between the election and the poisoning. He can't STATE it, because then he has to explain his reasoning – and there isn't any. Putin, and Russia as a whole, had nothing to gain from poisoning an ex-spy they had released nearly a decade earlier, especially on the eve of a Presidential election and mere weeks before the World Cup. There's no argument to be made, so he doesn't attempt to make one, he just makes a snide and baseless insinuation.

In his defense, Luke might genuinely believe it, cum hoc ergo propter hoc is a favorite amongst paranoid personalities , of which Luke is definitely a prime example .

Vladimir Putin, the man whom a public inquiry found in 2016 had "probably" signed off on the operation to kill Litvinenko. The UK security services say a "body of evidence" points to the GRU.

"Probably" is also a big word. For example, there's a marked difference between "probably being a plagiarist" and "being a plagiarist" .

It seems clear that Moscow continues to view Britain as a playground for undercover operations and is relatively insouciant about the consequences, diplomatic and political. The Skripal attack may have misfired. But the message, mingling contempt and arrogance, is there for all to see: we can smite our enemies whenever and wherever we want, and there is nothing you can do about it.

This is the second time Luke has used the word "insouciant" in two days, which means that word of the day calendar was a probably sound investment, but he forgot to flip it over this morning.

Other than that, this final paragraph is nothing but paranoia.

The Russians were TRYING to make it obvious, to send a message. But were also lazy and arrogant. And yet also left no solid evidence because they are experts at espionage. They had no motive except being mean, and couldn't even be bothered to make sure they did it right. They want us all to know they did it, but will never admit it.

The actual truth of the situation can be summed up in a few bullet points. Currently:

There is no evidence these men were using forged documents. There is no evidence these men were travelling under aliases or assumed names. There is no evidence these men ever had any contact with Sergei Skripal's house. There is no evidence these men ever had any contact with Sergei Skripal or his daughter. There is no evidence these men were Russian intelligence assets or had any military training. There is no evidence these men ever possessed or had any contact with the perfume bottle found by Charlie Rowley on June 27th. They have visited the UK before, not on intelligence business (as far as we know). Their movements don't align with the timeline of Skripal's illness.

The entire narrative is created around half a dozen screen caps of two (allegedly) Russian men, not behaving in any way illegally or even suspiciously. All the rest is fiction, created by a hack to service an agenda. This isn't one of those "You couldn't make it up" stories, it's not that incredible. It's just insulting and stupid.

You could make it up, and he did.

[Sep 07, 2018] Guardian cheerleading of the NYT "resistance" op-ed by Richard Wolffe

What is interesting is that Wolffe links the op-ed and publishing Bob Woodward's latest book: "Woodward has cornered the panicked Trump rats into screeching about all the ways they prevented World War Three , or a massive trade war, by ignoring the ranting boss or snatching papers off his desk."
Notable quotes:
"... Nothing proved, unnamed sources, claims about this, claims about that. Until someone is prepared to step forward and reveal themselves this is a non story. Still, it gives the Trump haters comfort. ..."
"... Personally, I am not surprised or impressed by this White House insider's account. Nothing he or she has said should be a real revelation to anyone who has cast a critical eye on the Trump presidency. And whoever it is, this person is so enamored with tax cuts, deregulation, ramping up military spending and the usual Republican horse shit that he or she does not seem prepared to risk further discrediting the administration by identifying him/herself and resigning publicly. ..."
Sep 07, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

The madness is pouring out of the White House now, for all to see Richard Wolffe

... ... ...

If you really believe your boss is a threat to the constitution which you've taken an oath to protect, perhaps you should consider quitting or going public. As in: going on Capitol Hill to hold a press conference to urge impeachment.

In this regard, and only in this regard, our anonymous whistleblower has handed the crazy boss a degree of righteous indignation.

"If the GUTLESS anonymous person does indeed exist," tweeted the madman in the attic, "the Times must, for National Security purposes, turn him/her over to government at once!"

Donald, we feel your pain, albeit briefly. Your internal enemies are indeed gutless, and if you feel better putting that in ALL CAPS, that's fine. Let it out.

But that bit about turning people over to you for national security reasons is kind of the point here. If you'll allow us to summarize the GUTLESS person's arguments: you are fundamentally a threat to democracy and national security yourself. You are indeed, as your lawyers have pointed out repeatedly, your own worst witness.

This much we know from this week's other bombshell in the shape of Bob Woodward's latest book. Woodward has cornered the panicked Trump rats into screeching about all the ways they prevented World War Three , or a massive trade war, by ignoring the ranting boss or snatching papers off his desk.

... ... ...

Mr or Ms GUTLESS describes Trump's decisions as "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless", while chief of staff John Kelly says Trump is "an idiot" living in a place called "Crazytown". This revelation led to the priceless statement from Kelly where he had to deny calling the president an idiot.

Somewhere in Texas, former secretary of state Rex Tillerson is swirling a glass of bourbon muttering that he lost his job for calling Trump a moron.

Second, Trump's staffers are enabling the very horrors they claim to hate, while grandiosely pretending to be doing the opposite.

Mr or Ms GUTLESS says there were "early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th amendment" in what he imagines is a clear sign they can distinguish reality from reality TV.

Ladies and gentlemen of the Trump cabinet: please know that you will not be accepted into the next edition of Profiles in Courage for your early whispers. If you truly believe the president is incapacitated, you should perhaps consider raising your voice to at least conversational level, if you're not inclined to bellow from the mountaintops. Library rules are inoperative at this point.

Given the weight of evidence, even the most diehard Trump defenders are now conceding the obvious, by signing up to the GUTLESS gang's self-promotion. Brit Hume, a Fox News veteran, let the cat out of the bag when he tweeted that it was a "good thing" they were restraining Trump "from his most reckless impulses".

This is how the pirate ship Trump eventually sinks to the ocean's floor. You can fool some of Fox News's viewers all of the time, and you can fool all of them some of the time.

But no fool wants to drown with the captain we all know is plain crazy.

Richard Wolffe is a Guardian US columnist

MoonlightTiger -> MoonlightTiger , 6 Sep 2018 10:02

It's someone high up that makes policy decisions, brags about everything they have done to help America despite Cheetos interfering. Why now? Pence wants it known that he is running the government not useless trump whom has passed nothing. Pence will come out as the author when Don is removed from office. Which could be nearing since this OPED is likely to expose him. Maybe he planned it that way.

Brutus is close now.

Carl123 -> MuttPretty , 6 Sep 2018 10:00

What's most remarkable to me is how closely the Michael Wolff's White House, Omarosa's White House, Bob Woodward's Whitehouse, and Anonymous Staffer's White House reflect each other.

Clearly a massive conspiracy. And one which Trump is helpfully participating in by constantly saying and doing stuff which accords with the pictures they're all painting.

MuttPretty , 6 Sep 2018 09:58
What's most remarkable to me is how closely the Michael Wolff's White House, Omarosa's White House, Bob Woodward's Whitehouse, and Anonymous Staffer's White House reflect each other. All these sources come together to display a rather coherent image of a chaotic White House led by a man who's not bright enough to realize he's in over his head.
Alun Jones , 6 Sep 2018 09:53
The New York Times attack piece was anonymous. It is therefore completely unverifiable and could have been written by anyone, including any of the politically biased NYT editorial team, or by Bob Woodward to publicize his new book. It's junk news.
OrangeLagoon -> JozzaBoy , 6 Sep 2018 09:49
I'm firmly convinced that when it's all said and done we'll be able to represent his presidency as an MMO boss fight. This is the bit where everyone concentrates fire on the glowy spot until the enrage mechanic kicks in. In fact it looks like the mad flailing has started and now everyone will try not to stand in the AoE as they DPS him down.
moranet , 6 Sep 2018 09:43
Mussolini was in power for twenty years before his functionaries deposed him to keep the regime intact while removing its newly-a-liability head. Mussolini was the legal (if abhorrent) premier of a coalition government in a liberal-democratic (both words with a pinch of salt) regime for his first two years, until winning a parliamentary majority of his own; indeed, after the leader of the Socialist Party was killed by his supporters, his coalition partners almost pulled out of government: that's not a totalitarian dictatorship, but what was then called "pre-fascism", and today we'd call it an 'illiberal democracy'. The dictatorship was informal (result of a supportive majority) until the constitional reform of 1928 - five years into his government.

Thinking that all will turn out fine because American democracy is under strain but generally intact, is a dangerous complacency. All interwar autocrats went through a transition of first governing under the old constitution, slowly undermining opposition, then installing a new organic law. Perhaps all will turn out well in the US, and Trump will leave office with the old 'rules of the game' untouched - but that can't be assumed, and we won't know until after he is gone.

Carl123 -> Finisterre , 6 Sep 2018 09:40

Pepperoni Pizza is absolutely correct. We DON'T know his staff are going behind his back - we have this anonymous bollocks as the totality of our evidence.

Truckloads of "anonymous bollocks" reported by credible, highly respected journalists with excellent reasons to protect their sources.

"Anonymous" bollocks" which syncs perfectly with events and pronouncements by the president himself - including numerous firings of so many of the "best people" he hired.

"Anonymous bollocks" confirmed in evidence/testimony presented publicly and under oath in court.

Otherwise, great point.

JozzaBoy , 6 Sep 2018 09:40
this is desperate stuff. Is this the thing that is finally going to bring down Trump?

The media cycle wrt Trump;

1. Trump is Crazy
2. Trump is Hitler
3. Trump is Losing
4. Go To Line 1.

babyboomer63 , 6 Sep 2018 09:38
Nothing proved, unnamed sources, claims about this, claims about that. Until someone is prepared to step forward and reveal themselves this is a non story. Still, it gives the Trump haters comfort.
imperious -> BLACKCAT66 , 6 Sep 2018 09:36
There is a segment of this country that is willfully ignorant because a con man told them to be. We really need to ignore this shrinking number of fuck-nuts and just out vote them.
We live in a democracy. If you choose to use facebook as your only source of news about the world, it is not because a con man told you to, it is because you are just too plain stupid to go looking elsewhere.
Cascais99 , 6 Sep 2018 09:36
I'm surprised that no one has compared the author of the anonymous article in the New York Times with "Deep Throat", who anonymously met Bernstein and Woodward in an underground parking garage in Washington to spill the beans about Watergate. Deep Throat turned out to be Mark Felt, a high-ranking official in the FBI who kept working against Nixon under cover and whose name was revealed only a few years ago.
FeliciorAugusto , 6 Sep 2018 09:31
Personally, I am not surprised or impressed by this White House insider's account. Nothing he or she has said should be a real revelation to anyone who has cast a critical eye on the Trump presidency. And whoever it is, this person is so enamored with tax cuts, deregulation, ramping up military spending and the usual Republican horse shit that he or she does not seem prepared to risk further discrediting the administration by identifying him/herself and resigning publicly.

Screw whoever it is, they are obviously no hero to the American people.

James Steel , 6 Sep 2018 09:31
Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo have denied writing the op-ed -- but that's exacta guilty person would say :)

[Sep 07, 2018] "Fake it till you make it" is the slogan they clutch tight to their heart the consequences however are far far reaching. My only hope is that should any of them leave here - they will get found out in a week.

Sep 07, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Red1729 -> mattblack81 , 6 Sep 2018 09:16

Nice post and well put.
I am currently sitting in an office where 30% are blaggers of the highest order. They talk and kiss ass - but ultimately - deep down - know they cannot do they do not know the job. The responsibiltiy they have will make you shudder. I have told friends and they are visibly shaken that this can happen. But I think it is the way of the world at the moment. They dare not argue with me for full knowledge they will be sent packing, they already have been but on "minor" non work related items.

"Fake it til you make it" is the slogan they clutch tight to their heart the consequences however are far far reaching. My only hope is that should any of them leave here - they will get found out in a week.

Yes the likes of Trump are a reflection of just that.

The mad thing is - I now am of the belief that I could do that job ie President of the US. That is madness.

MonsieurPumpernickel -> teppictoo , 6 Sep 2018 09:16

to foil the wishes of the elected members of government.

No. Just one member. And that one member isn't a supreme leader. You need to look elsewhere for those types of leaders - they're usually standing next to Trump while he fawns over them.

Personally I'm grateful for a bureaucracy that frustrates bad ideas - wherever they come
from. That's part of their role.

HiramsMaxim -> SolentBound , 6 Sep 2018 09:16
"If the author of the Op-Ed piece is telling the truth,"

Ay, there's the rub. But, still no existential threat.

HiramsMaxim -> aussieinjapan , 6 Sep 2018 09:15
Yes, I do read The Guardian, and I never watch Fox (cut the cable years ago)
Gojettgo , 6 Sep 2018 09:15
Everything, with the exception of Steve Bannon in Michael Wolf's book, has been anonymous. These people write things, attribute them to, say, John Kelly, then Kelly says I NEVER SAID THAT and we're left to believe whom?

If there is genuine resistance inside the White House to Trump- If it is at all like anybody says- then I would imagine that a genuine top level appointee would go on camera, throw themselves on their sword, and speak to the American people. Until such a time I question what is Woodward's agenda? Do I trust Omarosa? Is Michael Wolf credible? What are their goals? I'm not blind but I want to see more than anonymous. And until then... I don't believe it.

Daniel Ferris -> bonhiver , 6 Sep 2018 09:15
When the crowd screams, just join them. It's tremendous fun!
MoonlightTiger , 6 Sep 2018 09:15
Its Pence and trump can't fire him
imperious -> Nialler , 6 Sep 2018 09:15
I'm not going to attempt to defend Trump.

I agree, I'd hate to defend him either, but you can't help thinking he has a point by calling this person gutless. Either stand up in public and say it or, if s/he really is working in the background to save us from Trump's excesses, then surely you're better off (and the country as a whole) staying there and not alerting him?

CaptainHogwash , 6 Sep 2018 09:14
In any functioning household the adults would have sent Trump to his (preferably padded) room
KevinFinn -> Nepochtitelnikov , 6 Sep 2018 09:14
"Maybe electing a big stupid toddler as president was a bad idea after all you guys"

Still better than the alternative!!

Take a look at how the donations to the Clinton Foundation have dried up since they no longer have any influence to peddle.

AbFalsoQuodLibet -> John Edwin , 6 Sep 2018 09:13
It's the New York Times, and no, they certainly haven't been against Trump since his election.

Their lead White House correspondent, Maggie Haberman, still writes extremely understanding pieces of Trump. And she's been covering the man for almost 15 years, so one would think she had the measure of the man long ago.

More importantly, the NYT threw the election for Trump by first exonerating Trump of any Russian collusion - which was false - and by covering the last-minute Comey statements on the Clinton emails in the worst negative light possible for the Democratic candidate. The NYT turned out to be wrong, but the damage was done.

The NYT even tried to put new faces on their opinion staff with close connections to actual American neo-Nazis (!) and only failed when old tweets came to light.

I'm not quite sure what the NYT is playing at - I guess it's easy to play the devil's advocate in artsy-fartsy, liberal New York - but they most certainly have not been against Trump from January 2017 at all.

charlieblue -> John Edwin , 6 Sep 2018 09:13
Does that tinfoil hat pinch?

Trump is not a freedom fighter, he is not your Great White Messiah, he's not an advocate for blue collar American citizens. Trump is a stupid, vulgar, greedy old fat racist who conned his way into the White House. There has been a lot of talk in all mediums about his unsuitability for the office, and his obvious ties to the Kremlin, but there has been no organized effort to remove him from office, no matter what you might have read on Qanon.

Daniel Ferris -> bonhiver , 6 Sep 2018 09:13
His deregulation tendencies clinch it. No one could deregulate like Hitler!
Sixp__ -> teppictoo , 6 Sep 2018 09:12
Garbage.

Treason is defined as "The betrayal of one's own country by waging war against it or by consciously or purposely acting to aid its enemies".

Mueller should be considering indicting Trump for treason.

cacaMBa -> ctdahle , 6 Sep 2018 09:12
You think the entire population is incapable of thinking about serious issues because there's some tittle-tattle on twitter? When did that happen? No-one would work because there's always fluffy kittens on YouTube.
Pushk1n , 6 Sep 2018 09:12
Its Probably Donald himself, he has form on spoofing , pretending to be someone else.

The giveaway is the bit where it says a lot of good stuff has been done.

It could also be Giuliano creating a myth that Donald is such a muddle head he could not possibly have conspired with anyone about anything .

PaulBowyer -> Graeme48 , 6 Sep 2018 09:12
But not when Russia (who back Assad) retaliated.

And Putin has the nuts on Trump.

[Sep 07, 2018] Trump did not, in his 8th decade, suddenly develop a desire to serve the American people at his own expense. He is in the White House doing exactly what he has always done, he is pursuing whatever makes him happiest in the moment with no regard to consequences, morality or even common sense.

Sep 07, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com
charlieblue , 6 Sep 2018 09:20
Fascinating to see the tinfoil hat brigade turn out in such numbers to rant and rave about the "Deep State!" and poor, honest Donald Trump as a freedom fighter who is daily sacrificing himself for the good people of America.

Why do bullies always pretend to be victims?

As with science, human nature can usually boiled down to the most likely answer, the simple observable truth. Such as; Donald Trump's entire life is a story of greed, vulgarity and self promotion to the exclusion of all else. He did not, in his 8th decade, suddenly develop a desire to serve the American people at his own expense. He is in the White House doing exactly what he has always done, he is pursuing whatever makes him happiest in the moment with no regard to consequences, morality or even common sense.

[Sep 06, 2018] "Every nation gets the government it deserves."

Sep 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

unicone , 6 Sep 2018 07:04

"Every nation gets the government it deserves."

Joseph de Maistre, Letter 76, on the topic of Russia's new constitutional laws (27 August 1811)

[Sep 06, 2018] Sounds like a palace coup to me: first, news of the forthcoming Woodward book (and excepts); then-coincidentally-today's "anonymous" and 'Gutless' article in the Times

NYT practices digital lynching...
Sep 06, 2018 | theguardian.com

Michronics42, 6 Sep 2018 06:46

Sounds like a palace coup to me: first, news of the forthcoming Woodward book (and excepts); then-coincidentally-today's "anonymous" and 'Gutless' article in the Times.

As far as I'm concerned, this entire hellish administration is sheer "madness" and a very clear indication that this country is in its agonizing twilight.

Each and every senior official in this administration is an enabler of this "shithole" human being and current president, so there is no such thing as bravery here, just covering one's tail if a coup were to occur.

Not once, as has been mentioned here and elsewhere, has this 'Gutless' wonder decried the immorality of family separation, employing white racists as policy makers, shredding the social safety net for millions of this nation's most vulnerable; an outlandish Pentagon budget and etcetera.

What is solidly on display in this unfolding miasma is a firmly entrenched kleptocracy, enabled and supported by U.S. corporations and the death of democracy.

TheChillZone , 6 Sep 2018 06:36
The Woodward book seems to me just more kiss and tell stories of the Michael Wolff ilk (remember him?). The juiciest quotes - Trump being called an idiot by Kelly - is denied by Kelly himself and most of the others are ex-employees.

A better - more objective - book would get past the unconventional, apparent chaos of the Whitehouse and perhaps investigate whether Trumps methods have or will bear fruit.

That perhaps, as David Lynch said, traditional politicians can't take the country or the world forward - they can't get things done anymore because they are afraid of political consequences or media backlash. Trump and his ego doesn't seem to care about that - is that a good thing or a bad thing? Trump has turned everything on it's head and liberals find themselves allying with establishment politicians and business groups. It is a fascinating period of political change and time - and better journalism - will eventually judge Trump more objectively.

SolentBound -> uncleike , 6 Sep 2018 08:26
"The point of the op-ed is to continue to build popular support for removal of Trump by confirming the more detailed account of Woodward."

It was submitted to the Times before info on Woodward's book came out.

TezB -> HippoMan , 6 Sep 2018 08:22

'Pence... not a dangerous, mentally ill megalomaniac'

Pence is more dangerous – make that outright terrifying – than Trump. Yes. Trump is a senile vulgarian oaf – but he doesn't really believe in anything and is motivated only by his greed and pathological need for self-aggrandizement. He's mentally incompetent in a very obvious way, which renders him laughably inept at trying to bring his more odious policy objectives to fruition (in fact, inept at everything, pretty much).

Pence is far more sinister, because he's a dementedly fanatical believer in a fundamentalist and authoritarian mutation of religion – a crazed zealot. While sometimes able to imitate the superficial demeanour of a person of sound mind, he is in truth utterly deranged.

While Trump lies and denies obvious specific facts almost as a reflex, he doesn't really sustain his warped world view consistently or with conviction that lasts longer than it takes to play his next round of golf.

Pence vehemently espouses a whole alternative reality based upon his religious fantasies, and believes he has a mission to impose his delusional ideas in a punitive and repressive manner on his country's entire population, permanently. He may have the cunning to be chillingly effective at realising his most ghastly ambitions.

Trump represents a temporary aberration; a collective brain fart. Pence could be the instigator of a new dark age for the USA

Meerkatz , 6 Sep 2018 08:17
Having seen this type of character assassination visited on Bill and Hillary Clinton, character assassination before any reported crimes have been proven against them or for that matter any sexual misdemeanors as president are proven, what exactly is going on here?

I totally disagree with this type of thing even if the person is someone I don't understand much. The world has come to a dangerous place where digital lynching without reference to law seems to be the prevailing modus operandi.

Jessp , 6 Sep 2018 08:13
A little word of warning. Be careful what you wish for. If Don can be removed prior to the next election, (and I don't believe that would happen), then Mike Pence takes the reins. He has just as many crazy notions as his current boss, but is an experienced politician who knows the ins and outs of Congress. He may get more of the programme through than little Don can. And that would not be good.
BritinNormandy -> NameIcallme , 6 Sep 2018 08:12
He's done it before. Lots of times. Example: one of his posts back in April: "Trump is a genius. Nobody can take him down, the man is a fighter, you punch him and he'll punch you back 10 times harder. The FBI, Democrats and MSM have tried to take him down since he decided to run for president, yet he's standing tall and with a 50% approval rating."

There's no point in engaging in discussion with folks like that ...

malibudebumbum , 6 Sep 2018 08:09
Welcome to postmodernist politics folks. It will continue to degenerate until, in despair, people turn toward an orderly system of politics; the Chinese system, the Russian system or even a coherent religious system. Counsellors will be on hand for those who feel hurt or upset by the return to authoritarianism -- they will be able to get great treatment in re-education centres. Just a matter of time before our current system just crumbles from within.
sl0thp0pe -> littlepump , 6 Sep 2018 08:08
Yeah they're sucking it direct from Ayn Rand's teat. Bunch of sociopaths. And I think most political scientists are well aware that citizens united was the death of American democracy as a representative political system. The illusion of functionality has collapsed under the weight of corruption. Trump is really just a symptom of that. A giant orange enema of the state.
ID3866144 -> stuart255 , 6 Sep 2018 07:51
LOL. The west is about to collapse. There is no more money to finance the Ponzy Scheme of the everlasting growth you seem to think is natural. while everyone is distracted in this dualistic BS, the planet is slowly shutting down her ressources.

The Russia after years of sanctions have developed an economy that make them less dependant on other countries. So They will probably less affected by what is coming.

Unless you live in you own bubble, maybe you noticed that Occidental countries have become empty shells...gutted from their skills at making stuff. It is all virtual production now...all banking stuff, numbers insurance...most skilled stuff are either in Germany or in Asia...what is going on?

stuart255 -> HippoMan , 6 Sep 2018 07:47
Trump is a megalomaniac I agree, but he is not dangerous and is not mentally ill. Mental illness is a real thing and you shouldn't casually trivialize it in this way.

Finally anyone who runs for office as President of the USA is by very definition a pretty extreme megalomaniac. So you have two points that are not real and/or could be considered erroneous discrimination and one point that is a prerequisite for any POTUS candidate.

Looking for a reason to impeach him is a ridiculous back to front thing to do and is itself proof that any impeachment will fail. To impeach someone you must first start with a very obvious reason.

It's simply not possible to impeach a president because you don't like their politics or their personality. This whole searching for a reason to impeach is itself evidence that any impeachment is politically motivated and the very optics of this serve only to strengthen Trump's own political support in direct opposition.

Trump is President because the DNC was captured by very stupid and deeply corrupt people.

[Sep 06, 2018] Use of rather uncommon "lodestart" trace can be a false flag operation similar to Russian traces in DNC hack

I think people attributing the letter to Pence are confused as for which side the rogue CIA operatives are on :-)
Sep 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

j. von Hettlingen , 6 Sep 2018 07:16

Many say Mike Pence could have been the one behind the op-ed, because the unidentified author singled out the late John McCain as "a lodestar for restoring honor to public life and our national dialogue." The word isn't that commonly used. But Pence has used the word with some regularity. Yet the word could have been a ploy to divert attention from the real author, who claimed to support many of the GOP policies – "effective deregulation, historic tax reform, a more robust military and more."
No doubt the current crisis works for Pence: "Given the instability many witnessed, there were early whispers within the cabinet of invoking the 25th Amendment, which would start a complex process for removing the president." Of course he and the GOP didn't want to "precipitate a constitutional crisis. So we will do what we can to steer the administration in the right direction until -- one way or another -- it's over." But they don't want Trump to finish his term and hope that he'll soon be gone.
Finisterre -> Carl123 , 6 Sep 2018 06:53
Pepperoni Pizza is absolutely correct. We DON'T know his staff are going behind his back - we have this anonymous bollocks as the totality of our evidence.

This op-ed is going to absolutely confirm, in the eyes of Trump supporters, all his whines about being thwarted by the Deep State. It's going to increase his support among the crazies, and it's also useful for the Republicans who want to ditch him in favour of Mike Pence.

The whole thing stinks to high heaven and for the Democrats or the 'resistance' to see it as some kind of bonus is insane. Even if you take it at face value it's a disgusting piece of authoritarian, we-know-best hypocrisy. If you look at its actual effects, the net result is not likely to benefit the forces of sanity in any way.

The media's complacency about all of this, and their failure to actually report on the Republican trajectory and the bigger picture, is criminal. Instead we get YET ANOTHER bit of 'oh look the wheels are just about to come off the bus!', and all the while the Republicans are gerrymandering and purging voter rolls like crazt before the midterms, and of course refusing to change their unaccountable electronic voting machines and - did you read THIS one in the news? - blocking a bill which would have audited the election results.

Tl;dr: The US, and by extension the planet via environmental destruction and possibly war on top, is utterly fucked.

CharlieApples -> solarights , 6 Sep 2018 06:48
I think you've confused whose side the CIA are on :-)

[Sep 06, 2018] What is wrong with you American people ? Why such level of jingoism and fake national security concerns is possible ?

Notable quotes:
"... Mr anonymous also concedes that the administration has done some good things .. like .. a robust military. Now call me old fashioned, but having a military with twice(three times .. four times) the capability of the rest of the world put together and spending enough yearly to run the whole of Africa .. probably India too, just on a means of killing .. and this even before the US military became .. robust?.. ..."
Sep 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Blenheim , 6 Sep 2018 06:10

Mr anonymous also concedes that the administration has done some good things .. like .. a robust military. Now call me old fashioned, but having a military with twice(three times .. four times) the capability of the rest of the world put together and spending enough yearly to run the whole of Africa .. probably India too, just on a means of killing .. and this even before the US military became .. robust?..

What is wrong with you people .. national security?.. Laughable .. when is your security ever, ever, ever threatened! And yet people starve, people don't have clean water to drink ..
Perhaps were the US to help lift the basic burdens of millions who have bugger all, then there wouldn't be so many suposed 'enemies'. I do believe film maker Michael Moore has voiced this very same thing .. but then, what purpose all those shiny new expensive killing machines?..
Something is seriously wrong in America .. and it ain't just Trump!

CosmoCrawley , 6 Sep 2018 05:56
This is a very poor op-ed piece. Simply calling the President "a crazy loon " isn't political analysis, or at least not the sort of political analysis I would be willing to pay for. Nor do I think the thesis that certain members of the administration are busy trying to shore up their reputations in the face of a sinking presidency holds water. Firstly, unless the current investigations provide incontrovertible evidence that the President was engaged in criminal activity I don't think there is any change that he will be impeached. Secondly, if you wanted to protect your reputation surely the thing to do would be to resign and maintain a dignified silence while you are writing your memoirs. Or if you really were part of a secret clique protecting the American constitution against a reckless President you would keep quiet and get on with your important business. It seems to me that this anonymous piece was either a clumsy attempt to further damage the President or a sophisticated attempt to galvanise his support base by "proving" that the President is being undermined by unelected traitors. Or something else completely might be going on. That's why I would like to read a thoughtful opinion piece by an informed observer.
StGeorge , 6 Sep 2018 05:51
Sounds like there's a treasonous public servant there, doing their best to subvert the will of the people. And of course loudly supported by the squealing hard left guardian mob. Looking at the type of far left fascists crawling‭ out of the woodwork, I would say Trump is provoking utter derangement in all the right people.
Densher -> kent_rules , 6 Sep 2018 05:45
"the corrupt metropolitan elites have swindled them again"
-Who appointed these 'corrupt metropolitan elites' if it was not Trump himself? Who are these people-Betsy DeVos, Wilbur Ross and Steve Mnuchin- quite apart from Jeff Sessions and the now disgraced Michael Flynn? Trump appointed them, they weren't forced on him by the "corrupt metropolitan elites". Is Trump to be given a free pass for his own mistakes?
Throwawaythekey , 6 Sep 2018 05:44
What many commentators here seem to fail to recognise, because of their political bias I suppose, is that there is a ground swell of dissatisfaction with the political consensus that has seen the working class and lower middle class disenfranchised or at least their perceived interests ignored. As a result, populist ideologies, as espoused by Steven Bannon, and others, and exemplified by leaders like Donald Trump have thrown away the rule book with all its aims to support the extremely wealthy and have reached out to those that want jobs before green policies, law and order before gender diversity programs and so on.
I doubt that many of the readers here will receive the message but we are witnessing a revolution that I see as significant as the rise of the sans-culottes in the early part of the French Revolution. That didn't end well for the sans-culottes or their aims but we can hardly blame them for trying. Today the retrenched car worker in the US can hardly be blamed for being unhappy that the CEO of a car company receives a huge pay rise and bail outs from the government and similar stories in other areas.
Vive la revolution.
Stone Jones , 6 Sep 2018 05:43
Some of this stuff is clearly nonsense. Example: the insider claimed Trump is an admirer of dictators:

"In public and in private, President Trump shows a preference for autocrats and dictators, such as President Vladimir Putin of Russia and North Korea's leader, Kim Jong-un, and displays little genuine appreciation for the ties that bind us to allied, like-minded nations."

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And yet the forthcoming Bob Woodward book claims Trump told his defence secretary he wanted to kill Assad:

Donald Trump ordered his defence secretary to assassinate Syria's president Bashar al-Assad and "kill the f****** lot of them" in the leader's regime, in the wake of a chemical attack against civilians, according to a new book.

Defence secretary James Mattis is said to have told the president during a phone call he would "get right on it" before hanging up the phone and instead telling an aide: "We're not going to do any of that. We're going to be much more measured." In the wake of the chemical attack in April 2017, the president's national security team developed options that included the more conventional airstrike that Mr Trump eventually ordered.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The anti-Trump lot can't have it both ways. He can't be a fan of dictators but also want to kill them! It's clear there is lying or exaggeration on both sides. The people out to impeach Trump (or sell books!) will lie too.

[Sep 06, 2018] Is there is anything to admire in Trump record?

Sep 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

pretzelattack -> Densher , 6 Sep 2018 05:38

he reversed the war in afghanistan? drones? did he prosecute bankers? does he favor increasing offshore drilling? now it looks like he's renegotiating clinton's nafta and pushing for some version of obama's trade treaties. trump is the invading python, and the democrats and establishment republicans are the alligators; whichever wins, the small furry animals get eaten. i just hope they don't start world war 3 while they're settling things--trump looks to be doubling down on obama's syria policy too, and support of the current ukrainian government.
Bazster -> ImMovedToAdd , 6 Sep 2018 05:33
'Fraid so. Every new generation of neocons regurgitates the same discredited lies from the previous generation, and suckers believe them all over again. Even the title "neocon" or "neoliberal" is a lie: there's nothing new about them.
Densher -> simonsaint , 6 Sep 2018 05:25
Trump was not only openly attacked during the nomination process, the Republican Party nominee who was selected to fight Obama in 2012 -Mitt Romney- delivered a savage attack in which he described Trump as a con-man and a chronic liar -yet the same people who could, there and then have told Trump to get lost backed him. Trump has been attacked from the start and every time and all of the time said to his attackers: so what? I dare you to remove me from the nomination, I dare you to remove me from the Office of President. This is a man who is challenging the governance of the US in a manner no other President has done before, and so far, he is still winning. That is the scary part.
Freedom4UK2019 -> Jessie Welsh , 6 Sep 2018 05:24
Well of course you could list other benefits in addition to some I listed like. "transform the economy, get people back in work.

Peace on the Korean peninsula, end of US involvement in SYRIA etc...

" You could get a nice big house like Obama got. Or $500K for doing speeches for Russian companies like Bill Clinton did.

RichWoods -> raindancer68 , 6 Sep 2018 05:24
Trump is threatening Deep State corruption by placing his own family members in positions of power and profiting from charging the nation for his and his staff's repeated use of Trump Tower and Mar-a-Lago? That's a bizarre way of draining the swamp.
ID6314850 -> raindancer68 , 6 Sep 2018 05:19
The US political system has many flaws, not least that the President can be elected on an apparent electoral college landslide while losing the popular vote. But then again no country's political system is perfect, human nature being what it is.
However, Trump is clearly not up to the job. Not by intellect, understanding of world affairs, honesty, temperament, respect for the law, nor constitution. The list goes on frankly.
The system has gone bad. Trump hasn't "drained the swamp", he's made it far deeper. That said, "the system" such as it is should work in the hands of honest men and women of integrity. The trouble is they're few and far between in the GOP as it wilfully ignores issues in which they would be clamouring for a Democrat president to be impeached.
I sincerely hope the GOP get a thrashing in the mid-terms which may, just may, give them pause for thought. A Democrat Congress might also actually hold Trump to account. The only danger there is that he lashes out with even less self control.
Dangerous times.

[Sep 06, 2018] What better way of stirring up the base ahead of the mid-terms than talk of undemocratic factions within the administration and fifth columnists to be rooted out for the cause.

Sep 06, 2018 | profile.theguardian.com

charlieblue -> Johnstu9876 6 Sep 2018 09:08

I assumed it was an effort at creating some sort of record of resistance. Does anybody really believe Paul Ryan is retiring from the 3rd most powerful position in the US Government to "spend more time with family"? The rats are fleeing a sinking ship. Even if Trump serves out a full four years, anybody too closely tied to this stupid shit-storm of an Administration will be tarred in public eyes. But, American voters are notoriously forgetful, and getting out before the ship goes down will probably work.
charlieblue -> John Edwin , 6 Sep 2018 09:00
Funny shit. "the mole" wrote an Op/Ed piece, that contains no information of a sensitive nature. S/he wrote of their own personal observations working in the White House. There is nothing illegal in that.

I get that you might not have any functional understanding of US law, but it is deeply disturbing that the President of the United States is calling for the arrest of a citizen exercising their constitutionally guaranteed rights.

Jonathan Bailey , 6 Sep 2018 08:54
The op-ed piece being anonymous makes me wonder if Mr Trump himself put someone up to do it. What better way of stirring up the base ahead of the mid-terms than talk of undemocratic factions within the administration and fifth columnists to be rooted out for the cause. It also offers the president another cudgel against the press that will appeal to his core constituencies.

Even if Mr Trump isn't capable of coming up with such a scheme, there are certainly those around him who are.

crossedseven , 6 Sep 2018 08:27
The statements in the opinion piece are horribly anti-pluralist anti-democratic in themselves. The writer's nationalist appeal to 'American' unity at the end is based on everyone uniting around US Republican principles of neo-liberalism, inequality and militarism. S/he would use a false unity against Trump to impose the worst kind of conservative fundamentalism and eliminate anything more progressive from the political spectrum.

Maybe this is mainstream neo-liberal thinking but it's the end of a plural, democratic state. There would be no more room to discuss inequality, climate change, race or gender discrimination or new welfare provisions. Just an offer of false unity around hard neoliberal principles. I guess it's a very similar game to Brexit, which is a choice between life-threatening asset striping of the UK or May's 'hard right soft Brexit' super Thatcherism.

[Sep 06, 2018] Mike Pence and Mike Pompeo deny writing explosive op-ed attacking Trump by Ben Jacobs

Sep 06, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

The op-ed represents a shocking critique of Trump and is without precedent in modern American history. Former CIA Director John Brennan , who has sparred fiercely with the president, called the op-ed "active insubordination born out of loyalty to the country, not to Donald Trump".

"This is not sustainable to have an executive branch where individuals are not following the orders of the chief executive," Brennan told NBC's "Today" show. "I do think things will get worse before they get better. I don't know how Donald Trump is going to react to this. A wounded lion is a very dangerous animal, and I think Donald Trump is wounded."

In it, the anonymous author describes Trump as amoral, "anti-trade and anti-democratic" and prone to making "half-baked, ill-informed and occasionally reckless decisions".

The writer claims aides had explored the possibility of removing Trump from office via the 25th amendment , a complex constitutional mechanism to allow for the replacement of a president who is "unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office", but had decided against it.

[Sep 04, 2018] Reported Russia probe source at center of whistleblower complaint over Pentagon contracts

Notable quotes:
"... The professor who reportedly assisted the FBI's Russia probe as a confidential source is at the center of a Defense Department whisteblower complaint that alleges government contractor abuses, as well as excessive payments with taxpayer dollars, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Fox News. ..."
"... Earlier this month, conservative watchdog Judicial Watch announced it was suing the Defense Department on behalf of Lovinger to force the release of emails and other electronic messages after Lovinger had his security clearance suspended. ..."
"... Bigley, who is representing Lovinger pro bono, said his client flagged the concerns about contractors -- including Stefan Halper , the professor -- as early as 2016, to Lovinger's leadership at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which is like an internal Pentagon think tank. ..."
Aug 29, 2018 | www.foxnews.com

The professor who reportedly assisted the FBI's Russia probe as a confidential source is at the center of a Defense Department whisteblower complaint that alleges government contractor abuses, as well as excessive payments with taxpayer dollars, according to interviews and documents reviewed by Fox News.

The complaint was filed by attorney Sean Bigley on behalf of Pentagon lawyer Adam Lovinger. Earlier this month, conservative watchdog Judicial Watch announced it was suing the Defense Department on behalf of Lovinger to force the release of emails and other electronic messages after Lovinger had his security clearance suspended.

Bigley, who is representing Lovinger pro bono, said his client flagged the concerns about contractors -- including Stefan Halper , the professor -- as early as 2016, to Lovinger's leadership at the Office of Net Assessment (ONA), which is like an internal Pentagon think tank.

[Aug 28, 2018] Just move on. The Guardian is not a relevant news outlet.

Aug 28, 2018 | www.unz.com

Deschutes , says: Next New Comment August 28, 2018 at 12:22 pm GMT

@Digital Samizdat

I stopped reading the Guardian full stop 4-5 years ago, back when they launched their "Russia is evildoer!!" shrill campaign of propaganda -- also about the time the Ukraine civil war got into gear. Never looked back, the Guardian is a steaming pile of US/NATO/Atlantic Council bullshit.

I'll never understand why so many fixate on it, such as the Off-guardian.org bloggers who've devoted an entire blog for years on end to criticising Guardian journos, 'comment is free', comment mods, etc. All fine and good, but why?

With so many other better news sources is there a need? No, there isn't. Just move on. The Guardian is not a relevant news outlet. I mean, why keep going there to read pro-Israeli/pro-US government articles which make you angry? Doesn't make any sense.

[Aug 24, 2018] The Skripnal affair in the UK and Russiagate here in the US demonstrate the absolute and utter contempt of neoliberal elite of populace they rule

Notable quotes:
"... Anyway, what's there to argue: in its founding documents, the EU declares that its foreign and security policies will follow those of NATO. In other words, Europeans have declared *themselves* to be incapable of thinking about their place in the world, letting Uncle Sam do this for them instead. Nobody will respect them unless they first learn to respect themselves. ..."
"... By the standards our Congress is applying to Russia, this would be an "Act of War", now wouldn't it? ..."
"... Well the EU swallowed the farcical story of the Scripals so I expect anything Mrs May tells them about a leak will be believed. ..."
"... International spookery is a lucrative job, if you can get in it. ..."
"... Truth is every bit as strange as fiction, only dirtier. I have to believe that international skulduggery and its various specialties like espionage, smuggling, hacking, whacking and merking is a growth industry in today's globalist world. Millennials take note, if you want to pay off those student loans in this lifetime, because I'm sure they will still collect on them in Hades. ..."
"... GCHQ is there to support the establishment and the neocons. If Corbyn were to be elected, they will be in the thick of causing as much trouble as possible for the new government. Gladio springs to mind. ..."
"... john wilson – "the farce continues." Absolutely. The Skripnal affair in the U.K. and Russiagate here in the U.S. demonstrate the absolute and utter contempt our respective elites have for the intelligence of the populace of each nation. I ..."
Aug 24, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

Ma Laoshi , August 21, 2018 at 8:10 am

As the author also acknowledges with the references to the Belgacom saga: what else is new. It's not just spying, but outright sabotage of critical European infrastructure, which is one of the factors showing that if you'd ever want the EU to go anywhere, step one is that you'd *want* to throw the Brits out–the London branch of the US Govt will *never* be a loyal European ally. Instead of getting its own act together, the article informs us that the EU "is concerned to retain access to the UK's defense and security powers post-Brexit".

This goes to show that the problem lies a bit deeper, since ultimately the loyalty of Merkel and Macron is also to the Dark Throne, though perhaps not to the same extent as with Ms. May.

Anyway, what's there to argue: in its founding documents, the EU declares that its foreign and security policies will follow those of NATO. In other words, Europeans have declared *themselves* to be incapable of thinking about their place in the world, letting Uncle Sam do this for them instead. Nobody will respect them unless they first learn to respect themselves.

John McCarthy , August 18, 2018 at 8:24 pm

By the standards our Congress is applying to Russia, this would be an "Act of War", now wouldn't it?

padre , August 18, 2018 at 12:08 pm

First thing that comes to mind is, whether there were any Russians involved?

Peter , August 19, 2018 at 3:28 pm

Of course they were. Britishers never would spy on their "friends", would they now?. I think that Putin personally did the spying, the man has just too much time on his hands.

Brad Owen , August 18, 2018 at 9:19 am

Have British spies been hacking the EU you ask? Is it not true that spies have been at work in the isles and on the Continent for CENTURIES? I would say it's an even more important force than the military forces, what with their ability to embroil one enemy in a war with another enemy, thus eliminating two enemies, with just a bagful of money and a few proxy provocateurs. No wonder finance is King, intelligence/covert ops his governing Prime Minister, and over rules the military industrialists and uniformed services and the citizenry and their elected representatives.

john wilson , August 18, 2018 at 5:35 am

Well the EU swallowed the farcical story of the Scripals so I expect anything Mrs May tells them about a leak will be believed. Whatever the EU negotiators have to say about Brexit behind closed doors seems to be irrelevant as sooner or later they will have to put their cards on the table.

Realist , August 18, 2018 at 4:19 am

International spookery is a lucrative job, if you can get in it. Mental time slip back to the early 60's. Ian Fleming's "James Bond" novels had just hit the states as the latest craze and one of my best friends, a Ukrainian fellow, therefore congenitally attracted to the dark side, discovers them and becomes a cult follower, so much so that when he's kicked out of college for fraud a few years later he becomes involved in international gemstone smuggling under the mentorship of an ex-Nazi uncle ensconced near the Brasil-Argentine border, makes beaucoup lucre, marries a fellow American expat down in Latin America at the height of Iran-Contra shenanigans and eventually returns home a very wealthy man now living out his dotage in the closest thing to a manor house in the exurbs north of Chicago.

Truth is every bit as strange as fiction, only dirtier. I have to believe that international skulduggery and its various specialties like espionage, smuggling, hacking, whacking and merking is a growth industry in today's globalist world. Millennials take note, if you want to pay off those student loans in this lifetime, because I'm sure they will still collect on them in Hades.

John A , August 18, 2018 at 4:05 am

GCHQ is there to support the establishment and the neocons. If Corbyn were to be elected, they will be in the thick of causing as much trouble as possible for the new government. Gladio springs to mind.

john wilson , August 18, 2018 at 5:49 am

Jean, the latest in the Scripal case gets ever more bizarre. A few days ago the police went to the homes of 12 people who were in the Zizzies restaurant (don't know if is was staff or members of the public) and took away their clothes for testing.

This is a full FIVE MONTHS after the event.

I know we British are a scruffy lot, if not down right dirty, but for Christ sake give it rest, even we wash our clothes after five months. The farce continues.

Gary Weglarz , August 18, 2018 at 11:11 am

john wilson – "the farce continues." Absolutely. The Skripnal affair in the U.K. and Russiagate here in the U.S. demonstrate the absolute and utter contempt our respective elites have for the intelligence of the populace of each nation. It almost makes one long for the good old days when our intelligence agencies had to at least try to come up with plausible explanations for elite criminal activities: i.e. "the magic bullet (JFK assassination)" :) and "the pancake effect (9/11)" :)

Ok, ok, maybe they've never really given us any real respect as critical thinkers, but I quite agree with you that government propaganda has now reached absolutely farcical levels of idiocy over the last several years and is now completely and utterly detached from any actual "physical reality" on planet earth.

Jean , August 18, 2018 at 2:25 pm

Right?

How desperate are they?

How is the Steele dossier and Professor Stefan Halper playing there?Just curiosity

[Aug 24, 2018] Blast from the past: BBC WDM scam destroyed the credibility of the corporation

Aug 24, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

ET AL August 24, 2018 at 9:53 am

Spotted this via al Beeb s'Allah piece

Groaning Man: BBC's long struggle to present the facts without fear or favour
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2014/aug/18/-sp-bbc-report-facts-impartial
BBC in conflict with New Labour

According to Richard Sambrook, who was the BBC's director of news from 2001, trouble between the BBC and New Labour brewed when Britain intervened in Kosovo in 1999: Alastair Campbell, then Blair's press secretary, accused the media of being too much in thrall to Slobodan Milosevic's "lie machine". After 9/11, the stakes became much, much higher .

The crux came at 6.07am on 29 May 2003, when Andrew Gilligan reported on the Today programme that, according to a source, the joint intelligence committee report on Saddam Hussein's chemical and biological weapons capability had been "sexed up" by the government with a claim that such weapons could be activated within 45 minutes of an order. That there had been any deception was fiercely denied by the government and it was amid the ensuing maelstrom that the story's source, Dr David Kelly, took his own life. Lord Hutton's controversial and contested report into the death of the Ministry of Defence weapons expert was deeply critical of the BBC and precipitated the resignation of both the director general, Dyke, and the chairman, Gavyn Davies. That simultaneous toppling of the twin titans of the BBC was an unprecedentedly traumatic event in the history of the corporation. It was made all the more bitter by the fact that the struggle was fratricidal: Dyke's appointment as DG had been controversial because he had been a donor to New Labour .

Sambrook continued: "I suppose in a sense what I'm saying is that Kelly was a kind of mini-Edward Snowden story. He was saying that actually this intelligence has been completely misused, and many people inside the tent knew it and were uncomfortable about it

"If Edward Snowden had contacted Panorama or Newsnight could they have done what the Guardian did? No. No, they couldn't," he said.

"They might have been able to do a piece at a meta level, a headline level, but they could not have done what the Guardian did with Snowden. I find it uncomfortable to say that, but it's the truth. So what does that tell you about the BBC? It tells you that in the end there is a limit to its independence – some would call that public accountability. It is a wonderful news organisation. It does fantastic journalism every day. But there is a limit to it. And I think in the end that was part of a miscalculation in the Kelly story. We thought we were genuinely independent. And we weren't."

But how far is the BBC willing to take its journalism up against the establishment – and the government, which in the end seals the BBC's fate? Other journalists I spoke to within the BBC were much less sanguine. "The BBC is at its highest levels concerned with not offending the establishment, not making enemies in important places. Its core purpose – independent and impartial journalism – clashes with its survival instincts, and that goes back to the beginning," said one senior journalist.

'Senior people at the BBC see themselves part of the establishment'

Another took an even bleaker view. "Newsgathering – covering the stuff that is happening in the world – we do that brilliantly. The BBC newsgathering operation is genuinely a wonder to perceive. But digging out original stories? No, sorry. Nor has it ever done. When push comes to shove, senior people at the BBC consider themselves part of the establishment."..

The employee called such managers, as well the departments in charge of editorial policy and compliance, "journalism deterrent squads" who were strangling the efforts of colleagues "like Japanese knotweed". Journalists are afraid of not being backed up by the BBC, added the employee, when the pressure is on – and compared the corporation's approach with the much more bullish, confident and "cheeky, risk-taking" stance of Channel 4 News. "The BBC always buckles, always folds. You feel that as a journalist, they will abandon you; if you take a risky story to them it's as if you are actively trying to get them into trouble. There is an institutionalised anxiety and mistrust."

Peston said: "There is a risk-averse culture that means when the BBC wants people who can break stories it has to look to recruit from outside. When the BBC is training young journalists, it starts by telling them about the regulatory restraints: it starts with the rules and says: 'Don't you dare break them'."
####

Plenty more at the link.

The simple fact is that s/he who holds the purse strings, holds the power – regardless of how often or how rarely it is used. It casts a long shadow. And that's even before you look at the size and scale of such organizations. Self-censorship? Certainly. Admitting it publicly? Never.

MARK CHAPMAN August 24, 2018 at 6:40 pm

There was no danger that I would mistake the BBC for an impartial and unbiased investigative news source. However, Channel 4 with its 'cheeky, risk-taking stance' is no better, as 'cheeky risk-taking' in British journalism still means backing establishment positions when it comes to foreign policy. They might contribute to the odd cabinet minister's sacking, but I could give a toss about Britain's internal politics, and it is only its foreign-policy machinations I care about . And those are pretty much unvarying – Uncle Sam, boffo. Putin, evil.

[Aug 18, 2018] Pentagon Whistleblower Demoted After Exposing Millions Paid To FBI Spy Halper, Clinton Crony

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation " Crossfire Hurricane " - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign. ..."
"... Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA deputy director's daughter at one point), received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about. ..."
"... According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016 , for a contract that ran until this March. - Washington Times ..."
"... In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over $1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016. ..."
"... "As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none other than Mr. Halper ," wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as " cronyism and corruption ." ..."
"... " Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money ," said Bigley. "Adam said Jim Baker, the director, kept Halper's contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman . That was very unusual." ..."
"... A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos. ..."
"... The unassuming university professor approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails . ..."
"... And as the Daily Caller reported, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page. ..."
"... In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. " It seems attention has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci will be accommodated there," Halper wrote. ..."
Aug 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

A Pentagon whistleblower was stripped of his security clearance and demoted after complaining about questionable government contracts with both FBI informant spy Stefan Halper and a company headed by Chelsea Clinton's "best friend" for whom then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings, reports the Washington Times .

Adam Lovinger, a Trump supporter and 12-year veteran of the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment (ONA), filed a whistleblower reprisal complaint with the Defense Department's inspector general in May against ONA boss James Baker - who hired Halper, 73, to "conduct foreign relations" and kept the details of the spy's contracts "close to the vest." Baker was appointed chief of the ONA in 2015 by Obama Defense Secretary, Ashton Carter.

At that point, Lovinger wouldn't have known was a spy working with the FBI/DOJ on operation " Crossfire Hurricane " - the code name for the Obama administration's counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.

In an internal October 2016 email to higher-ups, Mr. Lovinger wrote of " the moral hazard associated with the Washington Headquarters Services contracting with Stefan Halper ," the complaint said. It said Mr. Baker hired Mr. Halper to "conduct foreign relations," a job that should be confined to government officials.

...

In the fall of 2016, as the election loomed, Mr. Lovinger sent emails to Mr. Baker and other officials at the Office of Net Assessment complaining about the entire outside contracting process. He also said the office failed to write papers on long-term threats presented by radical Islam, China and Iran .

And in September 2016, Lovinger sent an email directly to Baker summing up the perceived problems, which reads in part:

"Some of our contractors distribute to others their ONA work for personal and professional self-promotion," wrote Lovinger. "Another part is the growing narrative that ONA's most high-profile contractors are known for getting paid a lot to do rather peripheral work ."

"On the issue of pay, our contractors boast about how much they get paid from ONA . Such boasting, of course, generates jealously among those outside the club, and particularly from those who have tried to secure ONA contracts unsuccessfully."

"On the issue of quality, more than once I have heard our contractor studies labeled 'derivative,' 'college-level' and based heavily on secondary sources . One of our contractor studies was literally cut and pasted from a World Bank report that I just happened to have read the week before reading the contractor study itself. Even the font was the same."

Halper - an Oxford University professor, former US government official and longtime FBI / CIA asset (who was married to the CIA deputy director's daughter at one point), received over $400,000 for a 2016 contract which Lovinger complained about.

According to USASpending.gov, Mr. Halper was paid $411,000 by Washington Headquarters Services on Sept. 26, 2016 , for a contract that ran until this March. - Washington Times

In total, the American citizen teaching abroad received over $1 million from contracts dated between 2012 and 2016.

Lovinger's attorney, Sean M. Bigley, filed the second of four complaints on July 18 with the Pentagon's senior ethics official, claiming that Lovinger's bosses punished him on May 1, 2017 by abusing the security clearance process to yank his credentials and relegate him to clerical chores. Lovinger's complaint also names the Washington Headquarters Services, a support agency within the Pentagon that awarded the Halper contracts.

"As it turns out, one of the two contractors Mr. Lovinger explicitly warned his ONA superiors about misusing in 2016 was none other than Mr. Halper ," wrote Bigley in the ethics complaint, which referred to the contracts as " cronyism and corruption ."

" Nobody in the office seemed to know what Halper was doing for his money ," said Bigley. "Adam said Jim Baker, the director, kept Halper's contracts very close to the vest. And nobody seemed to have any idea what he was doing at the time. He subcontracted out a good chunk of it to other academics. He would compile them all and then collect the balance as his fee as a middleman . That was very unusual."

A longtime CIA and FBI asset who once reportedly ran a spy-operation on the Jimmy Carter administration, Halper was enlisted by the FBI to spy on several Trump campaign aides during the 2016 U.S. election, including Carter Page and George Papadopoulos.

Halper's $411,575 award came three days after a September 23 Yahoo! News article by Michael Isikoff about Trump aide Carter Page, which used information fed to Isikoff by "Steele dossier" creator Christopher Steele . The FBI would use the Yahoo! article along with the largely unverified dossier as supporting evidence in an FISA warrant application for Page.

The unassuming university professor approached Page during an election-themed conference at Cambridge on July 11, 2016, six weeks after the September 26 DoD award start date. The two would stay in contact for the next 14 months, frequently meeting and exchanging emails .

He said that he first encountered the informant during a conference in mid-July of 2016 and that they stayed in touch. The two later met several times in the Washington area. Mr. Page said their interactions were benign. - New York Times

And as the Daily Caller reported, Halper used a decades-old association with Paul Manafort to break the ice with Page.

Page noted that in their first conversation at Cambridge, Halper said he was longtime friends with then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort . A person close to Manafort told TheDCNF that Manafort has not seen Halper since the Gerald Ford administration . Manafort and Page are accused in the Steele dossier of having worked together on the campaign's collusion conspiracy, but both men say they have never met. - Daily Caller

Halper would continue to spy on Page after the election. Two days after the second installment of Halper's 2016 DoD contract, On July 28, he emailed Page with what the Trump campaign aide describes as a "cordial" communication, which did not seem suspicious to him at the time.

In the email to Page, Halper asks what his plans are post-election, possibly probing for more information. " It seems attention has shifted a bit from the 'collusion' investigation to the ' contretempts' [sic] within the White House and, how--or if--Mr. Scaramucci will be accommodated there," Halper wrote.

Clinton connection

The other complaint lodged by Lovinger concerns a string of contracts totaling $11 million to Long Term Strategy Group - a D.C. consulting firm headed by self-described "best friend" of Chelseal Clinton, Jacqueline Newmyer Deal.

In October, the Washington Free Beacon reported that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton arranged meetings in 2009 between Deal and Pentagon officials to discuss contracts - to which Deal says no award "resulted directly or indirectly from the actions or influence of Secretary Clinton ."

According to one 2009 email, Clinton said she recommended Deal to Michele Flournoy, the newly installed undersecretary of defense for policy, who was seeking young women to mentor.

Deal, a specialist in China affairs who worked at the White House as a press aide for First Lady Clinton in the 1990s, wrote back to Clinton saying she would meet Flournoy on May 5, 2009, and stated "thank you very much for making this happen."

Later that month, Deal thanked Clinton for "all your encouragement and help with DoD, " shorthand for the Defense Department. - Free Beacon

In a statement, Deal said: "Jacqueline Deal and the Long Term Strategy Group (LTSG) are justifiably proud of their collaboration with the US Department of Defense across multiple administrations over the last two decades, beginning under the administration of President George W. Bush. LTSG's work has consistently earned the highest respect and confidence of its clientele in government and has won LTSG a reputation for producing research and analysis of exceptional quality."

[Aug 15, 2018] A nice smackdown to the morons running the UK and their inane propaganda

Aug 15, 2018 | thenewkremlinstooge.wordpress.com

kirill says: August 12, 2018 at 4:55 pm

https://www.youtube.com/embed/_ST2RHxA2D0?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent

Apologies if the above was posted before. But that is nice smackdown to the morons running the UK and their inane propaganda about how the World Cup was like the 1936 Berlin Olympics.

No high ranking UK officials attended the World Cup as you know. But they had quite the entourage to the 1936 Olympics. Sick, hypocrite f*cks.

[Aug 14, 2018] Did Omarosa break the law by secretly recording Trump and Kelly?

She violated NDA. This is a crime.
Aug 14, 2018 | www.theguardian.com
s this a security risk?

Moss also told the Guardian that Manigault Newman's use of a recording device presented counterintelligence risks. "All it takes is one foreign agency hacking [the recording device], and setting it to passive record mode," said Moss. The result would mean all conversations, not just those Manigault Newman chose to record, would be "accessible to foreign entities".

This concern was shared by Kayyem. "There might be the perception, particularly by our enemies, that the entire White House might be compromised, and that's kind of scary," she said, adding: "The audience isn't just us and Omarosa and Trump. It's the Chinese and the Russians."

Is recording in the Situation Room a crime?

Moss said, however, that just because the conversation occurred in the Situation Room, which is actually a secured series of connected rooms, there is "no real obvious criminal liability". All staffers entering the area must lock away their cell phones and other insecure electronic devices. But he noted the violation would likely be enough to deny Manigault Newman a security clearance if she ever wishes to work for the federal government in the future.

What has the White House said?

"The very idea a staff member would sneak a recording device into the White House Situation Room shows a blatant disregard for our national security," said White House press secretary Sarah Sanders. She added: "Then to brag about it on national television further proves the lack of character and integrity of this disgruntled former White House employee."

[Aug 11, 2018] Neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national interest

Notable quotes:
"... "While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the so-called free marketers in Australia can see alternatives." ..."
"... It's dogma is nothing but empty lies held up as flawed truth's and full of scoundrels who profit from its concomitant pain. ..."
Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

SwingingVoter, 3 Jun 2018 19:43

"neoliberal language allows powerful groups to package their personal preferences as national interests"

Its almost impossible to talk about a mining economy and a "free market" in the same sentence, Richard. a mining economy is is synonymous with corruption, Dutch disease and political grabs for cash etc. In the height of the 2009 GFC announced by kev07, unskilled labourers in the pilbara were still earning $100/hr. Real estate prices for 3 bed shacks in karratha were starting at $1million plus. The blue collar dominated pilbara area was overwhelmed with greed fed by left politicians hiding behind socialist ideals. The reality was that left wing economists recognized the "dutch disease" problem and their solution was to flood the area with greedy blue collar workers who were blowing their enormous salaries on prostitutes, alcohol and gambling in the hope that profits from the mining boom would be flushed into other parts of the economy.

The solution? partially transition Australia's economy to an innovation driven economy because innovation is linked to learning which is linked to stronger self esteem and self efficacy in the community. an innovation driven econmy is the better way of promting social development in the community and an innovation driven economy is the most effective way for politicians to transition to the benefits of a "free market" driven economy.... the reality is that transitioning to an innovation would require smacking the socialists over the back of the head in the hope that aspiring socialists will respect the ideas and intellectual property of others as opposed to continue to assimilate intellectual property in the name of employment generation and the common good

I dont fear the potential rise of neoliberalism, although i understand that spruiking a free market whilst talking about mining is ridiculous.
I fear the individuals who are have been talking about mining, and targeting/victimising the non politically active conservatives for more than 2 decades in the name of socialism

sierrasierra, 3 Jun 2018 19:21
"While much of neoliberalism's rhetorical power comes from the assertion that "there is no alternative," the simple fact is that the world is full of alternatives. Indeed, even the so-called free marketers in Australia can see alternatives."

Excellent article Richard, you have captured the ideology and its dogma quite specularly.

It's dogma is nothing but empty lies held up as flawed truth's and full of scoundrels who profit from its concomitant pain.

Examples from today's headlines and a few from last week:

[Aug 10, 2018] Russia blasts new US sanctions as 'theatre of the absurd'

Aug 10, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Russian officials reacted with outrage and markets slumped on Thursday morning following the announcement of tough new US sanctions over Russia's alleged use of a nerve agent in the Salisbury attack.

President Vladimir Putin's spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, said the sanctions were "absolutely unlawful and don't conform to international law", as politicians vowed to respond with countermeasures, which could include bans on the exports of rockets or resources for manufacturing.

"The theatre of the absurd continues," tweeted Dmitry Polyanskiy, first deputy permanent representative of Russia to the UN. "No proofs, no clues, no logic, no presumption of innocence, just highly-likelies. Only one rule: blame everything on Russia, no matter how absurd and fake it is. Let us welcome the United Sanctions of America!"

One senior Russian MP called the US a "police state".

A member of the Duma's foreign affairs committee, Leonid Slutsky, said Russia could block exports of RD-180 rocket engines to the US as a potential countermeasure, the RIA Novosti news agency reported.

The United States announced on Wednesday that it would impose restrictions on the export of sensitive technology to Russia because of its use of a nerve agent in the attempted murder of a former Russian spy and his daughter in Britain.

The State Department said the new sanctions would come into effect on 22 August and would be followed by much more sweeping measures, such as suspending diplomatic relations and revoking Aeroflot landing rights, if Russia did not take "remedial" action within 90 days.

Moscow is not expected to agree to the response required by US legislation, which includes opening up Russian scientific and security facilities to international inspections to assess whether it is producing chemical and biological weapons in violation of international law.

"Certainly it is really up to Russia to make that decision, whether they meet this criteria," a senior administration official said. "The second round of sanctions are in general more draconian than the first round."

Another senior state department official said the US received in March "persuasive information" from the UK that Russia was behind the attack. It made its own determination last weekend and was now acting on the basis of "objective facts" and "legal requirements".

Russian markets took the news poorly. Stocks in Aeroflot, the country's national carrier, fell by 12% in trading before lunchtime on Thursday over concerns that its direct flights between Russia and the US could be halted entirely.

Russia's currency, the rouble, fell to below 66 to the US dollar, a 4% slide from Wednesday morning that began with the leak of a separate draft sanctions bill that could see Russia named a state sponsor of terror.

The US has already expelled 60 suspected Russian spies as part of a global response to the March attack in Salisbury against Sergei Skripal , a former colonel in Russian military intelligence, and his daughter, Yulia , in which a rare and potent Russian-made nerve agent, novichok, was found to have been used.

[Aug 08, 2018] Sergei Skripal was linked to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence

Highly recommended!
"Door handle" theory is dead on arrival. the main theory now is that UK government gave Skripals different agent BX (similar to LSD and which caused hallucinations) and they voluntarily took it in order to start preplanned Skripal false flag provocation. That's why military nurse accidentally appeared near Skripals soon after poisoning.
Notable quotes:
"... Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War, reports Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions. ..."
"... Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located. ..."
"... Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated. ..."
"... Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning. ..."
"... Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's claim ..."
"... Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy? ..."
"... Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys. ..."
"... Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger? ..."
"... If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed). ..."
"... It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to investigators. ..."
"... "We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101." ..."
"... Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence. ..."
"... These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims . ..."
"... "Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday. ..."
Aug 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

The British government has prepared an extradition request to Moscow for two Russians they claim carried out the Salisbury nerve agent attack, according to The Guardian , citing Whitehall and security sources.

Former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia were found unconscious on a public bench in Salisbury in early March - which UK authorities believe was due to a nerve agent called Novichok.

Months later on June 30, nearby residents Charlie Rowley and Dawn Sturgess, a 44-year-old mother of three, were subsequently treated for exposure to the nerve agent. Rowley recovered while Sturgess died.

Authorities are operating on the assumption that the Skripals were poisoned using a novichok-laced perfume bottle or a door handle smeared with the nerve agent, while Rowley may have picked up said bottle and given to Sturgess, who applied it to her wrists.

Sturgess received a much higher dose than the other three after apparently smearing the substance on her wrists, having sprayed it from the bottle. Rowley's recovery was helped, according to a source, by one of the first responders being familiar with the nerve agent, having been involved in helping the Skripals.

The Porton Down military defence laboratory near Salisbury has examined the novichok found on the Skripals' doorknob and the perfume bottle, but police have not yet said whether they are from the same batch. - The Guardian

UK authorities believe they have pieced together the movements of the two Russians, from their entry into the UK to their departure after the alleged assassination attempt.

Following the attack on the Skripals, European and US allies took Britain's side on the attack, ordering the largest expulsion of Russian diplomats since the height of the Cold War, reports Reuters . In response, Russia retaliated by expelling Western diplomats, while the Kremlin has repeatedly denied involvement in the attacks - while accusing the UK intelligence agencies of staging the attack in order to inflame anti-Russia tensions.

Oddly, Sergei Skripal was linked by The Telegraph to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence, who he reportedly had repeated contacts with.

The motive for trying to assassinate the 66-year-old skripal is unknown. Skripal moved to the UK in a Kremlin-approved "spy swap" in 2010, causing many to question why they would suddenly try to take him out a decade later.

In July, journalist Rob Slane compiled 10 questions for the UK authorities on the ever-confusing Skripal case:

***

The two most basic claims made by the Government and investigators regarding the method and the mode in the Salisbury poisoning are these:

  1. That military grade nerve agent was used to poison Mr Skripal
  2. That it was applied to the door handle of his house

These claims raise a number of very obvious questions. For example, how did the assassin(s) apply such a powerful chemical without wearing protective clothing? How did the people who are said to have come into contact with the substance not die immediately, or at the very least suffer irreparable damage to their Central Nervous Systems? How did this military grade nerve agent manage not only to have a delayed onset, but also managed to affect a large 66-year-old man and his slim 33-year-old daughter, both of whom would have vastly different metabolic rates, at exactly the same time?

These are perfectly reasonable questions that deserve reasonable answers. I am aware, however, that no matter how obvious and rational such questions might be, doing so places one – at least in the eyes of the authorities – in the camp of the conspiracy theorist. This is disingenuous. One of the marks of a true conspiracy theorist is that he is someone who refuses to accept an explanation for an event, even after being presented with facts which fit and explain it coherently . But when the "facts" presented in a case do not fit the event they are supposed to explain, and are neither rational nor coherent -- as in the Salisbury case -- then calling the person who raises legitimate questions a "conspiracy theorist" is a bit rich, is it not?

Nevertheless, for the purposes of this piece, what I'd like to do is work on the assumption that the "Military Grade Nerve Agent on the Door Handle" claim is correct. And working from this assumption, I want to ask some questions about how the authorities have handled the case. The point is this: These questions are not really intended to challenge the official claims; rather the intention is to ask whether the authorities have handled the case correctly on their own terms .


1. Prior to the investigation's focus on the door handle, for a period of almost three weeks there were at least nine other theories proposed by the authorities as to where the Skripals came into contact with the poison. These included the restaurant, the pub, the bench, the cemetery, the car, the flowers, the luggage, the porridge and even a drone. During that time, police officers and investigators were entering and leaving the house, by the door, since it was not known to be the place where the poison was located.

Can the authorities explain how these officers and investigators were not poisoned?

2. Once the door handle theory was established, those who had been in and out of the property during the previous three weeks would naturally have been concerned about the possibility that they had been contaminated.

Can the authorities tell us what steps were taken to reassure these officers?

3. Every officer who entered the house after 4th March, and before the door handle became an object of interest, should have been given a medical examination to check for signs of poisoning.

Can the authorities confirm that this took place for every officer?

4. Initial reports about Detective Sergeant Nick Bailey stated that he was poisoned at the bench, after coming to the aid of Mr Skripal and Yulia. However, on 9th March, Lord Ian Blair stated that D.S. Bailey had actually become poisoned after visiting Mr Skripal's house. Since he was thought to have been poisoned with a military grade nerve agent, and since it was thought that this had occurred at Mr Skripal's house, the immediate next step should have been to seal off the house and set up a mobile decontamination unit outside. However, numerous photographs show officers in normal uniforms standing close to the door long after Lord Blair's claim.

Can the authorities confirm why the house was not sealed off and a decontamination unit set up immediately after it became known that D.S. Bailey had been there, and why officers with no protective clothing on were allowed to continue standing guard outside the house for the next few weeks?

5. Can the authorities explain how these decisions did not put the health and even the lives of those officers in jeopardy?

6. Before the door handle theory was settled on, the majority of competing theories put out by the authorities tended to assume that Mr Skripal was poisoned long before he went to Zizzis. For example, the flowers, the cemetery, the luggage, the porridge and the car explanations all assume this to be the case. What this means is that according to the assumptions of police at that time, when Mr Skripal fed the ducks near the Avon Playground with a few local boys, at around 1:45pm, he was already contaminated. Yet although this event was caught on CCTV camera, it was more than two weeks before the police contacted the parents of these boys.

Can the authorities explain why it took more than two weeks to track down the boys, who – as the CCTV apparently shows – were given bread by Mr Skripal?

7. Can the authorities comment on why they did not air the CCTV footage on national television, in an effort to appeal to the boys or their parents to come forward, and whether the delay in tracking them down might have put them in danger?

8. If the door handle was the place of poisoning, it is extremely likely that the bread handed by Mr Skripal to the boys would have been contaminated. Certainly, areas that he visited after this incident were deemed to be so much at risk that they were either closed down (for example, The Mill and Zizzis, which are both still closed), or destroyed (for instance, the restaurant table, the bench and – almost certainly – the red bag near the bench have all been destroyed).

Can the authorities comment on how the boys, who were handed bread by Mr Skripal, managed to avoid contamination?

9. It has been said that one of the reasons the Government is/was so sure that the ultimate culprit behind the poisoning was the Russian state, is the apparent existence of an "FSB handbook" which, amongst other things, allegedly features descriptions of how to apply nerve agent to a door handle. Given that the Prime Minister first made a formal accusation of culpability on 12th March in her speech to the House of Commons, the Government must therefore have been in possession of this manual prior to that day. However, claims about the door handle being the location of the poison did not appear until late March (the first media reports of it were on 28th March). What this means is there was a delay of several weeks between the Government making its accusation, based partly on the apparent existence of the "door handle manual", and the door handle of Mr Skripal's house being a subject of interest to investigators.

Can the authorities therefore tell us whether the Government's failure to pass on details of the "door handle manual" put the lives of the officers going in and out of Mr Skripal's house from 5th March to 27th March in jeopardy?

10. On 17th March, Metropolitan Police Assistant Commissioner Neil Basu said:

"We are learning more about Sergei and Yulia's movements but we need to be clearer around their exact movements on the morning of the incident. We believe that at around 9.15am on Sunday, 4 March, Sergei's car may have been in the areas of London Road, Churchill Way North and Wilton Road. Then at around 1.30pm it was seen being driven down Devizes Road, towards the town centre. We need to establish Sergei and Yulia's movements during the morning, before they headed to the town centre. Did you see this car, or what you believe was this car, on the day of the incident? We are particularly keen to hear from you if you saw the car before 1.30pm. If you have information, please call the police on 101."

Now that Sergei and Yulia Skripal have been awake and able to communicate for around four months, these details are presumably now all known to investigators. In the normal course of such a high profile investigation, details such as these would be relayed to the public in the hope of jogging memories to prompt more information. And in fact, many such details have been released to the public in this case. Yet, confirmation of Mr Skripal's and Yulia's movements that day remain conspicuous by their absence.

Can the authorities confirm that the movements of the Skripals that day are now understood, and that they will be made known shortly, in order that more information from the public might then be forthcoming?

These questions have nothing to do with any conspiracy theory. On the contrary, they are all based on the assumption that the two central claims made by the authorities regarding the mode and the method used in this incident are correct. They are, however, very serious and perfectly legitimate questions about the way the authorities have dealt with this incident, on their own terms and on the basis of their own claims .

We await their explanations.

besnook Mon, 08/06/2018 - 14:22 Permalink

the brits want to embarrass themselves.

EuroPox -> besnook Mon, 08/06/2018 - 14:25 Permalink

They already have - that was just more lies:

"Reports that the United Kingdom is planning to ask Russia to extradite suspects in a Salisbury poisoning incident are nothing more than a "speculation," a spokesperson for the UK Foreign Office told Sputnik on Monday.

"This is just more speculation. The police investigation is ongoing and anything on the record will need to come from the Police," the spokesperson said."

https://sputniknews.com/europe/201808061067000089-uk-no-request-salisbu

[Aug 08, 2018] US corps have bought out UK and EU corps and then outsource the work to India and China. US Corps = Globalisation.

Aug 08, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

DancehallStyle -> AgainstDarkness , 6 Aug 2018 20:02

US corps have bought out UK and EU corps and then outsource the work to India and China. US Corps = Globalisation.
DancehallStyle -> AnthonyFlack , 6 Aug 2018 19:57
IT tech and even intricate clothing are too fiddly for automata.

Americans view is if other countries like China make too much money and will overtake them then they will take it all back.

They did that with Japan. They also destroyed Soviet's economy.

ID4355982 , 6 Aug 2018 19:52
trump has wrecked environmental policy, trade policy and domestic social policy....the upshots will be: 1- a much more toxic environment & much higher level of respiratory disease and cancerous related ailments; overall poorer health & health care for the average citizen 2- higher prices for imported goods, lower level of trade exports, fewer US based jobs and more off-shoring of US jobs 3- a substantial increase in the homeless population in the urban areas of this country; increased rates of poverty for the poor, lower economic prosperity for the lower and lower middle class income brackets; wage stagnation for the middle & upper middle income brackets; less advanced education & lower worker productivity and innovation to name just a few of the impacts created by this idiot....in simple in English, Trump and his so-called initiatives are shafting this country in almost every way possible
Ilya Grushevskiy -> RepaTea , 6 Aug 2018 19:17
What part of international law is not just pissed on toiler paper strewn over the floors of a urinal? Which post WWII president respected this law?

None.

International law, since WWII failed. It failed in '47 when no referendum was held in Palestine - against Chapter 1, Article 1 paragraph 2 of the UN Charter. It failed in Crimea, when the results of such a referendum was spat on by the previous war criminal to sit in the Oval Office. It fails now as sanctions are used unilaterally - being equivalent to the use of force in result, they should be

But then let's not stop at after the war. The US is the only country to nuke civilians. 6/7 US four star generals at the time said the action had no strategic or tactical purpose whatsoever.

The US is what ISIS dreams to be, the sooner it falls into obscurity the better.

Brian Black -> bobthebuilder2017 , 6 Aug 2018 19:13
Pure nonsense. The Great Depression began on October 29, 1929. FDR was inaugurated on March 4, 1933 nearly 4 years after it began. Hoover had actually only been in office for just over 6 months before Black Tuesday. GDP began growing and unemployment began falling in 1933 shortly after FDR took office. The Depression officially came to an end in 1939 when GDP returned to pre-Depression levels.
Ilya Grushevskiy , 6 Aug 2018 19:09
There is no long term US growth. There is a debt default after people realize the fact that the top of the whole US government is incompetent. That it has chained itself to such astronomic liabilities for useless wars (as the Empire has not succeeded in world hegemony), is even sadder. It coould have spent the $5tn of Iraq and Afghanistan on building shit, but instead it bombed shit.

Trump doesn't matter for US long run - in 5-10 years time the country will be only found in history books.

gmiklashek950 , 6 Aug 2018 17:59
Remember Kruschev's (sp?) last words on leaving office, and I'm paraphrasing: "Don't worry about America, they'll spend themselves to death (just like we have)". Continued economic growth is a wet dream of Wall Street origin. We are massively overpopulated and rapidly using up earth's natural resources at an increasingly unsustainable rate. We must begin to reduce our growth, not keep increasing it. Population density stress is killing us now and only increasing every day along with the 220,000 new mouths to feed that we are turning out into a world that has no room for 28,000,000 homeless migrants already. Just how crazy are we really. If this article is to be believed, we are nuts. E.F. Schumacher is rolling in his grave! Stress R Us
AgainstDarkness , 6 Aug 2018 16:56
Trump/the US is attempting to renegotiate globalisation.

It is time for the rest of the western world to follow suit.

Levente Tanka -> plakias , 6 Aug 2018 16:34
The contribution of a president to the national debt depends a bit on how you calculate it. You could simply look at rhe dates of inauguration or go a step further and look at the fiscal years. For the latter see :

https://www.thebalance.com/us-debt-by-president-by-dollar-and-percent-3306296

In absolute terms Obama is indeed at the top of the list, percentagewise his predecessor played a larger part. No matter how you look at it or what the causes were, under Bush and Obama the U.S. debt seems to have spiralled out of of control and Trump is doing bugger all to stop that trend.

[Aug 08, 2018] Obama added some $12.8 Trillion Dollars to the debt.

Aug 08, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

RepaTea -> plakias , 6 Aug 2018 14:56

Why quote figures without context?

Obama came to power January 2008.

Financial crisis hit 2007/8

So he gets the blame for the cost?

Conservative estimate is it added some $12.8 Trillion Dollars to the debt.

Now please grow up and compare apples with apples and be honest about the context....

plakias -> RepaTea , 6 Aug 2018 14:49
On January 20, 2009, when he was sworn in, the debt was $10.626 trillion. On January 20, 2017, when he left, it was $19.947 trillion. Most people would calculate Obama added $9 trillion to the debt, more than any other president. But then Tom Eleven isn't "Most people".

[Aug 07, 2018] Britain Tightens NATO s Noose Around Russia

Notable quotes:
"... In addition, Russia is being literally fenced off from Europe, with NATO members and/or EU member states Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland building border fences. Finland, Norway and Ukraine are members of neither NATO nor the EU but contribute to NATO and are also building fences with Russia. ..."
Aug 07, 2018 | www.counterpunch.org

A European Parliament report (2017) says :

"All Russian security documents explicitly single out the challenges that the policies of Western states supposedly create for Russian security (with particularly harsh words in the Security strategy). Grievances connected to what Russia sees as 'systemic problems in the Euro-Atlantic region' (Foreign policy concept), the enlargement of NATO, the location of its military infrastructure close to Russian borders, its 'offensive capabilities' and the trend towards the Alliance acquiring 'global functions', the 'symptoms' of the U.S. efforts to retain absolute military supremacy (the global antimissile system, Global Strike capabilities, militarization of space) "

Are Russian forces in Canada and Mexico conducting joint exercises against the US? No. Are Russian forces in Ireland conducting joint exercises against Britain? No. Is there an obvious Russian presence in Scotland promoting independence from the UK? No. But Britain and the US are mounted on Russia's borders and conducting joint exercises with its neighbors.

In addition, Russia is being literally fenced off from Europe, with NATO members and/or EU member states Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland building border fences. Finland, Norway and Ukraine are members of neither NATO nor the EU but contribute to NATO and are also building fences with Russia.

But what do Russia's neighbours, like the Estonians, rank as their national security priorities? A survey suggests that for Estonians, the biggest threat to global security is the Islamic State, followed by the refugee crisis in Europe and the war in Syria. Russia came fourth on the list, even after the Ukraine crisis. According to Gallup , a majority 52% of Estonians consider NATO a protective force, but 43% see it as either a threat (17%) or neither (26%). Estonians are behind Kosovars, Albanians, Poles and Lithuanians in their opinions of NATO.

[Aug 06, 2018] There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain.

Aug 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

GKB507 , 6 Aug 2018 23:01

At very least, a leader should be able to tell right from wrong... and sadly, too often in this world, "nice guys finish last".
"There are three classes of men; lovers of wisdom, lovers of honor, and lovers of gain."
Plato

[Jul 23, 2018] Neoliberalism has brought out the worst in us by Paul Verhaeghe

Not only "An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities", it crushes the will to resist presenting psychopathic dictate in forms that make it difficult. Such as performance reviews waterboarding or putting individual in the way too complex and self-contradictory Web of regulations.
Notable quotes:
"... An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities. ..."
"... Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak – in psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other. ..."
"... Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a growing dependence on external, often shifting, norms. This results in what the sociologist Richard Sennett has aptly described as the "infantilisation of the workers". Adults display childish outbursts of temper and are jealous about trivialities ("She got a new office chair and I didn't"), tell white lies, resort to deceit, delight in the downfall of others and cherish petty feelings of revenge. This is the consequence of a system that prevents people from thinking independently and that fails to treat employees as adults. ..."
"... Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, all the while reinforcing privilege and putting increasing pressure on its overstretched and exhausted citizens. An increasing number of people fail, feeling humiliated, guilty and ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever before, but the freedom to choose outside the success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those who fail are deemed to be losers or scroungers, taking advantage of our social security system. ..."
"... The current economic system is bringing out the worst in us. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

An economic system that rewards psychopathic personality traits has changed our ethics and our personalities.

Thirty years of neoliberalism, free-market forces and privatisation have taken their toll, as relentless pressure to achieve has become normative. If you're reading this sceptically, I put this simple statement to you: meritocratic neoliberalism favours certain personality traits and penalises others.

There are certain ideal characteristics needed to make a career today. The first is articulateness, the aim being to win over as many people as possible. Contact can be superficial, but since this applies to most human interaction nowadays, this won't really be noticed.

It's important to be able to talk up your own capacities as much as you can – you know a lot of people, you've got plenty of experience under your belt and you recently completed a major project. Later, people will find out that this was mostly hot air, but the fact that they were initially fooled is down to another personality trait: you can lie convincingly and feel little guilt. That's why you never take responsibility for your own behaviour.

On top of all this, you are flexible and impulsive, always on the lookout for new stimuli and challenges. In practice, this leads to risky behaviour, but never mind, it won't be you who has to pick up the pieces. The source of inspiration for this list? The psychopathy checklist by Robert Hare , the best-known specialist on psychopathy today.

This description is, of course, a caricature taken to extremes. Nevertheless, the financial crisis illustrated at a macro-social level (for example, in the conflicts between eurozone countries) what a neoliberal meritocracy does to people. Solidarity becomes an expensive luxury and makes way for temporary alliances, the main preoccupation always being to extract more profit from the situation than your competition. Social ties with colleagues weaken, as does emotional commitment to the enterprise or organisation.

Bullying used to be confined to schools; now it is a common feature of the workplace. This is a typical symptom of the impotent venting their frustration on the weak – in psychology it's known as displaced aggression. There is a buried sense of fear, ranging from performance anxiety to a broader social fear of the threatening other.

Constant evaluations at work cause a decline in autonomy and a growing dependence on external, often shifting, norms. This results in what the sociologist Richard Sennett has aptly described as the "infantilisation of the workers". Adults display childish outbursts of temper and are jealous about trivialities ("She got a new office chair and I didn't"), tell white lies, resort to deceit, delight in the downfall of others and cherish petty feelings of revenge. This is the consequence of a system that prevents people from thinking independently and that fails to treat employees as adults.

More important, though, is the serious damage to people's self-respect. Self-respect largely depends on the recognition that we receive from the other, as thinkers from Hegel to Lacan have shown. Sennett comes to a similar conclusion when he sees the main question for employees these days as being "Who needs me?" For a growing group of people, the answer is: no one.

Our society constantly proclaims that anyone can make it if they just try hard enough, all the while reinforcing privilege and putting increasing pressure on its overstretched and exhausted citizens. An increasing number of people fail, feeling humiliated, guilty and ashamed. We are forever told that we are freer to choose the course of our lives than ever before, but the freedom to choose outside the success narrative is limited. Furthermore, those who fail are deemed to be losers or scroungers, taking advantage of our social security system.

A neoliberal meritocracy would have us believe that success depends on individual effort and talents, meaning responsibility lies entirely with the individual and authorities should give people as much freedom as possible to achieve this goal. For those who believe in the fairytale of unrestricted choice, self-government and self-management are the pre-eminent political messages, especially if they appear to promise freedom. Along with the idea of the perfectible individual, the freedom we perceive ourselves as having in the west is the greatest untruth of this day and age.

The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman neatly summarised the paradox of our era as: "Never have we been so free. Never have we felt so powerless." We are indeed freer than before, in the sense that we can criticise religion, take advantage of the new laissez-faire attitude to sex and support any political movement we like. We can do all these things because they no longer have any significance – freedom of this kind is prompted by indifference. Yet, on the other hand, our daily lives have become a constant battle against a bureaucracy that would make Kafka weak at the knees. There are regulations about everything, from the salt content of bread to urban poultry-keeping.

Our presumed freedom is tied to one central condition: we must be successful – that is, "make" something of ourselves. You don't need to look far for examples. A highly skilled individual who puts parenting before their career comes in for criticism. A person with a good job who turns down a promotion to invest more time in other things is seen as crazy – unless those other things ensure success. A young woman who wants to become a primary school teacher is told by her parents that she should start off by getting a master's degree in economics – a primary school teacher, whatever can she be thinking of?

There are constant laments about the so-called loss of norms and values in our culture. Yet our norms and values make up an integral and essential part of our identity. So they cannot be lost, only changed. And that is precisely what has happened: a changed economy reflects changed ethics and brings about changed identity. The current economic system is bringing out the worst in us.


tocq1 , 7 Aug 2014 22:21

Panic attacks, anxiety attacks, nervous breakdowns, depression, suicidal thoughts alienation, cancers, withdrawal are all symptoms of the de-humanizing aspects of a market-driven life. In its worst forms it manifests periodically in mass shootings at strangers. So what do people do to cope? Drugs, pain killers, shrinks, alcohol, potato chips and soda. They then develop obesity, diabetes and heart diseases and cancers. How to save a human species terminally intoxicated with technology and enslaved by the market while the inner spirit is running empty may not be possible given the advanced nature of the disease.
Gary Walker -> NotForTurning , 7 Aug 2014 19:59
...what?
You fail to really acknowledge that time and again we've failed to exercise constrain within the capitalist models. The the meritorious are often inadequately rewarded - when any person in work cannot afford to home and feed themselves and their family then a reasonable balance has not been struck - in that sense at no time in history has capitalism functioned adequately.
To suggest that socialism is anti-human is to ignore how and why as a species we formed societies at all, we come together precisely because there is a mutual benefit in so doing; to help another is to help oneself - the model itself fails to operate in practice for the same reason that capitalism does - the greed of the power holder.

You reserve your sharpest barbs for socialism, but at least within the socialist agenda there is a commitment to the protection of the citizen, whoever they are, even the 'unmerited' as you describe them - a capitalist's paraphrase for 'those that create no value'.

The socialist at least recognises that whilst the parent may be 'unmerited' their dependants should be entitled to receive equality of opportunity and protection from the 'law-of-the-jungle' i.e., the greed of others.

The ability to generate wealth, simply by already having wealth and therefore being able to thrive off the labour of others carries little merit as far as I can tell and does indeed create the soul-crushing command-and-control empires of the capitalism that millions around the world experience daily.

zii000 , 7 Aug 2014 18:25
Neoliberalism is indeed a huge self-serving con and ironically the Thatcher/Regan doctrine which set out to break the status quo and free the economy from the old elitist guard has had exactly the opposite effect.
camllin , 7 Aug 2014 17:58
Capitalism cannot differentiate between honest competition and cheating. Since humans will cheat to win, capitalism has become survival of the worst not the best.
TheBBG , 7 Aug 2014 17:51
The bottom line is the basic human condition prizes food, shelter, sex, and then goes directly to greed in most modern societies. It was not always that way, and is not that way in ever fewer societies. As it is, greed makes the world go around.

In capitalistic societies greed has been fed by business and commerce; in communist societies it has been "some pigs are more equal then others"; and in dictatorships or true monarchies (or the Australian Liberal Party) there is the born to rule mentality where there are rulers and serfs.

Jon Allan , 7 Aug 2014 17:44
Nobody ever seems to address the paradox of the notion of an absolute free market: that within a free market, those who can have the freedom to exploit do exploit, thereby thus eliminating the freedom of the exploited, which thence paradoxically negates the absoluteness of the free market. No absolute freedom truly exist in a free market.

As such, the free market is pipe dream - a con - to eliminate regulations and create economic freedoms only where they benefit the elite. The free market does not exist, is impossible, and therefore should cease to be held as the harbinger of a progressive socio economic reality.

If we are to accept the Christian assumption that we, humans, are all self-serving and acquisitive, then we must, therefore, negate the possibility of an absolutely "free" market, since exploitation is a naturally occurring byproduct of weak-strong interactions. Exploitation negates freedom, and therefore, it must be our reality, as it is in all peoples' best interests, to accept directly democratic regulations as the keystone to any market.

Colin Bennett , 7 Aug 2014 17:06
It sounds very like the Marxist critique of capital. And similarly, points to real problems, but doesn't seek evidence for why such a sick situation not only persists, but is so popular - except by denigrating 'the masses'.

Surely what is particular about our time, about industrialisation generally, is the fragmenting of long term social structures, and orientation around the individual alone. It seems to me the problem of our times is redeveloping social structures which balance the individual and the socials selves, as all not merely stable but thriving happy creative societies, have always done.

pinkrobbo -> Jim Greer , 7 Aug 2014 16:06
Their propaganda is the same- an obsessive hatred of the state in any form, a semi-religious belief in the power of the individual operating in the free-market to solve humanity's ills.

Granted, they aren't social libertarians, but then, in the US, libertarians don't seem to be either.

makingtime -> YoungPete , 7 Aug 2014 13:28

Pretty typical that the assumption is the Marx "nailed it" and any dissenters are just "scared".


I'm scared by it too, as I said, it's a sensible fear of change. The question remains. What if Marx's analysis, just the analysis, is broadly correct? What if markets really are the road to ruination of our planet, morality and collective welfare in roughly the way that he explained?

It's not a trivial question, and clearly the current economic orthodoxy has failed to explain some recent little problems we've been having, while Marx explains how these problems are structurally embedded and only to be expected. It is intellectual cowardice to compulsively avoid this, in my view. Better minds than ours have struggled with it.

So beware of the fallacious argument from authority - 'You are stupid while I am axiomatically very clever, because I say so, hence I must be correct and you must shut it.' It goes nowhere useful, though we are all prone to employing it.

But it is not 'sixth form' thinking, surely, to consider these problems as being worth thinking about in a modern context. It is a plain fact that Stalinism didn't work as planned. We know it, but it doesn't make the problems it was intended to solve disappear to say so.

If you believe human nature can be changed by enforcing your interpretation of Marx's road to human freedom (a quasi-religious goal) you condemn millions to starvation, slaughter, gulags, misery etc.


Please read what I actually wrote about that. I'm not remotely quasi-religious, nor do I seek to enforce anything. My intention is only to expose a particularly damaging mythology. The extent of my crimes is persuasion as a prelude to consensual change before necessity really bites us all.

Markets conjure up the exact forms of misery you describe. Totalitarians of the right are highly undesirable too. I am against totalitarians, as are you, but an admirer of Marx's work. Do I fit into your simplistic categories? Does anyone? The freedoms we are permitted serve the market before they serve people. Markets are a social construct, as is capital, that we can choose to modify or squash. A child starving in a slum for lack of competitiveness, for its inability to serve the interests of capital, is less abstract perhaps.

Richard McDonough , 7 Aug 2014 13:20
Clintons are neoliberalss and about to be embraced by the neocons in foreign policy.
Reagan lives in a pan suit.
Serpentsarecreeps , 7 Aug 2014 12:15
The thing about selfishness and a brutal form of dog eat dog capitalism.

You see, it is a truth axiomatic that we human beings, as all living beings, are fundamentally selfish. We have to be in order to survive, and excel, and advance and perpetuate.

It is not theory but hard biology. You breathe for yourself, eat for yourself, love for yourself, have a family for yourself and so on. People are most affected and hurt if something happens to something or someone who means something to them personally. This is why concepts such as religion and nationality have worked so well, and will continue to even if they evolve in different ways, for they tap into a person's conception of theirself. Of their identity, of their self-definition. People tend to feel worse if something bad happens to someone they know than to a stranger; people tend to feel less bad when something happens to a cockroach than to a dog, simply because we relate better to dogs than to insects...So even our compassion is selfish after a fashion.

Capitalism and Socialism are two ends of the the same human spectrum of innate and hardwired selfishness. One stresses on the individual and the other on the larger group. It's always going to be hard to find the right balance because when you vest excessive power in any selfish ideology, it will begin to eat into the other type of selfishness..

The world revolves around competing selfishnesses...

yourmiddleclassfarce , 7 Aug 2014 11:46
The global economy is based upon wasting lives and material resources.

Designer landfill is no longer an option and neo-liberalism, which places importance of the invention called money over that of people (which is a dehumanising process), was never an option.

It is time for the neo-liberal fake politicians (that is 99.99% of them) to take up politics.

It really is, as ever since it is only another word for change, time for revolution.

Serpentsarecreeps , 7 Aug 2014 11:34
Excellent article by one of my favourite writers on this site! :)
steverandomno -> richterscalemadness , 7 Aug 2014 11:32

By extension, moving away from a system the shuns those who 'fail' people would be emotionally better off, and with the removal of the constant assessment and individualistic competition, people may feel better able to relate to one another. This would imply that healthy communities would be more likely to flourish, as people would be less likely to ignore those on lower income or of 'lower status'.

Move to what system? What system would achieve this?

Whether you agree or not, it is pretty clear what was being said.

Of course it's clear. George and his followers dislike market based systems. It couldn't be clearer. Even when the subject has little to do with the market, George and his followers always blame it for everything that is wrong with this world. That's pretty much the whole point of this article.

What's never clear is what alternative George and his followers propose that wouldn't result in all of the same flaws that accompany market driven systems. How can they be so sure some of those problems won't be worse? They always seem a bit sketchy, which is remarkable given the furor with which they relentlessly critique the market. We are told of alternatives concepts painted in the broadest of brushes, rich with abstract intangible idealism, but lacking in any pragmatism. We are invited to consider the whole exercise simply as academically self-indulgent navel gazing by the priviledged overeducated minority that comprise much of the Guardian's readership. It's quite disappointing. This article correctly details much of the discontent in the world. But this isn't a revelation. Where are the concrete ideas that can actualy be implemented now?
frontalcortexes at least makes a stab at something a bit more practicle than a 17 paragraph esoteric essay citing ancient Greek.

LastNameOnTheShelf , 7 Aug 2014 11:27
One of the worst thing is that the winners in the market race are showered with things which are fundamentally valueless and far in excess of what they could consume if they weren't, while bare necessities are withheld from the losers.
fractals -> Guardiansofwhatnow , 7 Aug 2014 11:12
of course, the nature of 'the market' means that all of our ipads and television sets will be obsolete within a year or 2.

[Jul 23, 2018] Sick of this market-driven world You should be too by George Monbiot

Notable quotes:
"... The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers ..."
"... The same forces afflict those who can't find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe. What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.

We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don't.

Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power. It is rapidly colonising the rest of the world.

Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.

At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, work hard, and innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility.

The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren't, on the whole, the most talented, hardworking or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs, and the best contacts – often in the KGB.

Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don't stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined .

If neoliberalism was anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and thinktanks were financed from the beginning by some of the world's richest people (the US multimillionaires Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others), its apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.

All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new righteous; the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally and are now classified as social parasites.

The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness.

The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers . It destroys autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty, and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox, it has led to the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition known in Russian as tufta . It means falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.

The same forces afflict those who can't find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.

These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders.

Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia: both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors – the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and loneliness plague us.

The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways: just as we congratulate ourselves for our success, we blame ourselves for our failure, even if we have little to do with it .

So, if you don't fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

[Jul 23, 2018] Neoliberalism glorifies inequality

Notable quotes:
"... Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning. ..."
"... We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances. ..."
Jul 23, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

Neoliberalism sees competition as the defining characteristic of human relations. It redefines citizens as consumers, whose democratic choices are best exercised by buying and selling, a process that rewards merit and punishes inefficiency. It maintains that "the market" delivers benefits that could never be achieved by planning.

Attempts to limit competition are treated as inimical to liberty. Tax and regulation should be minimised, public services should be privatised. The organisation of labour and collective bargaining by trade unions are portrayed as market distortions that impede the formation of a natural hierarchy of winners and losers. Inequality is recast as virtuous: a reward for utility and a generator of wealth, which trickles down to enrich everyone. Efforts to create a more equal society are both counterproductive and morally corrosive. The market ensures that everyone gets what they deserve.

We internalise and reproduce its creeds. The rich persuade themselves that they acquired their wealth through merit, ignoring the advantages – such as education, inheritance and class – that may have helped to secure it. The poor begin to blame themselves for their failures, even when they can do little to change their circumstances.

Never mind structural unemployment: if you don't have a job it's because you are unenterprising. Never mind the impossible costs of housing: if your credit card is maxed out, you're feckless and improvident. Never mind that your children no longer have a school playing field: if they get fat, it's your fault. In a world governed by competition, those who fall behind become defined and self-defined as losers.

Among the results, as Paul Verhaeghe documents in his book What About Me? are epidemics of self-harm, eating disorders, depression, loneliness, performance anxiety and social phobia. Perhaps it's unsurprising that Britain, in which neoliberal ideology has been most rigorously applied, is the loneliness capital of Europe. We are all neoliberals now.

[Jul 23, 2018] Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom by Deborah Orr

Jun 08, 2013 | www.theguardian.com

The crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response should be a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe

he International Monetary Fund has admitted that some of the decisions it made in the wake of the 2007-2008 financial crisis were wrong, and that the €130bn first bailout of Greece was "bungled". Well, yes. If it hadn't been a mistake, then it would have been the only bailout and everyone in Greece would have lived happily ever after.

Actually, the IMF hasn't quite admitted that it messed things up. It has said instead that it went along with its partners in "the Troika" – the European Commission and the European Central Bank – when it shouldn't have. The EC and the ECB, says the IMF, put the interests of the eurozone before the interests of Greece. The EC and the ECB, in turn, clutch their pearls and splutter with horror that they could be accused of something so petty as self-preservation.

The IMF also admits that it "underestimated" the effect austerity would have on Greece. Obviously, the rest of the Troika takes no issue with that. Even those who substitute "kick up the arse to all the lazy scroungers" whenever they encounter the word "austerity", have cottoned on to the fact that the word can only be intoned with facial features locked into a suitably tragic mask.

Yet, mealy-mouthed and hotly contested as this minor mea culpa is, it's still a sign that financial institutions may slowly be coming round to the idea that they are the problem. They know the crash was a debt-bubble that burst. What they don't seem to acknowledge is that the merry days of reckless lending are never going to return; even if they do, the same thing will happen again, but more quickly and more savagely. The thing is this: the crash was a write-off, not a repair job. The response from the start should have been a wholesale reevaluation of the way in which wealth is created and distributed around the globe, a "structural adjustment", as the philosopher John Gray has said all along.

The IMF exists to lend money to governments, so it's comic that it wags its finger at governments that run up debt. And, of course, its loans famously come with strings attached: adopt a free-market economy, or strengthen the one you have, kissing goodbye to the Big State. Yet, the irony is painful. Neoliberal ideology insists that states are too big and cumbersome, too centralised and faceless, to be efficient and responsive. I agree. The problem is that the ruthless sentimentalists of neoliberalism like to tell themselves – and anyone else who will listen – that removing the dead hand of state control frees the individual citizen to be entrepreneurial and productive. Instead, it places the financially powerful beyond any state, in an international elite that makes its own rules, and holds governments to ransom. That's what the financial crisis was all about. The ransom was paid, and as a result, governments have been obliged to limit their activities yet further – some setting about the task with greater relish than others. Now the task, supposedly, is to get the free market up and running again.

But the basic problem is this: it costs a lot of money to cultivate a market – a group of consumers – and the more sophisticated the market is, the more expensive it is to cultivate them. A developed market needs to be populated with educated, healthy, cultured, law-abiding and financially secure people – people who expect to be well paid themselves, having been brought up believing in material aspiration, as consumers need to be.

So why, exactly, given the huge amount of investment needed to create such a market, should access to it then be "free"? The neoliberal idea is that the cultivation itself should be conducted privately as well. They see "austerity" as a way of forcing that agenda. But how can the privatisation of societal welfare possibly happen when unemployment is already high, working people are turning to food banks to survive and the debt industry, far from being sorry that it brought the global economy to its knees, is snapping up bargains in the form of busted high-street businesses to establish shops with nothing to sell but high-interest debt? Why, you have to ask yourself, is this vast implausibility, this sheer unsustainability, not blindingly obvious to all?

Markets cannot be free. Markets have to be nurtured. They have to be invested in. Markets have to be grown. Google, Amazon and Apple haven't taught anyone in this country to read. But even though an illiterate market wouldn't be so great for them, they avoid their taxes, because they can, because they are more powerful than governments.

And further, those who invest in these companies, and insist that taxes should be low to encourage private profit and shareholder value, then lend governments the money they need to create these populations of sophisticated producers and consumers, berating them for their profligacy as they do so. It's all utterly, completely, crazy.

The other day a health minister, Anna Soubry , suggested that female GPs who worked part-time so that they could bring up families were putting the NHS under strain. The compartmentalised thinking is quite breathtaking. What on earth does she imagine? That it would be better for the economy if they all left school at 16? On the contrary, the more people who are earning good money while working part-time – thus having the leisure to consume – the better. No doubt these female GPs are sustaining both the pharmaceutical industry and the arts and media, both sectors that Britain does well in.

As for their prioritising of family life over career – that's just another of the myriad ways in which Conservative neoliberalism is entirely without logic. Its prophets and its disciples will happily – ecstatically – tell you that there's nothing more important than family, unless you're a family doctor spending some of your time caring for your own. You couldn't make these characters up. It is certainly true that women with children find it more easy to find part-time employment in the public sector. But that's a prima facie example of how unresponsive the private sector is to human and societal need, not – as it is so often presented – evidence that the public sector is congenitally disabled.

Much of the healthy economic growth – as opposed to the smoke and mirrors of many aspects of financial services – that Britain enjoyed during the second half of the 20th century was due to women swelling the educated workforce. Soubry and her ilk, above all else, forget that people have multiple roles, as consumers, as producers, as citizens and as family members. All of those things have to be nurtured and invested in to make a market.

The neoliberalism that the IMF still preaches pays no account to any of this. It insists that the provision of work alone is enough of an invisible hand to sustain a market. Yet even Adam Smith, the economist who came up with that theory , did not agree that economic activity alone was enough to keep humans decent and civilised.

Governments are left with the bill when neoliberals demand access to markets that they refuse to invest in making. Their refusal allows them to rail against the Big State while producing the conditions that make it necessary. And even as the results of their folly become ever more plain to see, they are grudging in their admittance of the slightest blame, bickering with their allies instead of waking up, smelling the coffee and realising that far too much of it is sold through Starbucks.

[Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax

Highly recommended!
So British were involved in fabricating of 'Guccifer 2.0' persona. Nice...
Notable quotes:
"... It was Matt Tait who, using the 'Twitter' handle @pwnallthethings, identified the name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky in the 'metadata' of the 'Guccifer 2.0' material on 15 June 2016, the day after Ellen Nakashima first disseminated the BS from 'CrowdStrike' in the 'WP.' ..."
"... 'Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.' ..."
"... As I have noted before on SST, a cursory examination of records at 'Companies House' establishes that 'Capital Alpha Security', which was supposed to have provided Tait with an – independent – source of income at the time he unearthed this 'smoking gun' incriminating the GRU, never did any business at all. So, a question arises: how was Tait making ends meet at that time: busking on the London underground, perhaps? ..."
"... The document, when available, may clarify a few loose ends, but the general picture seems clear. Last November, Tait filed 'dormant company accounts' for the company's first year in existence, up until February 2017. One can only do this if one has absolutely no revenue, and absolutely no expenditure. Not even the smallest contract to sort out malware on someone's computer, or to buy equipment for the office. ..."
"... He then failed to file the 'Confirmation statement', which every company must is legally obliged to produce annually, if it is not to be struck off. This failure led to a 'First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off' in May. ..."
"... However, Tait may well anticipate that there is there will never be any call for him to go back into the big wide world, as the large organisation in which he has now found employment is part of a 'Borgist' network. So much is evident from another entry on the 'Lawfare' site: ..."
"... Also relevant here is the fact that, rather transparently, this placing of the GRU centre stage is bound up with the attempt to suggest that there is some kind of 'Gerasimov doctrine', designed to undermine the West by 'hybrid warfare.' Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed. In March, he published a piece on the 'Foreign Policy' site, under the title: 'I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine'; I was the first to write about Russia's infamous high-tech military strategy. One small problem: it doesn't exist.' ..."
"... Quite clearly, the 'Guccifer 2.0' persona is a crude fabrication by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or indeed interest in, the bitter complexities of both of the history of Russia and of the 'borderlands', not only in the Soviet period but before and after. ..."
"... Jeffrey Carr is one of the latter, and his familiarity with intelligence matters is clear from his organization of the annual "Suits and Spooks" Conference. I believe he was the first to raise questions about the DNC hack which didn't pass his smell test. ..."
"... One quick way to know their bias is the AC test. Google their name plus "Atlantic Council". Ridd fails badly. ..."
"... The Comey, Brennan, Mueller claim - indeed a central one upon which the recent indictment rests- that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian State agent that hacked the DNC- was discredited and put to rest last year by the forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his colleagues. The Guccifer 2.0 metadata was analyzed for its transmission speed, and based on the internet speeds to and from numerous test locations abroad and in the U.S., it was determined to have been impossible for the so-called Guccifer 2.0 to have hacked the DNC computers over the internet. The transmission speed however did correspond to the speed of the transfer to a thumb drive. Additionally, it was found that the data had been manipulated and split into two parts to simulate a July and a September transfer, when in fact the parts merge perfectly as single file, and where, according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be 100 to the 50th power. ..."
"... There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment. The depths that were plumbed to push the Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any honest accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note. ..."
"... It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced in the Soviet Union when no one trusted the contents in Pravda. ..."
"... What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons cases since Litvinenko? In the US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance is futile is very high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to their dictats. ..."
"... I agree that taken by itself, the Dzerzinsky thing would be an anomaly only and could be dismissed as "black humor" of a kind often found in hackers. However, taken with all the other evidence produced by Adam Carter, it becomes much more obviously an attempt to support a false flag "Russian hacker" narrative that otherwise is porous. ..."
"... You want us to believe that the GRU are so sloppy and so inexperienced that they would launch a hack on the DNC and not take every measure to ensure there was no link whatsoever to anything Russian? Any former intel officer worth a damn knows that an operation to disrupt the election in a country the size of the United States would start with a risk/reward assessment, would require a team of at least 100 persons and would not be writing any code that could in any way be traced to Russia. ..."
"... Doctrine-mongering and repeating birth of new faux-academic "entities", such as a "hybrid war" (any war is hybrid by definition), is a distinct feature of the Western "political science-military history" establishment. Galeotti, who for some strange reason passes as Russia "expert" is a perfect example of such "expertise" and doctrine-mongering. Military professionals largely met this "hybrid warfare" BS with disdain. ..."
"... I have to say that the more I look into this whole Russiagate affair, which is mostly in the minds of democrats (and a few republicans) and the MSM, the more it seems that there is indeed a foreign conspiracy to meddle in the internal affairs of the US (and in the presidential elections) but the meddling entity is not Russia. It is the British! ..."
"... So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don't question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven't been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax. ..."
Jul 20, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

As some commenters on SST seem still to have difficulty grasping that the presence of 'metadata' alluding to 'Iron Felix' in the 'Guccifer 2.0' material is strong evidence that the GRU were being framed over a leak, rather than that they were responsible for a hack, an update on the British end of the conspiracy seems in order.

If you look at the 'Lawfare' blog, in which a key figure is James Comey's crony Benjamin Wittes, you will find a long piece published last Friday, entitled 'Russia Indictment 2.0: What to Make of Mueller's Hacking Indictment.'

Among the authors, in addition to Wittes himself, is the sometime GCHQ employee Matt Tait. It appears that the former head of that organisation, the Blairite 'trusty' Robert Hannigan, who must know where a good few skeletons are buried, is a figure of some moment in the conspiracy.

(See https://www.lawfareblog.com... .)

It was Matt Tait who, using the 'Twitter' handle @pwnallthethings, identified the name and patronymic of Dzerzhinsky in the 'metadata' of the 'Guccifer 2.0' material on 15 June 2016, the day after Ellen Nakashima first disseminated the BS from 'CrowdStrike' in the 'WP.'

The story was picked up the following day in a report on the 'Ars Technica' site, and Tait's own account appeared on the 'Lawfare' site, to which he has been a regular contributor, on 28 July.

(See https://arstechnica.com/inf... ; https://www.lawfareblog.com... .)

According to the CV provided in conjunction with the new article:

'Matt Tait is a senior cybersecurity fellow at the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law at the University of Texas at Austin. Previously he was CEO of Capital Alpha Security, a consultancy in the UK, worked at Google Project Zero, was a principal security consultant for iSEC Partners, and NGS Secure, and worked as an information security specialist for GCHQ.'

As I have noted before on SST, a cursory examination of records at 'Companies House' establishes that 'Capital Alpha Security', which was supposed to have provided Tait with an – independent – source of income at the time he unearthed this 'smoking gun' incriminating the GRU, never did any business at all. So, a question arises: how was Tait making ends meet at that time: busking on the London underground, perhaps?

(See https://beta.companieshouse... .)

Actually, there has been a recent update in the records. Somewhat prematurely perhaps, there is an entry dated 24 July 2018, entitled 'Final Gazette dissolved via compulsory strike-off. This document is being processed and will be available in 5 days.'

The document, when available, may clarify a few loose ends, but the general picture seems clear. Last November, Tait filed 'dormant company accounts' for the company's first year in existence, up until February 2017. One can only do this if one has absolutely no revenue, and absolutely no expenditure. Not even the smallest contract to sort out malware on someone's computer, or to buy equipment for the office.

He then failed to file the 'Confirmation statement', which every company must is legally obliged to produce annually, if it is not to be struck off. This failure led to a 'First Gazette notice for compulsory strike-off' in May.

It is, of course, possible that at the time Tait set up the company he was genuinely intending to try to make a go of a consultancy, and simply got sidetracked by other opportunities.

However – speaking from experience – people who have set up small 'one man band' companies to market skills learnt in large organisations, and then go back into such organisations, commonly think it worth their while to spend the minimal amount of time required to file the documentation required to keep the company alive.

If one sees any realistic prospect that one may either want to or need to go back into the big wide world again, this is the sensible course of action: particularly now when, with the internet, filing the relevant documentation takes about half an hour a year, and costs a trivial sum.

However, Tait may well anticipate that there is there will never be any call for him to go back into the big wide world, as the large organisation in which he has now found employment is part of a 'Borgist' network. So much is evident from another entry on the 'Lawfare' site:

'Bobby Chesney is the Charles I. Francis Professor in Law and Associate Dean for Academic Affairs at the University of Texas School of Law. He also serves as the Director of UT-Austin's interdisciplinary research center the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law. His scholarship encompasses a wide range of issues relating to national security and the law, including detention, targeting, prosecution, covert action, and the state secrets privilege; most of it is posted here. Along with Ben Wittes and Jack Goldsmith, he is one of the co-founders of the blog.'

(See https://www.lawfareblog.com... .)

Also relevant here is the fact that, rather transparently, this placing of the GRU centre stage is bound up with the attempt to suggest that there is some kind of 'Gerasimov doctrine', designed to undermine the West by 'hybrid warfare.' Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed. In March, he published a piece on the 'Foreign Policy' site, under the title: 'I'm Sorry for Creating the 'Gerasimov Doctrine'; I was the first to write about Russia's infamous high-tech military strategy. One small problem: it doesn't exist.'

(See https://foreignpolicy.com/2... .)

If anyone wants to grasp what the Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, General Valery Gerasimov, was actually saying in the crucial February 2013 article which Galeotti was discussing, and how his thinking has developed subsequently, the place to look is, as so often, the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth.

Informed discussions by Charles Bartles and Roger McDermott are at https://www.armyupress.army... ; http://www.worldinwar.eu/wp... ; and https://jamestown.org/progr... .

In relation to the ongoing attempt to frame the GRU, it is material that, in his 2013 piece, Gerasimov harks back to two pivotal figures in the arguments of the interwar years. Of these, Georgy Isserson, the Jewish doctor's son from Kaunas who became a Civil War 'political commissar' and then a key associate of Mikhail Tukhachevsky, was the great pioneer theorist of 'deep operations.'

The ideas of the other, Aleksandr Svechin, the former Tsarist 'genstabist', born in Odessa into an ethnically Russian military family, who was the key opponent of Tukhachevky and Isserson in the arguments of the 'Twenties, provided key parts of the intellectual basis of the Gorbachev-era 'new thinking.'

The 'Ars Technica' article in which Tait's claims were initially disseminated opened:

'We still don't know who he is or whether he works for the Russian government, but one thing is for sure: Guccifer 2.0 – the nom de guerre of the person claiming he hacked the Democratic National Committee and published hundreds of pages that appeared to prove it – left behind fingerprints implicating a Russian-speaking person with a nostalgia for the country's lost Soviet era.'

In his 2013 article, Gerasimov harks back to the catastrophe which overcame the Red Army in June 1941. Ironically, this was the product of the Stalinist leadership's disregard of the cautions produced not only by Svechin, but by Isserson. In regard to the latter, the article remarks that:

'The fate of this "prophet of the Fatherland" unfolded tragically. Our country paid in great quantities of blood for not listening to the conclusions of this professor of the General Staff Academy.'

As it happens, while both Svechin and Tukhachevsky were shot by the heirs of 'Felix Edmundovich', the sentence of death on Isserson was commuted, and he spent the war in prison and labour camps, while others used his ideas to devastating effect against the Germans.

Quite clearly, the 'Guccifer 2.0' persona is a crude fabrication by someone who has absolutely no understanding of, or indeed interest in, the bitter complexities of both of the history of Russia and of the 'borderlands', not only in the Soviet period but before and after.

Using this criterion as a 'filter', the obvious candidates are traditional Anglo-Saxon 'Russophobes', like Sir Richard Dearlove and Christopher Steele, or the 'insulted and injured' of the erstwhile Russian and Soviet empires, so many of them from the 'borderlands', of the type of Victoria Nuland, or the various Poles, Ukrainians and Balts and Jews who have had so much influence on American policy.

(I should note that other Jews, not only in Russia, but outside, including in Israel, think quite differently, in particular as they are very well aware, as Isserson would have been, of the extent to which 'borderlands' nationalists were enthusiastic collaborators with the Germans in the 'Final Solution'. On this, there is a large and growing academic literature.)

It is not particularly surprising that many of the victims of the Russian and Soviet empires have enjoyed seeing the tables turned, and getting their own back. But it is rather far from clear that this makes for good intelligence or sound policy. We were unable to load Disqus. If you are a moderator please see our troubleshooting guide .


blue peacock , 2 days ago
How does the objective truth get disclosed in an environment of extreme deceit by so many parties?

How to trust western intelligence when they have such a long and sordid track record of deceit, lies and propaganda? At the same time there is such a long history of Russian and Chinese intelligence and information operations against the west.

Then there is the nexus among the highest levels of US law enforcement and intelligence as well as political elites in both parties and key individuals in the media complex.

We are living in a hall of mirrors and it seems the trend is towards confirmation bias in information consumption.

richardstevenhack , 2 days ago
Excellent post, especially the debunking of the 'Gerasimov doctrine' which I always thought was more hand-waving and Russian mind-reading.

It's important to realize that there are a number of people in the infosec community who have biases against Russia, just as there are in the general population. Then there are more cautious people, who recognize the difficulty in attributing a hack to any specific person absent solid, incontrovertible, non-circumstantial and non-spoofable (and preferably offline) evidence.

Tait doesn't appear to be one of the latter. Thomas Rid would be another. There are others.

Jeffrey Carr is one of the latter, and his familiarity with intelligence matters is clear from his organization of the annual "Suits and Spooks" Conference. I believe he was the first to raise questions about the DNC hack which didn't pass his smell test.

There are also a number of companies in infosec who rely on latching onto a particular strain of hacker, the more publicly exploitable for PR purposes the better, as a means of keeping the company name in front of potential high-profile and highly billable clients. CrowdStrike and its Russia obsession isn't the only one that's been tagged with that propensity.

Mandiant could be referred to as the "Chinese, all the time" company, for example. Richard Bejtlich was at Fireeye and the became Chief Security Officer when they acquired Mandiant. He spent quite a bit of effort on his blog warning about the Chinese military buildup as a huge threat to the US. He's former USAF so perhaps that's not surprising.

Bottom line: Confirmation bias is a real thing.

David Blake -> richardstevenhack , 5 hours ago
One quick way to know their bias is the AC test. Google their name plus "Atlantic Council". Ridd fails badly.
Barbara Ann , 2 days ago
Glad David's comment has been reproduced as a post in its own right, this is a critically important topic. IMO Matt Tait plays the role of midwife in this conspiracy. His Twitter thread

View Hide

mlnw , 2 days ago
The Comey, Brennan, Mueller claim - indeed a central one upon which the recent indictment rests- that Guccifer 2.0 was a Russian State agent that hacked the DNC- was discredited and put to rest last year by the forensics conducted by Bill Binney and his colleagues. The Guccifer 2.0 metadata was analyzed for its transmission speed, and based on the internet speeds to and from numerous test locations abroad and in the U.S., it was determined to have been impossible for the so-called Guccifer 2.0 to have hacked the DNC computers over the internet. The transmission speed however did correspond to the speed of the transfer to a thumb drive. Additionally, it was found that the data had been manipulated and split into two parts to simulate a July and a September transfer, when in fact the parts merge perfectly as single file, and where, according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be 100 to the 50th power.

As for the crude trace fingerprints (e.g. the referencing of Dzerzinsky), one of the Wikileaks data dumps (Vault 7 Marble) during a period when Assange was negotiating with the Administration - there were two at the time (Vault 7 Marble and Vault 7 Grasshopper), the release of which apparently enraged Mike Pompeo- was designed to obfuscate, fabricate and frame countries such as Russia, Iran or North Korea by pretending to be the target country, including in the use of target's alphabet and language.

VIPs has written numerous articles on this in Consortium News. See also the report by Patrick Lawrence Smith in The Nation at: https://www.thenation.com/a... . (It was apparently so hot at the time- and disputed by several other VIPs members- that The Nation sought an independent assessment by third party, though those comments were easily addressed and dismissed in seriatim by Binney in an annex to the article.)

Binney has explained his forensic analysis and conclusions at numerous forums, and in a sit-down with Secretary Pompeo in October, 2017- though Mueller, the FBI, and mainstream and some of the alternative press seem either deaf, dumb and blind to it all, or interested in discrediting the study. The irony is, I'd venture to guess, that Binney, with his 40 years of experience, including as Technical Director and technical guru at the NSA, is, even in retirement, more sophisticated in these matters than any one at the Agency, or the FBI, or CIA, or certainly, the Congressional Intelligence Committees. So, it is astounding that any or all of them could have, but did not, invite him to testify as an expert.

Moreover, the NSA has a record of every transmission, and also would have it on backup files. And, the FBI has been sitting on Seth Rich's computer and his communications with Wikileaks, and presumably has a report that it has not released. And of course, as Trump asked in his press conference, where's the DNC server, any or all of which would put this question to rest.

A recent interview with Binney can be found at:

Play Hide
mlnw -> mlnw , 2 hours ago
The last clause of the first paragraph should have said: "according to Binney, the probability of the split being a coincidence would be one over 100 to the 50th power
Jack -> David Habakkuk , a day ago
David

There is a pattern of abuse of formerly well regarded institutions to achieve the propaganda aims of the Deep State establishment. The depths that were plumbed to push the Iraq WMD falsehoods are well known. Yet no one was held to account nor was there any honest accounting of the abuse. There have been pretenses like the Owen inquiry that you note.

We see the same situation of sweeping under the rug malfeasance and even outright criminality through obfuscation and obstruction in the case of the meddling in the 2016 election by top officials in intelligence and law enforcement. Clearly less and less people are buying what the Deep State sells despite their overwhelming control of the media channels.

It seems that we are marching towards a credibility crisis similar to what was experienced in the Soviet Union when no one trusted the contents in Pravda.

What is to be gained by the leadership in Britain in promoting these biological weapons cases since Litvinenko? In the US it is quite apparent that the Deep State have become extremely powerful and the likelihood that Trump recognizes that resistance is futile is very high. Schumer may be proven right that they have six ways from Sunday to make you kowtow to their dictats.

Fred -> Jack , a day ago
Jack,

"Yet no one was held to account"

That was one of the changes being hoped for when Obama was first elected. Instead we got little, except for things such as bailed out bankers and the IRS scandal which lasted until the end of his 2nd term. The panic from the left over the 2016 election issues the are still going on is that the expected candidate isn't in office and they are being exposed. Whether they get prosecuted is another story.

http://taxprof.typepad.com/...

TTG , a day ago
I think Matt Tait, David Habakkuk and many others are reading far more into this Dzerzinsky thing than what it warrants. The government dependent ID cards used by my family while I was working as a clandestine case officer overseas were signed by Robert Ludlum. Intelligence officers often have an odd sense of humor.

On a different note, I fully endorse David Habakkuk's recommendation of the writings of Bartles, McDermott and many others at the Foreign Military Studies Office at Fort Leavenworth. They are top notch. I learned a lot from Tim Thomas many years ago.

richardstevenhack -> TTG , a day ago
I agree that taken by itself, the Dzerzinsky thing would be an anomaly only and could be dismissed as "black humor" of a kind often found in hackers. However, taken with all the other evidence produced by Adam Carter, it becomes much more obviously an attempt to support a false flag "Russian hacker" narrative that otherwise is porous.

I believe there is a phrase going something like "an attempt to add verisimilitude to an otherwise bald and unconvincing narrative."

Publius Tacitus -> TTG , a day ago
TTG,

You want us to believe that the GRU are so sloppy and so inexperienced that they would launch a hack on the DNC and not take every measure to ensure there was no link whatsoever to anything Russian? Any former intel officer worth a damn knows that an operation to disrupt the election in a country the size of the United States would start with a risk/reward assessment, would require a team of at least 100 persons and would not be writing any code that could in any way be traced to Russia.

smoothieX12 . , a day ago
Unfortunately, the original author of this claptrap, Mark Galeotti, who, I regret to say, is, like Tait, British, has now recanted and confessed.

Doctrine-mongering and repeating birth of new faux-academic "entities", such as a "hybrid war" (any war is hybrid by definition), is a distinct feature of the Western "political science-military history" establishment. Galeotti, who for some strange reason passes as Russia "expert" is a perfect example of such "expertise" and doctrine-mongering. Military professionals largely met this "hybrid warfare" BS with disdain.

ancient archer , a day ago
I have to say that the more I look into this whole Russiagate affair, which is mostly in the minds of democrats (and a few republicans) and the MSM, the more it seems that there is indeed a foreign conspiracy to meddle in the internal affairs of the US (and in the presidential elections) but the meddling entity is not Russia. It is the British!

So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don't question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven't been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax.

This needs to be looked at in more detail by the alternative media and well informed commentators like the host of this site.

[Jul 20, 2018] 'Make them pariahs': how shaming Trump aides became a resistance tactic by Sam Wolfson

Hat tip to caucus99percent.com
Notable quotes:
"... @snoopydawg ..."
"... @gulfgal98 ..."
"... The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce. ..."
Jul 11, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

After another week saw leading Republicans accosted in public places, many on the left are arguing that harassment is legitimate

The day after Sarah Sanders was asked to leave the Red Hen restaurant in Virginia, Maxine Waters, the representative for the California 43rd who has become a leader of the anti-Trump resistance within Congress, addressed a rally in Los Angeles. Up until that point, national Democratic leaders had mostly urged respectful protest in response to the Trump administration.

"Let's make sure we show up wherever we have to show up," she said to cheers from the crowd. "And if you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you create a crowd. And you push back on them. And you tell them they're not welcome any more, anywhere."

In the days that followed, other leading Democrats, among them Nancy Pelosi and David Axelrod, distanced themselves from the comments and called for civility. Trump personally attacked Waters, calling her an "extraordinarily low IQ person". But Waters gave voice, and perhaps legitimacy, to what has become a prominent form of activism since Trump took office: accosting members of his team in public places.

Over the weekend, Steve Bannon was called "a piece of trash" by a heckler at a bookstore; a bartender gave Stephen Miller the middle finger, apparently causing Miller to throw away $80 of sushi he'd just bought in disgust; and Mitch McConnell was chased out of a restaurant in Kentucky by protesters, who followed him to this car yelling "turtle head" and "we know where you live".

These follow similar encounters for other members of Trump's top team. The homeland security secretary, Kirstjen Nielsen, was confronted by protesters chanting "shame" while she ate at a Mexican restaurant. Last week, Scott Pruitt was accosted by Kristin Mink while he was eating lunch. Mink, a teacher, held her two-year-old child as she asked him to resign "before your scandals push you out". Days later, Pruitt did resign, and although he was probably asked to do so by Trump, in his letter he cited "the unrelenting attacks on me" as his reason for leaving.

After each case, the merits of such an approach have been debated – many have called for civility or argued that protesters leave themselves open to attack if they pursue Trump-like techniques. There has been some consensus that encounters like Mink's, which are eloquent and non-aggressive, are more acceptable than when protesters chant personal attacks or use threatening language

... ... ...

Submitted by edg on Thu, 07/19/2018 - 2:08pm
If you stand with Markos ... @Wink

... you don't stand with most of C99 and most of progressive society. He is wrong, on this and many other things. Where was his (and your) outrage when Obama was droning American citizens, destroying Libya and creating Europe's current refugee crisis, and helping Saudi Arabia wreak havoc on Houthi civilians? How many pies did he throw then? How many Obama administration officials did he publicly shame?

Submitted by snoopydawg on Thu, 07/19/2018 - 1:37pm Would that have gone for shaming members of Obama's @Wink

administration too? He did many of the same things that Trump is doing to immigrants. He deported more of them then any president including 56% of them who hadn't committed any crimes. How about shaming them for his drone policies, killing 3 Americans without due process, bombing wedding parties and then the people who came to their rescue? Or the many, many other things he and his admin members did that were absolutely heinous?

Should we have done that to the people in the Bush administration too or how far back should we have been shaming people who worked in a president's administration?

Maybe we should be shaming the democrats who have been voting with the republicans to pass Trump's legislation, cabinet picks and justices? Where would it stop?


Submitted by thanatokephaloides on Thu, 07/19/2018 - 5:49pm

where it stops @snoopydawg

Maybe we should be shaming the democrats who have been voting with the republicans to pass Trump's legislation, cabinet picks and justices? Where would it stop?

Where it should -- with the non-voluntarily-complicit.

Submitted by Amanda Matthews on Thu, 07/19/2018 - 9:50pm When political life is reduced to @Wink

the publicly harassing, embarrssing, and running off the oposition then we're really fucked. Or do you seriousy think those tactics won't be repaid in kind?

on public shaming.
#7
Especially in public restaurants.
There is no better way to protest this admin than to shame them in a public place, confront them while they attempt to swallow a bite of pork chop.

up 0 users have voted. --

I'm tired of this back-slapping "Isn't humanity neat?" bullshit. We're a virus with shoes, okay? That's all we are. - Bill Hicks

Politics is the entertainment branch of industry. - Frank Zappa Submitted by gulfgal98 on Thu, 07/19/2018 - 12:00pm Critical thinking skills seem to be non-existent over there.

Again, Markos and his staff refuse to discuss policy from a positive perspective. Instead, they focus their readers on the outrage de jour and tribalism. The entire purpose of that site is a massive propaganda push designed to keep us divided. And the narrative they keep pushing are not only divisive, but extremely dangerous.

I rarely go there any more, mostly because I would like to keep as many of my remaining brain cells intact. But when I have visited that place, it is a very frightening place to see how Markos (post purge) has herded the remaining members into a small corral, all of them nodding in agreement with whatever gruel Markos and his front pagers are serving up. Submitted by snoopydawg on Thu, 07/19/2018 - 6:29pm Daily Kos should change its name to @gulfgal98

The Daily Tabloid. Or The Daily Gossip because of some of the topics covered there. The new McCarthyism will destroy this country even more:

BAR Book Forum: Jeremy Kuzmarov's and John Marciano's "The Russians are Coming, Again"
"The American people have been constantly manipulated and made to fear the Russian threat when it is the United States that has been the aggressive power."

In this series, we ask acclaimed authors to answer five questions about their book. This week's featured authors are Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano . Kuzmarov is Jay P. Walker Assistant Professor of American History, University of Tulsa. Marciano is Professor Emeritus at SUNY Cortland. Their book is The Russians Are Coming, Again: The First Cold War as Tragedy, the Second as Farce.

Roberto Sirvent: How can your book help BAR readers understand the current political and social climate?

Jeremy Kuzmarov and John Marciano: Our book provides a historical perspective on contemporary affairs by showing how the Russo-phobia that has been prevalent in our political discourse over the last four to five years has deep and long historical roots, and has often been used by government leaders to turn public attention away from domestic inequalities by channeling societal resources towards the military sector. During the early Cold War, a period of labor militancy and momentum for the expansion of the New Deal was destroyed by McCarthyism and the Cold War.The Korean War brought on huge military budgets that have never left us and an expansion of the U.S. overseas military base network. These policies were underlain by exaggerated views about the Soviet Union which were stoked by political elites, who had worked for companies that reaped enormous profit from the permanent warfare state. The same forces are behind the renewed efforts to demonize Russian President Vladimir Putin and exaggerate the Russian threat, with serious adverse consequences for society that have already been evident. The consequences include a revitalization of the arms race, waging of proxy wars, and a further poisoning of the domestic political culture through the reinvigoration of a McCarthyist discourse and tactics.

"During the early Cold War, a period of labor militancy and momentum for the expansion of the New Deal was destroyed by McCarthyism and the Cold War."

More: https://www.blackagendareport.com/bar-book-forum-jeremy-kuzmarovs-and-john-marcianos-russians-are-coming-again up

[Jul 18, 2018] That information was no more the private property of the DNC and Clinton Campaign than a plan to rob a bank belongs to the robbers. Isn't that so, Mr. Mueller?

Jul 18, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

ill-gotten goods are undeserving of protection of law. The DNC and Podesta had no legitimate expectation of privacy in their combinations to defraud the public and steal elections.

It's been imputed that the Russians did this to damage the reputation of Hillary Clinton. To take the alleged damage to reputation angle to its conclusion, truth is an entirely sufficient defense to any charge of libel. What was revealed by an alleged hack was the truth, something that is entirely lacking in the rest of this affair.

As for the alleged theft and public release of email, ill-gotten goods are undeserving of protection of law. The DNC and Podesta had no legitimate expectation of privacy in their combinations to defraud the public and steal elections.

The Russian GRU is accused of revealing that the people who run the DNC and Clinton campaign committee colluded with each other to steal the nomination. The allegedly hacked emails show what they really did and thought during the fraudulent nomination of Hillary Clinton. It might be argued, that whomever revealed the truth actually did a public service for the American people. An odd sort of "act of war," that.

Finally, individual officials and military officers have a limited immunity and are not normally indicted by foreign states for intelligence activities such as electronic surveillance and hacking across borders. That is where the element of harm comes in. The only real precedent for this is the Rainbow Warrior case. In 1985, French intelligence officers blew up and sank a Greenpeace ship by that name anchored in Auckland, NZ harbour, killing a passenger, a Dutch photographer. A UN arbitrator held in that case the French agents were not immune under customary international law to prosecution in a New Zealand court and could be individually tried and jailed, but only because of the death of the victim as part of "a criminal act of violence against property in New Zealand . . . done without regard for innocent civilians." Greenpeace was additionally awarded damages in the UK under international Maritime Law because the vessel was a British-flagged ship.

Also bear in mind, the US and UK both provide immunity to their own intelligence officers and law enforcement officers for hacking and related computer crimes committed against foreign powers. The UK takes that a step further and exempts police officers for domestic hacking:

See, https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/15/intelligence-officers-ha...

This is a dangerous precedent, and the likely result is to ignite retaliation and further exacerbate U.S.-Russian tensions. The entire staffs of the NSA, GCHQ and GRU could be similarly "prosecuted," but what will that accomplish? Even if every word of the indictment is fact, the indictment itself violates the norms of international law and this latest "Russiagate" escalation by Mueller seems intended to ratchet up the New Cold War.

That is why "Russiagate" is a legal sham, in my opinion. Even if the alleged Russian hack of the DNC email actually happened as claimed, and even if the hack was with bad intent, there was no real crime or harm in the release of that information. That information was no more the private property of the DNC and Clinton Campaign than a plan to rob a bank belongs to the robbers. Isn't that so, Mr. Mueller?

[Jul 09, 2018] China will never be able to initiate a land invasion against the Western Hemisphere

Jul 09, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

shortonoil -> porter_wins Fri, 07/06/2018 - 19:39 Permalink

China will never be able to initiate a land invasion against the Western Hemisphere. Period; and when the US fleet leaves the South China Sea it will be a cold day in hell. Now which member of MI6 leaked that damn memo? Trump's overture to the Russians is really making them dig.

[Jul 09, 2018] Presstitutes from BBC report lies again

Jul 09, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Daniel , Jul 8, 2018 2:07:03 PM | 53

LOL. I see BBC is today reporting:

"Almost all the Syrians who fled to the border with Jordan from an army offensive have now returned to their homes, a top UN official says."

Just days ago they reported that "The offensive in Syria's south-west had earlier forced more than 320,000 people to flee," and were bleating that Jordan should open their border and let them all in.

Today "Anders Pedersen, the UN humanitarian co-ordinator in Jordan, said that "around 150 to 200 people (are) right now at the border".

320,000 became <200 in a matter of days. LOL

So, once again we see that the civilians were fleeing the fighting, NOT the Syrian government. And once the SAR regains control of an area, almost everyone returns.

Well, at least BBC online did sort of admit it.

[Jul 08, 2018] Syria - OPCW Issues First Report Of Chemical Weapon Attack in Douma

From comment of chet380, Jul 7, 2018 7:03:08 PM (19): "Notwithstanding the counter-evidence and the strong counter-arguments, the decision by the OPCW to include references to 'chlorinated chemical compounds' guaranteed that the 'attack' scenario would continue to be advanced.Is it possible that the UK, US and/or France put pressure on the OPCW to make the inclusion so they would not have to admit they were wrong and that they were fooled? The fraud of the White Helmets should have been exposed by the OPCW inspection, but this interim report will give them continued life."
Notable quotes:
"... Interestingly the MI6 outlet in Coventry, the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR), does not confirm a 'gas' incident. ..."
"... The "Sarin" organophosphate use the 'rebels' claimed is thereby debunked. No degradation products of such chemicals were found. The "various chlorinated organic chemicals" are unsurprising. Chlorine is widely used for water purification and cleaning and "chlorinated organic chemicals" will be found in any household. ..."
"... The preliminary OPCW report says nothing about the concentrations in which these substances were found. Without knowing the concentrations, which may may be extremely low, one can not come to further conclusion. The report includes none of the witness statements the fact finding mission took. In various TV reports the medical personal of the one hospital involved in the stunt said that none of their patients were affected by chlorine or chemical weapons. ..."
"... After the 'rebels' claimed the 'chemical attack' and published their staged videos of stacked bodies U.S. President Trump tweeted that he would retaliate for the strike. Politically he could not pull back from that even when Secretary of Defense Mattis voiced his doubts about the 'rebel' claims. Trump attacked Syria with a series of cruise missiles most of which were shot down by the Syrian air defense. A civil chemical laboratory was destroyed during the attack but no one was hurt. ..."
"... They cannot admit everything was staged. And the report is not at all clear, so anyone can give it the desired spin. ..."
"... They didn't find anything relevant. See Appendix 3 of the report. There's no mention of traces of chlorine which I would find hard to believe anyway, they refer to chloride Cl- as in NaCl (table salt) or organic chlorides, of which they do name at least one. ..."
"... The Guardian employs Olivia Solon, a digital journalist (whose specialty is in writing about and recommending particular IT consumer hardware or software products) based in California, with no knowledge or access to knowledge about Syria, its politics or history, to write an article defending the White Helmets and defame the investigative journalists Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. That practice seems to be par for the course for The Guardian and other print and online newspapers. ..."
"... And yes, the corporate MSM is definitely profit-driven. When "news" was separate from "entertainment," there was some free press possible, but once they were combined, any imaginary wall between sponsors and newscasters was removed. ..."
"... Here in the US, CBS was founded by William Paley, who had been in charge of radio propaganda for the US Army Office of Psychological Warfare. CBS was owned by Westinghouse, which became the world's largest military contractor during WW II. ..."
"... Neither CBS and NBC ever generated even 5% of their parent companies revenues. The real profits were in consumer products and war. And so, not just their news, but all of their programming promoted world views that encouraged consumption and war. ..."
"... Almost all reporters covering international news are working for the various government and private intelligence agencies/think tanks and many domestic reporters as well. ..."
"... This has been the case for over 50 years if not a century. Many of the critical reports are likely written by the agencies/think tanks. Many CIA interns work at MSM for example and reporters are recruited as early as college if not high school through thr corporate government education system. ..."
"... Regarding comments of journalists, the problem may not always be with them. There have been countless discussions on the influence of intelligence agencies. Most people would choose to do the right thing when given the choice. However, if the choices are following orders or "suicide by nailgun", most people would choose to live another day. ..."
"... The British-created Anglo-American funded black propaganda organisation, the so-called White Helmets were the primary source for the claims of Sarin use by the SAG in Douma. In as just world, the White Helmets as proven liars would now become international pariahs. That they will still be hailed as heroes in the West and western MSM so just how sick the West and western MSM really are. Perhaps now that the OPCW is free to cast blame for "chemical weapons incidents", they should name and shame the United Kingdom for its black propaganda. ..."
"... Well, we all knew a false flag op was pending. So here it is. Also Trump is a POS. ..."
"... When the White Helmets and the rebels staged the 'Douma' chemical attack they were probably expecting that Douma would not be liberated and that no serious inspection would take place to debunk the 'fake' attack. That was bad luck for them. Contrary to the other chemical "attacks" locations, an inspection on location has taken place early enough and the masks may be falling. ..."
"... There are critically important information here from Vanessa Beelley False Flag Fail: How Syrian Civilians Derailed White Helmet 'Chemical' Stunt in Eastern Ghouta that Bernhardt has not mentioned. ..."
"... The White Helmets specifically stated that the protesters had ruined their chemical attack and ruined their communications with the UN, and that the Americans would not come to their assistance because of it. This incident explains important aspects of the false flag: ..."
"... 1) So close to impending defeat, the terrorists were really desperate to induce the Americans to save them, and really believed they would do so; ..."
"... the conflicting signals given out by the MI6 proxies SOHR I would read as a damage limitation act specifically in response to the civilian protest; ..."
"... It would appear that MI6 feared news of this protest would be spread, so that they needed to protect their proxies. ..."
"... Unfortunately, despite this information being published by Vanessa Beeley, I haven't seen any other mention of it. The protesters endangered their lives by this protest, at least one of them [or another hostage? - this is not clear] was shot dead for it, and all of them were sentenced to death. They deserve due publicity for it and it is really important to an understanding of the incident as a whole. ..."
"... Bernhardt, I am afraid I don't share your apparent confidence in this OPCW report. It is far too little and lopsided after months of investigation, and appears to be designed to test the waters for a decision confirming that chlorine was used as a weapon, and to coordinate with the MSM to prepare the ground for such a decision. In that case, the MSM reaction to the report is highly consistent with such an objective. ..."
"... Why did the the report make no caveats about the chlorine compounds, why did they include no data about concentrations, why did they emphasise the chain of custody of the (probably trivial) chrorine compound samples (and only those samples), why no information on witness testimony, why no mention of the witness testimony in the Hague, why mention (totally irrelevant) testimony of alleged witnesses in Turkey and biological samples taken in Turkey for which no plausible chain of custody exists? ..."
"... This report is a scandal, an outrage. This report itself is a false flag, it is designed to appease those observers who know the incident was a false flag by using carefully ambiguous wording, while preparing the ground for a full-blown 99% dishonest and 100% misleading report condemning the Syrian government. ..."
"... For Trump self inflicted ego wound somebody will pay. ..."
"... If the OPCW can no longer be trusted; then what? The U.S. has done an admirable job of destroying trust between countries. ..."
"... Nice article, however I tend to disagree partially on the last part, the US administration and the alleged rebels are two faces of the same coins, rebels are funded by the administration from various sources and they acr in response to commands from it, see the southern command operations where this approach of command was openly divulged by various reports and accounts. The reason for the Administration to get into Syria was to further weaken the middle eastern countries for a specific and obvious reason, and each strike and wall destroyed goes into this direction..the bigger picture explains it all.. ..."
"... So, as expected, this latest OPCW report will have no effect on the establishment narrative. The good guys vs bad guys scenario is the only approved version, and with no alternative versions being offered in the MSM, it is the one that the most people will believe. ..."
"... I suspect some of the stupidest staged events are just experiments to monitor how many people will simply buy anything. ..."
Jul 08, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Syria - OPCW Issues First Report Of 'Chemical Weapon Attack' in Douma

On April 7 2018 Syrian 'rebels' claimed that the Syrian government used chlorine gas and Sarin in an attack on the besieged Douma suburb near the Syrian capital Damascus. They published a series of videos which showed the dead bodies of mainly women and children.

During the night the incident allegedly happened Douma was hit with artillery and air strikes in retaliation for earlier deadly attacks by some 'rebels' splinter groups on Damascus city. Jaish al-Islam, the main 'rebel' group in Douma, had already agreed to leave towards Idleb governorate.

The claim of the 'chemical attack' was made shortly after U.S. President Trump had announced that he wanted U.S. troops to leave Syria. It was designed to "pull him back in" which it indeed did.

Moon of Alabama published several pieces on the issue:

It seemed obvious from the very first claims of the 'gas attack' that it did not happen at all. The Syrian government had no motive to use any chemical weapon or an irritant like chlorine in Douma. It had already won. The incident was obviously staged, like others before it, to drag the U.S. into a new attack on Syria.

Even a prominent opposition outlet said that no 'chemical attack' had taken place. As noted on April 9:

Interestingly the MI6 outlet in Coventry, the Syrian Observatory For Human Rights (SOHR), does not confirm a 'gas' incident. In its version of events some 40 people died after their shelter collapsed:

The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights issued a higher death toll, saying at least 80 people were killed in Douma, including around 40 who died from suffocation. But it said the suffocations were the result of shelters collapsing on people inside them.

Main stream media, which have quoted SOHR for years, now ignore it and report of a 'chemical attack' as if it were a proven reality.

The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) send a Fact Finding Mission (FFM) to Douma and investigated the incident. Today it published an interim report and some technical results:

OPCW designated labs conducted analysis of prioritised samples. The results show that no organophosphorous nerve agents or their degradation products were detected in the environmental samples or in the plasma samples taken from alleged casualties. Along with explosive residues, various chlorinated organic chemicals were found in samples from two sites, for which there is full chain of custody. Work by the team to establish the significance of these results is on-going. The FFM team will continue its work to draw final conclusions.

The "Sarin" organophosphate use the 'rebels' claimed is thereby debunked. No degradation products of such chemicals were found. The "various chlorinated organic chemicals" are unsurprising. Chlorine is widely used for water purification and cleaning and "chlorinated organic chemicals" will be found in any household.

In the technical notes of the OPCW report note that one of its laboratory found "dichloroacetic acid", "trichloroacetic acid", "chloral hydrate", "trichlorophenol" and "chlorphenol" in some of the samples its fact finding mission took at the claimed incident sites. These are all substances that are no surprise in any upbuild environment and especially within any home. Dichloroacetic acid" is for example "a trace product of the chlorination of drinking water". Chloral hydrate is likewise "a minor side-product of the chlorination of water when organic residues such as humic acids are present". The other substances are also not uncommon and of various household uses.

The other OPCW laboratory found only "No CWC-scheduled chemicals" and "2,4,6-trinitrotoluene" residues in the samples. Trinitrotoluene, also known as TNT, is an explosive widely used in military ammunition. The second laboratory does not report the chlorinated organic chemicals the other laboratory found.

The preliminary OPCW report says nothing about the concentrations in which these substances were found. Without knowing the concentrations, which may may be extremely low, one can not come to further conclusion. The report includes none of the witness statements the fact finding mission took. In various TV reports the medical personal of the one hospital involved in the stunt said that none of their patients were affected by chlorine or chemical weapons.

After the 'rebels' claimed the 'chemical attack' and published their staged videos of stacked bodies U.S. President Trump tweeted that he would retaliate for the strike. Politically he could not pull back from that even when Secretary of Defense Mattis voiced his doubts about the 'rebel' claims. Trump attacked Syria with a series of cruise missiles most of which were shot down by the Syrian air defense. A civil chemical laboratory was destroyed during the attack but no one was hurt.

The now published preliminary OPCW report reinforces the doubts about the 'rebel' claims. There was no 'chemical attack' in Douma. The incident was staged.

One hopes that Trump has learned from this episode and will in future refrain from violent threats over incidents for which no plausible and vetted evidence is provided.

Posted by b on July 6, 2018 at 03:23 PM | Permalink

Comments


Zanon , Jul 6, 2018 3:57:54 PM | 1

Remember the propaganda in the western media and among politicians, they lied and lied, and people like us here were right in our doubts.

Western media again act as warcriminal psyop agent, not to mention a useful idiot for the terrorists!

Ort , Jul 6, 2018 4:03:05 PM | 2
Thanks for this report, even though in my case you're "preaching to the choir".

I wish I could share your closing optimism: "One hopes that Trump has learned from this episode and will in future refrain from violent threats over incidents for which no plausible and vetted evidence is provided."

Hope springs eternal. But even though I'm not rabidly anti-Trump, I think he will remain unwilling to refrain, or is incapable of refraining, from impulsively responding with bluster, bombast, and chauvinistic bumptiousness when his buttons are pushed, regardless of the validity of the stimulus.

Trump, whose narcissism is second to no one's, is devoid of the introspective humility contemplated by the axiom "Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me"; his ego will not process the possibility that he can ever be fooled.

Alas! Trump is definitely a "Threaten first and ask questions later" kind of guy.

psychohistorian , Jul 6, 2018 4:13:31 PM | 3
Thanks for the report b. I was surfing the net as I prepared a meal and saw that the BBC is pushing this hard.

The BBC is even writing about the April chemical weapon scam as being added proof.....sad

The elite keep trying to start a war with anyone to keep the focus off their failure as the "leaders of the free world" BS. When are the elite going to realize their temper tantrums aren't working?

I hope they don't get their shooting war and I hope their economic war provides their final undoing.....think of the waste of human and other resources over the past 70 years.....let alone the centuries that the private finance/property scam has been going on.

Yag , Jul 6, 2018 4:24:04 PM | 4
And liquid chlorine (household bleach) combined with another common household chemical used around the world will release chlorine gas.
Pnyx , Jul 6, 2018 4:38:34 PM | 5
Still, Ard-Tagesschau says the following (originally in German): "In the battles for the Syrian rebel stronghold Duma, chlorine gas was apparently used in April. The OPCW found traces of this in gas cylinder residues."

Sure enough I agree with you B, but for the MSM the OPCW report reads different.

They cannot admit everything was staged. And the report is not at all clear, so anyone can give it the desired spin.

b , Jul 6, 2018 5:04:07 PM | 6
"The OPCW found traces of this in gas cylinder residues." Claiming that the OPCW found "traces of chlorine" is like claiming one found "traces of oxygen" or "traces of hydrogen" when one found water (H2O).

The occurrence of a basic element in a compound is not a "trace" of the basic element. That's chemistry 001. Journalists nowadays seem to lack most basics of higher education.

Hmpf , Jul 6, 2018 5:14:09 PM | 7
@5 Pynx

They didn't find anything relevant. See Appendix 3 of the report. There's no mention of traces of chlorine which I would find hard to believe anyway, they refer to chloride Cl- as in NaCl (table salt) or organic chlorides, of which they do name at least one.

What to expect from the 'Tagesschau' - same old, same old. They're making stuff up again, almost certainly out of willful ignorance and bias.

@6 b
I figure it's even worse than that. They're not even asking the most basic question: Am I a competent person?
My guess is a great many of these folks avoid asking that question on purpose.

Jen , Jul 6, 2018 6:06:36 PM | 8
Pnyx @ 5, B @ 6, Hmpf @ 7:

It would seem that a common (and deliberate) ploy used by the MSM these days is to use journalists with no particular knowledge, experience or insight in an area to write articles that need that knowledge or experience.

The Guardian employs Olivia Solon, a digital journalist (whose specialty is in writing about and recommending particular IT consumer hardware or software products) based in California, with no knowledge or access to knowledge about Syria, its politics or history, to write an article defending the White Helmets and defame the investigative journalists Eva Bartlett and Vanessa Beeley. That practice seems to be par for the course for The Guardian and other print and online newspapers.

Plus The Guardian and others rely on dubious sources like Bellingcat and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, whose credentials are laughable at best, as "experts" in their chosen areas of reporting.

All the Western MSM are now entirely driven by the pursuit of sales revenue and profit and are now no different from outlets peddling entertainment. No surprise really when news media outlets are now owned by the same individuals or corporations that own film studios, TV stations, online media and TV channels, book and comics publishers, and games publishers.

Daniel , Jul 6, 2018 6:35:53 PM | 9
Jen @8. Great point on the strategy of using "journalists" with no background in the topic they're tasked to 'report."

And yes, the corporate MSM is definitely profit-driven. When "news" was separate from "entertainment," there was some free press possible, but once they were combined, any imaginary wall between sponsors and newscasters was removed.

Still, considering who owns the MSM, I'd say their main purpose is not to sell commercials, but to sell the most profitable "products" of their owners.

Here in the US, CBS was founded by William Paley, who had been in charge of radio propaganda for the US Army Office of Psychological Warfare. CBS was owned by Westinghouse, which became the world's largest military contractor during WW II.

NBC was owned by GE, which was also one of the largest military contractors in the world.

Neither CBS and NBC ever generated even 5% of their parent companies revenues. The real profits were in consumer products and war. And so, not just their news, but all of their programming promoted world views that encouraged consumption and war.

Pft , Jul 6, 2018 6:56:32 PM | 10

Almost all reporters covering international news are working for the various government and private intelligence agencies/think tanks and many domestic reporters as well.

This has been the case for over 50 years if not a century. Many of the critical reports are likely written by the agencies/think tanks. Many CIA interns work at MSM for example and reporters are recruited as early as college if not high school through thr corporate government education system.

Everyone likes to supplement their income and many are convinced its their patriotic duty to disseminate propaganda. For some its a chance to join the elite class, even at a low level. Obviously getting the 6-8 corporate entities that own 80% of the media to go along is not difficult especially as those who go rogue will be punished by members of the business roundtable responsible for most advertising , which would of course dry up as punishment

Now monitoring the internet and social media with big data analytics allows almost Total Information Awareness. They can see in real time whats working and to what extent and what is not. They can then fill holes or modify the story as needed. They know they dont need to get 100% believability. This is why they have not shut down dissenting comments. They are useful, for now.

I suspect some of the stupidest staged events are just experiments to monitor how many people will simply buy anything. At some point they will feel confident enough to simulate an alien invasion of beings capable of taking human form. This will necessitate martial law which thw fearful will gladly accept, and a global governement led by the countries with the largest space force. Funny how the US still needs Russian Rockets to launch satellites so its Space Force has a way to go yet. I guess I wont be around for the fun since time is not a friend of old men

Ian , Jul 6, 2018 7:01:03 PM | 11

Regarding comments of journalists, the problem may not always be with them. There have been countless discussions on the influence of intelligence agencies. Most people would choose to do the right thing when given the choice. However, if the choices are following orders or "suicide by nailgun", most people would choose to live another day.

Timothy Hagios , Jul 6, 2018 7:05:17 PM | 12
Pft @ 10

Speaking of experiments to monitor how many people will believe anything, some good claims from the MSM come to mind: 40% of North Koreans are on crystal meth, the Russians killed the last clown in Aleppo, and the Breatharians (people who purportedly survive on only air and sunlight).

james , Jul 6, 2018 7:06:44 PM | 13
thanks b... unfortunately, i tend to see it much like what @8 jen says... these folks are unsure about their next pay check and are happy to write with a chatham house /scl / cambridge analytica slant knowing what is expected of them.. they ask no questions and are unwilling to articulate the false flags that have shaped all this discussion of opcw and chemical attacks in syria.. in this respect i also agree with @5 pnyx... they are unwilling or unable to raise these questions for fear of dismissal.. more and more people recognize what a poor state the msm is in today.. that is my hope anyway..
ben , Jul 6, 2018 7:47:04 PM | 14
b said:"One hopes that Trump has learned from this episode and will in future refrain from violent threats over incidents for which no plausible and vetted evidence is provided."

Unfortunately, probably no one here in the land of theater, will ever hear about this report. As to DJT, he'll do whatever it takes to enhance his appearance with the morons. His learning curve only bends toward his own enhancement. To him and his minions, truth doesn't matter...

Mark2 , Jul 6, 2018 8:19:28 PM | 15
There's unlikely to be any real investigative journalism regarding opcw reports, considering the papers in uk are owned by mega millionaires who profit from war and the Middle East land grab.oil ect. Plus the owners featured largely in the off shore tax haven leaks- relavent here not so much regarding tax, but what that hidden money is invested in, Gun running, slave labour, buying rebels? It's a small world, media moguls own it.
bevin , Jul 6, 2018 8:33:50 PM | 16
Try these Mark2

https://skwawkbox.org/2018/07/07/bbcs-outright-fake-news-tonight-on-douma-chlorine-attack/
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/07/07/video-bbc-news-joins-fake-news-scandal-over-opcws-douma-chlorine-report/

Ghost Ship , Jul 6, 2018 8:43:25 PM | 17
The British-created Anglo-American funded black propaganda organisation, the so-called White Helmets were the primary source for the claims of Sarin use by the SAG in Douma. In as just world, the White Helmets as proven liars would now become international pariahs. That they will still be hailed as heroes in the West and western MSM so just how sick the West and western MSM really are. Perhaps now that the OPCW is free to cast blame for "chemical weapons incidents", they should name and shame the United Kingdom for its black propaganda.
Mark2 , Jul 6, 2018 8:55:31 PM | 18
Thanks Bevin @ 16
I do follow that site, but had'nt looked recently. Really Good, no doubt your aware of 'the canary ' good article on this subject! Both sites I recommend to one and all.
fast freddy , Jul 6, 2018 9:01:43 PM | 19
Well, we all knew a false flag op was pending. So here it is. Also Trump is a POS.
Daniel , Jul 6, 2018 9:24:19 PM | 20
Thanks, bevin for the links to yet another site I'll be trying to find the time to visit. :-)

Both of those articles lay out the BBC BS succinctly and clearly.

Virgile , Jul 6, 2018 10:12:59 PM | 21

When the White Helmets and the rebels staged the 'Douma' chemical attack they were probably expecting that Douma would not be liberated and that no serious inspection would take place to debunk the 'fake' attack. That was bad luck for them. Contrary to the other chemical "attacks" locations, an inspection on location has taken place early enough and the masks may be falling.

james , Jul 6, 2018 10:40:08 PM | 22
@21 virgile... exactly.... all the money the usa/uk have sunk into the white helmets and etc - and very little to nothing to show for it..
chet380 , Jul 6, 2018 10:59:46 PM | 23
@3 Psychohistorian --

Your early call that the MSM would go with the chlorine findings to support the attack is proving true across the board -- there is not a chance that an admission of having been mistaken is going to happen.

adamski , Jul 7, 2018 12:19:58 AM | 24
Chloral Hydrate...?! This was an old school sedative medication. Seems appropriate somehow.
V , Jul 7, 2018 12:36:26 AM | 25
Finally, straight shooting from the OPCW. About time...
Red Ryder , Jul 7, 2018 1:20:06 AM | 26
It is Highly Likely that all the gas attacks were staged as false flags. Exceedingly Likely.
fairleft , Jul 7, 2018 1:37:18 AM | 27
james @13 I think it's clearly true, not just a hope, that fewer and fewer people take the media seriously. Those who still watch mainstream and cable 'news' programs are a pretty small minority, and the MSNBC/FOX side of that is probably acknowledged even by most of its consumers, as 'my side' comfort food rather than 'news' as we used to understand it.

The media's lock-step Western-Empire perspective _is_ frightening, but we also need to remember recent election results that have gone against the empire's wishes. Just a couple days ago in Mexico, for example. Real alternative and real (whether socialist, left, right, or libertarian) populist media is having an impact, I think, and we may be able to turn things around in the West before the next world wars start.

BM , Jul 7, 2018 2:00:06 AM | 28

There are critically important information here from Vanessa Beelley False Flag Fail: How Syrian Civilians Derailed White Helmet 'Chemical' Stunt in Eastern Ghouta that Bernhardt has not mentioned.

Vanessa Beeley interviewed at least two witnesses who - seeing that the government forces were about to liberate Hamouriya village in Douma from the terrorists under whose control they had suffered for 6 years and thereby feeling empowered - on 6th March at 3pm decided to publicly protest against the terrorists by marching through Hamouriya carrying Syrian national flags. They were met by members of the White Helmets and the terrorists, who blamed them explicitly for ruining their chemical weapons false flag.

Critically importantly, the White Helmets had already released news for the claimed false flag that morning and the night before, and they had already collected 30 dead bodies from all over Douma and brought them to the hospital, and had already started filming.

The protest critically negated the propaganda message of the false flag chemical attack - if the Syrian Army had really been dropping chemical weapons on Hamouriya the night before with intent to kill civilian women and children, why would the civilians immediately afterwards start marching through the city carrying Syrian national flags, and having raised the flag at key points in the city? It makes the whole flase flag [even more] implausible. The White Helmets then wrapped one hostage in a Syrian flag and shot him dead as a warning. Fortunately the two witnesses interviewed (and hopefully most of the protesters) were able to escape soon afterwards with the help of the nearby Syrian Army.

The White Helmets specifically stated that the protesters had ruined their chemical attack and ruined their communications with the UN, and that the Americans would not come to their assistance because of it. This incident explains important aspects of the false flag:

1) So close to impending defeat, the terrorists were really desperate to induce the Americans to save them, and really believed they would do so;

2) Having already announced the false flag the previous night and having collected so many dead bodies in preparation, the existence of the protest creates a credibility problem for the terrorists and White Helmets, to which they seem to have responded with various conflicting signals;

3) In particular, the conflicting signals given out by the MI6 proxies SOHR I would read as a damage limitation act specifically in response to the civilian protest;

4) It would appear that MI6 feared news of this protest would be spread, so that they needed to protect their proxies.

Unfortunately, despite this information being published by Vanessa Beeley, I haven't seen any other mention of it. The protesters endangered their lives by this protest, at least one of them [or another hostage? - this is not clear] was shot dead for it, and all of them were sentenced to death. They deserve due publicity for it and it is really important to an understanding of the incident as a whole.

Bernhardt, I hope you will update the article above to include some of Vanessa Beeley's reporting on this incident.

BM , Jul 7, 2018 2:20:22 AM | 29
Bernhardt, I am afraid I don't share your apparent confidence in this OPCW report. It is far too little and lopsided after months of investigation, and appears to be designed to test the waters for a decision confirming that chlorine was used as a weapon, and to coordinate with the MSM to prepare the ground for such a decision. In that case, the MSM reaction to the report is highly consistent with such an objective.

Why did the the report make no caveats about the chlorine compounds, why did they include no data about concentrations, why did they emphasise the chain of custody of the (probably trivial) chrorine compound samples (and only those samples), why no information on witness testimony, why no mention of the witness testimony in the Hague, why mention (totally irrelevant) testimony of alleged witnesses in Turkey and biological samples taken in Turkey for which no plausible chain of custody exists?

Posted by: V | Jul 7, 2018 12:36:26 AM | 25
Finally, straight shooting from the OPCW.
About time...

This report is a scandal, an outrage. This report itself is a false flag, it is designed to appease those observers who know the incident was a false flag by using carefully ambiguous wording, while preparing the ground for a full-blown 99% dishonest and 100% misleading report condemning the Syrian government.

The correct response to this report is very loud and active and persistent protest against it.

The Russians should make very strongly worded complaints and criticisms about it both at the OPCW and at the UN (maybe they have, I wouldn't know).

V , Jul 7, 2018 2:31:49 AM | 30
BM | Jul 7, 2018 2:20:22 AM | 29

You may be correct; we'll see...

Kalen , Jul 7, 2018 3:09:25 AM | 31
For Trump self inflicted ego wound somebody will pay.
V , Jul 7, 2018 7:09:29 AM | 35
Mark2 | Jul 7, 2018 6:29:06 AM | 34

So, following your logic (which I mostly agree); what value/good are elections?
None, near as I can tell.
Time for something new?
But then I digress; what to do about false flag chemo attacks?

If the OPCW can no longer be trusted; then what? The U.S. has done an admirable job of destroying trust between countries.

dfnslblty , Jul 7, 2018 9:25:39 AM | 39
¿Has anyone here read Peter Ford's piece on OPCW? I believe it fits somewhere in the discussion. Unfortunate this choir is so small. Keep writing and Protest Loudly!
Mike , Jul 7, 2018 9:29:28 AM | 40
Hi
Nice article, however I tend to disagree partially on the last part, the US administration and the alleged rebels are two faces of the same coins, rebels are funded by the administration from various sources and they acr in response to commands from it, see the southern command operations where this approach of command was openly divulged by various reports and accounts. The reason for the Administration to get into Syria was to further weaken the middle eastern countries for a specific and obvious reason, and each strike and wall destroyed goes into this direction..the bigger picture explains it all..
Mike , Jul 7, 2018 9:35:41 AM | 41
... to clarify , every "regime" that threatens Israel openly is to be brought down ... Libya, Iraq,, Sudan, Yemen, Syria, Iran , Egypt's Nasser and the list goes on..
bevin , Jul 7, 2018 10:22:39 AM | 42
More on the BBC and this story:
https://skwawkbox.org/2018/07/07/bbc-forced-to-correct-douma-gas-story-after-skwawkbox-exposes-fake-news/

And Craig Murray too:

"Yesterday the OPCW reported that, contrary to US and UK assertions in the UN security council, there was no nerve agent attack on jihadist-held Douma by the Syrian government, precisely as Robert Fisk was execrated by the entire media establishment for pointing out. The OPCW did find some traces of chlorine compounds, but chlorine is a very commonly used element and you have traces of it all over your house.

The US wants your chicken chlorinated. The OPCW said it was "Not clear" if the chlorine was weaponised, and it is plain to me from a career in diplomacy that the almost incidental mention is a diplomatic sop to the UK, US and France, which are important members of the OPCW.

"Trump's reaction to yet more lying claims by the UK government funded White Helmets and Syrian Observatory, a reaction of missile strikes on alleged Syrian facilities producing the non-existent nerve agent, was foolish. May's leap for British participation was unwise, and the usual queue of Blairites who stood up as always in Parliament to support any bombing action, stand yet again exposed as evil tools of the military industrial complex.

"Hillary Clinton, true to form, wanted more aggressive military action than was undertaken by Trump. Hillary has been itching to destroy Syria as she destroyed Libya. Libya was very much Hillary's war and – almost unreported by the mainstream media – NATO bombers carried out almost 14,000 bombing sorties on Libya and devastated entire cities...."

If you put Murray, MoA, The Skwawkbox, Strategic Culture, Dissident Voice and a few of the better aggregators together you've got a better Daily Newspaper than The Guardian or Le Monde ever was, far better.

By the way, unless I'm mistaken (it wouldn't be a first!) Ghandi was asked what he thought about Western Civilisation when he replied that "It would be a good idea". It still is an idea worth looking into. It would look just like socialism.

james , Jul 7, 2018 10:50:35 AM | 43
@27 fairleft.. i hope you are correct on that..

@28 BM... i think it was daniel who left that link here at moa a few days ago.. i read it..

@29 BM.. i tend to agree with you, but see @6 b for more clarity...

@32 pft... it is my observation that the msm in the usa is so usa centric, they know shit about canada, or the rest of the world.. i could be wrong, but that is my general view on what ''americans'' consume for news in the usa.. the indoctrination is heavy.. i would like to think people like @33 V are the norm, but i mostly think people are tuned out of the news - excluding the older generation - above 60 or 70 especially - who still consume the shit via the tv..

@41 mike.. in other words, the usa foreign policy is built around looking after israel.. most here at moa would agree with that.. will the usa ever get it's head out of israels ass? one can hope, lol..

craig murrays post from today that bevin quotes @42.. good comments bevin!

et Al , Jul 7, 2018 10:53:24 AM | 44
Motherboard.com: Japan Just Executed the Leaders of an LSD-Fueled Doomsday Science Cult
https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/article/gy3xex/what-is-aum-shinrikyo-sarin-attack

####

This one was real, but even the Aum Shinrikyo sect showed all those years ago how how difficult it is to pull off an effective chemical weapons attack, requiring an enclosed space like the metro system. But that's never the point. Instilling mass fear and panic, not to mention being 'news friendly' is what makes such attacks, sponsored proxy false-flag or not, so enduringly popular . To borrow a well known ad phrase ' Once you pop, you can't stop '

Noirette , Jul 7, 2018 11:00:54 AM | 45
Journalists nowadays seem to lack most basics of higher education. b.

Yes + they have zero comprehension of basic numbers. Amazing. (Nobody wants to read my exs..) Nowadays, they are not supposed to have any knowledge whatsoever; they have become scribal hacks, merely write, film, show, expose, what they are told or do haphazard copy-pasta.

They are bought servants, nah compradors, and their presence is completely useless (A.I. and some guidance, input from above by 7 -say- very smart ppl would do the job faster and cheaper, for the whole W world) they are actors whose function is to pretend that a 'fourth estate' is necessary to uncover facts, inform the populace, air dissenting points of view, have debates, and so on Lies.

(comes to mind, book https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Udo_Ulfkotte)

Aware they are past their sell-date, one can smell the desperation. The reaction is to become more subservient, toe the line, preserve what can be, become more in-groupy and shaft colleagues who might stray away from the prescribed hyper-rigid guide-lines. Collectively, they have fantastic potential power and means of control (network savvy, present at the switches, etc.) but they are so dumbed down and terrified of status and monetary loss they are like deer caught in the headlights, to stay on track they secretly pray at dawn, conjure the fates, or whatever. The mansion with pool, the ginormous mortgage, Junior, etc. in the US. In France, the monetary aspect is less vital; being excluded from the movers and shakers, the in-ppl, the heady, sexy, wonderful Parisian life.. no.. no.. help

Part of how a 'post-truth' environment comes about. The other driver is the underlying aim, i.e. the imposition of one narrative over another, the Rovian creation of realities which can only be managed by wielding power violent enough to make the 'other - the people - the adversary' accept and bow down to the proffered narrative, and never object, call out the lies. Using this template requires careful calculations which, it appears, have gone off kilter in the US.

Maybe one should consider that there were never any Chem-WMD attacks in Syria at all (pace Seymour Hersh, heh, but that is a personal beef of mine..) - there are always limited hangout ppl who try to cobble up one narrative with another and make a living out o that.

Curtis , Jul 7, 2018 11:10:52 AM | 46
So far, I'm seeing BBC (as above), al Jazeera, ABC, Reuters, Qatar Tribune twisting the report to say it was a Chlorine attack. PressTV, RT, and Sputnik News say the report clears SAA.
Rob , Jul 7, 2018 1:36:25 PM | 50
And then there's this: https://www.nytimes.com/reuters/2018/07/06/world/europe/06reuters-syria-crisis-chemicalweapons.html
and this: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/06/25/world/middleeast/syria-chemical-attack-douma.html
both from the New York Times.

The latter is an absurd "virtual crime scene" in which crack reporters claim to prove that the Syrian government used chemical weapons on their own people.

So, as expected, this latest OPCW report will have no effect on the establishment narrative. The good guys vs bad guys scenario is the only approved version, and with no alternative versions being offered in the MSM, it is the one that the most people will believe.

Mark2 , Jul 7, 2018 2:24:33 PM | 55
Den Kelley Abe @ 53

O k see if I can help, kind of kill or cure! The shock to us all may be to much ! There is no squirrel ! They made it up, yes I know it's kind of tuff !we all looked for a squirrel they distracted us. There was no people poisoned by Russians in Salisbury, Amesbury the chlorine attack in Syria yes made up.What the tv and papers said was a lie, to program us all like a laptop !!!

Whilst we were out squirrel huntin, they got through half of world 3 we never noticed. They formed a dictatorship. Sold all your urban buildings services and council houses to one an other. And devalued us all by about 60% But i'l go easy for now. Couse from there on things went down hill !!! Warm regards

Patrick Armstrong , Jul 7, 2018 7:14:13 PM | 61
By the way, I read somewhere recently that Chlorine rapidly degrades Sarin and therefore no one would use them together. But I can't find the reference now. Can anybody help?
fast freddy , Jul 7, 2018 8:12:38 PM | 62
47. hrc = Bloodthirsty killer; sociopath coming out the gate. Likewise. POS. Trump was not a mass murderer until a couple months in. Didn't take him long to join the club.
Guerrero , Jul 7, 2018 8:43:14 PM | 63
Posted by: Jen | 8Pnyx @ 5, B @ 6, Hmpf @ 7:
It would seem that a common (and deliberate) ploy used by the MSM these days is to use journalists with no particular knowledge, experience or insight in an area to write articles that need that knowledge or experience.

I wonder if these "news reporters" were not selected based upon their "sex appeal" to a superior?

Posted by: Pft | @10

I suspect some of the stupidest staged events are just experiments to monitor how many people will simply buy anything.

I agree. These zany false flag events might be designed to map the approach to an asymptote .

(In analytic geometry, an asymptote (/ˈæsɪmptoʊt/) of a curve is a line such that the distance between
the curve and the line approaches zero as one or both of the x or y coordinates tends to infinite stupidity)

[Jul 04, 2018] Former US Envoy to Moscow Calls Intelligence Report on Alleged Russian Interference 'Politically Motivated'

Notable quotes:
"... Joe Mifsud is the key to the path that leads all the way through MI6 and back to Hillary Clinton and the 'permanent state'. Take a peek. ..."
"... Nothing was permissable, that is, that might impede the deep state's pursuit of world hegemony. ..."
"... The procedure used was the same as that used in 2003 – most likely because the order to prepare it was an Executive, not an Intelligence Community decision. That's what they're trying to keep under wraps, and that's why Rosenstein is stonewalling Congress. ..."
"... Those of the US elite pushing this steaming load of a propaganda campaign (and a really scurrilous one the latest is), for all their learning and experience, are either incredibly stupid or just plain psychotic. ..."
"... Thank you for a very informative piece. You are clearly a diplomat. Only a diplomat could refrain from saying: And the most important politician in the country, the President, completely and utterly failed in his obligation to exercise critical judgement of the advice that he had been given and foolishly and dangerously imposed sanctions on a nuclear equal based on this political hit job of an analysis which hasn't been shot down in flames only by virtue of an incessant invocation of classification. ..."
"... The only more amazing thing is that the US government has been so monumentally stupid that it has kept the sanctions in place even though the basis for the sanctions has been thoroughly discredited. ..."
"... I recall Jack Matlock relating the following anecdote; right around the dissolution of the USSR, the Soviet ambassador to the UN told Matlock, "This will be bad for us, but worse for you. We've just taken away your best enemy." ..."
"... They also overestimated the power of the media, which traditionally has had much sway over which neoliberal candidate gets elected President. Turns out that said industry has gradually lost the public trust over time, which condition happened to reach a critical mass at any inconvenient juncture. ..."
Jul 04, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

uncle tungsten , July 4, 2018 at 12:39 am

Thank you John Matlock The fraud of this allegation has been apparent from day one. The Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein started this witch hunt and Sessions permits him to continue. The stone walling of Congress is an insult to everyone watching. Yet the farce continues. It seems Rod Rosenstein is the president of the permanent state and Trump is a token president of the yankee snake oil corporation.

Please USA the world is weary of the permanent state script and hollywood movie based on the farce. Is Sessions a protected species or just a convenient foil while the Awans, Clintons, Comeys, Wasserman-Shultz team run past the statute of limitations finish line?
Trump is a failure on this most important measure. He might fool Kim Jong Un (or vice versa) but he doesn't fool the world.

Joe Mifsud is the key to the path that leads all the way through MI6 and back to Hillary Clinton and the 'permanent state'. Take a peek.

jacobo , July 4, 2018 at 12:33 am

After the Nov'16 election when Hillary Clinton, instead of acknowledging that she alone was to blame for her defeat (what with, among her other mistakes, her labeling a segment of the working class' as deplorables) resorted to attributing said defeat to Russian/Putin interference in America's "sacred" electoral system.

Clearly, thereby, she was signaling that her post-defeat game would consist of nothing but scapegoating.

Soon thereafter, though, as the deep state joined the hate Russia/Putin chorus, it was apparent that this scapegoating had as much to do with preventing Donald Trump from making good on his promises, however vague, to improve US-Russian relations + getting our nation out of the business of regime changing.

Nothing was permissable, that is, that might impede the deep state's pursuit of world hegemony. Subsequent events re: government hearings along with democratic party politics and MSM coverage of same have only confirmed, not only that the above initial observations were correct, but that the scapegoating is aimed not only at maintaining the status quo vis-a-vis US foreign policy, but to prevent any leftward shift in the Democratic Party – that the duopoly be preserved. .

F. G. Sanford , July 3, 2018 at 9:23 pm

The procedure used was the same as that used in 2003 – most likely because the order to prepare it was an Executive, not an Intelligence Community decision. That's what they're trying to keep under wraps, and that's why Rosenstein is stonewalling Congress. I suspect that James Clapper has nothing to worry about. It wasn't his idea in the first place.

Joe Tedesky , July 3, 2018 at 10:47 pm

F.G. are you saying the order came down from the president (Obama)? Joe

robjira , July 3, 2018 at 8:57 pm

https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/07/02/trump-putin-peace-trade-and-friendship-talks.html

Sorry for the repeated posts, but this is a significant issue for me. Since 1990, when we had the perfect opportunity to cement a bilateral relationship with Russia (maybe even one of those "special" ones the UK, Germany, Japan, and Israel love reminding everyone of), the US has done nothing but pull this kind of petty, mean spirited BS when all Russia has been after is peaceful, profitable coexistence.

Those of the US elite pushing this steaming load of a propaganda campaign (and a really scurrilous one the latest is), for all their learning and experience, are either incredibly stupid or just plain psychotic. Eff them and the preening mandarins posing as national news outlets.

Thank the stars for CN.

Jim DiEugenio , July 3, 2018 at 8:46 pm

I agree with all the statements in this analysis. And so far, what Mueller has put together does not come close to the charges he was supposed to investigate. Maybe he will later. But why is it taking so long? He has been in business for over a year now.

Jeff Harrison , July 3, 2018 at 7:44 pm

Thank you for a very informative piece. You are clearly a diplomat. Only a diplomat could refrain from saying: And the most important politician in the country, the President, completely and utterly failed in his obligation to exercise critical judgement of the advice that he had been given and foolishly and dangerously imposed sanctions on a nuclear equal based on this political hit job of an analysis which hasn't been shot down in flames only by virtue of an incessant invocation of classification.

The only more amazing thing is that the US government has been so monumentally stupid that it has kept the sanctions in place even though the basis for the sanctions has been thoroughly discredited.

robjira , July 3, 2018 at 7:31 pm

I recall Jack Matlock relating the following anecdote; right around the dissolution of the USSR, the Soviet ambassador to the UN told Matlock, "This will be bad for us, but worse for you. We've just taken away your best enemy."

DFC , July 3, 2018 at 7:52 pm

MBOB, I used to hate Fox News, which I thought was a lunatic screech-fest against anything Obama did, even when it was reasonable. I am not saying everything Obama did was reasonable, but Fox portrayed everything he did in the worst possible light. As far as Breitbart was concerned, I had not even heard of that organization until after the 2016 election. The way I ran into Breitbart was when I was trying to sort out why every single reputable news agency that I was reading said HRC was going to be the next President and then I read that there was one that reported the opposite (Breitbart). So, I guess the question I asked myself was: am I going to continue to read news sources that got the 2016 presidential election so wrong, or start to read Breitbart? And what else were they getting wrong? So, the first week I was on Breitbart, they were talking Trump's "movement" and how it was related to Brexit (no clue who Nigel Farage was at the tine) and how big Trump's crowd sizes had been at his rallies. I was literally blindsided by all this; being a regular consumer of WaPo, CNN, NYT, etc, I felt like I was totally left in the dark. Breitbart actually informed me about what really happened and what was going on (how the world was undergoing a populist revolution) vs having to swallow the idea that Putin and a bunch of xenophobic misogynistic racists had taken over the United States. I finally gave up entirely on my old news sources when time after time something I read in them would be debunked 3 days later (why spend all those reading hours to become informed when I was being misinformed?). Anyway, I still have not warmed up to Fox News entirely (if it were not for Tucker Carlson, it would be hard to tune in at all, and I suppose Hannity has been right about Trump-Russia but he is so far over the top ) and that is how I drifted here to Consortium News.

*I am not saying Breitbart is a balanced source of news, but can be indispensable at times.

David G , July 3, 2018 at 5:55 pm

I've read elsewhere as well that the State Department's INR has historically yielded some of the best intelligence analysis in the U.S. government. Perhaps not coincidentally, it also lacks the big budget and swagger of the other agencies.

voteforno6 , July 3, 2018 at 5:52 pm

For me, the giveaway on this report was that half of it was boilerplate security tips, the sorts of things that people see in their annual security training. It's almost like they were writing a college paper, and had to hit a certain page count, so they included anything they could.

Bill , July 3, 2018 at 5:26 pm

Yes the report is bad. I came to that conclusion just reading the contents. They didn't have enough words to fill all of the pages. Now the question is, when is the GOP going to go after Clapper for it?

mrtmbrnmn , July 3, 2018 at 5:15 pm

Intelligence Agencies "assessment" is weasel word for not exactly lying, just sayin'. The MSM malpracticers, on the other hand, have decided, in the total absence of ANY evidence in this long-running farcedy, to simply DECLARE their lies are truth. Paging George Orwell!! And furthermore: http://news.jornal.us/article-681288.-THE-REAL-PUTINGATE-.html

Zim , July 3, 2018 at 5:05 pm

Thanks for the info. This reinforces how corrupt the DNC/DLC/HRC cabal truly are.

Antiwar7 , July 3, 2018 at 4:55 pm

What a cogent, well-written piece. Shows a clear pattern of politically-motivated deception, implemented by a few appointees at the top (of a few agencies). Plus, why did the FBI never request access to Hillary Clinton's servers?

Herman , July 3, 2018 at 4:45 pm

I hope Mr. Matlock becomes a frequent contributor. I think he has a lot more to say beyond the subject he addresses.

John Kirsch , July 3, 2018 at 4:22 pm

Excellent article. My understanding is that the FBI didn't examine the DNC computer that was allegedly hacked. I find that very curious.

John Neal Spangler , July 3, 2018 at 4:20 pm

It was a coup attempt and the FBI/CIA plotters must be held accountable if we are going to regain a Democracy, instead of letting a few senile oligarchs dictate policy. Comey, Clapper, Brennan and some lesser figures must go to prison for all the disturbance that Russiagate has caused.

ranney , July 3, 2018 at 4:12 pm

Fabulous article with so much important info! THANK YOU!!! But Ambassador Matlock, what took you so long??? Didn't it occur to you that we needed to know this months ago? Thank you for for finally sharing your very important expertise. And thanks to Ray McGovern and Bill Binney for encouraging you to do so.

Sally Snyder , July 3, 2018 at 3:01 pm

As shown in this article, apparently it is not a two-way street when it comes to Russian/American propaganda:

https://viableopposition.blogspot.com/2018/06/the-united-states-and-russia-propaganda.html

Washington has a very, very thin skin when it comes to outside nations criticisms of its agenda.

jaycee , July 3, 2018 at 2:56 pm

There used to be a reasonably clear separation between objective news reporting and the expression of opinion – i.e. in print, news and editorial opinion appeared in distinct sections while on television there was hard news through the week and opinion and analysis on the Sunday morning programs.

Fox News and right-wing talk radio was effectively responsible for clouding these distinctions, presenting opinion (informed and uninformed) in a format usually understood as factual reporting. It used to be a common observation fifteen years ago that Fox News viewers cognitive understanding of objective reality diminished according to their degree of consumption of the Fox product. (see the documentary film "Outfoxed"). But nowadays, most if not all of the mainstream/legacy/corporate news media operate using the Fox model whereby factual reporting and opinion have dissolved into one another – and opinion becomes fact without the consumer being quite aware of it. It has been a major step backwards socially and politically, and a real eye-opener for those who once believed in the ever upward trajectory of human progress.

Joe Tedesky , July 3, 2018 at 6:16 pm

Your comment jaycee should not go unnoticed. More Americans should study and contemplate the dynamics of what you point to, as our news isn't at all news reporting in as much as our news is slanted opinion based propaganda. This control method is why Robert Parry left the MSM, so as he could inform the voter as to allow the voter to have the knowledge required to make an informed decision . & here we are. Good comment. Joe

robjira , July 3, 2018 at 2:45 pm

I first became aware of Jack Matlock via an interview on Democracy Now. Somehow I don't think Amy Goodman will be having him on again anytime soon to discuss this issue.

Gary Weglarz , July 3, 2018 at 9:00 pm

Democracy Now and Counterpunch have both shilled the CIA regime change propaganda aimed at Syria. One expects such things from the NYT's and mainstream media, but I found this quite amazing given both DN and Counterpunch used to be valuable "progressive sites." My suggestion is that they consider combining forces. They could appropriately call the new joint venture either: "Counter Democracy," or better yet, "Democracy Punch."

Realist , July 3, 2018 at 2:42 pm

The deep state figured that the much-loathed Trump was the perfect patsy for Hillary to roll in the general election, so they didn't prevent him from getting the Republican nomination, in fact, with the considerable aid of the mass media, they promoted his case. The puppet masters in Washington, Arlington and Langley never believed for a moment that Hillary would lose. They simply miscalculated on how much she, also, was hated by the public. They've orchestrated a soft, slow motion coup attempt ever since their bubble was popped on election night. What will happen to Trump is still uncertain, probably depending on how he continues to dance to their tune and walk back every promise made during the campaign. What is certain is that these shadows behind the scenes will never again allow an "outsider," someone they did not create and entirely control, to receive the nomination of either major party ever again.

Joe Tedesky , July 3, 2018 at 6:08 pm

Realist good to hear from you, and yes Trump was the decoy candidate whom Queen Hillary would run over with a stampede of her voters, but whoops then there was the Electoral College damn the details. There by with Hillary's surprising loss, all the long knives of the Deep State were drawn to take down the orange haired tv reality star turned president down. Now, I have a theory, and my theory all though it can be disputed, is that I believe Trump out did his rivals with his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital. With this honor so bestowed upon the disruptive Zionist Trump rallied his Calvary to his rescue or something like that.

Kick it around Realist. Joe

KiwiAntz , July 3, 2018 at 6:56 pm

Trump's a "useful idiot" as a President & as long as he dances to the Deepstate & MIC tune, he will be left in place & not suffer the same fate as JFK! Trump's backdown of his Election promises confirm that he has been totally bought & paid for, by his DS masters & now follows that warmongering agenda of plunder for Elitist gain! Russiagate is the biggest, Propagandist lie that has ever been proported as Truth, despite 2 yrs of zero evidence & fabricated reports such as this latest nothingburger of a Intelligence Report! But they have to keep this nonsense going because to much time & money & energy has been invested, to preserve this propagandist lie that they can't back track from it! Is it any wonder that the general population are starting to despise & distrust all Politicians & the US Govt & it's institutions because of their immoral behaviour! And the RT Channel or Sputnik cannot be blamed for exposing this corruption which the MSM has failed to do!

GM , July 3, 2018 at 9:06 pm

They also overestimated the power of the media, which traditionally has had much sway over which neoliberal candidate gets elected President. Turns out that said industry has gradually lost the public trust over time, which condition happened to reach a critical mass at any inconvenient juncture.

I'm sure they'll address the problem next time round with strategies involving censorship, blacklisting, and the deployment of covert armies of online disinformation teams, all of which we have already begun to see take shape.

[Jun 26, 2018] Graham Phillips, an Englishman and journalist made an interesting podcast about Shaun Walker demolishing Walker's claims that Russians were singing Nazi songs in a nightclub.

Jun 26, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

The World Cup proceeds as if carried along by an unstoppable force, pouring very positive concrete into foundations somewhere, giving ordinary people another vision of a country that has always fascinated me.

Graham Phillips, an Englishman and journalist, who joined with the Donbass people in their resistance to the coup in Ukraine made an interesting podcast echoing b.'s piece about Shaun Walker, my particular enemy. He quietly demolishes Walker's claims that Russians were singing Nazi songs in a nightclub.

All in all there is a feeling of tensions subsiding a little, a feeling that one can carry on a bit with one's life. The only thing I have learned is to enjoy such moments even if stuff like Yemen is agonizing. Agonizing but not existential as Syria is. But is that not just a bit cynical?

Posted by: Lochearn | Jun 24, 2018 6:05:53 PM | 25

[Jun 23, 2018] Comey And Lynch Will Be Subpoenaed By Senate Unless Feinstein Obstructs

Notable quotes:
"... Comey's memo was a key component in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's decision to launch a special counsel investigation headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller. ..."
"... Some have also suggested ( Paul Sperry to be exact) that Cambridge professor and FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper, may have had a much larger role in the operation. ..."
"... Halper is a longtime spook whose ex-father-in-law, Ray Cline , was the former chief Soviet analyst and Deputy Director of the CIA from 1962 - 1966. Halper also spied on the Carter campaign during the 1980 election for Reagan - whose Vice President was former CIA director George H.W. Bush ( Ray Cline denied the spying took place). ..."
"... Papadopoulos' statement of offense also detailed his April 26, 2016, meeting with Mifsud at a London hotel. Over breakfast Mifsud told Papadopoulos "he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian governmental officials." Mifsud explained "that on that trip he (the Professor) learned that the Russians had obtained 'dirt' on then-candidate Clinton." Mifsud told Papadopoulos "the Russians had emails of Clinton." - The Federalist ..."
Jun 22, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley (R-IA) says he'll issue subpoenas for former FBI Director James Comey and former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, but the panel's top Democrat Dianne Feinstein (CA) has to agree to it per committee rules. Grassley also said he would be open to exploring immunity for Comey's former #2, Andrew McCabe.

"I will want to subpoena him," Grassley said of Comey during an appearance on C-SPAN's Newsmakers ."

The Iowan added that committee rules require that he and Feinstein "agree to it, and at this point I can't tell you if she would agree to it. But if she will, yeah, then we will subpoena . " - Politico

Feinstein may be hesitant to sign on, as she says she thinks Comey acted in good faith - which means she thinks Congress shouldn't have a crack at questioning a key figure in the largest political scandal in modern history.

"While I disagree with his actions, I have seen no evidence that Mr. Comey acted in bad faith or that he lied about any of his actions," said Feinstein during a Monday Judiciary panel hearing. Former Feinstein staffer and FBI investigator Dan Jones, meanwhile, continues to work with Christopher Steele and Fusion GPS on a $50 million investigation privately funded by George Soros and other "wealthy donors" to continue the investigation into Donald Trump.

Also recall that Feinstein leaked Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's Congressional testimony in January.

Comey skipped out on appearing before Grassley's committee this week following the June 14 release of DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz's (OIG) report on FBI conduct during the Hillary Clinton email investigation - which dinged Comey for being "insubordinate" and showing poor judgement. Horowitz is conducting a separate investigation into the FBI's counterintelligence operation on the Trump campaign, including allegations of FISA surveillance abuse.

Maybe Comey also decided to bail after Horowitz admitted on Monday that he's under a separate investigation for mishandling classified information after leaking a memo to the press documenting what he felt was President Trump obstructing the FBI's probe into former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn - which was conducted by the FBI under dubious circumstances, and for which evidence may have been tampered with .

Comey's memo was a key component in Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein's decision to launch a special counsel investigation headed by former FBI Director Robert Mueller.

Loretta Lynch, on the other hand , was dinged in the IG report over an "ambiguous" incomplete recusal from the Clinton email "matter" despite a clandestine 30-minute "tarmac" meeting with Bill Clinton one week before the FBI exonerated Hillary Clinton .

All part of the bigger picture...

Despite IG Horowitz ultimately concluding that pro-Clinton / anti-Trump bias among the FBI's top brass did not make its way into the Clinton email investigation, his report revealed alarming facts about FBI officials handling parallel investigations into each candidate who received vastly different treatment.

For starters, it's clear that the FBI rushed to wrap up the Clinton email investigation before the election, while at the same time the agency launched an open-ended counterintelligence operation against those in Trump's orbit.

We also know that opposition research paid for by Hillary Clinton was used by the FBI to justify surveilling the Trump campaign - while new facts point to a multi-pronged campaign of espionage and deceit spanning several continents, governments and agencies which was deployed at the highest levels in an effort to undermine Donald Trump before and after the 2016 U.S. election.

Some have also suggested ( Paul Sperry to be exact) that Cambridge professor and FBI "informant" (spy) Stefan Halper, may have had a much larger role in the operation.

Halper is a longtime spook whose ex-father-in-law, Ray Cline , was the former chief Soviet analyst and Deputy Director of the CIA from 1962 - 1966. Halper also spied on the Carter campaign during the 1980 election for Reagan - whose Vice President was former CIA director George H.W. Bush ( Ray Cline denied the spying took place).

From 2012 - 2017, the Pentagon under Obama awarded Halper over $1 million in "research" contracts - nearly half of which was awarded during the 2016 US election .

Award ID Recipient Name Start Date End Date Amount Awarding Agency
HQ003416P0148 HALPER, STEFAN 9/26/2016 3/29/2018 $411,575 Department of Defense
HQ003415C0100 HALPER, STEFAN 9/24/2015 9/27/2016 $244,960 Department of Defense
HQ003414C0076 HALPER, STEFAN 7/29/2014 7/31/2015 $204,000 Department of Defense
HQ003412C0039 HALPER, STEFAN 5/30/2012 5/29/2013 $197,626 Department of Defense

Then there's the mysterious Maltese professor, Joseph Mifsud - a key witness in the Mueller investigation who disappeared last fall , and who told Trump aide George Papadopoulos that Russia had dirt on Hillary Clinton. Papadopoulos would drunkenly repeat the rumor to seasoned Australian diplomat (and Clinton ally ) Alexander Downer in a London Bar, only to be construed by the FBI as potential collusion in order to justify their counterintelligence operation against Trump.

And just Monday Trump advisor Roger Stone said that a second FBI informant , Henry Greenberg, tried to entrap the Trump campaign with an offer to sell dirt on Hillary Clinton in exchange for $2 million.

While the entire mosaic of events is multi-faceted and requires perhaps the world's biggest corkboard - here's a basic timeline of various espionage or other spycraft conducted against the Trump campaign.

April 26, 2016 - Maltese professor Joseph Mifsud - who told an Italian newspaper in November he's a member of the Clinton Foundation , passed a rumor to Trump campaign aide George Papadopoulos that the Russians had dirt on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos' statement of offense also detailed his April 26, 2016, meeting with Mifsud at a London hotel. Over breakfast Mifsud told Papadopoulos "he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian governmental officials." Mifsud explained "that on that trip he (the Professor) learned that the Russians had obtained 'dirt' on then-candidate Clinton." Mifsud told Papadopoulos "the Russians had emails of Clinton." - The Federalist

May 10, 2016 - Papadopoulos tells this to former Australian Diplomat Alexander Downer during an alleged " drunken barroom admission ."

Late May, 2016 - Roger Stone is approached by Greenberg with the $2 million offer for dirt on Clinton

July 2016 - FBI informant (spy) Stefan Halper meets with Trump campaign aide Carter Page for the first time, which would be one of many encounters.

July 31, 2016 - the FBI officially launches operation Crossfire Hurricane , the code name given to the counterintelligence operation against the Trump campaign.

September, 2016 - Halper invites Papadopoulos to London, paying him $3,000 to work on an energy policy paper while wining and dining him at a 200-year-old private London club on September 15.

While the FBI has yet to find any evidence that the Trump campaign colluded with Russia, they were able to use information Mifsud planted with Papadopoulos to launch a counterintelligence operation .

And as new facts and revelations continue to emerge, and IG Horowitz continues to unravel the FBI's counterintelligence operation on Donald Trump, several rank-and-file FBI employees say they want Congress to subpoena them so that they can step forward and testify against Comey and Andrew McCabe.

Funny - for two "innocent" people, Comey and Lynch want the exact opposite!

Tags Politics

Comments

Theosebes Goodfellow -> sabaj49 Fri, 06/22/2018 - 12:00 Permalink

~Grassley also said he would be open to exploring immunity for Comey's former #2, Andrew McCabe.~

Screw you, Chuck. No one gets immunity. Stay the fuck out of what should be the business of a federal criminal grand jury. Diane has enough trouble of her own with the leaky aide.

And maybe you forgot this:

Embattled FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe has reportedly stiffed the House Intelligence Committee who expected him to testify on Tuesday.

BandGap -> nmewn Fri, 06/22/2018 - 11:22 Permalink

No, I think she will. They have the goods on her for leaking like a sieve through her aide and on to the entry level Pulitzer Prize media whore (remember, they raided the newspaper. The goods are still there).

Rumor has it there is a subpoena waiting for DiFi out there. It would be best if she complied.

DosZap -> nmewn Fri, 06/22/2018 - 12:15 Permalink

She's won by a landslide against other Dems, IF she refuses she JUST vindicates their GUILT.

Even a DemoNrat could see that.

Quantify -> Stan522 Fri, 06/22/2018 - 10:45 Permalink

18 U.S. Code § 2384 - Seditious conspiracy

Seditious conspiracy

If two or more persons in any State or Territory, or in any place subject to the jurisdiction of the United States , conspire to overthrow, put down, or to destroy by force the Government of the United States , or to levy war against them, or to oppose by force the authority thereof, or by force to prevent, hinder, or delay the execution of any law of the United States , or by force to seize, take, or possess any property of the United States contrary to the authority thereof, they shall each be fined under this title or imprisoned not more than twenty years, or both.

(June 25, 1948, ch. 645, 62 Stat. 808 ; July 24, 1956, ch. 678, § 1, 70 Stat. 623 ; Pub. L. 103–322, title XXXIII , § 330016(1)(N), Sept. 13, 1994, 108 Stat. 2148 .)

Jdillinger -> Quantify Fri, 06/22/2018 - 14:36 Permalink

We don't need Commey and Lynch questioned by those losers on Capitol Hill, that is a waste of money and time. What is required is a DOJ inquiry, or better yet, a special council for the HRC Mail Server and Corruption in the Meuller probe.

I am normally against a special council, but in this case the DOJ is clearly biased. They should get to the bottom of the crimes committed by hillery on her mail server including realated crime transacted on the server like uranium one. That is what the FBI would do to us, and they should be no different. Equal protection under the law means equal punishment under the law as well.

An additional special council should be formed to get to the bottom of the FISA warrant to used for surveillance on the Trump team and find out if there was any malfeasance obtaining those warrants. This would also bring up the question of whether the meuller probe obstructed justice by obscuring exonerating evidence that the probe was established with junk evidence.

If a good prosecutor was used, there is enough evidence in the public forum now to throw a bunch of the obama administration in prison for political corruption and the higher echelon members of the FBI in jail for bribery. That's right, the FBI can't take gifts, even if the media are offering them. This is corruption of the highest order and our country will not survive this if it is not prosecuted properly.

IF WE WANT THE SWAMP DRAINED PEOPLE HAVE TO GO TO PRISON FOR LIFE TO PUT THE FEAR OF GOD AND THE PEOPLE BACK INTO BUTEAUCRATS.

[Jun 21, 2018] Britain In Panic As Trump-Putin Summit Looms : all roads in Russiagate lead to London, not, be it noted, Moscow. by Alexander Mercouris

Notable quotes:
"... In my article for Consortium News I discussed at length the size of the British footprint in the scandal, and the outsized role in it of various British or British connected individuals such as the ex British spy Christopher Steele who compiled the Trump Dossier, the former chief of Britain's NSA equivalent GCHQ Robert Hannigan, the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, and the Cambridge based US academic Stefan Halper. ..."
"... I would add that there are now rumours that Professor Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious London based Maltese Professor who also had a big role in the Russiagate affair, may also have had connections to British intelligence. ..."
"... As this article in Zerohedge says, all roads in Russiagate lead to London, not, be it noted, Moscow. ..."
Jun 21, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Alexander Mercouris via TheDuran.com,

Britain alarmed as John Bolton travels to Moscow to prepare summit...

Days after I discussed rumours of an imminent Trump-Putin summit , seeming confirmation that such a summit is indeed in the works has been provided with the Kremlin's confirmation that President Trump's National Security Adviser John Bolton is travelling to Moscow next week apparently to discuss preparations for the summit.

The Kremlin's confirmation of John Bolton's visit was given today by President Putin's spokesman Dmitry Peskov

As far as we know, such a visit is going to take place. This is all we can say for now.

Further suggestions that some sort of easing of tensions between Washington and Moscow may be in the works has been provided by confirmation that a group of US Republican Senators will shortly be visiting Moscow.

It seems that a combination of the collapse in the credibility of the Russiagate collusion allegations – which I suspect no Republican member of the House or Senate any longer believes – unease in the US at Russia's breakthrough in hypersonic weapons technology (recently discussed by Alex Christoforou and myself in this video ), and the failure of the recent sanctions the US Treasury announced against Rusal, has concentrated minds in Washington, and is giving President Trump the political space he needs to push for the easing of tensions with Russia which he is known to have long favoured.

One important European capital cannot conceal its dismay.

In a recent article for Consortium News I discussed the obsessive quality of the British establishment's paranoia about Russia , and not surprisingly in light of it an article has appeared today in The Times of London which made clear the British government's alarm as the prospect of a Trump-Putin summit looms.

As is often the way with articles in The Times of London, this article has now been "updated" beyond recognition. However it still contains comments like these

Mr Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the G8 this month, wrecking Mrs May's efforts to further isolate Mr Putin after the Salisbury poisonings. Mr Trump then linked US funding of Nato to the trade dispute with the EU, singling out Germany for special criticism.

The prospect of a meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin appalls British officials. "It's unclear if this meeting is after or before Nato and the UK visit," a Whitehall official said. "Obviously after would be better for us. It adds another dynamic to an already colourful week." .

A senior western diplomatic source said that a Trump-Putin meeting before the Nato summit would cause "dismay and alarm", adding: "It would be a highly negative thing to do."

Nato is due to discuss an escalation of measures to deter Russian aggression. "Everyone is perturbed by what is going on and is fearing for the future of the alliance," a Whitehall source said.

I will here express my view that the Russiagate scandal was at least in part an attempt by some people in Britain to prevent a rapprochement between the US and Russia once it became clear that achieving such a rapprochement was a policy priority for Donald Trump.

In my article for Consortium News I discussed at length the size of the British footprint in the scandal, and the outsized role in it of various British or British connected individuals such as the ex British spy Christopher Steele who compiled the Trump Dossier, the former chief of Britain's NSA equivalent GCHQ Robert Hannigan, the former MI6 chief Sir Richard Dearlove, and the Cambridge based US academic Stefan Halper.

I would add that there are now rumours that Professor Joseph Mifsud, the mysterious London based Maltese Professor who also had a big role in the Russiagate affair, may also have had connections to British intelligence.

As this article in Zerohedge says, all roads in Russiagate lead to London, not, be it noted, Moscow.

A summit meeting between the US and Russian Presidents inaugurated an improvement in relations between the US and Russia is exactly the opposite outcome which some people in London want.

That however looks to be what they are facing.

[Jun 21, 2018] The Media is a complete weapon for propaganda. The "writers" are propagandists. There never is a report on Russia from the Western media that does not vilify or demonize Russia or Russians in some way.

Jun 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Daniel | Jun 20, 2018 11:53:53 PM | 34

When I saw that Shawn Walker Tweet, and the mostly brilliant take-down responses, I hoped b would mention it. I can think of no one better suited to address this particularly putrid propaganda. Bravo! And to the (almost) universally excellent barfly commentariat.

BBC created a whole genre of Russian World Cup scare mongering. One they did was on the deadly threat of "Russian Football Hooligans." RT did an excellent 4 minute job of combining journalism with humor to expose that bit of 100% Fake News.

They also expanded it into a full set-piece. Here's the trailer:

Red Ryder , Jun 20, 2018 11:57:21 PM | 35

The Media is a complete weapon for propaganda. The "writers" are propagandists. There never is a report on Russia from the Western media that does not vilify or demonize Russia or Russians in some way.

The World Cup is experienced by hundreds of thousands of tourists in Russia. They are going to be the truth-tellers.
The event, like Sochi Winter Olympics will stand for itself. It will be splendid.

And the lies will die.

Never expect the truth from the Media.

Always expect the Russian people to be extraordinary. They have demonstrated it for a century.

[Jun 21, 2018] No one believes the bloody presstitutes anymore!

Notable quotes:
"... Fact is that the Guardian and the Telegraph are full of anti-Russian propaganda. There is no piece in them about Russia or Putin that does not include snide and fear mongering or repeats long refuted claims about this or that incident for which Russia is claimed to be responsible. The military industrial complex gave order to condemn Russia and the "western" main stream media follow through. ..."
"... But don't pity them. They made their choice, and are well rewarded for their services. With respect, I would rather despise them. ..."
"... And Shaun is trying to sneak out: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/20/police-england-fans-russia-nazi-salute-world-cup ..."
"... I can't prove Shaun Walker and Luke Harding are MI5 operatives but I feel it in my gut. ..."
"... Shawn Wanker personally witnessed Russian AFVs invading Ukraine when he was 1) too far away from the border to see them 2) had amazingly forgotten to bring his smart phone so he could take a geolocated photo. So his credibility is low. As in lower than snake shit. ..."
"... What a tangled web the west has woven for itself through its deceits. How these presstitutes had to work through the night, and sweat the details, to try to patch the holes in the sinking ship - while those who were part of the truth of discovering the reality of Russia slept soundly, and probably with a great beer buzz, and the ring of real people in their ears. ..."
Jun 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

The Guardian's Moscow Bureau Chief joined in and also retweets the Walker claim spreading it further and further:

Andrew Roth @Andrew__Roth - 14:37 UTC - 19 Jun 2018

Andrew Roth Retweeted Shaun Walker
Absurd the responses to this incident that multiple correspondents saw. And their point is that it was an outlier in what sounded like a fine night at the football. Context is all here, should they ignore it instead?

If two British scribes say they heard something, which each describes differently, then it must be true. "Evidence? We don't report with evidence. Trust us."

This morning a Russian blogger posted some evidence (machine translated from Russian):

Borisenko @amdn_blog - 7:58 UTC - 20 Jun 2018

Remember yesterday there was a lot of talk about the English journalist who wrote about the alleged Russians who sang Nazi songs in a bar in Volgograd? They found them. But they were not Russian, but... British. Actually, for that, it's e... Lo must be beaten. This is Volgograd! Stalingrad!

The attached a video shows three drunk British blokes in an 'Irish' pub where the menu is written in Cyrillic letters and World Cup flags hang from the ceiling. The blokes sing a line about putting someone to Auschwitz, give the Hitler salute and shout "Sieg Heil!" The pub where the video was taken seems to be a different one than the Harat's Walker and Luhn visited. But the point was made.

Fact is that the Guardian and the Telegraph are full of anti-Russian propaganda. There is no piece in them about Russia or Putin that does not include snide and fear mongering or repeats long refuted claims about this or that incident for which Russia is claimed to be responsible. The military industrial complex gave order to condemn Russia and the "western" main stream media follow through.

Both of the scribes quoted English fans who lament about the false picture they had when they arrived in Russia. Might that have something to do with the constant stream of russophobe trash the British media provides? Should a British correspondent in Russia take some time to reflect upon that?

But the two scribes go off to have lots of beer to then send spurious, late-night, anti-Russian claims to their 100,000 followers without providing any evidence. Then they lament about being called out for that.

They are mediocre propagandists who's words no one trusts or believes. One must truly pity these guys.

Posted by b on June 20, 2018 at 04:14 PM | Permalink

FHTEX | Jun 20, 2018 7:20:21 PM | 11

Pity these guys? Not really. Remember, they are not journalists. They are propagandist, hired mouthpieces. They say what they are scripted to say by their corporate bosses, it doesn't matter how absurd, the point is to just hammer and hammer and hammer away and mold public opinion via brute force. The old Soviet Union had more subtle liars.

But don't pity them. They made their choice, and are well rewarded for their services. With respect, I would rather despise them.

Vitor Vieira , Jun 20, 2018 7:43:08 PM | 16

And Shaun is trying to sneak out: https://www.theguardian.com/football/2018/jun/20/police-england-fans-russia-nazi-salute-world-cup
PhilK , Jun 20, 2018 8:00:26 PM | 17
RT's coverage of the Nazis:

England fans give Nazi salutes, sing Hitler song in World Cup city invaded during WWII (VIDEO)

Lochearn , Jun 20, 2018 8:11:39 PM | 19
I can't prove Shaun Walker and Luke Harding are MI5 operatives but I feel it in my gut. I got banned from the Guardian for contrasting Walker's article on the supposedly insanely loud, strident music in hotels at the Sochi Olympics with a real journalist who said the music was quiet and varied between classical and soft pop.

Most people are reading the sports journalists, thankfully, and watching them...

Mischi , Jun 20, 2018 8:17:25 PM | 20
@Peter 2 - I was going to write the same thing about Shaun Walker. He tried to start a war singlehandedly. I am amazed he still has a job!
PhilK , Jun 20, 2018 8:54:03 PM | 21
@20 I am amazed he still has a job!

Trying to start a war IS his job.

Bart Hansen , Jun 20, 2018 9:04:03 PM | 22
Every day the NYT has one or two op-ed pieces critical of Putin/Russia. Today it was by Alexey Kovalev, and titled "The World Cup Is Fun. Except for the Russians Being Tortured." I'm still waiting for a mention that the host team scored 8 goals in their two matches.
Patrick Armstrong , Jun 20, 2018 9:12:16 PM | 24
Shawn Wanker personally witnessed Russian AFVs invading Ukraine when he was 1) too far away from the border to see them 2) had amazingly forgotten to bring his smart phone so he could take a geolocated photo. So his credibility is low. As in lower than snake shit.
Den Lille Abe , Jun 20, 2018 9:34:59 PM | 25
Aaaaaaaaaand in the meantime, people around the world are are amazed at the beautiful stadiums, the fantastic atmosphere, the great welcome from local people who ar suddenly "invaded", they wonder at the well functioning machine behind it all, the wonder at the tight security and safety of spectators and sport stars.

Congratulations Russia and Russian people, well done! You are doing this exceptionally well. The World Cup, will be billions of dollars worth in positive reviews.

Great to see that Brit fans laid a wreath at the memorial. Shows May and Johnson are not connected to the public,

Jen , Jun 20, 2018 11:04:49 PM | 31
Seeing that the homophobia and racism claims are not sticking well in their relentless anti-Russian narrative, the MSM has dug up the case of the Ukrainian film director Oleg Sentsov who is currently on hunger strike while in jail in Labytnangi, in northern Siberia, for planning to carry out terrorist acts on public infrastructure and a statue in Crimea and to set fire to government office buildings in Simferopol in 2014, and is flaying it for all it's worth.
https://www.smh.com.au/world/europe/ukrainian-film-director-on-hunger-strike-in-a-russian-prison-casts-dark-cloud-over-world-cup-20180620-p4zmmr.html
Grieved , Jun 20, 2018 11:28:38 PM | 32
The sports writers are the truth, while the established anchors are the party line. It was never any different.

We forget the upside. We forget how much energy it takes to keep a lie believable. We forget how the west has to strain against incredulity itself in order to counter the random and unschooled manifestations of the truth.

What a tangled web the west has woven for itself through its deceits. How these presstitutes had to work through the night, and sweat the details, to try to patch the holes in the sinking ship - while those who were part of the truth of discovering the reality of Russia slept soundly, and probably with a great beer buzz, and the ring of real people in their ears.

We have to do something, but we don't have to do everything, in order to counter the lies of the liars. The universe itself - the very nature of reality - abhors untruth, and causes the truth to show the shallowness of lies on countless, unscripted occasions.

And these occasions are usually a party. A celebration by ordinary people, joining in common understanding.

What the rulers most fear.

Because all it takes is a small consensus of 10-15 percent of any population and you have an activist force. They know this. Minions like the presstitutes mentioned here probably don't understand this in words, but in their bowels they know.

[Jun 12, 2018] Is there a civil war between deep state factions represented by Hillary/Obama-Qatar/Muslim Brotherhood ( globalists ) and Trump-KSA

Notable quotes:
"... Obama/Dem circles were strong supporters-funders of jihadis and the MB (Ex. Huma Abedin, with of course the MB itself being of doubtful aka astro-turf origins, British encouragement back in the day. ..."
"... The Dems captured informatics, computers, aka 'Silicon valley', anything cultural , ex. MSM, other media, Unis, etc., Unions (symbolic), and the hugely profitable Health Care sector (scammers.) Afaik, Banks contributed equally to both (as I heard from an UBS bankster but I did not tally on O.S.) ..."
"... Trump + Putin loathing (compare with Bush Jr. and Russia in 2002, 3..) thus seems fuelled by the MSM (more so than the pols or the ppl) which seems evident though one might like to add trad. Brit. (T. May, etc. but recall the UK is down to 9% manufacturing jobs, well before the grip of Brexit.) That has to do with Russia and bloggers breaking the W MSM monoply strangle on 'news.' ..."
Jun 12, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Noirette , Jun 10, 2018 12:46:03 PM | 4

Jack Rabbit in prev. open thread.

Is there a "civil war" between est./"deep state" factions represented by Hillary/Obama-Qatar/Muslim Brotherhood ("globalists"/"socialists") and Trump-KSA ("nationalists") .. it's difficult to see why the establishment would be so much against Trump. .. has proven to be a faux populist. .. the political charades that we have seen have as much to do with the "betrayal" of ISIS as they do with anti-Russian psy-ops.

Open t. Rabbit posts 147, 151

Yes, an intercine fight, not left-right, or Dem-Rep, but covert tribes that maintain an ersatz pol. oppo for the deplorable unwashed public. (They share the power and the profits, e.g. McCain is practically part of Clintoon.Co.)

They vie for control of Gvmt. law-making, organisation, largesse / exemption, passes / etc., in view of implementing regulatory capture, monopolies, rent-seeking, etc., for them to keep their position as dependent on being a conduit for their funders + backers. All other personae are there for cinematic purposes only to create the illusion of a 'democracy.' Well-paid, these side-actors do a fair job, the MSM cheers along so they hold on and persevere.

DJT's 'nationalist' stance is evident in his keeness in meeting, dealing with, NK Kim, China Xi, the 'desire' to ally w. Putin (now he wants it back into the G7 so 8), his original plan > withdraw from Syria (partly achieved) and of course KSA - Israel. (That gets muddled, long story..)

Obama/Dem circles were strong supporters-funders of jihadis and the MB (Ex. Huma Abedin, with of course the MB itself being of doubtful aka astro-turf origins, British encouragement back in the day. The primo contemp. MB voice, Tariq Ramadan, is in prison in France for rape, having being brought down by the Me Too cries.) DJT made the 'fight' against 'muslim terrorists' etc. a priority, going so far as to hold up visas, etc. - quite the Racist! scandal.

Funding to Dems/Reps was about equal overall in the last election. DJT was funded by Big Agri, Arms, Oil.

The Dems captured informatics, computers, aka 'Silicon valley', anything cultural , ex. MSM, other media, Unis, etc., Unions (symbolic), and the hugely profitable Health Care sector (scammers.) Afaik, Banks contributed equally to both (as I heard from an UBS bankster but I did not tally on O.S.)

Trump + Putin loathing (compare with Bush Jr. and Russia in 2002, 3..) thus seems fuelled by the MSM (more so than the pols or the ppl) which seems evident though one might like to add trad. Brit. (T. May, etc. but recall the UK is down to 9% manufacturing jobs, well before the grip of Brexit.) That has to do with Russia and bloggers breaking the W MSM monoply strangle on 'news.'

https://www.opensecrets.org/donor-lookup/

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/jun/04/uk-manufacturing-has-lost-600000-jobs-in-a-decade-says-union

Jen , Jun 10, 2018 5:01:28 PM | 8
Interesting that the Daily Mail article on Hala Jaber's interview with the Syrian President was not open for BTL comments. I presume this could be because many DM readers might well agree with Bashar al Assad on much of what he says about Britain's role in the West's war against Syria and the White Helmets in particular. As a whole, DM readers tend to be much more skeptical about the MSM in Britain than, say, followers of The Guardian or the BBC.

[Jun 11, 2018] Maltese Professor Who Lured Papadopoulos Tied To Soros' Open Society Foundation

Notable quotes:
"... Soros and his band of colluding commodities fund managers have done more damage in the world than any communist, socialist, or American exceptionalist. These soulless pathological misers' need to accumulate endless wealth leads to their trampling the rules and laws of free nations, bought off by their ownership of the regulatory apparatus. ..."
"... I speak from first hand knowledge. This is no fantasy. What IS a fantasy is that it is any religion or group ("the Rothschilds," "the Joos") who are behind this clique. It is the heads of the largest funds and money managers who work together like sharks on the body politic. Some are Jews, but far more are not. Greed knows no religion, no country, no creed or color. ..."
"... Bill and Hillary are at the vanguard of this group. Bill's administration did more to abet the metastatisis of this group than any other. Hillary tried to cash the IOU but failed because of her transparent venality, and Trump's appeal. ..."
Jun 11, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Maltese Professor Who Lured Papadopoulos Tied To Soros' Open Society Foundation

by Tyler Durden Mon, 06/11/2018 - 19:55 88 SHARES

Submitted by Disobedient Media

In the latest revelation concerning the "mysterious Maltese Professor," Joseph Mifsud, and his involvement in the "Russiagate" saga, Disobedient Media can additionally reveal that Mifsud interacted on a number of occasions with individuals tied to think tanks known for engaging in "pay to play" behavior for the purposes of pushing specific policies on behalf of donors. The involvement of these institutes, which include the Atlantic Council, Brookings Institute and Open Society Foundation raises questions about whether or not certain private parties were involved with efforts to target Donald Trump's presidential campaign for their own political benefit.

Disobedient Media broke coverage of Joseph Mifsud's connections to UK intelligence and was also the first outlet to report on the findings of UK political analyst Chris Blackburn, who recounted evidence that included reference to Mifsud's close relationship with Italian Senator Gianni Pittella. Pittella has been deemed in leaked documents to be a " reliable ally " of George Soros' Open Society Foundation.

Mifsud's Interaction With Think Tank Members

Joseph Mifsud has routinely and consistently interacted with various members of think tanks and institutions that as a general rule support internationalist policies. In the aftermath of the 2016 US Presidential Election, these interactions intensified as both think tanks and establishment media outlets began to increase their coverage of alleged "Russian collusion" narratives in an effort to justify ongoing investigations to the public.

On June 21st and 22nd, 2009, Mifsud was listed as a participant in the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs-hosted " G8 and Beyond " convened with the Brookings Institution, Aspen, Club de Madrid and LINK Campus. The event was also attended by Strobe Talbott, the President of the Brookings Institution. Disobedient Media has previously highlighted research by Chris Blackburn, tying members of cyber-security firm Crowdstrike to the LINK Campus in Rome. Crowdstrike founder Dmitri Alperovitch acts as a Senior Fellow for the Atlantic Council .

Mifsud has routinely aligned himself with pro-European Union parties and attended multiple events where members of the Atlantic Council and Open Society Foundation were also involved within the last several years. On June 28, 2016, Mifsud was listed as a signatory to a statement released by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) in response to the UK's Brexit vote. Other signatories included David Koranyi , Director of the Atlantic Council's Eurasian Energy Future Initiative, Jordi Vaquer , Director of the Open Society Initiative for Europe, Goran Buldioski , Director of the Open Society Initiative For Europe and George Soros. Since March 2018, the ECFR has removed Mifsud from their List of Members in an apparent attempt to distance themselves from this troubling affiliation.

On May 7th through May 9th, 2017, Mifsud was a participant in a panel discussion as part of the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation-sponsored " G7 International Forum " at the LINK Campus in Rome along with Andrea Montanino , a Chief Economist at the Atlantic Council.

On May 21st, 2017, Mifsud spoke at the Riyadh Forum On Countering Extremism And Fighting Terrorism hosted by the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies and the Islamic Military Counter Terrorism Coalition. The event also featured multiple speakers from the Atlantic Council, including Nonresident Senior Fellow Elisabeth Kendall and Ashton B. Carter , who is listed as an Honorary Director at the Atlantic Council.

On the 26th and 27th of June 2017 Mifsud attended the 10th annual council meeting of the European Council on Foreign Relations . Also present at the event was David Koranyi , the Director of the Atlantic Council's Energy Diplomacy Initiative. George Soros also appeared at the meeting along with his son, Alex Soros.

The Involvement Of Think Tanks In "Pay For Play" Propaganda Peddling

The Atlantic Council is a NATO-supported think tank that is known for pushing pro European Union, anti-Russia narratives, including " black propaganda " claiming that Russia was likely involved with attempts to "hack" the 2016 US Presidential Elections and that Wikileaks is a pawn of the Russian government. However, Disobedient Media has previously reported that the Atlantic Council and other think tanks have a troubling history of taking money from foreign special interest groups and government agencies in return for pushing propaganda to support various initiatives around the globe.

The New York Times has named the Atlantic Council along with the Brookings Institution and the Center for Strategic and International Studies as being think tanks which have made undisclosed "agreements" with foreign governments. The article denounced the Atlantic Council for having "opened a whole new window into an aspect of the influence-buying in Washington that has not previously been exposed." Multiple legal experts cited by the New York Times said that these relationships with foreign powers may constitute a violation of the Foreign Agents Registration Act .

In May 2016, a report by the Associated Press identified the Atlantic Council as one of a number of think tanks which had received funding from the Ploughshares Fund. The Ploughshares Fund is financed by George Soros' Open Society Foundation . A May 5, 2016 article by the New York Times revealed that the Ploughshares Fund was a major player in efforts to sell the Iranian nuclear deal to the American public. The deal has been generally criticized as a foreign policy failure which resulted in the transfer of hundreds of billions of dollars to Iran without any concessions in return and has failed to prevent Iran from continuing to illegally test long range ICBM missiles in violation of both the deal and international sanctions.

The Atlantic Council has released a number of glowing reviews of Soros' "philanthropic" work and proudly lists a jaw-dropping number of various special interest groups, government agencies, foreign governments and well connected, wealthy individual patrons among its donors. Highlights include the foundation of Ukranian oligarch Victor Pinchuk, The Open Society Foundation, the United Arab Emirates, Bahaa Hariri, the billionaire brother of Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, Rockefeller Brothers Fund, Inc., NATO, the United States Department of State, and Lockheed Martin Corporation. A donor list from 2015 also names the Turkish Ministry of Energy & National Resources, whose head Berat Albayrak was the subject of leaks released by publishing giant Wikileaks exposing increasing political oppression in Turkey and the involvement of the Ministry in providing material support to the terror group ISIS.

The Brookings Institution's Contributor List also mentions many of the same donors who fund the Atlantic Council. Common supporters include Victor Pinchuk, The Open Society Foundation, The Rockefeller Foundation, Lockheed Martin Corporation and The Boeing Company. Brookings has also played a central role in helping to stoke the flames of the "Russiagate" story. Its staff includes Benjamin Wittes , a Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution who admitted to leaking information given to him by James Comey about President Donald Trump to the New York Times .

The heavy emphasis placed on narrative pushing by the Atlantic Council and Brookings Institution is hardly surprising and has only intensified in 2018. In May 2018, a panel convened by the Council on Foreign Relations openly endorsed the use of propaganda on Western populations to combat what they claim to be "disinformation and fake news."

Consistent Interactions Create Concerns About Claims Of Collusion

The consistent interactions and connections between Mifsud and individuals tied to think tanks with a vested interest in pushing specific policy narratives leads to skepticism about claims that Russia systemically interfered with American elections. The damage that has been done not only to the reputation of hardworking intelligence professionals but to the very ideals of Western democracy internationally will take some time to fully repair.

While much attention has been given to the identities of the intelligence and government officials involved with the "Spygate" scandal, very little has been said about the private parties who may have used them for their own benefit. There is a plethora of international groups such as the Open Society Foundation, NATO and other individuals and organizations around the world which support these think tanks that have a proven history of pushing propaganda on behalf of their beneficiaries. Mifsud's ties to such groups that support an internationalist political agenda which has been disrupted by political events over the past several years raise serious questions about the identities of the actual parties who interfered with democratic processes and institutions in the United States.


AtATrESICI Mon, 06/11/2018 - 19:57 Permalink

Shocking...Yet another color revolution attempt by the usual suspects.

ted41776 -> AtATrESICI Mon, 06/11/2018 - 19:59 Permalink

Soros lived just long enough to see his life's work go to shit. best gift i could ever ask for

"Everything that could go wrong has gone wrong" ~ György Schwartz

can't take all that wealth with you György. hope it was worth it

johngaltfla -> Oliver Klozoff Mon, 06/11/2018 - 20:03 Permalink

Soros? CIA? Rigging elections? Whouldathunkit, now where did I put my shocked face.

TBT or not TBT -> johngaltfla Mon, 06/11/2018 - 20:06 Permalink

This is Brennan's A game . Imagine the damage team Obama could have inflicted if they had been competent .

LaugherNYC -> Bastiat • Mon, 06/11/2018 - 20:11 Permalink

Soros and his band of colluding commodities fund managers have done more damage in the world than any communist, socialist, or American exceptionalist. These soulless pathological misers' need to accumulate endless wealth leads to their trampling the rules and laws of free nations, bought off by their ownership of the regulatory apparatus.

I speak from first hand knowledge. This is no fantasy. What IS a fantasy is that it is any religion or group ("the Rothschilds," "the Joos") who are behind this clique. It is the heads of the largest funds and money managers who work together like sharks on the body politic. Some are Jews, but far more are not. Greed knows no religion, no country, no creed or color.

Bill and Hillary are at the vanguard of this group. Bill's administration did more to abet the metastatisis of this group than any other. Hillary tried to cash the IOU but failed because of her transparent venality, and Trump's appeal.

But, Trump isn't a pimple on their ass. He will come and go, and they will still be with us. They co-opt useful idiots like Comey and McCabe, and will laugh as their heads, most deservedly roll. But until the corrupt financial complex is brought to justice, nothing will change.

[Jun 09, 2018] Spooks Spooking Themselves by Daniel Lazare

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block " Siberian candidate " Trump. ..."
"... The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The Washington Post , Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers" opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin." ..."
"... Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down. When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA Director (and now NBC News analyst). ..."
"... Dearlove and Halper are now partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another MI6 vet. Alexander Downer served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an unpaid advisor . ..."
"... Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom every Russian is a Boris Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that Lokhova convincingly argues are absurd. ..."
"... As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known, Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, argued that the Iraqi military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too. ..."
"... Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult" hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine. ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... describes Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr. Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort. ..."
"... But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK. ..."
"... Stefan Halper then infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign. Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other. ..."
"... The rightwing Federalist website speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating it." Clovis believes that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue after inauguration. ..."
"... Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a "nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency with violating US election laws. ..."
"... As The Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2 article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election Day. ..."
"... Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not his government. ..."
"... Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker ..."
"... But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press." ..."
"... It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice. ..."
"... "Russiagate" continues to attract mounting blowback at Clinton, Obama and the Dems. Might well be they who end up charged with lawbreaking, though I'd be surprised if anyone in authority is ever really punished. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-02/fbi-spying-trump-started-london-earlier-thought-new-texts-implicate-obama-white ..."
"... I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb, Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged "puppet." ..."
"... The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what really happened. ..."
"... I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump did. ..."
"... Long-time CIA asset named as FBI's spy on Trump campaign By Bill Van Auken https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/21/poli-m21.html ..."
"... What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was "in the lead". ..."
"... Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House. Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal ideology for the most part. ..."
"... The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White House. ..."
"... It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its existence based on foreign enemies. ..."
"... So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab. ..."
May 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

As the role of a well-connected group of British and U.S. intelligence agents begins to emerge, new suspicions are growing about what hand they may have had in weaving the Russia-gate story, as Daniel Lazare explains.

Special to Consortium News

With the news that a Cambridge academic-cum-spy named Stefan Halper infiltrated the Trump campaign, the role of the intelligence agencies in shaping the great Russiagate saga is at last coming into focus.

It's looking more and more massive. The intelligence agencies initiated reports that Donald Trump was colluding with Russia, they nurtured them and helped them grow, and then they spread the word to the press and key government officials. Reportedly, they even tried to use these reports to force Trump to step down prior to his inauguration. Although the corporate press accuses Trump of conspiring with Russia to stop Hillary Clinton, the reverse now seems to be the case: the Obama administration intelligence agencies worked with Clinton to block " Siberian candidate " Trump.

The template was provided by ex-MI6 Director Richard Dearlove , Halper's friend and business partner. Sitting in winged chairs in London's venerable Garrick Club, according to The Washington Post , Dearlove told fellow MI6 veteran Christopher Steele, author of the famous "golden showers" opposition research dossier, that Trump "reminded him of a predicament he had faced years earlier, when he was chief of station for British intelligence in Washington and alerted US authorities to British information that a vice presidential hopeful had once been in communication with the Kremlin."

Apparently, one word from the Brits was enough to make the candidate in question step down. When that didn't work with Trump, Dearlove and his colleagues ratcheted up the pressure to make him see the light. A major scandal was thus born – or, rather, a very questionable scandal. Besides Dearlove, Steele, and Halper, a bon-vivant known as "The Walrus" for his impressive girth , other participants include: Robert Hannigan, former director Government Communications Headquarters, GCHQ, UK equivalent of the NSA. Alexander Downer, top Australian diplomat. Andrew Wood, ex-British ambassador to Moscow. Joseph Mifsud, Maltese academic. James Clapper, ex-US Director of National Intelligence. John Brennan, former CIA Director (and now NBC News analyst).

In-Bred

A few things stand out about this august group. One is its in-bred quality. After helping to run an annual confab known as the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, Dearlove and Halper are now partners in a private venture calling itself "The Cambridge Security Initiative." Both are connected to another London-based intelligence firm known as Hakluyt & Co. Halper is also connected via two books he wrote with Hakluyt representative Jonathan Clarke and Dearlove has a close personal friendship with Hakluyt founder Mike Reynolds, yet another MI6 vet. Alexander Downer served a half-dozen years on Hakluyt's international advisory board, while Andrew Wood is linked to Steele via Orbis Business Intelligence, the private research firm that Steele helped found, and which produced the anti-Trump dossier, and where Wood now serves as an unpaid advisor .

Everyone, in short, seems to know everyone else. But another thing that stands out about this group is its incompetence. Dearlove and Halper appear to be old-school paranoids for whom every Russian is a Boris Badenov or a Natasha Fatale . In February 2014, Halper notified US intelligence that Mike Flynn, Trump's future national security adviser, had grown overly chummy with an Anglo-Russian scholar named Svetlana Lokhova whom Halper suspected of being a spy – suspicions that Lokhova convincingly argues are absurd.

Halper: Infiltrated Trump campaign

In December 2016, Halper and Dearlove both resigned from the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar because they suspected that a company footing some of the costs was tied up with Russian intelligence – suspicions that Christopher Andrew, former chairman of the Cambridge history department and the seminar's founder, regards as " absurd " as well.

As head of Britain's foreign Secret Intelligence Service, as MI6 is formally known, Dearlove played a major role in drumming up support for the 2003 Anglo-American invasion of Iraq even while confessing at a secret Downing Street meeting that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the [regime-change] policy." When the search for weapons of mass destruction turned up dry, Clapper, as then head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, argued that the Iraqi military must have smuggled them into neighboring Syria, a charge with absolutely no basis in fact but which helped pave the way for US regime-change efforts in that country too.

Brennan was meanwhile a high-level CIA official when the agency was fabricating evidence against Saddam Hussein and covering up Saudi Arabia's role in 9/11. Wood not only continues to defend the Iraqi invasion, but dismisses fears of a rising fascist tide in the Ukraine as nothing more than "a crude political insult" hurled by Vladimir Putin for his own political benefit. Such views now seem distressingly misguided in view of the alt-right torchlight parades and spiraling anti-Semitism that are now a regular feature of life in the Ukraine.

The result is a diplo-espionage gang that is very bad at the facts but very good at public manipulation – and which therefore decided to use its skill set out to create a public furor over alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election.

It Started Late 2015

The effort began in late 2015 when GCHQ, along with intelligence agencies in Poland, Estonia, and Germany, began monitoring what they said were " suspicious 'interactions' between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents."

Since Trump was surging ahead in the polls and scaring the pants off the foreign-policy establishment by calling for a rapprochement with Moscow, the agencies figured that Russia was somehow behind it. The pace accelerated in March 2016 when a 30-year-old policy consultant named George Papadopoulos joined the Trump campaign as a foreign-policy adviser. Traveling in Italy a week later, he ran into Mifsud, the London-based Maltese academic, who reportedly set about cultivating him after learning of his position with Trump. Mifsud claimed to have "substantial connections with Russian government officials," according to prosecutors. Over breakfast at a London hotel, he told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Moscow where he had learned that the Russians had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of "thousands of emails."

This was the remark that supposedly triggered an FBI investigation. The New York Times describes Mifsud as "an enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia" and "a regular at meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, an annual conference held in Sochi, Russia, that Mr. Putin attends," which tried to suggest that he is a Kremlin agent of some sort.

But WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange later tweeted photos of Mifsud with British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson and a high-ranking British intelligence official named Claire Smith at a training session for Italian security agents in Rome. Since it's unlikely that British intelligence would rely on a Russian agent in such circumstances, Mifsud's intelligence ties are more likely with the UK.

After Papadopoulos caused a minor political ruckus by telling a reporter that Prime Minister David Cameron should apologize for criticizing Trump's anti-Muslim pronouncements, a friend in the Israeli embassy put him in touch with a friend in the Australian embassy, who introduced him to Downer, her boss. Over drinks, Downer advised him to be more diplomatic. After Papadopoulos then passed along Misfud's tip about Clinton's emails, Downer informed his government, which, in late July, informed the FBI.

Was Papadopoulos Set Up?

Suspicions are unavoidable but evidence is lacking. Other pieces were meanwhile clicking into place. In late May or early June 2016, Fusion GPS, a private Washington intelligence firm employed by the Democratic National Committee, hired Steele to look into the Russian angle.

On June 20, he turned in the first of eighteen memos that would eventually comprise the Steele dossier , in this instance a three-page document asserting that Putin "has been cultivating, supporting and assisting TRUMP for at least 5 years" and that Russian intelligence possessed "kompromat" in the form of a video of prostitutes performing a "golden showers" show for his benefit at the Moscow Ritz-Carlton. A week or two later, Steele briefed the FBI on his findings. Around the same time, Robert Hannigan flew to Washington to brief CIA Director John Brennan about additional material that had come GCHQ's way, material so sensitive that it could only be handled at "director level."

One player was filling Papadopoulos's head with tales of Russian dirty tricks, another was telling the FBI, while a third was collecting more information and passing it on to the bureau as well.

Page: Took Russia's side.

On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in which he complained that " Washington and other western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed " unease " that someone representing the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's side in a growing neo-Cold War.

Stefan Halper then infiltrated the Trump campaign on behalf of the FBI as an informant in early July, weeks before the FBI launched its investigation. Halper had 36 years earlier infiltrated the Carter re-election campaign in 1980 using CIA agents to turn information over to the Reagan campaign. Now Halper began to court both Page and Papadopoulous, independently of each other.

On July 11, Page showed up at a Cambridge symposium at which Halper and Dearlove both spoke. In early September, Halper sent Papadopoulos an email offering $3,000 and a paid trip to London to write a research paper on a disputed gas field in the eastern Mediterranean, his specialty. "George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?" Halper asked when he got there, but Papadopoulos said he knew nothing. Halper also sought out Sam Clovis, Trump's national campaign co-chairman, with whom he chatted about China for an hour or so over coffee in Washington.

The rightwing Federalist website speculates that Halper was working with Steele to flesh out a Sept. 14 memo claiming that "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and [are] considering disseminating it." Clovis believes that Halper was trying "to create an audit trail back to those [Clinton] emails from someone in the campaign so they could develop a stronger case for probable cause to continue to issue warrants and to further an investigation." Reports that Halper apparently sought a permanent post in the new administration suggest that the effort was meant to continue after inauguration.

Notwithstanding Clovis's nutty rightwing politics , his description of what Halper may have been up to makes sense as does his observation that Halper was trying " to build something that did not exist ." Despite countless hyper-ventilating headlines about mysterious Trump Tower meetings and the like, the sad truth is that Russiagate after all these months is shaping up as even more of a "nothing-burger" than Obama administration veteran Van Jones said it was back in mid-2017. Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller has indicted Papadopoulos and others on procedural grounds, he has indicted former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort for corruption, and he has charged a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency with violating US election laws.

But the corruption charges have nothing to do with Russian collusion and nothing in the indictment against IRA indicates that either the Kremlin or the Trump campaign were involved. Indeed, the activities that got IRA in trouble in the first place are so unimpressive – just $46,000 worth of Facebook ads that it purchased prior to election day, some pro-Trump, some anti, and some with no particular slant at all – that Mueller probably wouldn't even have bothered if he hadn't been under intense pressure to come up with anything at all.

The same goes for the army of bots that Russia supposedly deployed on Twitter. As The Washington Post noted in an oddly, cool-headed Dec. 2 article , 2, 700 suspected Russian-linked accounts generated just 202,000 tweets in a six-year period ending in August 2017, a drop in a bucket compared to the one billion election-related tweets sent out during the fourteen months leading up to Election Day.

The Steele dossier is also underwhelming. It declares on one page that the Kremlin sought to cultivate Trump by throwing "various lucrative real estate development business deals" his way but says on another that Trump's efforts to drum up business were unavailing and that he thus "had to settle for the use of extensive sexual services there from local prostitutes rather than business success."

Why would Trump turn down business offers when he couldn't generate any on his own? The idea that Putin would spot a U.S. reality-TV star somewhere around 2011 and conclude that he was destined for the Oval Office five years later is ludicrous. The fact that the Democratic National Committee funded the dossier via its law firm Perkins Coie renders it less credible still, as does the fact that the world has heard nothing more about the alleged video despite the ongoing deterioration in US-Russian relations. What's the point of making a blackmail tape if you don't use it?

Steele: Paid for political research, not intelligence.

Even Steele is backing off. In a legal paper filed in response to a libel suit last May, he said the document "did not represent (and did not purport to represent) verified facts, but were raw intelligence which had identified a range of allegations that warranted investigation given their potential national security implications." The fact is that the "dossier" was opposition research, not an intelligence report. It was neither vetted by Steele nor anyone in an intelligence agency. Opposition research is intended to mix truths and fiction, to dig up plausible dirt to throw at your opponent, not to produce an intelligence assessment at taxpayer's expense to "protect" the country. And Steele was paid for it by the Democrats, not his government.

Using it Anyway

Nonetheless, the spooks have made the most of such pseudo-evidence. Dearlove and Wood both advised Steele to take his "findings" to the FBI, while, after the election, Wood pulled Sen. John McCain aside at a security conference in Halifax, Nova Scotia, to let him know that the Russians might be blackmailing the president-elect. McCain dispatched long-time aide David J. Kramer to the UK to discuss the dossier with Steele directly.

Although Kramer denies it, The New Yorker found a former national-security official who says he spoke with him at the time and that Kramer's goal was to have McCain confront Trump with the dossier in the hope that he would resign on the spot. When that didn't happen, Clapper and Brennan arranged for FBI Director James Comey to confront Trump instead. Comey later testified that he didn't want Trump to think he was creating "a J. Edgar Hoover-type situation – I didn't want him thinking I was briefing him on this to sort of hang it over him in some way."

But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press."

Since then, the Democrats have touted the dossier at every opportunity, The New Yorker continues to defend it , while Times columnist Michelle Goldberg cites it as well, saying it's a "rather obvious possibility that Trump is being blackmailed." CNN, for its part, suggested not long ago that the dossier may actually be Russian disinformation designed to throw everyone off base, Republicans and Democrats alike.

It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree. But that's what the intelligence agencies are for, i.e. to spread fear and propaganda in order to stampede the public into supporting their imperial agenda. In this case, their efforts are so effective that they've gotten lost in a fog of their own making. If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice.

Daniel Lazare is the author of The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace, 1996) and other books about American politics. He has written for a wide variety of publications from The Nation to Le Monde Diplomatique , and his articles about the Middle East, terrorism, Eastern Europe, and other topics appear regularly on such websites as Jacobin and The American Conservative.


Vivian O'Blivion , June 4, 2018 at 6:36 am

Interesting technical detail.

https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/04/mueller-russia-troll-case-620653

Mueller is trying to omit the normal burden of legal liability, "wilful intent" in his charges against the St Petersburg, social media operation. In a horrifically complex area such as tax, campaign contributions or lobbying, a foreign entity can be found guilty of breaking a law that they cannot reasonably have been expected to have knowledge of.

But the omission or inclusion of "wilful intent" is applied on a selective basis depending on the advantage to the deep state. From a practical standpoint, omission of "wilful intent" makes it easier for Mueller to get a guilty verdict (in adsentia assuming this is legally valid in America). Once the "guilt" of the St Petersburg staff is established, any communication between an American and them becomes "collusion".

This stinks.

Realist , June 3, 2018 at 4:50 am

"Russiagate" continues to attract mounting blowback at Clinton, Obama and the Dems. Might well be they who end up charged with lawbreaking, though I'd be surprised if anyone in authority is ever really punished. https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-06-02/fbi-spying-trump-started-london-earlier-thought-new-texts-implicate-obama-white

I've always thought that the great animus between Obama and Trump stemmed from Trump's persistent birtherist attacks on Obama followed by Obama's public ridicule of Trump at the White House Correspondants' Dinner. Without the latter, Trump probably would not have been motivated to run for the presidency. Without the former, Obama would probably not have gotten into the gutter to defeat and embarrass Trump at all costs. Clinton and Obama probably never recruit British spooks to sabotage and provide a pretense for spying on the campaigns of Jeb, Ted or Little Marco. Since these were all warmongers like Hillary and Obama, the issues would have been different, Russia would not have been a factor, and Putin would have had no alleged "puppet."

The irony is that Clinton and Obama wanted Trump as her opponent. They cultivated his candidacy via liberal media bias throughout the primaries. (MSNBC and Rachel Maddow were always cutting away to another full length Trump victory speech and rally, including lots of jibber jabber with the faithful supporters.) Why? Because they thought he was the easiest to beat. The polls actually had Hillary losing against the other GOP candidates. The Dems beat themselves with their own choice of candidate and all the intrigue, false narratives and other questionable practices they employed in both the primaries and the general. That's what really happened.

backwardsevolution , June 3, 2018 at 2:50 pm

Realist – good post. I think what you say is true. Trump got too caught up in the birther crap, and Obama retaliated. But I think that Trump had been thinking about the presidency long before Obama came along. He sees the country differently than Obama and Clinton do. Trump would never have built up China to the point where all American technology has been given away for free, with millions of jobs lost and a huge trade deficit, and he would have probably left Russia alone, not ransacked it.

I saw Obama as a somewhat reluctant globalist and Hillary as an eager globalist. They are both insiders. Trump is not. He's interested in what is best for the U.S., whereas the Clinton's and the Bush's were interested in what their corporate masters wanted. The multinationals have been selling the U.S. out, Trump is trying to put a stop to this, and it is going to be a fight to the death. Trump is playing hardball with China (who ARE U.S. multinationals), and it is working. Beginning July 1, 2018, China has agreed to reduce its tariffs:

"Import tariffs for apparel, footwear and headgear, kitchen supplies and fitness products will be more than halved to an average of 7.1 percent from 15.9 percent, with those on washing machines and refrigerators slashed to just 8 percent, from 20.5 percent.

Tariffs will also be cut on processed foods such as aquaculture and fishing products and mineral water, from 15.2 percent to 6.9 percent.

Cosmetics, such as skin and hair products, and some medical and health products, will also benefit from a tariff cut to 2.9 percent from 8.4 percent.

In particular, tariffs on drugs ranging from penicillin, cephalosporin to insulin will be slashed to zero from 6 percent before.

In the meantime, temporary tariff rates on 210 imported products from most favored nations will be scrapped as they are no longer favorable compared with new rates."

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-tariffs/china-to-cut-import-tariffs-for-some-consumer-goods-from-most-favored-nations-idUSKCN1IW1PY

Trade with China has been all one way. At least Trump is leveling the playing field. He at least is trying to bring back jobs, something the "insiders" could care less about.

I agree that Hillary wanted Trump as an opponent, thought she could easily win. I've underestimated idiot opponents before, always to my detriment. Why is it that they are always the most formidable? The "insiders" are so used to voters rolling over, taking it on the chin. They gave away their jobs, replaced them with the service industry, killed their sons and daughters in wars abroad, and still the American people cast their ballots in their favor. This time was different. The insiders just did not see the sea change, not like Trump did.

Abe , June 2, 2018 at 2:20 am

"Pentagon documents indicate that the Department of Defense's shadowy intelligence arm, the Office of Net Assessment, paid Halper $282,000 in 2016 and $129,000 in 2017. According to reports, Halper sought to secure Papadopoulos's collaboration by offering him $3,000 and an all-expenses-paid trip to London, ostensibly to produce a research paper on energy issues in the eastern Mediterranean.

"The choice of Halper for this spying operation has ominous implications. His deep ties to the US intelligence apparatus date back decades. His father-in-law was Ray Cline, who headed the CIA's Directorate of Intelligence at the height of the Cold War. Halper served as an aide to Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney and Alexander Haig in the Nixon and Ford administrations.

"In 1980, as the director of policy coordination for Ronald Reagan's presidential campaign, Halper oversaw an operation in which CIA officials gave the campaign confidential information on the Carter administration and its foreign policy. This intelligence was in turn utilized to further back-channel negotiations between Reagan's campaign manager and subsequent CIA director William Casey and representatives of Iran to delay the release of the American embassy hostages until after the election, in order to prevent Carter from scoring a foreign policy victory on the eve of the November vote.

"Halper subsequently held posts as deputy assistant secretary of state for political-military affairs and senior adviser to the Pentagon and Justice Department. More recently, Halper has collaborated with Richard Dearlove, the former head of MI6, the British intelligence service, in directing the Cambridge Security Initiative (CSi), a security think tank that lists the US and UK governments as its principal clients.

"Before the 2016 election, Halper had expressed his view – shared by predominant layers within the intelligence agencies – that Clinton's election would prove 'less disruptive' than Trump's.

"The revelations of the role played by Halper point to an intervention in the 2016 elections by the US intelligence agencies that far eclipsed anything one could even imagine the Kremlin attempting."

Long-time CIA asset named as FBI's spy on Trump campaign By Bill Van Auken https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2018/05/21/poli-m21.html

CitizenOne , June 1, 2018 at 11:19 pm

Sorry for not commenting on other posts as of yet. But I think I have a different perspective. Russia Gate is not about Hillary Clinton or Putin but it is about Donald Trump. Specifically an effort to get rid of him by the intelligence agencies and the MSM. The fact is the MSM created Trump and were chiefly responsible for his election. Trump is their brainchild starlet used to fleece all the republican campaigns like a huckster fleeces an audience. It all ties to key Supreme Court rulings eliminating campaign finance regulations which ushered in the age of dark money.

When billionaires can donate unlimited amounts of money anonymously to the candidate of their choosing what ends up is a field of fourteen wannabes in a primary race each backed by their own investor(s). The only way these candidates can win is to convince us to vote. The only way they can do that is to spend on advertising.

What the MSM dreamed of in a purely capitalistic way was a way to drain the wallets of every single one of the republican Super PACs. The mission was fraught with potential checkmates. Foe example, there could be an early leader who snatched up the needed delegates for the nomination early on which would have stopped the flow of advertising cash flowing to the MSM. Such possibilities worried the MSM and caused great angst since this might just be the biggest haul they ever took in during a primary season. How would they prevent a premature end of the money river. Like financial vampire bats, ticks and leeches they needed a way to keep the money flowing from the veins of the republican Super PACs until they were sucked dry.

What the MSM really needed was a bait which they could use to lure more dollars just like a horse race where the track owners needed a fast underdog horse to clean up. I believe the term is to be "hustled". The con men of the media hustlers decided they needed a way to cause all of the candidates to squirm uneasily and to then react to the news that Donald Trump was "in the lead".

It was a pure stroke of genius and it worked so well that Carl Rove is looking for a job and Donald Trump is sitting in the White House.

Those clever media folks. What a gift the Supreme Court handed them. But there was one little (or big) problem. The problem was the result of the scam put Trump in the White House. Something that no conservative republican would ever sign onto. Trump had spent years as a democrat, hobnobbed with the Clinton's and was an avowed agnostic who favored the liberal ideology for the most part.

What to do? Trump was now the Commander in Chief and was spouting nonsense that the establishment recoiled at such as Trumps plans to form economic ties with Russia rather than continue to wage a cold war spanning 65 years which the MIC used year after year to spook us all and guarantee their billions annual increase in funding. Trump directly attacked defense projects and called for de-funding major initiatives like F35 etc.

The new guy in the White House with his crazy ideas of making friends with Vladimir Putin horrified a national arms industry funded with hundreds of billions of our tax dollars every year propped up by all the neocons with their paranoid beliefs and plans to make America the hegemon of the World. Our foreign allies who use the USA to fight their perceived enemies and entice our government to sell them weapons and who urge us to orchestrate the overthrow of governments were all alarmed by the "not a real republican" peace-nick occupying the White House.

What to do? There was clearly a need to eliminate this bad guy since his avowed policies were in direct opposition to the game plan that had successfully compromised the former administration. They felt powerless to dissuade the Administration to continue the course and form strategies to eliminate Iran, Syria, North Korea, Libya, Ukraine and other vulnerable targets swaying toward China and Russia. They faced a new threat with the Trump Administration which seemed hell bent to discontinue the wars in these regions robbing them of many dollars.

It is probable that the casino and hotel owner in the White House posed an very threatening alternate strategy of forming economic ties with former enemies which scared the hell out of the arms industry which built its economy on scaring all of us and justifying its existence based on foreign enemies.

So the MSM and the MIC created a new cold war with their friends at the New York Times and the Washington Post which published endless stories about the new Russian threat we faced. It had nothing to do with the 0.02% Twitter and Facebook "influence" that Russia actually had in the election. It was billed as the crime of the century. The real crime was that they committed the crime of the century that they mightily profited from by putting Trump in the White House in the first place with a plan to grab all the election cash they could grab.

In the interim, they also forgot on purpose to tell anyone about the election campaign finance fraud that they were the chief beneficiaries of. They also of course forgot to tell anyone what the fight was about for the Supreme Court nominee Neil Gorsuch. Twenty seven million dollars in dark money was donated by dark money donors enabled by the Supreme Court's decisions to eliminate campaign finance regulations which enabled these donors to buy out Congress and elect and confirm a Supreme Court Justice who would uphold the laws which eliminate all the election rules and campaign finance regulations dating back to the Tillman Act of 1907 which was an attempt to eliminate corporate contributions in political campaigns with associated meager fines as penalties. The law was weak then and has now been eliminated.

In an era of dark money in politics protected by revisionist judges laying at the top of our federal judicial branch posing as strict constructionists while being funded by the corporatocracy that viciously fights over control of the highest court by a panicked republican party that seeks to tie up their domination in our Congress by any means including the abdication of the Constitutional authority granted to the citizens of the nation we now face a new internal enemy.

That enemy is not some foreign nation but our own government which conspires to represent the wealthy and the powerful and which exalts them and which enacts laws to defend their control of our nation. Here is a quote:

When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men living together in society, they create for themselves in the course of time, a legal system that authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frederic Bastiat – (1801-1850) in Economic Sophisms

Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:32 am

Different journalist covering much the same ground:

http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/why-is-the-new-york-times-misleading-the-american-people-about-the-paid-informant-who-was-spying-on-the-trump-campaign/

"Russiagate" is strictly a contrivance of the Deep State, American & British Spookery, and the corporate media propagandists. It clearly needs to be genuinely investigated (unlike the mockery being orchestrated by Herr Mueller from the Ministry of Truth), re-christened "Intellgate" (after the real perpetrators of crime), pursued until all the guilty traitors (including Mueller) who really tried to steal our democratic election are tried, convicted and incarcerated (including probably hundreds complicit from the media) and given its own lengthy chapter in all the history books about "The Election They Tried to Steal and Blame on Russia: How America Nearly Lost its Constitution." If not done, America will lose its constitution, or rather the incipient process will become totally irreversible.

Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 6:25 am

Your timing of events is confused.
The deep state didn't try and steal the election because they were overly complacent that their woman would win. Remember, they didn't try to use the dodgy, Steele dossier before the election.
What the deep state has done is reactively try to overcome the election outcome by launching an investigation into Trump. The egregious element of the investigation is giving it the title "investigation into collusion" when they in all probability knew that collusion was unlikely to have taken place. To achieve their aim (removing Trump) they included the line "and matters arising" in the brief to give them an open ended remit which allowed them to investigate Trump's business dealings of a Russian / Ukrainian nature (which may venture uncomfortably close to Semion Mogilevich).
If as you state (and I concur) there was no Russian collusion, then barring fabrication of evidence by Mueller (and there is little evidence of that to date) you have nothing to worry about on the collusion front. Remember, to date, Mueller has stuck (almost exclusively) to meat and potatoes charges like tax evasion and money laundering. If however the investigation leads to credible evidence that Trump broke substantive laws in the past for financial gain, then it is not reasonable to cry foul.

Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:02 am

The Deep State assisted the DNC in knocking out Sanders. THAT was ground zero. Everything since then has been to cover this up and to discredit Trump (using him as the distraction). Consider that the Deep State never bothered to investigate the DNC servers/data; reason being is that they'd (Deep State) be implicated.

Skip Scott , June 1, 2018 at 7:29 am

Very true Seer. That is the real genesis of RussiaGate. It was a diversion tactic to keep people from looking at the DNC's behavior during the primaries. They are the reason Trump is president, not the evil Ruskies.

Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:13 am

We all seem agreed that the Russia collusion is an exercise in distraction. I can't say I know enough to comment with authority on whether the DNC would require assistance from the deep state to trash Bernie. From an outsider perspective it looked more like an application of massively disproportionate spending and standard, back room dirty tricks.
There is a saying; don't attribute to conspiracy that which can be explained by incompetence. In this case, try replacing incompetence with MONEY.

dikcheney , June 2, 2018 at 5:09 pm

Totally agree with you Skip and the Mueller performance is there to keep up the intimidation and distraction by regularly finding turds to throw at Trump. Mueller doesnt need to find anything, he just needs to create vague intimations of 'guilty Trump' and suspicious associates so that no one will look at the DNC or the Clinton corruption or the smashing of the Sanders campaign.

Their actual agenda is to smother analysis and clear thinking. Thankfully there is the forensicator piecing the jigsaw as well as consortium news.

robjira , June 1, 2018 at 11:55 am

Spot on, Seer.

michael , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm

Those servers probably had a lot more pay-to-play secrets from the Clinton Foundation and ring-kissing from foreign big donors than what was released by Wikileaks, which mostly was just screwing over Bernie, which the judge ruled was Hillary's prerogative. Some email chains were probably construed as National Security and were discreetly not leaked.
The 30,000 emails Hillary had bit bleached from her private servers are likely in the hands of Russians and every other major country, all biding their time for leverage. This was the carrot the British (who undoubtedly have copies as well) dangled over idiot Popodopolous.

Uncle Bob , June 1, 2018 at 10:33 pm

Seth Rich

anon , June 1, 2018 at 7:42 am

Realist is likely referring to events before the election which involved people with secret agency connections, such as the opposition research (Steele dossier and Skripal affair).

Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:32 am

Realist responded but is being "moderated" as per usual.

Realist , June 1, 2018 at 9:31 am

Hillary herself was a prime force in cooking up the smear against Trump for being "Putin's puppet." This even before the Democratic convention. Then she used it big time during the debates. It wasn't something merely reactive after she lost. Certainly she and her collaborators inside the deep state and the intelligence agencies never imagined that she would lose and have to distract from what she and her people did by projecting the blame onto Trump. That part was reactive. The rest of the conspiracy was totally proactive on her part and that of the DNC, even during the primaries.

Don't forget, the intel agencies led by Clapper, Brennan and Comey were all working for Obama at the time and were totally acquiescent in spying on the Trump campaign and "unmasking" the identities and actions of his would-be administration, including individuals like General Flynn. The cooked up Steele dossier was paid for by money from the Clinton campaign and used as a pretext for the intel agencies to spy on the Trump campaign. There is no issue on timing. The establishment was fully behind Clinton by hook or crook from the moment Trump had the delegates to win the GOP nomination. (OBTW, I am not a Trump supporter or even a Republican, so I KNOW that I "have nothing to worry about on the collusion front." I'm a registered Dem, though not a Hillary supporter.)

Moreover, if you think that Mueller (and the other intel chiefs) have been on the impartial up-and-up, why did the FBI never seize and examine the DNC servers? Why simply accept the interpretation of events given by the private cybersecurity firm (Crowdstrike) that the Clinton campaign hired to very likely mastermind a cover-up? That is exceptional (nay, unheard of!) "professional courtesy." Why has Mueller to this day not deposed Julian Assange or former British Ambassador Craig Murray, both of whom admit to knowing precisely who provided the leaked (not hacked) Podesta and DNC emails to Wikileaks? Why has Mueller not pursued the potential role of the late Seth Rich in the leaking of said emails? Why has Mueller not pursued the robust theory, based on actual evidence, proposed by VIPS, and supported by computer experts like Bill Binney and John McAfee, that the emails were not, as the Dems and the intel agencies would have you believe on NO EVIDENCE, hacked (by the "Russians" or anyone else) but were downloaded to a flash drive directly from the DNC servers? Why has Mueller not deposed Binney or Ray McGovern who claim to have evidence to bear on this and have discussed it freely in the media (to the miniscule extent that the corporate media will give them an audience)? Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a kangaroo court he is running? Is the media really independent and impartial or are they part of a cover-up, perpetrating numerous sins of both commission and omission in their highly flawed reportage?

I don't see clarity in what has been thus far been propounded by Mueller or any of Trump's other accusers, but I don't think I am the one who is confused here, Vivian. If you want to meet a thoroughly confused individual on what transpired leading up to this moment in American political history, just go read Hillary's book. Absolutely everyone under the sun shares in the blame but her for the fact that she does not presently reside in the White House.

Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 1:48 pm

You have presented your case with a great deal more detail and clarity than the original post that prompted my reply. You are also a great deal more knowledgeable than I on the details. I think we are 98% in agreement and I wouldn't like to say who's correct on the remaining 2%.
For clarity, I didn't follow the debates and wouldn't do so now if they were repeated. Much heat very little light.
The "pretext" that the intel agencies claim launched their actions against Trump was not the Steele dossier, at least that is what the intel agencies say. Either way your assertion that it was the dossier that set things off is just that, an assertion. I think this is a minor point.
On the DNC servers and the FBI we are 100% singing from the same hymn book and it all sticks. Mueller's apparent disinterest in the question of hack or USB drive does rather taint his investigation and thanks for pointing this out, I hadn't thought of that angle. I still think Mueller will stick to tax and money laundering and stay well clear of "collusion", so yes he may be running a kangaroo court investigation but the charges will be real world.
The MSM as a whole are a sick joke which is why we collectively find ourselves at CN, Craig Murray's blog, etc. I wouldn't like to attribute "collaboration" to any individual in the media. It was the reference to hundreds of journalists being sent to jail in your original post that set me off in the first place. When considering the "culpability" of any individual journalist you can have any position on a spectrum from; fully cognisant collaborator with a deep state conspiracy, to; a bit dim and running with the "sexy" story 'cause it's the biggest thing ever, the bosses can't get enough of it and the overtime is great. If American journalists are anything like their UK counterparts, 99% will fall into the latter category.
Don't have any issue with your final point. Hillary on stage and on camera was phoney as rocking horse s**te and everyone outside her extremely highly remunerated team could see it.
Sorry for any inconvenience, but your second post makes your points a hell of a lot clearer than the original.

Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:26 pm

My purpose for the first post in this thread was to direct readers to the article in Unz by Mike Whitney, not to compress a full-blown amateur expose' by myself into a three-sentence paragraph. You would have found much more in the way of facts, analysis and opinion in his article to which my terse comments did not even serve as an abstract.

Quoting his last paragraph may give you the flavor of this piece, which is definitely not a one-off by him or other actual journalists who have delved into the issues:

"Let's see if I got this right: Brennan gets his buddies in the UK to feed fake information on Russia to members of the Trump campaign, after which the FBI uses the suspicious communications about Russia as a pretext to unmask, wiretap, issue FISA warrants, and infiltrate the campaign, after which the incriminating evidence that was collected in the process of entrapping Trump campaign assistants is compiled in a legal case that is used to remove Trump from office. Is that how it's supposed to work?

It certainly looks like it. But don't expect to read about it in the Times."

backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 4:49 pm

Vivian – 90% of all major media is owned by six corporations. There most definitely was and IS collusion between some of them to bring down the outsider, Trump.

As far as individual journalists go, yeah, they're trying to pay their mortgage, I get it, and they're going to spin what their boss bloody well tells them to spin. But there is evidence coming out that "some" journalists did accept money from either Fusion GPS, Perkins Coie (sp) or Christopher Steele to leak information, which they did.

Bill Clinton passed the Telecommunications Act of 1996 that enabled these six media conglomerates to dominate the news. Of course they're political. They need to be split up, like yesterday, into a thousand pieces (ditto for the banks). They have purposely and with intent been feeding lies to the American people. Yes, some SHOULD go to jail.

As Peter Strzok of the FBI said re Trump colluding with Russia, "There was never any there, there." The collusion has come from the intelligence agencies, in cahoots with Hillary Clinton, perhaps even as high as Obama, to prevent Trump being elected. When that failed, they set out to get him impeached on whatever they could find. Of course Mueller is going to stick with tax and money laundering because he already KNOWS there was never any collusion with Russia.

This is the Swamp versus the People.

backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 1:52 pm

Realist – another excellent post. "Is Mueller after the truth, or is this a kangaroo court he is running?" As you rightly point out, Mueller IS being very selective in what he examines and doesn't examine. He's not after the whole truth, just a particular kind of truth, one that gets him a very specific result – to take down or severely cripple the President.

Evidence continues to trickle out. Former and active members of the FBI are now even begging to testify as they are disgusted with what is being purposely omitted from this so-called "impartial" investigation. This whole affair is "kangaroo" all the way.

I'm not so much a fan of Trump as I am a fan of the truth. I don't like to see him – anyone – being railroaded. That bothers me more than anything. But he's right about what he calls "the Swamp". If these people are not uncovered and brought to justice, then the country is truly lost.

Realist , June 1, 2018 at 4:38 pm

Precisely. Destroy the man on false pretenses and you destroy our entire system, whether you like him and his questionable policies or not.

Some people would say it's already gone, but we do what we can to get it back or hold onto to what's left of it. Besides, all the transparent lies and skullduggery in the service of politics rather than principles are just making our entire system look as corrupt as hell.

michael , June 1, 2018 at 5:00 pm

When Mueller arrested slimy Manafort for crimes committed in the Ukraine and gave a pass to the Podesta Brothers who worked closely with Manafort, it was clear that Russiagate was a partisan operation.

backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 6:17 pm

Michael – good point!

KiwiAntz , June 1, 2018 at 1:00 am

Its becoming abundantly clear now, that the whole Russiagate charade was had nothibg to do with Russia & is about a elaborate smokescreen & shellgame coverup designed to divert attention away from, firstly the Democratic Party's woeful defeat & its lousy Candidate choice in the corrupt Hillary Clinton? & also the DNC's sabotaging of Bernie Saunders campaign run! But the most henious & treacherous parts was Obama's, weaponising the intelligence agencies to spy (Halper) on the imaginary Mancharian Candidate Trump & to set him up as a Russia stooge? Obama & Hillary Clinton are complicent in this disgraceful & illegal activity to get dirt on Trump withe goal of ensuring Clinton's election win? This is bigger than Watergate & more scandalous? But despite the cheating & stacking of the card deck, she still lost out to the Donald? And this isn't just illegal its treasonous & willful actions deserving of a lengthy jail incarceration? HRC & her crooked Clinton foundation's funding of the fraudulent & discredited "Steele Dosier" was also used to implement Trump & Russia in a made up, pile of fictitious gargage that was pure offal? Obama & HRC along with their FBI & CIA spys need to be rounded up, convicted & thrown in jail? Perhaps if Trump could just shut his damn mouuth for once & get off twitter long enough to be able too get some Justice Dept officials looking into this, without being distracted by this Russiagate shellgame fakery, then perhaps the real criminal's like Halpert, Obama,HRC & these corrupt spooks & spies can be rounded up & held to account for this treasonous behaviour?

Sean Ahern , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 pm

Attention should be paid also to the role of so called progressive media outlets such as Mother Jones which served as an outlets for the disinformation campaign described in Lazare's article.
Here from David Corn's Mother Jones 2016 article:

"And a former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence tells Mother Jones that in recent months he provided the bureau with memos, based on his recent interactions with Russian sources, contending the Russian government has for years tried to co-opt and assist Trump -- and that the FBI requested more information from him."
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/veteran-spy-gave-fbi-info-alleging-russian-operation-cultivate-donald-trump/

Not only was Corn and Mother Jones selected by the spooks as an outlet, but these so called progressives lauded their 'expose' as a great investigative coup on their part and it paved the way for Corn's elevation on MSNBC for a while as a 'pundit.'

Paul G. , May 31, 2018 at 8:46 pm

In that vein did the spooks influence Rachel Maddow or is her $30,000. a day salary adequate to totally compromise her microscopic journalistic integrity.

dikcheney , June 3, 2018 at 6:57 am

Passing around references to Mother Jones is like passing round used toilet paper for another try. MJ is BS it is entirely controlled fake press.

Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:23 pm

Stefan Halper was being paid by the Clinton's foundation during the time he was spying on the Trump campaign. This is further evidence that Hillary Clinton's hands are all over getting Russia Gate started. Then there's the role that Obama's justice department played in setting up the spying on people who were working with the Trump campaign. This is worse than Watergate, IMO.

Rumors are that a few ex FBI agents are going to testify to congress in Comey's role in covering up Hillary's crimes when she used her private email server to send classified information to people who did not have clearance to read it. Sydney Bluementhol was working for Hillary's foundation and sending her classified information that he stole from the NSA.

Huma Abedin and Cheryl Mills were concerned about Obama knowing that Hillary wasn't using her government email account after he told the press that he only found out about it at the same time they did. He had been sending and receiving emails from her Clintonone email address during her whole tenure as SOS.

Obama was also aware of her using her foundation for pay to play which she was told by both congress and Obama to keep far away from her duties. Why did she use her private email server? So that Chelsea could know where Hillary was doing business so she could send Bill there to give his speeches to the same organizations, foreign governments and people who had just donated to their foundation.

Has any previous Secretary of State in history used their position to enrich their spouses or their foundations? I think not.

The secrets of how the FBI covered for Hillary are coming out. Whether she is charged for her crimes is a different matter.

F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 7:48 pm

If Hillary paid a political operative using Clinton Foundation funds – those are tax exempt charitable contributions – she would be guilty of tax fraud, charity fraud and campaign finance violations. Hillary may be evil, but she's not stupid. The U.S.Government paid Halper, which might be "waste, fraud and abuse", but it doesn't implicate Hillary at all. Not that she's innocent, mind you

Rob , June 1, 2018 at 2:14 am

I need some references to take any of your multitude of claims seriously. With all due respect, this sound like something taken from info wars and stylized in smartened up a little bit.

chris m , May 31, 2018 at 2:52 pm

the idea that Stefan Halper was some sort a of mastermind spy behind the so called "Russiagate" fiasco
seems very implausible considering what he seems to have spent doing for the past 40 years
going back to the Iran hostage crisis of 1979-1980 and his efforts then.

i think he must have had a fairly peripheral role as to whatever or not was going on behind the scenes from 2016 election campaign, and the campaign to first stop Trump getting elected, and secondly, when that failed, to bring down his Presidency.

of course, the moment his name was revealed in recent days, would have shocked or surprised those of in the general
public, but not certainly amongst those in Government aka FBI/CIA/Military-industrial circles.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 4:36 pm

chris m – Halper is probably one of those people who hide behind their professor (or other legitimate) jobs, but are there at the ready to serve the Deep State. "I understand. You want me to set up some dupes in order to make it look like there was or could be actual Russian meddling. Gotcha." All you've got to do is make it "look like" something nefarious was going on. This facilitates a "reason" to have a phony investigation, and of course they make it as open-ended an investigation as possible, hoping to get the target on something, anything.

Well, they've no doubt looked long and hard for almost two years now, but zip. However, in their zeal to get rid of their opponent, who they did not think would win the election, they left themselves open, left a trail of crimes. Whoops!

This is the Swamp that Trump talked about during the election. He's probably not squeaky clean either, but he pales in comparison to what these guys have done. They have tried to take down a duly-elected President.

F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 5:09 pm

His role may have been peripheral, but I seem to recall that the Office of Net Assessments paid him roughly a million bucks to play it. That office, run from the Pentagon, is about as deep into the world of "black ops" spookdom as you can get. Hardly "peripheral", I'd say.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:13 pm

F. G. Sanford – yes, a million bucks implies something more than just a peripheral involvement, more like something essential to the plot, like the actual setting up of the plot. Risk of exposure costs money.

ranney , May 31, 2018 at 6:17 pm

Chris, I think the Halper inclusion in this complex tale is simply an example of how these things work in the ultra paranoid style of spy agencies. As Lazare explains, every one knew every one else – at least at the start of this, and it just kind of built from there, and Halper may have been the spark – but the spark landed on a highly combustible pile of paranoia that caught on fire right away. This is how our and the UK agencies function. There is an interesting companion piece to this story today at Common Dreams by Robert Kohler titled The American Way of War. It describes basically the same sort of mind set and action as this story. I'd link it for you if I knew how, but I'm not very adept at the computer. (Maybe another reader knows how?)

We (that is the American people who are paying the salaries of these brain blocked, stiff necked idiots) need to start getting vocal and visible about the destructive path our politicians, banks and generals have rigidly put us on. Does any average working stiff still believe that all this hate, death and destruction is to "protect" us?

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:07 pm

ranney – when you are on the page that you want to link to, take your cursor (the little arrow on your screen) to the top of the page to the address bar (for instance, the address for this article is:
"https://consortiumnews.com/2018/05/31/spooks-spooking ")

Once your cursor is over the address bar, right click on your mouse. A little menu will come up. Then position your cursor down to the word "copy" and then left click on your mouse. This will copy the link.

Then proceed back to the blog (like Consortium) where you want to provide the link in your post. You might say, "Here is the link for the article I just described above." Then at this point you would right click on your mouse again, position your cursor over the word "paste", and then left click on your mouse. Voila, your link magically appears.

If you don't have a mouse and are using a laptop pad, then someone else will have to help you. That's above my pay grade. Good luck, ranney.

irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:13 pm

If you are using a Mac, either laptop w/touch screen or with a mouse, the copy/paste function
works similarly. Use either the mouse (no need to 'right click, left click') or the touch screen
to highlight the address bar once you have the cursor flashing away on the left side of it.
You may need to scroll right to highlight the whole address. Then go up to Edit (there's also
a keyboard command you can use, but I don't) in your tool bar at the top of your screen.
Click on 'copy'. Now your address is in memory. Then do the same as described above to
get back to where you want to paste it. Put your cursor where you want it to be 'pasted'.
Go back to 'edit' and click 'paste'. Voila !

This is a very handy function and can be used to copy text, web addresses, whatever you want.
Explore it a little bit. (Students definitely overuse the 'paste and match style' option, which allows
a person to 'paste' text into for example an essay and 'match the style' so it looks seamless, although
unless carefully edited it usually doesn't read seamlessly !)

Remember that whatever is in 'copy' will remain there until you 'copy' something else. (Or your
computer crashes . . . )

ranney , June 1, 2018 at 3:39 pm

Irina and Backwards Evolution – Thanks guys for the computer advice! I'll try it, but I think I need someone at my shoulder the first time I try it.

backwardsevolution , June 1, 2018 at 8:53 pm

ranney – you're welcome! Snag one of your kids or a friend, and then do it together. Sometimes I see people posting things like: "Testing. I'm trying to provide a link, bear with me." Throw caution to the wind, ranney. I don't worry about embarrassing myself anymore. I do it every day and the world still goes on.

I heard a good bit of advice once, something I remind my kids: when you're young, you think everybody is watching you and so you're afraid to step out of line. When you're middle-aged, you think everybody is watching you, but you don't care. When you're older, you realize nobody is really watching you because they're more concerned about themselves.

Good luck, ranney.

irina , June 2, 2018 at 10:00 pm

I find it helpful to write down the steps (on an old fashioned piece of paper, with old fashioned ink)
when learning to use a new computer tool, because while I think I'll remember, it doesn't usually
'stick' until after using it for quite a while. And yes, definitely recruit a member of the younger set
or someone familiar with computers. My daughter showed me many years ago how to 'cut & paste'
and to her credit she was very gracious about it. Remember that you need a place to 'paste' what-
ever you copied -- either a comment board like this, or a document you are working on, or (this is
handy) an email where you want to send someone a link to something. Lots of other possibilities too!

mike , June 1, 2018 at 7:43 pm

No one is presenting Halper as a mastermind spy. He was a tool of the deep state nothing more.

Gary Weglarz , May 31, 2018 at 1:57 pm

It seems a mistake to frame the "Russiagate" nonsense as a "Democrat vs Republican" affair, except at the most surface level of understanding in terms of our political realities. If one considers that the Bush family has been effectively the Republican Party's face of the CIA/deep state nexus for decades, as the Clinton/Obama's have been the Democratic Party's face for decades now, what comes into focus is Trump as a sort of unknown, unexpected wild card not appropriately tethered to the control structure. Simply noting that the U.S. and Russia need not be enemies is alone enough to require an operation to get Trump into line.
This hardly means this is some sort of "partisan" issue as the involvement of McCain and others demonstrates.

One of the true "you can't make this stuff up" ironies of the Bush/Clinton CIA/deep state nexus history is worth remembering if one still maintains any illusions about how the CIA vets potential presidents since they killed JFK. During Iran/Contra we had Bush, the former CIA director now vice president, running a drugs for arms operation out the White House through Ollie North, WHILE then unknown Arkansas governor Bill Clinton was busy squashing Arkansas State Police investigations into said narcotics trafficking. Clinton obviously proved his bona fides to the CIA/deep state with such service and was appropriately rewarded as an asset who could function as a reliable president. Here in one operation we had two future presidents in Bush and Clinton both engaged in THE SAME CIA drug running operation. You truly can't make this stuff up.

Russiagate seems to be in the end all about keeping deep state policy moving in the "right direction" and "hating Russia" is the only entree on the menu at this time for the whole cadre of CIA/deep state, MIC, neocons, Zionists, and all their minions in the MSM. The Obama White House would have gladly supported Vlad the Impaler as the Republican candidate that beat Hillary if Vlad were to have the appropriate foaming at the mouth "hate-Russia" vibe going on.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:18 pm

Gary – great post.

irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm

Roger that. I would really like to see an inquiry re-opened into the
teenage boys who died 'on the train tracks' in Arkansas during the
early years of the Clinton-Bush trafficking. Many questions are still
unanswered. Speculation is that they saw something they weren't
supposed to see.

Mark Thomason , May 31, 2018 at 1:12 pm

This all grows out of the failure to clean up the mess revealed by the Iraq fiasco. Instead, those who did that remained, got away with it, and are doing more of the same.

Babyl-on , May 31, 2018 at 12:46 pm

So, here is my question – Who, ultimately does the permanent/bureaucratic/deep/Imperial* state finally answer to? Who's interests are they serving? How do they know what those interests are?

It could be, and increasingly it looks as if, the answer is – no one in particular – but the Saud family, the Zionist cabal of billionaires, the German industrialist dynasties, the Japanese oligarchy and never forget the arms dealers, all of them once part of the Empire now fighting for themselves so we end up with the high level apparatchiks not knowing what to do or who to follow so they lie outright to Congress and go on TV and babble more lies for money.

It's a great contradiction that the greatest armed force ever assembled with cutting edge robotics and AI yet at the same time so weak and pathetic it can not exercise hegemony over the Middle East as it seems to desire more than anything. Being defeated by forces with less than 20% of the US spend.

Abby , May 31, 2018 at 6:36 pm

You're right. They answer to no one because they are not just working in this country, but they think that the whole world is theirs.

To these people there are no borders. They meet at places like the G20, Davos and wherever the Bilderberg group decides to meet every year. No leader of any country gets to be one unless they are acceptable to the Deep State. The council of foreign relations is one of the groups that run the world. How we take them down is a good question.

Abe , May 31, 2018 at 12:43 pm

Following the pattern of mainstream media, Daniel Lazare assiduously avoids mentioning Israel and pro-Israel Lobby interference in the 2016 presidential election, and the Israel-gate reality underlying all the Russia-gate fictions.

For example, George Papadopoulos is directly connected to the pro-Israel Lobby, right wing Israeli political interests, and Israeli government efforts to control regional energy resources.

Lazare mentions that Papadapoulos had "a friend in the Israeli embassy".

But Lazare conspicuously neglects to mention numerous Israeli and pro-Israel Lobby players interested in "filling Papadopoulos's head" with "tales of Russian dirty tricks".

Papadopoulos' LinkedIn page lists his association with the right wing Hudson Institute. The Washington, D.C.-based think tank part of pro-Israel Lobby web of militaristic security policy institutes that promote Israel-centric U.S. foreign policy.

https://rightweb.irc-online.org/profile/hudson_institute/

The Hudson Institute confirmed that Papadopoulos was an intern who left the pro-Israel neoconservative think tank in 2014.

In 2014, Papadopoulos authored op-ed pieces in Israeli publications.

In an op-ed published in Arutz Sheva, media organ of the right wing Religionist Zionist movement embraced by the Israeli "settler" movement, Papadopoulos argued that the U.S. should focus on its "stalwart allies" Israel, Greece, and Cyprus to "contain the newly emergent Russian fleet".

In another op-ed published in Ha'aretz, Papadopoulos contended that Israel should exploit its natural gas resources in partnership with Cyprus and Greece rather than Turkey.

In November 2015, Papadapalous participated in a conference in Tel Aviv, discussing the export of natural gas from Israel with a panel of current and past Israeli government officials including Ron Adam, a representative of the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and Eran Lerman, a former Israeli Deputy National Security Adviser.

Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region.

Israeli plans to develop energy resources and expand territorial holdings in the Syrian Golan are threatened by the Russian military presence in Syria. Russian diplomatic efforts, and the Russian military intervention that began in September 2015 after an official request by the Syrian government, have interfered with the Israeli-Saudi-U.S. Axis "dirty war" in Syria.

Israeli activities and Israel-gate realities are predictably ignored by the mainstream media, which continues to salivate at every moldy scrap of Russia-gate fiction.

Lazare need no be so circumspect, unless he has somehow been spooked.

Herman , May 31, 2018 at 4:13 pm

"Among Israel's numerous violations of United Nations Resolution 242 was its annexation of the Syrian Golan Heights in 1981. Recent Israeli threatened military threats against Lebanon and Syria have a lot to do with control of natural gas resources, both offshore from Gaza and on land in the occupied Syrian Golan Heights region."

And water. Rating energy and water, what's at the top for Israel. Israel would probably say both but Israel shielded by the US will take what it wants. That is already true with the Palestinians.. The last figure I heard is that the Palestinians are allocated one fifth per capita what is allocated to Israel's

mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:59 am

A large swamp is actually an ancient and highly organized ecosystem. Only humans could create a lawless madness like Washington DC.

irina , May 31, 2018 at 8:24 pm

Yes that is a good description of a swamp. BUT, if it loses what sustains it --
water, in the case of a 'real' swamp and money in the case of this swamp --
it changes character very quickly and becomes first a bog, then a meadow.

I am definitely ready for more meadowland ! But the only way to create it
is to voluntarily redirect federal taxes into escrow accounts which stipulate
that the funds are to be used for (fill in the blank) Public Services at the
Local and Regional levels. Much more efficient than filtering them through
the federal bureaucracy !

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:21 pm

But how would one avoid prosecution for nonpayment of taxes?
That seems a very quiet way to be rendered ineffective as a resister.

irina , June 1, 2018 at 2:30 am

The thing is, you don't 'nonpay' them. The way it used to work, through the
Con$cience and Military Tax Campaign Escrow Account, was that you filed
your taxes as usual. (This does require having less withholding than you owe).
BUT instead of paying what is due to the IRS, you send it to the Escrow Account.
You attach a letter to your tax return, explaining where the money is and why it
is there. That is, you want it to be spent on _________________(fill in the blank)
worthy public social service. Then you send your return to the IRS.

When I used to do this, I stated that I wanted my tax dollars to be spent to develop
public health clinics at neighborhood schools. Said clinics would be staffed by nurse
practitioners, would be open 24-7 and nurses would be equipped with vans to make
House Calls. Security would be provided.

So you're not 'nonpaying' your taxes, you are (attempting) to redirect them. Eventually,
after several rounds of letters back and forth, the IRS would seize the monies from the
escrow account, which would only release them to the IRS upon being told to by the
tax re-director. Unfortunately, not enough people participated to make it a going concern.
But the potential is still there, and the template has been made and used. It's very scale-
able, from local to international. And it would not take that many 're-directors' to shift the
focus of tax liability from the collector to the payor. Because ultimately we are liable for
how our funds are used !

Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:19 pm

this was done a lot during the Vietnam conflict, especially by Quakers. the first thing, if you are a wage earner, is to re-file a W2 with maximum withholdings-that has two effects: 1) it means you owe all your taxes in April. 2) it means the feds are deprived of the hidden tax in which they use or invest your withholding throughout the year before it's actually due(and un-owed taxes if you over over-withhold). Pretty sure that if a large number of people deprive the government of that hidden tax by under-withholding, they will begin to take notice.

Abe , May 31, 2018 at 11:54 am

Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) is an intelligence agency of the government and armed forces of the United Kingdom.

In 2013, GCHQ received considerable media attention when the former National Security Agency contractor Edward Snowden revealed that the agency was in the process of collecting all online and telephone data in the UK. Snowden's revelations began a spate of ongoing disclosures of global surveillance and manipulation.

For example, NSA files from the Snowden archive published by Glenn Greenwald reveal details about GCHQ's Joint Threat Research Intelligence Group (JTRIG) unit, which uses "dirty trick" tactics to covertly manipulate and control online communities.

JTRIG document: "The Art of Deception: Training for Online Covert Operations"
https://edwardsnowden.com/docs/doc/the-art-of-deception-training-for-a-new.pdf

In 2017, officials from the UK and Israel made an unprecedented confirmation of the close relationship between the GCHQ and Israeli intelligence services.

Robert Hannigan, outgoing Director-General of the GCHQ, revealed for the first time that his organization has a "strong partnership with our Israeli counterparts in signals intelligence." He claimed the relationship "is protecting people from terrorism not only in the UK and Israel but in many other countries."

Mark Regev, Israeli ambassador to the UK, commented on the close relationship between British and Israeli intelligence agencies. During remarks at a Conservative Friends of Israel reception, Regev opined: "I have no doubt the cooperation between our two democracies is saving British lives."

Hannigan added that GCHQ was "building on an excellent cyber relationship with a range of Israeli bodies and the remarkable cyber industry in Be'er Sheva."

The IDF's most important signal intelligence–gathering installation is the Urim SIGINT Base, a part of Unit 8200, located in the Negev desert approximately 30 km from Be'er Sheva.

Snowden revealed how Unit 8200 receives raw, unfiltered data of U.S. citizens, as part of a secret agreement with the U.S. National Security Agency.

After his departure from GCHQ, Hannigan joined BlueteamGlobal, a cybersecurity services firm, later re-named BlueVoyant.

BlueVoyant's board of directors includes Nadav Zafrir, former Commander of the Israel Defense Forces' Unit 8200. The senior leadership team at BlueVoyant includes Ron Feler, formerly Deputy Commander of the IDF's Unit 8200, and Gad Goldstein, who served as a division head in the Israel Security Agency, Shin Bet, in the rank equivalent to Major General.

In addition to their purported cybersecurity activities, Israeli. American, and British private companies have enormous access and potential to promote government and military deception operations.

mike k , May 31, 2018 at 12:23 pm

Thanks Abe. Sounds like a manual for slave owners and con men. What a tangled wed the rich bastards weave. The simple truth is their sworn enemy.

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:19 pm

Interesting that a foreign power would be given all US communications data, which implies that the US has seized it all without a warrant and revealed it all in violation of the Constitution. If extensive, this use of information power amounts to information warfare against the US by its own secret agencies in collusion with a foreign power, an act of treason.

Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:18 am

This has been going on for a LONG time, it's nothing new. I seem to recall 60 Minutes covering it way back in the 70s(?). UK was allowed to do the snooping in the US (and, likely, vice versa) and then providing info to the US. This way the US govt could claim that it didn't spy/snoop on its citizens. Without a doubt Israel has been extensively intercepting communications in the US..

Secrecy kills.

Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:23 am

Yes, but the act of allowing unregulated foreign agencies unwarranted access to US telecoms is federal crime, and it is treason when it goes so far as to allow them full access, and even direct US bulk traffic to their spy agencies. If this is so, these people should be prosecuted for treason.

F. G. Sanford , May 31, 2018 at 11:36 am

To listen to the media coverage of these events, it is tempting to believe that two entirely different planets are being discussed. Fox comes out and says Mueller was "owned" by Trump. Then, CNN comes out and says Trump was "owned" by Clapper. Clapper claims the evidence is "staggering", while video clips of his testimony reveal irrefutable perjury. Some of President Trump's policies are understandably abhorrent to Democrats, while Clinton's email server and charity frauds are indisputably violations of Federal statutes. Democrats are attempting to claim that a "spy" in the Trump campaign was perfectly reasonable to protect "national security", but evidence seems to indicate that the spy was placed BEFORE there was a legitimate national security concern. Some analysts note that, while Mueller's team appears to be Democratic partisan hacks, their native "skill set" is actually expertise in money laundering investigations. They claim that although Mr. Trump may not be compromised by the Russian government, he is involved with nefarious Russian organized crime figures. It follows, according to them, that given time, Mueller will reveal these illicit connections, and prosecution will become inevitable.

Let's assume, for argument, that both sides are right. That means that our entire government is irretrievably corrupt. Republicans claim that it could " go all the way to Obama". Democrats, of course, play the "moral high ground" card, insinuating that the current administration is so base and immoral that somehow, the "ends justify the means". No matter how you slice it, the Clinton campaign has a lot more liability on its hands. The problem is, if prosecutions begin, people will "talk" to save their own skins. The puppet masters can't really afford that.

"All the way to Obama", you say? I think it could go higher than that. Personally, I think it could go all the way to Dick Cheney, and the 'powers that be' are in no mood to let that happen.

Vivian O'Blivion , May 31, 2018 at 12:19 pm

The issue as I see it is that from the start everyone was calling the Mueller probe an investigation into collusion and not really grasping the catch all nature of his brief.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Counsel_investigation_(2017–present)

It's the "any matters arising " that is the real kicker. So any dodgy dealing / possible criminal activity in the past is fair game. And this is exactly what in happening with Manafort.
Morally you can apply the Nucky Johnson defence and state that everyone knew Trump was a crook when they voted for him, but legally this has no value.
There is an unpleasant whiff of deep state interference with the will of the people (electoral college). Perhaps if most bodies hadn't written Trump's chances off in such an off hand manner, proper due diligence of his background would have uncovered any liabilities before the election.
If there is actionable dirt, can't say I am overly sympathetic to Trump. Big prizes sometimes come with big risks.

David G , May 31, 2018 at 5:14 pm

My own feeling from the start has been that Mueller was never going to track down any "collusion" or "meddling" (at least not to any significant degree) because the whole, sprawling Russia-gate narrative – to the extent one can be discerned – is obviously phony.

But at the same time, there's no way the completely lawless, unethical Trump, along with his scummy associates, would be able to escape that kind of scrutiny without criminal conduct being exposed.

So far, on both scores, that still seems to me to be a likely outcome, and for my part I'm fine with it.

Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 5:29 am

My thoughts exactly. Collusion was never a viable proposition because the Russians aren't that stupid. Regardless of any personal opinion regarding the intelligence and mental stability of Donald Snr., the people he surrounds himself with are weapons grade stupid. I don't see the Russians touching the Trump campaign with a proverbial barge pole.

Bill , June 2, 2018 at 3:26 pm

it just happens that Trump appears to have been involved (wittingly or not), with the laundering a whole lot of Russian money and so many of his friends seem to be connected with wealthy Russian oligarchs as well plus they are so stupid, they keep appearing to (and probably are) obstructing justice. The Cohen thing doesn't get much attention here, but it's significant that they have all this stuff on a guy who is clearly Trump's bagman.

Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:15 pm

There is also quite an indication that the entire Mueller investigation is a complete smoke screen to be used as cannon fodder in the mainstream media.

On the one hand, Mueller and his hacks have found nothing of import to link Trump to anything close to collusion with members of the Russian government. And I am by no means a Trump supporter by any stretch of the imagination, except as a foil to Clinton. However, even my minimalist expectations for Trump have not worked out either.

In addition. the Mueller investigation has been spending what appears to be a majority of its time on ancillary matters that were not within the supposed scope and mandate of this investigation. Further, a number of indictments have come down against people involved with such ancillary matters.

The result is that if Mueller is going beyond the scope of his investigatory mandate, this may come in as a technicality that will allow indicted persons to escape prosecution on appeal.

Such a mandate, I would think, is the same thing as a police warrant, which can find only admissible evidence covered by the warrant. Anything else found to be criminally liable must be found to be as a result of a completely different investigation that has nothing to do with the original warrant.

In other words, it appears that the Mueller investigation was allowed to commence under a Republican controlled Congress for the very reason that its intent is simply to go in circles long enough for Republicans to get their agendas through, which does not appear to be working all too well as a result of their high levels of internecine party conflicts.

This entire affair is coming to show just how dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent the entirety of the US federal government has become. And to the chagrin of all sincere activists, no amount of organized protesting and political action will ever rid the country of this grotesque political quagmire that now engulfs the entirety of our political infrastructure.

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:48 pm

Very true that the US federal government is now "dysfunctional, corrupt, and incompetent."
What are your thoughts on forms of action to rid us this political quagmire?
(other than ineffective "organized protesting and political action")
Have you considered new forms of public debate and public information?

Seer , June 1, 2018 at 7:34 am

All of this is blackmail to hold Trump's feet to the fire of the Israel firsters (such actions pull in all the dark swampy things). By creating the Russia blackmail story they've effectively redirected away from themselves. The moment Trump balks the Deep State will reel in some more, airing innuendos to overwhelm Trump. Better believe that Trump has been fully "briefed" on all of this. John Bolton was able to push out a former OPCW head with threats (knew where his, the OPCW head's children were). And now John Bolton is sitting right next to Trump (whispering in his ear that he knows ways in which to oust Trump).

What actual "ideas" were in Trump's head going in to all of this (POTUS run) is hard to say. But, anything that can be considered a threat to the Deep State has been effectively nullified now.

Vivian O'Blivion , June 1, 2018 at 8:22 am

Possible, but Manafort already tried to get his charges thrown out as being the outcome of investigations beyond the remit He failed.

Brendan , May 31, 2018 at 10:26 am

There's no doubt at all that Joseph Mifsud was closely connected with western intelligence, and with MI6 in particular. His contacts with Russia are insignificant compared with his long career working amongst the elite of western officials.
Lee Smith of RealClearInvestigations lists some of the places where Mifsud worked, including two universities:

"he taught at Link Campus University in Rome, ( ) whose lecturers and professors include senior Western diplomats and intelligence officials from a number of NATO countries, especially Italy and the United Kingdom.

Mifsud also taught at the University of Stirling in Scotland, and the London Academy of Diplomacy, which trained diplomats and government officials, some of them sponsored by the UK's Foreign and Commonwealth Office, the British Council, or by their own governments."

Two former colleagues of Mifsud's, Roh and Pastor, recently interviewed him for a book they have written. Those authors could very well be biased, but one of them makes a valid point, similar to one that Daniel Lazare makes above:
"Given the affiliations of Link's faculty and staff, as well as Mifsud's pedigree, Roh thinks it's impossible that the man he hired as a business development consultant is a Russian agent."

Politically, Mifsud identifies with the Clintons more than anyone else, and claims to belong to the Clinton Foundation, which has often been accused of being just a way of funneling money into Hillary Clinton's campaign.

As Lee Smith says, if Mifsud really is a Russian spy, "Western intelligence services are looking at one of the largest and most embarrassing breaches in a generation. But none of the governments or intelligence agencies potentially compromised is acting like there's anything wrong."

From all that we know about Joseph Mifsud, it's safe to say that he was never a Russian spy. If not, then what was he doing when he was allegedly feeding stories to George Papadopoulos about Russians having 'dirt' on Clinton?

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/05/26/the_maltese_phantom_of_russiagate_.html

David G , May 31, 2018 at 4:25 pm

I read somewhere that Mifsud had disappeared. Was that true? If so, is he back, or still missing?

Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 6:21 pm

Here are some excerpts that will answer your question from an article by Lee Smith at Realclearinvestigations, "The Maltese Phantom of Russiagate".

A new book by former colleagues of Mifsud's – Stephan Roh, a 50-year-old Swiss-German lawyer, and Thierry Pastor, a 35-year-old French political analyst – reports that he is alive and well. Their account includes a recent interview with him.

Their self-published book, "The Faking of Russia-gate: The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with Mifsud in which he denies saying anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they write, stated "vehemently that he never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos." Mifsud asked rhetorically: "From where should I have this [information]?"

Mifsud's account seems to be supported by Alexander Downer, the Australian diplomat who alerted authorities about Papadopoulos. As reported in the Daily Caller, Downer said Papadopoulos never mentioned emails; he spoke, instead, about the Russians possessing material that could be damaging to Clinton. This new detail raises the possibility that Mifsud, Papadopoulos' alleged source for the information, never said anything about Clinton-related emails either.

In interviews with RealClearInvestigations, Roh and Pastor said Mifsud is anything but a Russian spy. Rather, he is more likely a Western intelligence asset.

According to the two authors, it was a former Italian intelligence official, Vincenzo Scotti, a colleague of Mifsud's and onetime interior minister, who told the professor to go into hiding. "I don't know who was hiding him," said Roh, "but I'm sure it was organized by someone. And I am sure it will be difficult to get to the bottom of it."

Toby McCrossin , June 1, 2018 at 1:54 am

" The Papadopoulos Case, an Investigative Analysis," includes a recent interview with Mifsud in which he denies saying anything about Clinton emails to Papadopoulos. Mifsud, they write, stated "vehemently that he never told anything like this to George Papadopoulos.""

Thank you for providing that explosive piece of information. If true, and I suspect it is, that's one more nail in the Russiagate narrative. Who, then, is making the claim that Misfud mentioned emails? The only source for the statement I can find is "court documents".

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:20 am

The election scams serve only to distract from the Israel-gate scandal and the oligarchy destruction of our former democracy. Mr. Lazare neglects to tell us about that. All of Hillary's top ten campaign bribers were zionists, and Trump let Goldman-Sachs take over the economy. KSA and big business also bribed heavily.

We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for democracy is lost.

We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious preference.

Otherwise the United States is lost, and our lives have no historical meaning beyond slavery to oligarchy.

Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 9:51 am

You are right Sam. Israel does work the fence under the guise of the Breaking News. Joe

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:18 pm

My response was that Israel massacres at the fence, ignored by the zionist US mass media.

mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:48 am

The extreme wealth and privileges of oligarchy depend on the poverty and slavery of others. Inequality of income is the root cause of most of our ills. Try to imagine what a world of economic equals would be like. No striving for more and more wealth at the expense of others. No wars. What would there be to fight over – everyone would be content with what they already had.

If you automatically think such a world would be impossible, try to state why. You might discover that the only obstacle to such a world is the greedy bastards who are sitting on top of everybody, and will do anything to maintain their advantages.

mike k , May 31, 2018 at 11:52 am

How do the oligarchs ensure your slavery? With the little green tickets they have hoarded that the rest of us need just to eat and have a roof over our heads. The people sleeping in the streets tell us the penalty for not being good slaves.

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 12:50 pm

Very true, Mike. Those who say that equality or fairness of income implies breaking the productivity incentive system are wrong. No matter how much or how little wage incentive we offer for making an effort in work, we need not have great disparities of income. Those who can work should have work, and we should all make an effort to do well in our work, but none of us need the fanciest cars or grand monuments to live in, just to do our best.

Getting rid of oligarchy, and getting money out of mass media and elections, would be the greatest achievement of our times.

Joe Tedesky , May 31, 2018 at 5:30 pm

An old socialist friend of my dad's generation who claimed to have read the biography of Andrew Carnegie had told me over a few beers that Carnegie said, "that at a time when he was paying his workers $5 a week he 'could' have been paying them $50 a day, but then he could not figure out what kind of life they would lead with all that money". Think about it mike, if his workers would have had that kind of money it would not be long before Carnegie's workers became his competition and opened up next door to him the worst case scenario would be his former workers would sell their steel at a cheaper price, kind of, well no exactly like what Rockefeller did with oil, or as Carnegie did with steel innovation. How's that saying go, keep them down on the farm . well. Remember Carnegie was a low level stooge for the railroads at one time, and rose to the top .mike. Great point to make mike, because there could be more to go around. Joe

Steve Naidamast , May 31, 2018 at 3:16 pm

"We must restrict funding of elections and mass media to limited individual donations, for democracy is lost.

We must eliminate zionist fascism from our political parties, federal government, and foreign policy. Obviously that has nothing to do with any ethnic or religious preference."

Good luck with that!!!

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 8:19 pm

Well, you are welcome to make suggestions on how to save the republic.

john wilson , May 31, 2018 at 9:10 am

The depths of the deep state has no limits, but as a UK citizen, I fail to see why the American "spooks" need any help from we Brits when it comes state criminal activity. Sure, we are masters at underhand dirty tricks, but the US has a basket full of tricks that 'Trump' (lol) anything we've got. It was the Russians wot done mantra has been going on for many decades and is ever good for another turn around the political mulberry tree of corruption and underhand dealings. Whether the Democrats or the Republicans win its all the same to the deep state as they are in control whoever is in the White House. Trump was an outsider and there for election colour and the "ho ho ho" look what a great democracy we are, anyone can be president. He is in fact the very essence of the 'wild card' and when he actually won there was total confusion, panic, disbelief and probably terror in the caves and dungeons of the deep state.

Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:33 am

I'm sure the result was so unexpected that the shadowy fixers, the IT mavens who could have "adjusted" the numbers, were totally caught off guard and unable to do "cleanly." Not that they didn't try to re-jigger the results in the four state recounts that were ordered, but it was simply too late to effectively cheat at that point, as there were already massive overvotes detected in key urban precincts. Such a thing will never happen again, I am sure.

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 9:36 am

It appears that UK has long had a supply of anti-Russia fearmongers, presumably backed by its anti-socialist oligarchy as in the US. Perhaps the US oligarchy is the dumbest salesman, who believes that all customers are even dumber, so that UK can sell Russophobia here thirty years after the USSR.

Bob Van Noy , May 31, 2018 at 8:49 am

"But how could Trump think otherwise? As Consortium News founding editor Robert Parry observed a few days later, the maneuver "resembles a tactic out of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover's playbook on government-style blackmail: I have some very derogatory information about you that I'd sure hate to see end up in the press."

Perfect.
Recently, while trying to justify my arguement that a new investigation into the RFK Killing was necessary, I was asked why I thought that, and my response was "Modus operandi," exactly what Robert Parry learned by experience, and that is the fundamental similarity to all of the institutionalized crime that takes place by the IC. Once one realizes the literary approach to disinformation that was fundamental to Alan Dulles, James Jesus Angleton, even Ian Fleming, one can easily see the Themes being applied. I suppose that the very feature of believability offered by propaganda, once recognized, becomes its undoing. That could be our current reality; the old Lines simply are beginning to appear to be ridiculous

Thank you Daniel Lazar.

Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 8:39 am

The recognition of themes of propaganda as literary themes and modus operandi is helping to discredit propaganda. The similarities of the CW false-flag operations (Iraq, Syria, and UK), and the fake assassinations (Skripal and Babchenko) by the anti-Russia crowd help reveal and persuade on the falsehood of the Iraq WMD, Syria CW, and MH-17 propaganda ops. Just as the similarities of the JFK/MLK/RFK assassinations persuade us that commonalities exist long before we see evidence.

Bob Van Noy , June 1, 2018 at 1:11 pm

Many thanks Sam F for recognizing that. As we begin to achieve a resolution of the 60's Kllings, we can begin to see the general and specific themes utilized to direct the programs of Assassination. The other aspect is that real investigation Never followed; and that took Real Power.

In a truly insightful book by author Sally Denton entitled "The Profiteers" she puts together a very cogent theory that it isn't the Mafia, it's the Syndicate, which means (for me at least) real, criminal power with somewhat divergent interests ok with one another, to the extent that they can maintain their Own Turf. I think that's a profound insight

Too, in a similar vain, the Grand Deceptions of American Foreign Policy, "scenarios" are simply and only that, not a Real possible solution. Always resulting in failure

Sam F , June 1, 2018 at 9:23 pm

Yes, it is difficult to determine the structure of a subculture of gangsterism in power, which can have many specialized factions in loose cooperation, agreeing on some general policy points, like benefits for the rich, hatred of socialism, institutionalized bribery of politicians and judges, militarized policing, destruction of welfare and social security, deregulation of everything, essentially the neocon/neolib line of the DemReps. The party line of oligarchy in any form.

Indeed the foreign policy of such gangsters is designed to "fail" because destruction of cultures, waste, and fragmentation most efficiently exploits the bribery structure available, and serves the anti-socialist oligarchy. Failure of the declared foreign policy is success, because that is only propaganda to cover the corruption.

SocraticGadfly , May 31, 2018 at 8:48 am

You know, not only Gay Trowdy but even Dracula Napolitano think people like Lazare , McGovern, etc. are overblown on this issue.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 1:47 pm

SocraticGadfly – Trey Gowdy hasn't even seen the documents yet, so he's hardly in a position to say anything. The House Intelligence Committee, under Chairman Nunes, are being stymied by the FBI and the Department of Justice who are refusing to hand over documents. Refusing! Refusing to disclose documents to the very people who, by law, have oversight. Nunes is threatening to hit them with Contempt of Congress.

Let's see the documents. Then Trey Gowdy can open his mouth.

Herman , May 31, 2018 at 8:32 am

What I take from this head spinning article is the paragraph about Carter Page.

"On July 7, 2016 Carter Page delivered a lecture on U.S.-Russian relations in Moscow in which he complained that "Washington and other western capitals have impeded potential progress through their often hypocritical focus on ideas such as democratization, inequality, corruption, and regime change." Washington hawks expressed "unease" that someone representing the presumptive Republican nominee would take Russia's side in a growing neo-Cold War

Mr. Page hit the nail on the head. There is no greater sin to entrenched power than to spell out what is going on with Russia. It helps us understand why terms like dupe and naïve were stuck on Carter Page's back.. Truth to power is not always good for your health.

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:07 am

The tyrant accuses of disloyalty, all who question the reality of his foreign monsters.
And so do his monster-fighting agencies, whose budgets depend upon the fiction.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:25 am

Daniel Lazare – good report. "It sounds more like CIA paranoia raised to the nth degree." This wasn't a case of paranoia. This was a blatant attempt to bring down a rival opponent and, failing that, the President of the United States. This was intentional and required collusion between top officials of the government. They fabricated the phony Steele dossier (paid for by the Clinton campaign), exonerated Hillary Clinton, and then went to town on bringing down Trump.

"Was George Popodopolous set up?" Of course he was. Set up a patsy in order to give you reason to carry out a phony investigation.

"If the corporate press fails to point this out, it's because reporters are too befogged themselves to notice." They're not befogged; they're following orders (the major television and newspaper outfits). Without their 24/7 spin and lies, Russiagate would never have been kept alive.

These guys got the biggest surprise of their life when Hillary Clinton lost the election. None of this would have come out had she won. During the campaign, as Trump gained in the polls, she was heard to say, "If they ever find out what we've done, we'll all hang."

I hope they see jail time for what they've done.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:38 am

Apparently what has come out so far is just the tip of the iceberg. Some are saying this could lead all the way up to Obama. I hope not, but they have certainly done all they can to ruin the Trump Presidency.

JohnM , May 31, 2018 at 9:58 am

I'm adjusting my tinfoil hat right now. I'm wondering if Skripal had something to do with the Steel dossier. The iceberg may be even bigger than thought.

Sam F , May 31, 2018 at 10:18 am

It is known that Skripal's close friend living nearby was an employee of Steele's firm Orbis.

Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 2:58 pm

Exactly, his name is Pablo Miller and he is the MI6 agent who initially recruited Sergei Skripal. Miller worked for Orbis, Steele's company and listed that in his resume on LinkedIn but later deleted it. But once it's on the internet it can always be found and it was and it was published.

robjira , May 31, 2018 at 2:13 pm

John, both Moon Of Alabama and OffGuardian have had excellent coverage of the Skripal affair. Informed opinions wonder if Sergei Skripal was one of Steele's "Russian sources," and that he may have been poisoned for the purpose of either a) bolstering the whole "Russia = evil" narrative, or b) a warning not to ask for more than what he may have conceivably received for any contribution he may or may not have made to the "dossiere."

mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:20 am

Interesting details in this article, but we have known this whole Russiagate affair was a scam from the get go. It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over Hillary. The chagrined dems came together and concocted their sore loser alibi – the Russians did it. They scooped up a lot of pre-election dirt, rolled it into a ball and directed it at Trump. It is a testament to the media's determination to stick with their story, that in spite of not a single scrap of real evidence after over a year of digging by a huge team of democratic hit men and women, this ridiculous story still has supporters.

David G , May 31, 2018 at 10:31 am

"It all started the day after Trump's unexpected electoral win over Hillary."

Not so.

Daniel Lazare's first link in the above piece is to Paul Krugman's July 22, 2016 NY Times op-ed, "Donald Trump, the Siberian Candidate". (Note how that headline doesn't even bother to employ a question mark.)

I appreciate that that Krugman column gets pride of place here since I distinctly remember reading it in my copy of the Times that day, months before the election, and my immediate reaction to it: nonplussed that such a risible thesis was being aired so prominently, along with a deep realization that this was only the first shot in what would be a co-ordinated media disinformation campaign, à la Saddam's WMDs.

Chet Roman , May 31, 2018 at 3:37 pm

Actually, I think the intelligence agencies' (CIA/FBI/DNI) plan started shortly after Trump gave the names of Page and Papadopoulos to the Washington Post (CIA annex) in a meeting on March 21, 2016 outlining his foreign policy team.

Carter Page (Naval Academy distinguished graduate and Naval intelligence officer) in 2013 worked as an "under-cover employee" of the FBI in a case that convicted Evgeny Buryakov and it was reported that he was still an UCE in March of 2016. The FBI never charged or even hinted that Page was anything but innocent and patriotic. However, in October 2016 the FBI told the FISA Court that he was a spy to support spying on him. Remember the FISA Court allows spying on him AND the persons he is in contact, which means almost everyone on the Trump transition team/administration.

Here is an excerpt from an article by WSJ's Kimberley Strassel:

In "late spring" of 2016, then-FBI Director James Comey briefed White House "National Security Council Principals" that the FBI had counterintelligence concerns about the Trump campaign. Carter Page was announced as a campaign adviser on March 21, and Paul Manafort joined the campaign March 29. The briefing likely referenced both men, since both had previously been on the radar of law enforcement. But here's what matters: With this briefing, Mr. Comey officially notified senior political operators on Team Obama that the bureau had eyes on Donald Trump and Russia. Imagine what might be done in these partisan times with such explosive information.

And what do you know? Sometime in April, the law firm Perkins Coie (on behalf the Clinton campaign) hired Fusion GPS, and Fusion turned its attention to Trump-Russia connections.

David G , May 31, 2018 at 4:56 pm

Most interesting, Chet Roman. Thanks.

My understanding is that Trump more or less pulled Page's name out of a hat to show the WashPost that he had a "foreign policy team", and thus that his campaign wasn't just a hollow sham, but that at that point he really had had no significant contact at all with Page – maybe hadn't even met him. It was just a name from his new political world that sprang to "mind" (or the Trumpian equivalent).

Of course, the Trump campaign *was* just a sham, by conventional Beltway standards: a ramshackle road show with no actual "foreign policy team", or any other policy team.

So maybe that random piece of B.S. from Trump has caused him a heap of trouble. This is part of why – no matter how bogus "Russia-gate" is – I just can't bring myself to feel sorry for old Cheeto Dust.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 6:56 am

Kimberly Strassel of the Wall Street Journal had some good advice:

"Mr. Trump has an even quicker way to bring the hostility to an end.

He can – and should – declassify everything possible, letting Congress and the public see the truth.

That would put an end to the daily spin and conspiracy theories. It would puncture Democratic arguments that the administration is seeking to gain this information only for itself, to "undermine" an investigation.

And it would end the Justice Department's campaign of secrecy, which has done such harm to its reputation with the public and with Congress."

What do you bet he does?

RickD , May 31, 2018 at 6:44 am

I have serious doubts about the article's veracity. There seems to be a thread running through it indicating an attempt to whitewash any Russian efforts to get Trump elected. To dismiss all the evidence of such efforts, and , despite this author's words, there is enough such evidence, seems more than a bit partisan.

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , May 31, 2018 at 6:55 am

What evidence? I've seen none so far. A lot of claims that there is such evidence but no one seems to ever say what it is.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:06 am

RickD – thanks for the good laugh before bedtime. I'm with Mr. Merrell and I actually want to see some evidence. Maybe it was Professor Halper in the kitchen with the paring knife.

Realist , May 31, 2018 at 9:21 am

Unfortunately, what this guy says is what most Americans still seem to believe. When I ask people what is the actual hard evidence for "Russiagate" (because I don't know of any that has been corroborated), I get a response that there have been massive examples of Russian hacks, Russian posts, tweets and internet adverts–all meant to sabotage Hillary's candidacy, and very effective, mind you. Putin has been an evil genius worthy of a comic book villain (to date myself, a regular Lex Luthor). Sez who, ask I? Sez the trustworthy American media that would never lie to the public, sez they. You know, professional paragons of virtue like Rachel Maddow and her merry band.

Nobody seems aware of the recent findings about Halpern, none seem to have a realistic handle on the miniscule scope of the Russian "offenses" against American democracy. Rachel, the NY Times and WaPo have seen to that with their sins of both commission and omission. Even the Republican party is doing a half-hearted job of defending its own power base with rigorous and openly disseminated fact checking. It's like even many of the committee chairs with long seniority are reluctant to buck the conventional narrative peddled by the media. Many have chosen to retire rather than fight the media and the Deep State. What's a better interpretation of events? Or is one to believe that the silent voices, curious retirements and political heat generated by the Dems, the prosecutors and the media are all independent variables with no connections? These old pols recognise a good demonizing when they see it, especially when directed at them.

Personally, I think that not only the GOPers should be fighting like the devil to expose the truth (which should benefit them in this circumstance) but so should the media and all the watchdog agencies (ngo's) out there because our democracy WAS hijacked, but it was NOT by the Russians. Worse than that, it was done by internal domestic enemies of the people who must be outed and punished to save the constitution and the republic, if it is not too late. All the misinformation by influential insiders and the purported purveyors of truth accompanied by the deliberate silence by those who should be chirping like birds suggests it may well be far too late.

backwardsevolution , May 31, 2018 at 7:53 pm

Realist – a most excellent post! Some poll result I read about the other day mentioned that well over half of the American public do NOT believe what they are being told by the media. That was good to hear. But you are right, there are still way too many who never question anything. If I ever get in trouble, I wouldn't want those types on my jury. They'd be wide awake during the prosecution's case and fast asleep during my defense.

This is the Swamp at work on both sides of the aisle. Most of the Republicans are hanging Trump out to dry. They've probably got too much dirt they want to keep hidden themselves, so retirement looks like a good idea. Get out of Dodge while the going is good, before the real fighting begins! The Democrats are battling for all they're worth, and I've got to hand it to them – they're dirty little fighters.

Yes, democracy has been hijacked. Hard to say how long this has been going on – maybe forever. If there is anything good about Trump's presidency, it's that the Deep State is being laid out and delivered up on a silver platter for all to see.

There has never been a better chance to take back the country than this. If this opportunity passes, it will never come again. They will make sure of it.

The greatest thing that Trump could do for the country would be to declassify all documents. Jeff Sessions is either part of the Deep State or he's been scared off. He's not going to act. Rosenstein is up to his eyeballs in this mess and he's not going to act. In fact, he's preventing Nunes from getting documents. It is up to Trump to act. I just hope he's not being surrounded by a bunch of bad apple lawyers who are giving him bad advice. He needs to go above the Department of Justice and declassify ALL documents. If he did that, a lot of these people would probably die of a heart attack within a minute.

mike k , May 31, 2018 at 7:11 am

You sure came out of the woodwork quickly to express your "serious doubts" RickD.

Skip Scott , May 31, 2018 at 8:07 am

Please provide "such evidence". I've yet to see any. The entire prosecution of RussiaGate has been one big Gish Gallop.

strgr-tgther , May 31, 2018 at 9:39 pm

RickD – Thank you for pointing that out! You were the only one!!! It is a very strange article leaving Putin and the Russians evidence out and also not a single word about Stromy Daniels witch is also very strange. I know Hillary would never have approved of any of this and they don't say that either.

John , June 1, 2018 at 2:26 am

What does Stormy Daniels have to do with RussiaGate?

You know that someone who committed the ultimate war crime by lying us into war to destroy Libya and re-institute slavery there, and who laughed after watching video of a man that Nelson Mandela called "The Greatest Living Champion of Human Rights on the Planet" be sodomized to death with a knife, is somehow too "moral" to do such a thing? Really?

It amazes me how utterly cultish those who support the Red Queen have shown themselves to be – without apparently realizing that they are obviously on par with the followers of Jim Jones!

strgr-tgther , June 1, 2018 at 12:17 pm

That is like saying what does income tax have to do with Al Capone. Who went to Alctraz because he did not pay income tax not for being a gangster. So we know Trump has sexual relations with Stormy Daniels, then afterward PAID her not to talk about it. So he paid Story Daniels for sex! That is Prostitution! Same thing. And that is inpeachable, using womens bodies as objects. If we don't prosecute Trump here then from now on all a John needs to say to the police is that he was not paying for sex but paying to keep quiet about it. And Cogress can get Trump for prostitution and disgracing the office of President. Without Russia investigations we would never have found out about this important fact, so that is what it has to do with Russia Gate.

Paul E. Merrell, J.D. , May 31, 2018 at 4:53 am

Guccifer 2.0's American Fingerprints Reveal An Operation Made In The USA: https://disobedientmedia.com/2018/05/guccifer-2-0s-american-fingerprints-reveal-an-operation-made-in-the-usa/

[Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say. ..."
"... The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack. ..."
"... "No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.] ..."
"... "Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since . ..."
"... "More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi." ..."
"... The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ] ..."
"... Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies. MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers. ..."
"... The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. ..."
"... I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed out" propaganda. One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not. No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply." ..."
"... There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths. ..."
"... Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked" to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another ..."
"... (FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and printed. ..."
"... Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden. ..."
"... Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their "investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again. ..."
"... Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's activities are a complete sham. ..."
"... Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely cause of the Russiagate scams. ..."
"... Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." ..."
"... For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic conspiracy. ..."
"... Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB drive, it is not a known. ..."
"... There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings. ..."
"... Don't forget this Twitter post by Wikileaks on October 30, 2016: Podesta: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH- ..."
"... Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face? ..."
"... If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars. ..."
"... My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody? ..."
Jun 09, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

If you are wondering why so little is heard these days of accusations that Russia hacked into the U.S. election in 2016, it could be because those charges could not withstand close scrutiny . It could also be because special counsel Robert Mueller appears to have never bothered to investigate what was once the central alleged crime in Russia-gate as no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team.

Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity -- including two "alumni" who were former National Security Agency technical directors -- have long since concluded that Julian Assange did not acquire what he called the "emails related to Hillary Clinton" via a "hack" by the Russians or anyone else. They found, rather, that he got them from someone with physical access to Democratic National Committee computers who copied the material onto an external storage device -- probably a thumb drive. In December 2016 VIPS explained this in some detail in an open Memorandum to President Barack Obama.

On January 18, 2017 President Obama admitted that the "conclusions" of U.S. intelligence regarding how the alleged Russian hacking got to WikiLeaks were "inconclusive." Even the vapid FBI/CIA/NSA "Intelligence Community Assessment of Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent U.S. Elections" of January 6, 2017, which tried to blame Russian President Vladimir Putin for election interference, contained no direct evidence of Russian involvement. That did not prevent the "handpicked" authors of that poor excuse for intelligence analysis from expressing "high confidence" that Russian intelligence "relayed material it acquired from the Democratic National Committee to WikiLeaks." Handpicked analysts, of course, say what they are handpicked to say.

Never mind. The FBI/CIA/NSA "assessment" became bible truth for partisans like Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA), ranking member of the House Intelligence Committee, who was among the first off the blocks to blame Russia for interfering to help Trump. It simply could not have been that Hillary Clinton was quite capable of snatching defeat out of victory all by herself. No, it had to have been the Russians.

Five days into the Trump presidency, I had a chance to challenge Schiff personally on the gaping disconnect between the Russians and WikiLeaks. Schiff still "can't share the evidence" with me or with anyone else, because it does not exist.

WikiLeaks

It was on June 12, 2016, just six weeks before the Democratic National Convention, that Assange announced the pending publication of "emails related to Hillary Clinton," throwing the Clinton campaign into panic mode, since the emails would document strong bias in favor of Clinton and successful attempts to sabotage the campaign of Bernie Sanders. When the emails were published on July 22, just three days before the convention began, the campaign decided to create what I call a Magnificent Diversion, drawing attention away from the substance of the emails by blaming Russia for their release.

Clinton's PR chief Jennifer Palmieri later admitted that she golf-carted around to various media outlets at the convention with instructions "to get the press to focus on something even we found difficult to process: the prospect that Russia had not only hacked and stolen emails from the DNC, but that it had done so to help Donald Trump and hurt Hillary Clinton." The diversion worked like a charm. Mainstream media kept shouting "The Russians did it," and gave little, if any, play to the DNC skullduggery revealed in the emails themselves. And like Brer' Fox, Bernie didn't say nothin'.

Meanwhile, highly sophisticated technical experts, were hard at work fabricating "forensic facts" to "prove" the Russians did it. Here's how it played out:

June 12, 2016: Assange announces that WikiLeaks is about to publish "emails related to Hillary Clinton."

June 14, 2016: DNC contractor CrowdStrike, (with a dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest) announces that malware has been found on the DNC server and claims there is evidence it was injected by Russians.

June 15, 2016: "Guccifer 2.0" affirms the DNC statement; claims responsibility for the "hack;" claims to be a WikiLeaks source; and posts a document that the forensics show was synthetically tainted with "Russian fingerprints."

The June 12, 14, & 15 timing was hardly coincidence. Rather, it was the start of a pre-emptive move to associate Russia with anything WikiLeaks might have been about to publish and to "show" that it came from a Russian hack.

Enter Independent Investigators

A year ago independent cyber-investigators completed the kind of forensic work that, for reasons best known to then-FBI Director James Comey, neither he nor the "handpicked analysts" who wrote the Jan. 6, 2017 assessment bothered to do. The independent investigators found verifiable evidence from metadata found in the record of an alleged Russian hack of July 5, 2016 showing that the "hack" that day of the DNC by Guccifer 2.0 was not a hack, by Russia or anyone else.

Rather it originated with a copy (onto an external storage device – a thumb drive, for example) by an insider -- the same process used by the DNC insider/leaker before June 12, 2016 for an altogether different purpose. (Once the metadata was found and the "fluid dynamics" principle of physics applied, this was not difficult to disprove the validity of the claim that Russia was responsible.)

One of these independent investigators publishing under the name of The Forensicator on May 31 published new evidence that the Guccifer 2.0 persona uploaded a document from the West Coast of the United States, and not from Russia.

In our July 24, 2017 Memorandum to President Donald Trump we stated , "We do not know who or what the murky Guccifer 2.0 is. You may wish to ask the FBI."

Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, the disclosure described below may be related. Even if it is not, it is something we think you should be made aware of in this general connection. On March 7, 2017, WikiLeaks began to publish a trove of original CIA documents that WikiLeaks labeled 'Vault 7.' WikiLeaks said it got the trove from a current or former CIA contractor and described it as comparable in scale and significance to the information Edward Snowden gave to reporters in 2013.

"No one has challenged the authenticity of the original documents of Vault 7, which disclosed a vast array of cyber warfare tools developed, probably with help from NSA, by CIA's Engineering Development Group. That Group was part of the sprawling CIA Directorate of Digital Innovation – a growth industry established by John Brennan in 2015. [ (VIPS warned President Obama of some of the dangers of that basic CIA reorganization at the time.]

Marbled

"Scarcely imaginable digital tools – that can take control of your car and make it race over 100 mph, for example, or can enable remote spying through a TV – were described and duly reported in the New York Times and other media throughout March. But the Vault 7, part 3 release on March 31 that exposed the "Marble Framework" program apparently was judged too delicate to qualify as 'news fit to print' and was kept out of the Times at the time, and has never been mentioned since .

"The Washington Post's Ellen Nakashima, it seems, 'did not get the memo' in time. Her March 31 article bore the catching (and accurate) headline: 'WikiLeaks' latest release of CIA cyber-tools could blow the cover on agency hacking operations.'

"The WikiLeaks release indicated that Marble was designed for flexible and easy-to-use 'obfuscation,' and that Marble source code includes a "de-obfuscator" to reverse CIA text obfuscation.

"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report , Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi."

A few weeks later William Binney, a former NSA technical, and I commented on Vault 7 Marble, and were able to get a shortened op-ed version published in The Baltimore Sun

The CIA's reaction to the WikiLeaks disclosure of the Marble Framework tool was neuralgic. Then Director Mike Pompeo lashed out two weeks later, calling Assange and his associates "demons," and insisting; "It's time to call out WikiLeaks for what it really is, a non-state hostile intelligence service, often abetted by state actors like Russia."Our July 24 Memorandum continued: "Mr. President, we do not know if CIA's Marble Framework, or tools like it, played some kind of role in the campaign to blame Russia for hacking the DNC. Nor do we know how candid the denizens of CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate have been with you and with Director Pompeo. These are areas that might profit from early White House review. [ President Trump then directed Pompeo to invite Binney, one of the authors of the July 24, 2017 VIPS Memorandum to the President, to discuss all this. Binney and Pompeo spent an hour together at CIA Headquarters on October 24, 2017, during which Binney briefed Pompeo with his customary straightforwardness. ]

We also do not know if you have discussed cyber issues in any detail with President Putin. In his interview with NBC's Megyn Kelly he seemed quite willing – perhaps even eager – to address issues related to the kind of cyber tools revealed in the Vault 7 disclosures, if only to indicate he has been briefed on them. Putin pointed out that today's technology enables hacking to be 'masked and camouflaged to an extent that no one can understand the origin' [of the hack] And, vice versa, it is possible to set up any entity or any individual that everyone will think that they are the exact source of that attack.

"'Hackers may be anywhere,' he said. 'There may be hackers, by the way, in the United States who very craftily and professionally passed the buck to Russia. Can't you imagine such a scenario? I can.'

New attention has been drawn to these issues after I discussed them in a widely published 16-minute interview last Friday.

In view of the highly politicized environment surrounding these issues, I believe I must append here the same notice that VIPS felt compelled to add to our key Memorandum of July 24, 2017:

"Full Disclosure: Over recent decades the ethos of our intelligence profession has eroded in the public mind to the point that agenda-free analysis is deemed well nigh impossible. Thus, we add this disclaimer, which applies to everything we in VIPS say and do: We have no political agenda; our sole purpose is to spread truth around and, when necessary, hold to account our former intelligence colleagues.

"We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental." The fact we find it is necessary to include that reminder speaks volumes about these highly politicized times.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Savior in inner-city Washington. He was an Army infantry/intelligence officer before serving as a CIA analyst for 27 years. His duties included preparing, and briefing one-on-one, the President's Daily Brief.


ThomasGilroy , June 9, 2018 at 9:44 am

"More important, the CIA reportedly used Marble during 2016. In her Washington Post report, Nakashima left that out, but did include another significant point made by WikiLeaks; namely, that the obfuscation tool could be used to conduct a 'forensic attribution double game' or false-flag operation because it included test samples in Chinese, Russian, Korean, Arabic and Farsi."

Another false flag operation? Suddenly false flag operations have become the weapon of choice. Interestingly enough, they are nefariously (always) committed by the US or US allies. MH17 was a false flag with an SU-25 Ukraine jet responsible for downing the passenger jet (to blame Russia). All of the chemical attacks in Syria were false flag operations with the supply of sarin/chlorine made in Turkey or directly given to the "rebels" by the CIA or US allies. The White Helmets were of course in on all of the details. Assad was just simply not capable of doing that to "his" people. Forget that the sarin had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply. Next it was the snipers who used a false flag operation during the Maidan revolution to shoot protesters and police to oust Yanukovych. Only the neo-Nazis could be capable of shooting the Maidan protesters so they could take power. And then Seth Rich was murdered so he couldn't reveal he was the "real" source of the leak. This was hinted by Assange when he offered a reward to find the killers.

The author tosses out that the DNC hack was (potentially) a false flag operation by the CIA obviously to undermine Trump while victimizing Russia. It must be the Gulf of Tonkin all over again. While Crowdstrike might have a "dubious professional record and multiple conflicts of interest", their results were also confirmed by several other cyber-security firms (Wikipedia):

cybersecurity experts and firms, including CrowdStrike, Fidelis Cybersecurity, Mandiant, SecureWorks, ThreatConnect, and the editor for Ars Technica, have rejected the claims of "Guccifer 2.0" and have determined, on the basis of substantial evidence, that the cyberattacks were committed by two Russian state-sponsored groups (Cozy Bear and Fancy Bear).

Then there was Papadopoulas who coincidentally was given the information that Russia had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton in the form of thousands of emails. Obviously, they were illegally obtained (unless this was another CIA false flag operation). This was before the release of the emails by WikiLeaks. This was followed by the Trump Tower meeting with Russians with connections to the Russian government and the release of the emails by WikiLeaks shortly thereafter. Additionally, Russia had the motive to defeat HRC and elect Trump. Yesterday, Trump pushed for the reinstatement of Russia at the G-7 summit. What a shock! All known evidence and motive points the finger directly at Russia.

Calling everything a false flag operation is really the easy way out, but ultimately, it lets the responsible culprits off of the hook.

anon , June 9, 2018 at 11:28 am

I don't seen any cause to say that any false-flag theory you don't like is merely "tossed out" propaganda. One cannot tell in your comment where you think the accounts are credible and where not. No evidence that the Syria CW attacks "had the chemical signature of the Assad regime sarin supply."

CitizenOne , June 8, 2018 at 11:40 pm

There can be no doubt that counterintelligence tools would be pursued by our intelligence agencies as a means to create narratives and false evidence based on the production of false flags which support desired geopolitical outcomes. There would be a need to create false flags using technology to support the geopolitical agenda which would be hard or impossible to trace using the forensic tools used by cyber sleuths.

In pre computer technology days there were also many false flags which were set up to create real world scenarios which suited the geopolitical agenda. Even today, there are many examples of tactical false flag operations either organized and orchestrated or utilized by the intelligence agencies to create the narrative which supports geopolitical objectives.

Examples:

The US loaded munitions in broad daylight visible to German spies onto the passenger ship Lusitania despite German warnings that they would torpedo any vessels suspected of carrying munitions. The Lusitania then proceeded to loiter unaccompanied by escorts in an area off the Ireland coast treading over the same waters until it was spotted by a German U-Boat and was torpedoed. This was not exactly a false flag since the German U-Boat pulled the trigger but it was required to gain public support for the entrance of the US into WWI. It worked.

There is evidence that the US was deliberately caught "off guard" in the Pearl Harbor Attack. Numerous coded communication intercepts were made but somehow the advanced warning radar on the island of Hawaii was mysteriously turned off in the hours before and during the Japanese attack which guaranteed that the attack would be successful and also guaranteed that our population would instantly sign on to the war against Japan. It worked.

There is evidence that the US deliberately ignored the intelligence reports that UBL was planning to conduct an attack on the US using planes as bombs. The terrorists who carried out the attacks on the twin towers were "allowed" to conduct them. The result was the war in Iraq which was sold based on a pack of lies about WMDs and which we used to go to war with Iraq.

The Tonkin Gulf incident which historians doubt actually happened or believe if it did was greatly exaggerated by intelligence and military sources was used to justify the war in Vietnam.

The Spanish American War was ginned up by William Randolph Hearst and his yellow journalism empire to justify attacking Cuba, Panama and the Philippines. The facts revealed by forensic analysis of the exploded USS Maine have shown that the cataclysm was caused by a boiler explosion not an enemy mine. At the time this was also widely believed to not be caused by a Spanish mine in the harbor but the news sold the story of Spanish treachery and war was waged.

In each case of physical false flags created on purpose, or allowed to happen or just made up by fictions based on useful information that could be manipulated and distorted the US was led to war. Some of these wars were just wars and others were wars of choice but in every case a false flag was needed to bring the nation into a state where we believed we were under attack and under the circumstances flocked to war. I will not be the judge of history or justice here since each of these events had both negative and positive consequences for our nation. What I will state is that it is obvious that the willingness to allow or create or just capitalize on the events which have led to war are an essential ingredient. Without a publicly perceived and publicly supported cause for war there can be no widespread support for war. I can also say our leaders have always known this.

Enter the age of technology and the computer age with the electronic contraptions which enable global communication and commerce.

Is it such a stretch to imagine that the governments desire to shape world events based on military actions would result in a plan to use these modern technologies to once again create in our minds a cyber scenario in which we are once again as a result of the "cyber" false flag prepared for us to go to war? Would it be too much of a stretch to imagine that the government would use the new electronic frontier just as it used the old physical world events to justify military action?

Again, I will not go on to condemn any action by our military but will focus on how did we get there and how did we arrive at a place where a majority favored war.

Whether created by physical or cyberspace methods we can conclude that such false flags will happen for better or worse in any medium available.

susan sunflower , June 8, 2018 at 7:52 pm

I'd like "evidence" and I'd also like "context" since apparently international electoral "highjinks" and monkey-wrenching and rat-f*cking have a long tradition and history (before anyone draws a weapon, kills a candidate or sicc's death squads on the citizenry.

The DNC e-mail publication "theft" I suspect represents very small small potatoes for so many reasons As Dixon at Black Agenda Report put it . Russia-gate is American Exceptionalism writ large which takes on a more sinister aspect as groups like BLM and others are "linked" to alleged "Russian funding"on one and and Soros funding on another

https://www.blackagendareport.com/russia-gate-and-crisis-american-exceptionalism

(FWIW, this is a new neoliberal phenomenon when the ultra-rich "liberals" can quietly fund marches on Washington and "grassroots" networking making those neophyte movements too easy targets with questionable robust foundation (color revolutions are possible when anyone is able to foot the cost of 1,000 or 2000 "free" signs or t-shirts -- impecccably designed and printed.

Gary Weglarz , June 8, 2018 at 11:08 am

Excellent post. Thanks also for reminding me I need to revisit the Vault 7 information as source material. These are incredibly important leaks that help connect the dots of criminal State intelligence activities designed to have remained forever hidden.

Skip Scott , June 8, 2018 at 1:07 pm

I can't think of any single piece of evidence that our MSM is under the very strict control of our so-called intelligence agencies than how fast and completely the Vault 7 releases got flushed down the memory hole. "Nothing to see here folks, move along."

Realist , June 9, 2018 at 1:36 am

http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/dems-put-finishing-touches-on-one-party-surveillance-superstate/

Skip Scott , June 9, 2018 at 7:05 am

Mbob-

I don't think anyone can predict whether or not Sanders would have won as a 3rd party candidate. He ran a remarkable campaign, but when he caved to the Clinton machine he lost a lot of supporters, including me. If he had stood up at the convention and talked of the DNC skullduggery exposed by Wikileaks, and said "either I run as a democrat, or I run as a Green, but I'm running", he would have at least gotten 15 pct to make the TV debates, and who knows what could have happened after that. 40 pct of registered voters didn't vote. That alone tells you it is possible he might have won.

Instead he expected us to follow him like he was the f'ing Pied Piper to elect another Wall St. loving warmonger. That's why he gets no "pass" from me. He (and the Queen of Chaos) gave us Trump. BTW, Obama doesn't get a "pass" either.

willow , June 8, 2018 at 9:24 pm

It's all about the money. A big motive for the DNC to conjure up Russia-gate was to keep donors from abandoning any future
Good Ship Hillary or other Blue Dog Democrat campaigns: "Our brand/platform wasn't flawed. It was the Rooskies."

Vivian O'Blivion , June 8, 2018 at 8:22 am

An earlier time line.

March 14th. Popadopoulos has first encounter with Mifsud.

April 26th. Mifsud tells Popadopoulos that Russians have "dirt" on Clinton, including "thousands of e-mails".

May 4th. Trump last man standing in Republican primary.

May 10th. Popadopoulos gets drunk with London based Australian diplomat and talks about "dirt" but not specifically e-mails.

June 9th. Don. Jr meets in Trump tower with Russians promising "dirt" but not specifically in form of e-mails.

It all comes down to who Mifsud is, who he is working for and why he has been "off grid" to journalists (but not presumably Intelligence services) for > 6 months.

Specific points.

On March 14th Popadopoulos knew he was transferring from team Carson to team Trump but this was not announced to the (presumably underwhelmed) world 'till March 21st. Whoever put Mifsud onto Popadopoulos was very quick on their feet.
The Australian diplomat broke chain of command by reporting the drunken conversation to the State Department as opposed to his domestic Intelligence service. If Mifsud was a western asset, Australian Intelligence would likely be aware of his status.
If Mifsud was a Russian asset why would demonstrably genuine Russians be trying to dish up the dirt on Clinton in June?

There are missing pieces to this jigsaw puzzle but it's starting to look like a deep state operation to dirty Trump in the unlikely event that he went on to win.

Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:28 pm

Ms. Clinton was personally trying to tar Trump with allusions to "Russia" and being "Putin's puppet" long before he won the presidency, in fact, quite conspicuously during the two conventions and most pointedly during the debates. She was willing to use that ruse long before her defeat at the ballot box. It was the straw that she clung to and was willing to use as a pretext for overturning the election after the unthinkable happened. But, you are right, smearing Trump through association with Russia was part of her long game going back to the early primaries, especially since her forces (both in politics and in the media) were trying mightily to get him the nomination under the assumption that he would be the easiest (more like the only) Republican candidate that she could defeat come November.

Wcb , June 8, 2018 at 5:25 pm

Steven Halper?

Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:33 am

I might add to this informative article that the reason why Julian Assange has been ostracized and isolated from any public appearance, denied a cell phone, internet and visitors is that he tells the truth, and TPTB don't want him to say yet again that the emails were leaked from the DNC. I've heard him say it several times. H. Clinton was so shocked and angry that she didn't become president as she so confidently expected that her, almost knee-jerk, reaction was to find a reason that was outside of herself on which to blame her defeat. It's always surprised me that no one talks about what was in those emails which covered her plans for Iran and Russia (disgusting).
Trump is a sociopath, but the Russians had nothing to do with him becoming elected. I was please to read here that he or perhaps just Pompeo? met with Binney. That's a good thing, though Pompeo, too, is unstable and war hungry to follow Israel into bombing yet another innocent sovereign country. Thank, Mr. McGovern for another excellent coverage of this story.

MLS , June 7, 2018 at 9:59 pm

"no one associated with WikiLeaks has ever been questioned by his team"

Do tell, Ray: How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's investigation – with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks – has and has not done?

strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:14 am

MLS: Thank you! No one stands up for what is right any more. We have 17 Intelligency agencies that say are election was stolen. And just last week the Republicans Paul Ryan, Mitch McConnel and Trey Gowdy (who I detest) said the FBI and CIA and NSA were just doing there jobs the way ALL AMERICANS woudl want them to. And even Adam Schiff, do you think he will tell any reporter what evidence he does have? #1 It is probably classified and #2 he is probably saving it for the inpeachment. We did not find out about the Nixon missing 18 minutes until the end anyways. All of these articles sound like the writer just copied Sean Hannity and wrote everything down he said, and yesterday he told all suspects in the Mueller investigation to Smash and Bleach there mobile devices, witch is OBSTRUCTION of justice and witness TAMPERING. A great American there!

Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:48 am

strgr-tgther:

Sean Hannity??? Ha, ha, ha.

As Mr. McGoven wrote .."any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental."

John , June 8, 2018 at 5:48 am

Sorry I had to come back and point out the ultimate irony of ANYONE who supports the Butcher of Libya complaining about having an election stolen from them (after the blatant rigging of the primary that caused her to take the nomination away from the ONE PERSON who was polling ahead of Trump beyond the margin of error of the polls.)

It is people like you who gave us Trump. The Pied Piper Candidate promoted by the DNC machine (as the emails that were LEAKED, not "hacked", as the metadata proves conclusively, show.)

incontinent reader , June 8, 2018 at 7:14 am

What is this baloney? Seventeen Intelligence agencies DID NOT conclude what you are alleging, And in fact, Brennan and his cabal avoided using a National intelligence Estimate, which would have shot down his cherry-picked 'assessment' before it got off the ground – and it would have been published for all to read.

The NSA has everything on everybody, yet has never released anything remotely indicating Russian collusion. Do you think the NSA Director, who, as you may recall, did not give a strong endorsement to the Brennan-Comey assessment, would have held back from the Congress such information, if it had existed, when he was questioned? Furthermore, former technical directors of the NSA, Binney, Wiebe and Loomis- the very best of the best- have proven through forensics that the Wikileaks disclosures were not obtained by hacking the DNC computers, but by a leak, most likely to a thumb drive on the East Coast of the U.S. How many times does it have to be laid out for you before you are willing and able to absorb the facts?

As for Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, (and Trey Gowdy, who was quite skilled on the Benghazi and the Clinton private email server investigations- investigations during which Schiff ran interference for Clinton- but has seemed unwilling to digest the Strozk, Page, McCabe, et al emails and demand a Bureau housecleaning), who cares what they think or say, what matters is the evidence.

I suggest you familiarize yourself with the facts- and start by rereading Ray's articles, and the piece by Joe diGenova posted on Ray's website.

Realist , June 8, 2018 at 4:12 pm

The guy's got Schiff for brains. Everyone who cares about the truth has known since before Mueller started his charade that the "17 intelligence agency" claim was entirely a ruse, bald-faced confected propaganda to anger the public to support the coup attempted by Ms. Clinton and her zombie followers. People are NOT going to support the Democratic party now or in the future when its tactics include subverting our public institutions, including the electoral process under the constitution–whether you like the results or not! If the Democratic party is to be saved, those honest people still in it should endeavor to drain the septic tank that has become their party before we can all drain the swamp that is the federal government and its ex-officio manipulators (otherwise known as the "deep state") in Washington.

Farmer Pete , June 8, 2018 at 7:30 am

"We have 17 Intelligency agencies that say are election was stolen."

You opened up with a talking point that is factually incorrect. The team of hand-picked spooks that slapped the "high confidence" report together came from 3 agencies. I know, 17 sounds like a lot and very convincing to us peasants. Regardless, it's important to practice a few ounces of skepticism when it comes to institutions with a long rap sheet of crime and deception. Taking their word for it as a substitute for actual observable evidence is naive to say the least. The rest of your hollow argument is filled with "probably(s)". If I were you, I'd turn off my TV and stop looking for scapegoats for an epically horrible presidential campaign and candidate.

strgr-tgther , June 8, 2018 at 12:50 pm

/horrible presidential campaign and candidate/ Say you. But we all went to sleep comfortable the night before the election where 97% of all poles said Clinton was going to be are next President. And that did not happen! So Robert Mueller is going to find out EXACTLY why. Stay tuned!!!

irina , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm

Not 'all'. I knew she was toast after reading that she had cancelled her election night fireworks
celebration, early on the morning of Election Day. She must have known it also, too.

And she was toast in my mind after seeing the ridiculous scene of her virtual image
'breaking the glass ceiling' during the Democratic Convention. So expensively stupid.

Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:50 pm

Mueller is simply orchestrating a dramatic charade to distract you from the obvious reason why she lost: Trump garnered more electoral votes, even after the popular votes were counted and recounted. Any evidence of ballot box stuffing in the key states pointed to the Democrats, so they gave that up. She and her supporters like you have never stopped trying to hoodwink the public either before or after the election. Too many voters were on to you, that's why she lost.

Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:57 pm

Indeed, stop the nonsense which can't be changed short of a coup d'etat, and start focusing on opposing the bad policy which this administration has been pursuing. I don't see the Dems doing that even in their incipient campaigns leading up to the November elections. Fact is, they are not inclined to change the policies, which are the same ones that got them "shellacked" at the ballot box in 2016. (I think Obama must own lots of stock in the shellack trade.)

Curious , June 8, 2018 at 6:27 pm

Ignorance of th facts keep showing up in your posts for some unknown reason. Sentence two: "we have 17 intelligency (sic) agencies that say ". this statement was debunked a long time ago.

Have you learned nothing yet regarding the hand-picked people out of three agencies after all this time? Given that set of lies it makes your post impossible to read.
I would suggest a review of what really happened before you perpetuate more myths and this will benefit all.

Also, a good reading of the Snowden Docs and vault 7 should scare you out of your shell since our "intelligeny" community can pretend to be Chinese, Russian, Iranian just for starters, and the blame game can start after hours instead of the needed weeks and/or months to determine the veracity of a hack and/or leak.

It's past trying to win you over with the actual 'time lines' and truths. Mr McGovern has re-emphasized in this article the very things you should be reading.
Start with Mr Binney and his technical evaluation of the forensics in the DNC docs and build out from there This is just a suggestion.

What never ceases to amaze me in your posts is the 'issue' that many of the docs were bought and paid for by the Clinton team, and yet amnesia has taken over those aspects as well. Shouldn't you start with the Clintons paying for this dirt before it was ever attributed to Trump?

Daniel , June 8, 2018 at 6:38 pm

Actually, both Brennan and Hayden testified to Congress that only 3 agencies signed off on their claim. They also said that they'd "hand picked" a special team to run their "investigation," and no other people were involved. So, people known to be perjurers cherry picked "evidence" to make a claim. Let's invade Iraq again.

More than 1/2 of their report was about RT, and even though that was all easily viewable public record, they got huge claims wrong. Basically, the best they had was that RT covered Occupy Wall Street and the NO DAPL and BLM protests, and horror of horrors, aired third party debates! In a democracy! How dare they?

Why didn't FBI subpoena DNC's servers so they could run their own forensics on them? Why did they just accept the claims of a private company founded by an Atlantic Council board member? Did you know that CrowdStrike had to backpedal on the exact same claim they made about the DNC server when Ukraine showed they were completely wrong regarding Ukie artillery?

Joe Lauria , June 8, 2018 at 2:12 am

Until he went incommunicado Assange stated on several occasions that he was never questioned by Muellers team. Craig Murray has said the same. And Kim Dotcom has written to Mueller offering evidence about the source and he says they have never replied to him.

Realist , June 8, 2018 at 3:40 pm

Mueller is not interested in the truth. He can't handle the truth. His purpose is not to divulge the truth. He has no use for truthtellers including the critical possessors of the truth whom you mentioned. This aversion to the truth is the biggest clue that Mueller's activities are a complete sham.

Miranda Keefe , June 8, 2018 at 3:28 pm

MLS wrote, "How do you know what the GOP Congress appointed Special Prosecutor's investigation – with its unlimited budget, wide mandate, and notable paucity of leaks – has and has not done?"

Robert Mueller is NOT a Special Prosecutor appointed by the Congress. He is a special counsel appointed by the Deputy Attorney General, Rod Rosenstein, and is part of the Department of Justice.

I know no one who dislikes Trumps wants to hear it. But all Mueller's authority and power to act is derived from Donald J. Trump's executive authority because he won the 2016 presidential election. Mueller is down the chain of command in the Executive Department.

That's why this is all nonsense. What we basically have is Trump investigating himself. The framers of the Constitution never intended this. They intended Congress to investigate the Executive and that's why they gave Congress the power to remove him or her via impeachment.

As long as we continue with this folly of expecting the Justice Department to somehow investigate and prosecute a president we end up with two terrible possibilities. Either a corrupt president will exercise his legitimate authority to end the investigation like Nixon did -or- we have a Deep State beyond the reach of the elected president that can effectively investigate and prosecute a corrupt president, but also then has other powers with no democratic control.

The solution to this dilemma? An empowered Congress elected by the People operating as the Constitution intended.

As to the rest of your post? It is an example of the "will to believe." Me? I'll not act as if there is evidence of Russian interference until I'm shown evidence, not act as if it must be true, because I want to believe that, until it's fully proven that it didn't happen.

F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 8:22 pm

There must be some Trump-Russia ties.
Or so claim those CIA spies-
McCabe wants a deal, or else he won't squeal,
He'll dissemble when he testifies!

No one knows what's on Huma's computer.
There's no jury and no prosecutor.
Poor Adam Schiff hopes McCabe takes the fifth,
Special council might someday recruit her!

Assange is still embassy bound.
Mueller's case hasn't quite come unwound.
Wayne Madsen implies that there might be some ties,
To Israelis they haven't yet found!

Halper and Mifsud are players.
John Brennan used cutouts in layers.
If the scheme falls apart and the bureau is smart,
They'll go after them all as betrayers!

They needed historical fiction.
A dossier with salacious depiction!
Some urinous whores could get down on all fours,
They'd accomplish some bed sheet emiction!

Pablo Miller and Skripal were cited.
Sidney Blumenthal might have been slighted.
Christopher Steele offered Sidney a deal,
But the dossier's not copyrighted!

That story about Novichok,
Smells a lot like a very large crock.
But they can't be deposed or the story disclosed,
The Skripals have toxic brain block!

Papadopolis shot off his yap.
He told Downer, that affable chap-
There was dirt to report on the Clinton cohort,
Mifsud hooked him with that honey trap!

She was blond and a bombshell to boot.
Papadopolis thought she was cute.
She worked for Mifsud, a mysterious dude,
Now poor Paps is in grave disrepute!

But the trick was to tie it to Russians.
The Clinton team had some discussions.
Their big email scandal was easy to handle,
They'd blame Vlad for the bad repercussions!

There must have been Russian collusion.
That explained all the vote count confusion.
Guccifer Two made the Trump team come through,
If he won, it was just an illusion!

Lisa Page and Pete Strzok were disgusted
They schemed and they plotted and lusted.
If bald-headed Clapper appealed to Jake Tapper,
Brennan's Tweets might get Donald Trump busted!

There had to be cyber subversion.
It would serve as the perfect perversion.
They would claim it was missed if it didn't exist,
It's a logically perfect diversion!

Ray McGovern , June 8, 2018 at 1:03 am

BRAVO, F.G. and thanks.
Ray

Rob Roy , June 8, 2018 at 1:41 am

F.G., you've done it again, and I might add, topped even yourself! Thanks.

KiwiAntz , June 7, 2018 at 7:30 pm

What a joke, America, the most dishonest Country on Earth, has meddled, murdered & committed coups to overturn other Govts & interfered & continues to do so in just about every Country on Earth by using Trade sanctions, arming Terrorists & illegal invasions, has the barefaced cheek to puff out its chest & hypocritcally blame Russia for something that it does on a daily basis?? And the point with Mueller's investigation is not to find any Russian collusion evidence, who needs evidence when you can just make it up? The point is provide the US with a list of unfounded lies & excuses, FIRSTLY to slander & demonise RUSSIA for something they clearly didn't do! SECONDLY, was to provide a excuse for the Democrats dismal election loss result to the DONALD & his Trump Party which just happens to contain some Republicans? THIRDLY, to conduct a soft Coup by trying to get Trump impeached on "TRUMPED UP CHARGES OF RUSSIAN COLLUSION"? And FOURTLY to divert attention away from scrutiny & cover up Obama & Hillary Clinton's illegal, money grubbing activities & her treasonous behaviour with her private email server?? After two years of Russiagate nonsense with NOTHING to show for it, I think it's about time America owes Russia a public apology & compensation for its blatant lying & slander of a innocent Country for a crime they never committed?

Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 7:11 pm

Thanks, Ray, for revealing that the CIA's Digital Innovation Directorate is the likely cause of the Russiagate scams.

I am sure that they manipulate the digital voting machines directly and indirectly. True elections are now impossible.

Your disclaimer is hilarious: "We speak and write without fear or favor. Consequently, any resemblance between what we say and what presidents, politicians and pundits say is purely coincidental."

Antiwar7 , June 7, 2018 at 6:23 pm

Expecting the evil people running the show to respond to reason is futile, of course. All of these reports are really addressed to the peanut gallery, where true power lies, if only they could realize it.

Thanks, Ray and VIPS, for keeping up the good fight.

mike k , June 7, 2018 at 5:55 pm

For whatever reason, Ray McGovern chose not to mention the murder of Seth Rich, which pretty clearly points to the real source of the leak being him, as hinted by Assange offering a reward for anyone uncovering his killer. The whole thing stinks of a democratic conspiracy.

And BTW people have become shy about using the word conspiracy, for fear it will automatically brand one as a hoaxer. On the contrary, conspiracies are extremely common, the higher one climbs in the power hierarchy. Like monopolies, conspiracies are central to the way the oligarchs do business.

John , June 8, 2018 at 5:42 am

Ray, from what I have seen in following his writing for years, meticulously only deals in knowns. The Seth Rich issue is not a known, it is speculation still. Yes, it probably is involved, but unless Craig Murray states that Seth Rich was the one who handed him the USB drive, it is not a known.

There is a possibility that Seth Rich was not the one who leaked the information, but that the DNC bigwigs THOUGHT he was, in which case, by neither confirming nor denying that Seth Rich was the leaker, it may be that letting the DNC continue to think it was him is being done in protection of the actual leaker. Seth Rich could also have been killed for unrelated reasons, perhaps Imran Awan thought he was on to his doings.

Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 10:44 am

Don't forget this Twitter post by Wikileaks on October 30, 2016: Podesta: "I'm definitely for making an example of a suspected leaker whether or not we have any real basis for it." https://www.wikileaks.org/podesta-emails/emailid/36082#efmAGSAH-

Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 10:47 am

" whether or not"?!! Wow. That's an imperialistic statement.

Drew Hunkins , June 7, 2018 at 5:50 pm

Mueller has nothing and he well knows it. He was willingly roped into this whole pathetic charade and he's left grasping for anything remotely tied to Trump campaign officials and Russians. Even the most tenuous connections and weak relationships are splashed across the mass media in breathless headlines. Meanwhile, NONE of the supposed skulduggery unearthed by Mueller has anything to do with the Kremlin "hacking" the election to favor Trump. Which was the entire raison d'etre behind Rosenstein and Mueller's crusade on behalf of the deplorable DNC and Washington militarist-imperialists. Sure be interesting to see how Mueller and his crew ultimately extricate themselves from this giant fraudulent edifice of deceit. Will they even be able to save the most rudimentary amount of face?

So sickening to see the manner in which many DNC sycophants obsequiously genuflect to their godlike Mueller. A damn prosecutor who was arguably in bed with the Winter Hill Gang!

jose , June 7, 2018 at 5:13 pm

If they had had any evidence to inculpate Russia, we would have all seen it by now. They know that by stating that there is an investigation going on: they can blame Russia. The Democratic National Committee is integrated by a pack of liars.

Jeff , June 7, 2018 at 4:35 pm

Thanx, Ray. The sad news is that everybody now believes that Russia tried to "meddle" in our election and, since it's a belief, neither facts nor reality will dislodge it. Your disclaimer should also probably carry the warning – never believe a word a government official says especially if they are in the CIA, NSA, or FBI unless they provide proof. If they tell you that it's classified, that they can't divulge it, or anything of that sort, you know they are lying.

john wilson , June 7, 2018 at 4:09 pm

I suspect the real reason no evidence has been produced is because there isn't any. I know this is stating the obvious, but if you think about it, as long as the non extent evidence is supposedly being "investigated" the story remains alive. They know they aren't going to find anything even remotely plausible that would stand up to any kind of scrutiny, but as long as they are looking, it has the appearance that there might be something.

Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 4:08 pm

I first want to thank Ray and the VIPS for their continuing to follow through on this Russia-Gate story. And it is a story.

My question is simple, when will we concentrate on reading Hillary's many emails? After all wasn't this the reason for the Russian interference mania? Until we do, take apart Hillary's correspondence with her lackeys, nothing will transpire of any worth. I should not be the one saying this, in as much as Bernie Sanders should be the one screaming it for justice from the highest roof tops, but he isn't. So what's up with that? Who all is involved in this scandalous coverup? What do the masters of corruption have on everybody?

Now we have Sean Hannity making a strong case against the Clinton's and the FBI's careful handling of their crimes. What seems out of place, since this should be big news, is that CNN nor MSNBC seems to be covering this story in the same way Hannity is. I mean isn't this news, meant to be reported as news? Why avoid reporting on Hillary in such a manner? This must be that 'fake news' they all talk about boy am I smart.

In the end I have decided to be merely an observer, because there are no good guys or gals in our nation's capital worth believing. In the end even Hannity's version of what took place leads back to a guilty Russia. So, the way I see it, the swamp is being drained only to make more room for more, and new swamp creatures to emerge. Talk about spinning our wheels. When will good people arrive to finally once and for all drain this freaking swamp, once and for all?

Realist , June 7, 2018 at 5:25 pm

Ha, ha! Don't you enjoy the magic show being put on by the insiders desperately trying to hang onto their power even after being voted out of office? Their attempt to distract your attention from reality whilst feeding you their false illusions is worthy of Penn & Teller, or David Copperfield (the magician). Who ya gonna believe? Them or your lying eyes?

Joe Tedesky , June 7, 2018 at 10:00 pm

Realist, You can bet they will investigate everything but what needs investigated, as our Politico class devolves into survivalist in fighting, the mechanism of war goes uninterrupted. Joe

F. G. Sanford , June 7, 2018 at 5:34 pm

Joe, speaking of draining the swamp, check out my comment under Ray's June 1 article about Freddy Fleitz!

Sam F , June 7, 2018 at 6:59 pm

That is just what I was reminded of; here is an antiseptic but less emphatic last line:
"Swamp draining progresses apace.
It's being accomplished with grace:
They're taking great pains to clean out the drains,"
New swamp creatures will need all that space!

Unfettered Fire , June 8, 2018 at 11:00 am

We must realize that to them, "the Swamp" refers to those in office who still abide by New Deal policy. Despite the thoroughly discredited neoliberal economic policy, the radical right are driving the world in the libertarian direction of privatization, austerity, private bank control of money creation, dismantling the nation-state, contempt for the Constitution, etc.

[Jun 06, 2018] Neoliberal Economics has a lot of similarities with Theology

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Carlosthepossum -> innercity leftie , 3 Jun 2018 19:10

Economics has a lot of similarities with Theology.
People can believe whatever interpretation fits with their own indoctrination.
The difference being there is a truth to economics that seems to be invisible to most people, major economists included.
Your post highlights some of the stark realities that people just refuse to accept for some inexplicable reason.
Maybe the better economic managers will come to the rescue or maybe there will be a collective awakening when in a moment of clarity we start to realise how badly we have been conned.

[Jun 06, 2018] What is the "optimum" level of inequality in the society?

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Janeee -> Jas636 , 3 Jun 2018 21:52

There are many societies that tolerate a certain degree of economic inequality, but still provide decent living conditions, services and infrastructure for most citizens. The notion that we either have extreme inequality or extreme poverty is empirically and morally empty.

[Jun 06, 2018] Where are the rational limits of libertarian vision?

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Friarbird , 3 Jun 2018 21:42

Further down the thread, 'Weakaspiss' makes a pertinent observation; " government has forgotten they govern for all, and have a primary duty for those who are least able to prosper."

In fact, they've "forgotten" nothing.
Instead, they've fallen for the self-serving blandishments of Libertarian dogma.
Where have I learned of these ?
By reading the posts of GA's resident Libertarians.
The sub-texts of which are wonderfully instructive.

1. Nothing is more important than the individual.
2. And as an individual and a Libertarian, I am infinitely superior to you.
3. Plus I resent paying taxes, which are outright theft.
4. Since I believe, utterly without basis in reality, that taxes levied on hard-working, wonderful freedom-loving ME, sustain the likes of lazy, parasitical YOU.
5. Meanwhile, govt, if it cannot be destroyed, must always be demonised and underfunded. And so-called 'programs of public benefit' for the parasites--like Medicare, or the ABC-- must be sold outright to the private sector.
6. No I don't want to debate about it, if there's a chance I'll lose the argument.
My ego demands I win every time..
7. Certainly not with losers of lower social status, who were 'educated' in a union-run public school.
8. And don't even come near me, losers. Yuk ! You're probably not even white !
9. Because I socialise only within my own tribe, thank you very much.
10. Besides, you're probably living off my taxes.
11. Did I mention taxes somewhere ?
12. Taxes are theft.

Our conservatives have "forgotten" NOTHING.
Instead, they've fallen for a sociopathic ideology which tells them their least attractive impulses are positively praiseworthy.
Hence the nasty, ego-driven tone of current political life.
Injected directly into the bloodstream of our body politic by a Lying Rodent.
Its philosophy may be simply stated

Does your policy shit all over people you never cared for anyway ?
THEN DO IT.

[Jun 06, 2018] PossumBilly

Jun 06, 2018 | profile.theguardian.com

3 Jun 2018 23:25

This message is clear and concise. It is however never going to be heard beyond the 'Guardian'.

The MSM are hardly going to publish this article, nor are they going to reference it, why should they? It goes against everything they have been fighting for and the tin ear of their readership are unwilling to change teir views.

The only thing that they understand is money and the concentration of wealth. This misonception as Dennis So far this has been handed to them on a plate, the taxation system has enabled them to manipulate an multiply their earnings. So much of money the has nothing to do with adding value to this countries economy but is speculative in nature based on financial and overseas instruments.

No is the time for our government to take the lead and start as the Victorian ALP have done and invest in people and jobs on the back of strategic investment. It is a fallacy that governments don't create jobs they, through their policies do just that.

Friends of mine who make a living out of dealing both in stock and wealth creating schemes have no loyalty to this country, they are self motivated and libertarian in persuasion. "Government should get out of the way!" This is nothing short of scandalous.

Unless we stand up for our rights and a civil society that provides adequate provision for fair and balanced policy making,xwe will continue until we will see an implosion. History is littered with examples of revolution based on the kind of inequality we are seeing happen in this country. Let's hope it doesn't come to that.

jclucas , 3 Jun 2018 23:25
It is indeed important to make the distinction between the ideology of neoliberalism - the ideology of private enterprise is good, and public spending is bad - and the operational system of crony capitalism - the game of mates played by government and the special interests.

And it is certainly equally important to call out the monumental hypocrisy involved in the government's application of the ideology's set of rules to the powerless and public and the government's application of corrupt practice rules to the special interests.

The system is destroying the egalitarian character of Australia and fanning the flames of nativist authoritarianism here.

But what's even more dangerous is the fundamental dishonesty that the system necessitates, and the alienating influence it has - on top of the growing economic inequality.

The system has destroyed the economic and environmental viability and sustainability of the planet on which human civilization depends.

What is becoming increasingly clear to more and more of the public is that - simple put- the system cannot be allowed to go on as it has been proceeding because it threatens the future of civilization on earth.

Change is imperative now. However, how that will unfold is unclear, as well as, the toll the destruc5turing system will take.

What is clear is that a great restructuring must happen - and soon.

Aldeano , 3 Jun 2018 23:20
The neo liberals are intent on defacing Australia. Their pusstulant tentacles stretch into our classrooms forcing our kids to believe in their god. They tell us that white millionaire farmers deserve refugee status and all the benefits bestowed on poor persecuted minorities. They tell us that the disgustingly rich deserve tax relief. Their's is a world where their children are entitled to safe electoral sets. But they can be defeated and sent to misery. We did it in the Same Sex Marriage fiasco and we can do it to their more insidious behaviours. Write to your local member. Barrage them with emails. Write to their propaganda Letters to the Editor. Donate to GetUp. Keep on keeping on.
Alan Ritchie -> Paul Felix , 3 Jun 2018 23:02
Neoliberalism, the dogma was was sourced from Milton Freidman's Monetarism economic theory. When it morphed into the 'Greed is Good' credo is unclear.
Guess you have to call the disease something, so Neoliberalism it is.
familygardener , 3 Jun 2018 20:37
So anyway.

Is capitalism stuffed?
There is much debate at the moment about which Party has the best economic plan going forward. The Coalition maintains that the best way is by giving large tax breaks to business.
This is currently being called 'Pre GST theory or old style trickle down economics'.
Lenore Taylor writes:
"The investment bank once chaired by Malcolm Turnbull has backed the view that much of the benefit from the Coalition's company tax cuts could flow to offshore investors, as the prime minister insisted his plan was the best way to ensure continued economic growth".
"The domestic benefits would be far bigger if companies used the tax cut to grow their business, but according to Goldman Sachs "survey evidence suggests that companies are less likely to voluntarily lower the dividend payment ratio", in other words, the real-world impact was likely to be closer to the scenario where 60% of the benefit flowed offshore"

https://theaimn.com/day-to-day-politics-is-capitalism-stuffed/

[Jun 06, 2018] "Neoliberalism will literally be the death of democracy." In fact, that was the plan.

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Friarbird -> 64newc , 3 Jun 2018 17:56

"Neoliberalism will literally be the death of democracy."

In fact, that's the plan.
Openly alluded to by the IPA's Gary Johns;

".... a cardinal tenet of libertarianism is to keep democracy in its place, to regard it as an activity of limited application. Government's role is to depoliticise much of life, to make it less amenable to public dispute....."

From Margo Kingston's 'Not happy, John !' (2005).
Get on to the 'Catallaxy' site.
You'll soon find out what Libertarian sociopaths think of democracy.

Scryboy -> spharks , 3 Jun 2018 17:55
I actually think many people go along with neoliberalism because they perceive it will turn out well for them. It's the every man for himself Darwinian approach to life, but the LNP reflects that view most closely. It's the one where everyone is a welfare scrounger, but if for some reason you end up needing welfare, you deserve it because of all the tax you paid, even though you've been minimising your tax for decades.
64newc , 3 Jun 2018 17:44
Neoliberalism will literally be the death of democracy.

[Jun 06, 2018] The other great con is convincing the public that voting for anyone but the two major parties is "wasting your vote".

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Purge, 3 Jun 2018 17:46

The other great con is convincing the public that voting for anyone but the two major parties is "wasting your vote". This political duopoly means only those interests are ever represented and that has also led to Australia's systematic decline. Yes it's true that the majors hold majority in parliament but we've already seen that voting below the line can work- Labour had to take notes from the Greens last time they held power. Despite how hopeless it all seems we do still have the power to affect change as long as we- all of us- stop swallowing the lies.
BobsWorth2 , 3 Jun 2018 17:35
The current two party system is like a coin. On one side we have the head of Malcolm Turnbull and on the other Bill Shorten. When it comes to the toss up the corporations and wealthy get to call heads.
BelindaJonas -> Tom Dalyell , 3 Jun 2018 17:30
There is perhaps more honour amongst thieves? Hard to imagine there being less.
B.J.

[Jun 06, 2018] It's apparent that elections can be won by throwing enough resources into well aimed propaganda

Slightly edited Guardian comment...
How many voters even have any idea of what "neoliberalism" is? I would be thinking not many, especially as the Murdoch press don't even use the term in their publications. They might feel the effects , but without any conceptualisation of its underpinning ideas and ideology be less likely to be able to identify policy which reflects neoliberal values. And I'm sure the powers that be like it that way.
Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Alan Ritchie , 3 Jun 2018 21:58

For that last 40 years some variant of neoliberalism has been the predominant dogma. Unfortunately once we moved on from hunter gatherer to an agriculture supported society we lost the connections to each other that existed at the tribal level. That sense of community does not flourish in our eight thousand year experiment with city based civilisation. It seems to only do so during times of disruption and war.

Personally my experience of living in a socially cohesive society was the 30 year period leading up to the reinfestation of the neoliberal curse that started in the 80's with Reagan and Thatcher.

So neoliberalism is the norm, socialism requires more work. We can't take it for granted that society will naturally gravitate towards egalitarianism.

Turnbull and his LNP cohort can openly mock the population with impunity safe in the knowledge that a small but powerful and rich minority, joined by group think and supported by exclusive membership institutions, schools, corporations, have a shared goal of controlling the monetary, economic system and government.

It's apparent that elections can be won by throwing enough resources into well aimed propaganda, (cue Murdoch). Cambridge Analytica was brutally effective at the last elections in the US and UK. Anyone who believes a similar scam won't be tried in Australia is being naive.
So people will still vote against their long term interests and we will likely still get another dose of self inflicted neoliberalism at the next election.

1MadUncle , 3 Jun 2018 21:51
The real problem will be that no where near enough voters will read this article or pieces like it. The Murdoch press for example would never publish it and the content won't be seriously discussed on morning TV. The ABC wouldn't dare mention a word of it.

I don't think it is all doom and gloom. I have 12 grandchildren, some now teenagers. They and their kind are smarter than we give them credit for and they won't put up with the crap we have bequeathed them. They don't get information from main stream media and although their social media contains an enormous amount of rubbish, embedded are real grievances about their lot in life. Soon they will vote. Goodbye and good riddance to the conservatives.

PDGFD1 -> sarkany , 3 Jun 2018 21:39

It is actually just a pan-national oligarchy, where legislatures and media are compromised into acceptance of destructive and unethical policies by Big Money.

Worthy of repetition since I'm not able to give you more than one 'uptick'.

In this instance, I very much suspect it will be the staggering load put on the natural environment that will spin the current "Eternal Empires" "down the sinkhole of history".
Sadly for everyone and everything else.

nogapsallowed , 3 Jun 2018 21:26
Neoliberalism wins by manipulating public distraction. The so-called reality shows of mainstream media are the furthest flight imaginable from lived experience, and even the serious news outlets succumb to the Peyton Place of Barnaby's baby and a disappeared Melania Trump. All of which makes a considered analysis such as the one republished here such a notable exception.
BlackAbbott -> familygardener , 3 Jun 2018 21:22
That man has the real meaning of neoliberalism. Neoliberal way is not incompatible with unions, wages, social services or governments that protect their citizens.


His way there should be no division and no angst of politics. Maybe that's where the problem is/ His way is not the way of modern politics and greed. Being rich does not mean being greedy. But that is what modern neoliberam with its free markets mantra have come to be seen as.

My Grandfather and Great Grandfather, would see this man as being correct with a very good attitude. He would see Wall St and many financial businesses as greedy and managed by bullies and tyrants.

[Jun 06, 2018] The divisive societal aspects of free market fundamentalism

Jun 06, 2018 | profile.theguardian.com

AsDusty, 3 Jun 2018 17:43

Half the population prefers a politics that is racist and unethical, that demonises the poor and idolises the rich, that eschews community and embraces amoral individuality. These people don't care about the economic inconsistencies of neo-liberalism, they are far more attracted to the divisive societal aspects of free market fundamentalism.

[Jun 06, 2018] Stigmatization of poor as the way to justify and increase inequality

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

ellaquint , 3 Jun 2018 19:35

Like Joe Hockey, Rinehart saw the problem of inequality as having more to do with the character of the poor than with the rules of the game:

They don't "see" it this way. They just say they see it this way to perpetuate that inequality. They know that their wealth depends on the labour of the other 95-99%.

To keep us all working and voting for their lackeys, they make promises of wealth if you are a persistent hard worker, never mentioning that the entire game depends on only a tiny minority ever reaching the top. No, the real people holding them back are those who don't work hard. Who don't contribute to the game. They're the ones to blame for why you're not levelling up. The true scapegoats.

It's one giant con and they know it.

[Jun 06, 2018] Victim blaming is a classic neo-con tactic, they seek to deflect from the impact of their heartless policies by demonising the victims, from the unemployed and those stuck in the welfare cycle to refugees trapped in offshore detention, indefinitely .

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

reinhardpolley , 3 Jun 2018 17:18

Victim blaming is a classic neo-con tactic, they seek to deflect from the impact of their heartless policies by demonising the victims, from the unemployed and those stuck in the welfare cycle to refugees trapped in offshore detention, indefinitely . We've all seen how appalling their commentary can get, from Abbott and Hockey's "lifters and leaners" to Gina Mineheart's "two dollars a day" & "spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising" they show just how out touch they are. They honestly believe that people can lift themselves out of poverty if only they "spent more time working", ignoring the fact that many are working two jobs just to stay ahead.
Seems that on planet RWNJ there are more than 24 hours in a day..
OrwelHasNothingOnLNP -> w roberts , 3 Jun 2018 17:00
Half the population need welfare to survive.
1% have 90% of all the toys in the sandpit and won't share. They feel that they are entitled to all the toys.

[Jun 06, 2018] Neoliberalism idealises competition against each other to ensure the rights of the few, by suppressing our capacity to take responsibility together through cooperation and collaboration with each other.

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

maven501 , 3 Jun 2018 22:54

This piece is well worth the reading particularly in light of the trashing of society's values we see played out in Trump's America. However, the writer's definition of "ideology " as a "system of ideas and ideals" even though it accords with the OED's, fails to take into account the current pernicious influence of the ideologue who distorts "ideology" into the "rationalisation of a suppression" as Joseph Dunne noted in his book, " Back to the Rough Ground" .

This is the most apt description of the modus operandi of today's neoliberalists - the justifying of their project to maximise wealth accumulation in their own self-interest by promoting the propaganda that we are powerless cogs in the machine of the economy , slaves to the whim of the omnipotent market, rather than active agents who wish to contribute to a flourishing society .

Neoliberalism idealises competition against each other to ensure the rights of the few, by suppressing our capacity to take responsibility together through cooperation and collaboration with each other.

This classic divide and conquer tactic will prevail only as long as we permit it.

Time to take a stand and be counted.

[Jun 06, 2018] The neoliberal mantra that "markets are always right" is just rubbish.

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

DickTyger , 27 Apr 2018 00:27

I'm a conservative and I have an good economics degree. I have to say though that I don't understand neoliberalism at all.

As a example, when I was doing economics it was made very clear to me that natural monopolies (such as electricity and water) cannot be made into a competitive market (rather like trying to put lipstick on a pig). Similarly oligopolies introduce opportunities for price manipulation (e.g. the banks). The neoliberal mantra that "markets are always right" is just rubbish. Markets work well only when certain criteria are met.

Secondly, the right of workers to collectively bargain is fundamental to a well functioning market economy. Labour is one of the inputs to production and the workers have a right to a proper return on their labour. Individual workers have no real bargaining power and can only act collectively through unions.

Finally, the related casualisation of the workforce is a disaster for workers and the long-term interests of the economy. The stagnation of wages (and inflation) is one of the products of this strong trend to casualisation (my blood boils when I hear of examples of wage theft affecting vulnerable workers).

Income inequality is a product of a capitalist system. However, when the distribution of wealth becomes very badly skewed (such as in the USA) then the political system starts to break down. Trump was a beneficiary of this flawed income distribution. All Hillary Clinton was promising was "more of the same". In short, Bernie Sanders was right.

Walter Schadel, in his book, The Great Leveler (see below), points to the role of income inequality in driving revolutions and disruptions. There are lessons in this book for our current crop of politicians both on the left and the right.

https://press.princeton.edu/titles/10921.html

[Jun 06, 2018] Privatization as a "big con"

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Beekeeper49 , 3 Jun 2018 19:32

Wow! Richard Denniss says it like it is, neatly summing up "the big con".

I believe Australia is being sold from under our feet. The big asset-strip is on. Why are we not benefiting from the mining boom? The answer lies in the way Rinehart companies and others like hers have been permitted to use Singapore or other low-taxing countries to minimise taxes. That these large companies should have the gall to demand large tax cuts as well is preposterous.

When headlines indulge in fear-mongering about China, why is angst directed at Dastyari for taking a relatively small donation, whilst at the same time the Australian government has approved a joint purchase of large swathes of the Australian outback by Rinehart and Chinese interests? Have we already forgotten the Darwin port deal? Why were Robb, Bishop and the Liberal Party allowed to benefit from deals or large donations from "Chinese interests"? Yet Bob Carr is being slammed for trying over many years to develop a more harmonious relationship with China?

Australians have told federal and state governments that they hate privatisation. Not content with selling off profitable businesses such as Medibank Private, the Liberal/National Party federal government is privatising its services. Detention centres and prisons acted as a stalking-horse for the creeping privatisation of jobs. Politicians assume most voters don't notice or care when government jobs in those sectors are privatised, but other government departments are following suit.

By permitting the Future Fund and superannuation funds to invest in tax havens, the federal government has opened the door to a growing trend. If my super fund uses the Cayman Island tax haven, it is easier to justify everyone else from the PM down to evade Australian taxes as well. More insidiously, tax havens make it easier to cheat creditors in bankruptcy cases, launder dirty money, break trade sanctions and much more. We aren't even aware of how these may be playing out behind closed doors in our name. The problem with allowing Rinehart to use Singapore or Turnbull to use the Cayman Island is that other companies and individuals will increasingly Do so, and in the end, everyone is doing it. And when will we take note of cryptocurrencies and how they can act like tax havens?

Our participation in wars not of our own making is also having dire results. Think of all the money spent and lives of servicemen destroyed by serving in Iraq and Afghanistan. Imagine if that money had instead been invested wisely in defence capabilities. And yet there we are, interfering in the South China Sea, trying to provoke China at Trump's behest, and it is not clear whether the Phillipines wants us there now anyway. And all the while, the cost of our participation in war games is crippling our ability to acquire defence assets, making us more reliant on the US.

The banking enquiry has only scratched the surface of how voters are being ripped off with impunity. There are growing demands that the superannuation industry, in particular retail funds, be subject to greater transparency and regulation. Yet Turnbull, Cash and colleagues prefer to direct their scorn at industry funds, simply because they are controlled by workers, via their unions.

We can sense "the big con" is all around us. We can almost smell it, so pungent is the air of exploitation, corruption and fraud. Hopefully Denniss will join others in focussing us more clearly on how we are being cheated of our birthright.

[Jun 06, 2018] Inverted totalitarism described by a Guardia commenter

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Bearmuchly, 3 Jun 2018 16:37

Despite the huge changes in communication in the last several decades and the ever increasing levels of education in our society, politics have failed to engage the vast majority and that cohort of the cynical, the alienated, the disinterested, the lazy, the simply care less continues to grow.

In the last decade the only cause that evoked passion and engaged a larger number, finally forcing our elected members to act was same sex marriage .....a crescendo that took years to generate.

With the complicity of our media and the decline of that part of education that teaches analysis, social psychology and political philosophy (let alone teaches about basic political structures and mechanisms) our level of disengagement from the political process appears to be at an all time high. The performance of our legislators has become increasingly unaccountable and purely self interested .... we have re-created the "political class" of pre-war times where alienation was based on a lack of education and awareness and a sense of inferiority and powerlessness DESPITE our vastly improved communication, access to information and educational standards (not to mention affluence).

Basically, we have "dumbed down" to the extent where passion and ideology in politics is now the preserve of fewer and fewer. In a democracy this trend is of massive concern and a threat to its sustainability.... it also completely suits those that are focused on concentrating power and wealth... the more that don't give a toss the less likely you are to be encumbered by limitations, social considerations, ethics and morality.

Until we re-engage far larger numbers into the political process, raise the levels of awareness of political thought and choices, stop dumbing down and re-inject some broader passion and participation into our political processes then vested interests will continue to dominate.....and democracy will become increasingly undemocratic !

[Jun 06, 2018] Friarbird

Jun 06, 2018 | profile.theguardian.com

3 Jun 2018 20:42

Coded language:
or,
how we bade farewell to publicly-owned electricity.

Part 1

The perceptions of George Orwell seem as valid now as then
Since he dealt with sly deceptions of tyrannical men
So 'Orwellian language', though imprinted on a page
Now has impacts universal, which resound in every age
And in ours, language functions like a fingerprint-free glove
To absolve of guilt the guilty as, imposed from up above,
Has come theft of public assets, for the benefit of those
To whom money by the truckload only ever upward flows.

By subversion of our usage may such larceny be won
And I speak as a Victorian, so know how it is done.
It begins when greedy forces, with a nose for seeking rent
Need to seize and reshape language to conceal true intent
So collusion is essential, 'twixt such forces and the man
Who will slake their gross desires. He's a poll-i-tish-i-an
It is he who'll grasp the nettle, perform tasks of Hercules
Telling punters it is raining, while upon their backs he pees

Yet his task is mitigated. Because, what should hove in sight,
But the money-driven think-tanks of the predatory Right
Which have spent long hours fixated by their loathing of the State
So won't even wipe their bottoms, unless at an outsourced rate.
Now the think-tanks wunderkinden turn to '1984'
Where they find therein a tactic once employed in days of yore
It's to pick out words and phrases from contemporary use
Then submit their basic meanings to an arse-about abuse

Yet an overarching irony attends this tour de force
Since there's precedents in stating that a cart is now a horse.
For who bastardised a language, drawing from their bag of tricks ?
It was Stalin and Vyshinsky, back in 1936
O the horror ! O the shamefullness ! That, Sons Of Liberty
Must resort to basing tactics on the Kremlin's tyranny !
It's a classic situation when rent-seeking runs amuck
But there's easy money looming, so who gives a flying f**k ?

So consumers are persuaded, via mantra-laden talk
That they come before big shareholders in London or New York
Thus, a host of euphemisms sugar-coat the bitter pill
To the melodies seductive of a loudly-ringing till
Hark to incantantions joyous and of outcomes bound to please !
'Competition', 'lower prices', 'market-based efficiencies'!
(Though their very warmth and fuzziness will reinforce the fact
They've dragooned the highest language to describe the lowest act.)

Part 2 to follow........

[Jun 06, 2018] Marx was keenly aware of capitalism's ability to innovate and adapt. But he also knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable.

Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Helicalgroove -> RangerX , 3 Jun 2018 17:03

"Karl Marx exposed the peculiar dynamics of capitalism, or what he called "the bourgeois mode of production." He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies -- think neoliberalism -- were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since "the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production" and "the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships the relationships which make one class the ruling one." He saw that there would come a day when capitalism would exhaust its potential and collapse. He did not know when that day would come. Marx, as Meghnad Desai wrote, was "an astronomer of history, not an astrologer." Marx was keenly aware of capitalism's ability to innovate and adapt. But he also knew that capitalist expansion was not eternally sustainable. And as we witness the denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism, Karl Marx is vindicated as capitalism's most prescient and important critic."

https://www.truthdig.com/articles/karl-marx-was-right-2 /

[Jun 06, 2018] Nationalism is a decision-making tool as it always poses a question; what is good for this country ?

This is not true: this question "what is good for the country" very soon mutates to "what is good for nationalists"
Jun 06, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

DesignConstruct -> quintal , 3 Jun 2018 17:39

We need a Nationalist government, which will automatically see itself as the mortal enemy of the primary Internationalist (there used to be a song about that) force in the world today, and which affects us greatly in terms of resource exploitation: Globalisation, or what we used to call 'multi national corporations' or 'international capital'.

Nationalism is a decision-making tool as it always poses a question; what is good for this country ?

DesignConstruct -> Alpo88 , 3 Jun 2018 17:24
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/opinion/we-need-real-leadership-and-real-democracy-from-our-politicians/news-story/f37a3a3951aa78df86892c71166fdbb5

When/if he mentions de-Globalisation, an Aus-Indonesian defence alliance, citizen initiated referenda, and a Constitutional ban on donations and parties , then people may listen, however he cannot be accused of being too imaginative or bright. He is however advocating authoritarianism not fascism.

quintal -> DesignConstruct , 3 Jun 2018 17:16
Hi DC

I halfway agree

We're not there yet

But .......

Fascism doesn't require a state sanctioned religion or suppression of religion

That said the Catholicism/fundamentalist Christian bent of the present cabinet and the demonisation of any green beliefs is uncomfortably close to what you describe

And the nexus between big business and govern, the destruction of public institutions, the reduction in the capacity of media to report truth and the vitriolic attacks on opponenents are straws in an ill wind

Cheets

Alpo88 -> DesignConstruct , 3 Jun 2018 17:11
You are right, it's not "fascismmmmmmmmmmmmmm".... it's Fascism. Which brings back to my memory what Tom Elliott (the son of Liberal Party former president John Elliott) wrote in the Herald Sun on 6 February 2015: "It's time we temporarily suspended the democratic process and installed a benign dictatorship to make tough but necessary decisions."

[Jun 05, 2018] The Obama Hit Men in the Russiagate Coup-Attempt Can No Longer Hide the British Controlling Hand

Those guys really do not like British. So they probably are telling the truth ;-)
Notable quotes:
"... Halper is an American who has longstanding ties to the Bush family and the Pentagon's China-bashing Office of Net Assessment, who is now teaching at Cambridge University, where he is close to former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove. It is Halper, a longstanding CIA and FBI informant, who initiated contact with minor players in the Trump Campaign, planting lies about Russian hacking of the DNC emails, aiming to facilitate the dodgy Christopher Steele dossier lies about Trump collusion with Russia in order to steal the election. ..."
"... But the British role can no longer be concealed. The same is true for the pending financial crash, which also is too hard to hide these days. Bloomberg's headline: "Corporate Bonds Sink Fast in One of Worst Tumbles Since 2000." At the same time, the currency crisis, brought on in part by the U.S. finally raising interest rates, is rapidly turning into a debt crisis in developing sector nations around the world. Capital flight is driving down currencies in many of these developing countries, while their debts, contracted in dollars, are coming due, even while interest rates for those debts are rising. In a classic case of what EIR has long called "bankers' arithmetic," entire nations are suddenly watching their debts skyrocket, not from borrowing more, but because they have to buy dollars with devalued currencies to pay them back. Bloomberg writes that Brazil and Turkey are "the two leaders" in this danger, but wishfully stating that it "still isn't as extreme as it was in Thailand and Indonesia" before the 1998 Asian debt explosion. Indonesia's debt tripled overnight when Soros and others broke their banks by speculating against their currency. ..."
Jun 05, 2018 | larouchepac.com

None of Trump's intentions have been realized as yet, in large part due to the Russiagate operation. On Sunday, Trump announced his intention to demand that the DOJ open an investigation into "whether or not the FBI/DOJ infiltrated or surveilled the Trump Campaign for political purposes," and whether or not the Obama Administration was part of it. Within hours, Deputy Attorney General Rosenstein tasked the DOJ Inspector General to do precisely that, stating that if it is shown to be true, they would "take appropriate action."

At the center of this is the desperate effort by the DOJ and the FBI to hide the identity of one Stefan Halper as the source whose exposure would somehow cause a disaster to Western Civilization. In fact, however, his name was not hard to discover and has been widely reported in the press. Halper is an American who has longstanding ties to the Bush family and the Pentagon's China-bashing Office of Net Assessment, who is now teaching at Cambridge University, where he is close to former MI6 chief Richard Dearlove. It is Halper, a longstanding CIA and FBI informant, who initiated contact with minor players in the Trump Campaign, planting lies about Russian hacking of the DNC emails, aiming to facilitate the dodgy Christopher Steele dossier lies about Trump collusion with Russia in order to steal the election.

The criminals in the Obama intelligence team are squirming. Obama's CIA chief John Brennan sent a message to Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan demanding that they act to stop Trump's "self-serving actions" or "bear major responsibility for the harm done to our democracy." Trump re-tweeted a message from a former Secret Service officer that "John Brennan is panicking. He has disgraced himself, disgraced the country, he has disgraced the intelligence community. He is the one man who is largely responsible for the destruction of Americans' faith in the intelligence community..., he's worried about staying out of jail."

But the British role can no longer be concealed. The same is true for the pending financial crash, which also is too hard to hide these days. Bloomberg's headline: "Corporate Bonds Sink Fast in One of Worst Tumbles Since 2000." At the same time, the currency crisis, brought on in part by the U.S. finally raising interest rates, is rapidly turning into a debt crisis in developing sector nations around the world. Capital flight is driving down currencies in many of these developing countries, while their debts, contracted in dollars, are coming due, even while interest rates for those debts are rising. In a classic case of what EIR has long called "bankers' arithmetic," entire nations are suddenly watching their debts skyrocket, not from borrowing more, but because they have to buy dollars with devalued currencies to pay them back. Bloomberg writes that Brazil and Turkey are "the two leaders" in this danger, but wishfully stating that it "still isn't as extreme as it was in Thailand and Indonesia" before the 1998 Asian debt explosion. Indonesia's debt tripled overnight when Soros and others broke their banks by speculating against their currency.

The British model of a deregulated speculative "Casino Mondial," which has replaced American System credit policies, has destroyed the financial system as a whole. As Lyndon LaRouche has demonstrated since the 1980s, the system can not be fixed -- it must be replaced, with a Hamiltonian credit system and a restoration of science drivers, pushing ahead at the frontiers of human knowledge. This is the necessary means to both raise the productivity of the workforce, and inspire young minds with optimism, that they can create a better future for themselves and for posterity. This is the purpose of LaRouche's Four Laws , which can and must replace the bankrupt British financial structure which is falling apart at the seams.

The new paradigm represented by the New Silk Road has, over the past two weeks, brought nearly the entire Asian continent -- including China, Japan and Russia -- into a level of cooperation not witnessed in modern history. At the same time, Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi visited France, Spain and Portugal, where agreements were reached to work together in joint infrastructure development projects in countries along the New Silk Road.

The world is changing rapidly, but the Empire will not go quietly. The war party is desperate to provoke a war between Israel and Iran, Jew and Arab, Sunni and Shi'a, and any other form of divisiveness between human beings which they can use to their advantage.

Helga Zepp-LaRouche responded to an uplifting report from LaRouchePAC organizers Monday on the intense response from Americans across the country, young and old, to the message from LaRouche: to stop the coup, implement the Four Laws, and join the New Silk Road. "This war can be won," she said. "We have come a long way, and there are more battles to be fought, but history will be shaped by the ideas of Lyndon H. LaRouche."

[Jun 05, 2018] Tim Winton on class and neoliberalism 'We're not citizens but economic players' Books The Guardian

Notable quotes:
"... • The Boy Behind the Curtain is published by Penguin Books and is available now ..."
Jun 05, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

he first page of Tim Winton's new essay collection, The Boy Behind the Curtain , sets a disturbing scene. A 13-year-old boy stands at the window of a suburban street, behind a terylene curtain, training a rifle on passersby.

"He was a fraught little thing," says Winton of that boy – the boy he used to be. "I feel related to him but I'm no longer completely him, thank god."

The passage opens a surprisingly intimate essay about the role of guns in Australian life, setting the tone for a collection being billed as Winton's most personal yet.

In spite of his inclination for solitude, Winton has spent much of his life in the spotlight. His first novel, An Open Swimmer, catapulted him into the public eye when it won the Vogel literary award in 1981, but it was his 1991 novel, Cloudstreet, that cemented his place in Australian letters. Winton has won the Miles Franklin award four times and been shortlisted twice for the Booker. His books have been adapted for film, TV and even opera .

ss="rich-link"> Island Home by Tim Winton review – a love song to Australia and a cry to save it Read more

The contradictions of having such a high-profile career while working in a quintessentially solitary artform are not lost on him. "I spend all day in a room with people who don't exist, and I'm not thinking about any public – but once the thing's done it goes out there and it has a public life over which I have no, or very little, control," he says.

On one reading, the boy with the rifle lurking out of sight, watching the world go by, could be a metaphor for the life of a reclusive writer. But Winton is quick to distinguish himself from such a reading. "I wouldn't like to see myself as somebody who was just cruelly observing the world behind the terylene curtain of art."

For Winton, the perceived lives of other writers always seemed completely unrelated to his own experience. "I grew up with a kind of modernist romantic idea of the writer as some kind of high priest, someone who saw themselves as separate and better, which I now find a bit repellent," he says. "I think that was something that was sold to us at school and certainly at university that writers were somehow aloof from the ordinary business of life; they didn't have to abide by the same rules as other people. The worse their behaviour off the page, the more we were supposed to cheer them on. Once I woke up to that idea as a teenager, I think I consciously resisted it."

Winton's own background was characterised by a working class sensibility and evangelical religion. His parents converted to the Church of Christ when he was a small boy, the circumstances and his experiences of which form the basis of a number of the previously unpublished essays in The Boy Behind the Curtain. As a result, when he finally did start writing, it was with a particularly industrious work ethic.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tim Winton: 'There wasn't a lot of romance in my view of what writing was about.' Photograph: Hank Kordas

"I approached it like I was a tradesperson," he says. "It didn't necessarily involve FM radio played very loudly on a worksite; it didn't always require plumbers' crack or a hard hat and there was certainly no catcalling, but for the rest of it I went a different route. There wasn't a lot of romance in my view of what writing was about."

ss="rich-link"> A fish called Tim Winton: scientists name new species after novelist Read more

Yet it was finding words, what Winton calls "the enormous luxury of language", that took him from being a 13-year-old boy who watched strangers through the eye of a rifle – a boy who was "obviously insecure and feeling threatened and probably not quite one with the world" – to a well-adjusted adult.

The "emotional infancy of men" has a lot to answer for, he says, suggesting that it's something society would do well to pay more attention to in its early stages. "The lumpiness and surly silence of boys is not something we're sufficiently interested in. They're not sufficiently attractive to us until they become victims or dangerous brutes and bullies."

ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">

I think it's a mistake to think someone who doesn't say much doesn't have strong feelings

Tim Winton

Conflicted masculinity is recurring theme throughout Winton's fiction, and his characters often suffer as a result of their inability to articulate their feelings. "I think it's a mistake to think someone who doesn't say much doesn't have strong feelings," he says. "I think we stifle people's expression or we ignore people's signals of wanting to express things at our peril."

The distinct tenor of Winton's prose, a lyricism which manages to turn even the Australian vernacular into a kind of rough poetry, lends itself to the intimacy of the personal essay. The Boy Behind the Curtain contains a number of vignettes that reflect the imagery and landscape that characterises his fiction: hot bitumen roads through the desert; the churning ocean.

https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/287428716&color=ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false

But there is also a clear political streak to Winton's nonfiction, and the inclusion of a number of more direct essays in this collection mean it's difficult to collapse the work under the category of memoir. Stones for Bread, for example, calls for a return to empathy and humanity in Australia's approach to asylum seekers. The Battle for Ningaloo Reef is a clear-eyed account of the activism that prevented a major commercial development from destroying a stretch of the Western Australian coastline. And Using the C-Word concerns that other dirty word that Winton believes we are avoiding: class.

"I think there are people talking about class but they're having to do that against the flow," Winton says. "We're living in a dispensation that is endlessly reinforcing the idea that we are not citizens but economic players. And under that dispensation it's in nobody's interest, especially those in power, to encourage or foster the idea that there's any class difference."

The market doesn't care about people, Winton argues, and neither is there any genius in it. "There's no invisible hand," he says. "And if there is one, it's scratching its arse."

It's clear to Winton that neoliberalism is failing, but not without casualties, two of which are very close to his heart: the arts and the environment.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Cover image for The Boy Behind The Curtain by Tim Winton. Photograph: Penguin

"People in the arts are basically paying the price for this new regime where we pay no tax and where we get less public service and more privatised service," he says. "The arts are last on, first off in people's minds and I think that's not just sad, it's corrosive. They're just seen as fluff, as fripperies, as indulgence, as add-ons and luxury. And I don't think the arts are luxury; I think they're fundamental to civilisation. It's just that under our current dispensation, civilisation is not the point; civilisation is something that commerce has to negotiate and traduce if necessary."

Winton is one of a number of high-profile critics of the Productivity Commission's proposals to allow the parallel importation of books , and a signatory to petitions opposing funding cuts to the Australia Council . But he has also been a grassroots activist in the area of marine conservation for over 15 years.

"I don't know if I'm an activist writer or just a writer who has an activist life on the side," he says.

ass="inline-garnett-quote inline-icon ">

I don't know if I'm an activist writer or just a writer who has an activist life on the side

Tim Winton

Years of lobbying by conservation groups and the general public contributed to the Labor government announcement in 2012 of 42 marine reserves in Australian waters , including over the entire Coral Sea. The Abbott government, however, implemented a review which, in September this year, recommended significantly scaling back those reservations . It was, says Winton, an act of cowardice.

"The Abbott review was basically all about applying inertia to imminent progress," Winton says. "We've gone from world leaders [in conservation] to being too frightened to lead."

When asked what role writing fiction plays in his activist work, Winton says it comes back to the idea of "keeping people's imaginations awake".

"Imagination is the fundamental virtue of civilisation. If people can't imagine then they can't live an ethical life."

The Boy Behind the Curtain is published by Penguin Books and is available now

[May 29, 2018] London-to-Langley Spy Ring; The Roots Of Obamagate Become Clearer

Notable quotes:
"... All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco requires no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it . - American Spectator ..."
"... GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added. ..."
"... Notice it doesn't say the "Trump campaign" but "figures connected to Trump." One of those figures was Michael Flynn, who didn't join the campaign until February 2016. But Brennan and British intelligence had already started spying on him, drawing upon sham intelligence from Stefan Halper, a long-in-the-tooth CIA asset teaching at Cambridge University whom Brennan and Jim Comey would later send to infiltrate the Trump campaign's ranks. ..."
"... It appears that Halper had won Brennan's confidence with a false report about Flynn in 2014 -- a reported sighting of Flynn at Cambridge University talking too cozily with a Russian historian ..."
May 28, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

A recent article by George Neumayr in The American Spectator provides an excellent forensic dig into the earliest stages of the US Intelligence Community's surveillance of people in Trump's orbit - and makes clear something that many pointing to a politicized "witch hunt" have long suspected; the Obama DOJ/FBI began looking into "Trumpworld" and the Russians long before the official timeline would suggest .

Moreover, the operation was conducted in close coordination with foreign counterparts, primarily the United Kingdom and Australia, but primarily the former.

All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco requires no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it . - American Spectator

Here is George Neumayer explaining, how the "roots of Obamagate become clearer" originally published in The American Spectator .

* * *

Even before the first Republican primary, a London-to-Langley spy ring had begun to form against Donald Trump. British spies sent to CIA director John Brennan in late 2015 alleged intelligence on contacts between Trumpworld and the Russians, according to the Guardian.

Here's the crucial paragraph in the story:

GCHQ first became aware in late 2015 of suspicious "interactions" between figures connected to Trump and known or suspected Russian agents, a source close to UK intelligence said. This intelligence was passed to the US as part of a routine exchange of information, they added.

Notice it doesn't say the "Trump campaign" but "figures connected to Trump." One of those figures was Michael Flynn, who didn't join the campaign until February 2016. But Brennan and British intelligence had already started spying on him, drawing upon sham intelligence from Stefan Halper, a long-in-the-tooth CIA asset teaching at Cambridge University whom Brennan and Jim Comey would later send to infiltrate the Trump campaign's ranks.

It appears that Halper had won Brennan's confidence with a false report about Flynn in 2014 -- a reported sighting of Flynn at Cambridge University talking too cozily with a Russian historian. Halper had passed this absurdly simpleminded tattle to a British spy who in turn gave it to Brennan, as one can deduce from this euphemistic account in the New York Times about Halper as the "informant":

The informant also had contacts with Mr. Flynn, the retired Army general who was Mr. Trump's first national security adviser. The two met in February 2014, when Mr. Flynn was running the Defense Intelligence Agency and attended the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, an academic forum for former spies and researchers that meets a few times a year.

According to people familiar with Mr. Flynn's visit to the intelligence seminar, the source was alarmed by the general's apparent closeness with a Russian woman who was also in attendance. The concern was strong enough that it prompted another person to pass on a warning to the American authorities that Mr. Flynn could be compromised by Russian intelligence, according to two people familiar with the matter [italics added].

Again, that's early 2014 and a file on Flynn is already sitting on Brennan's desk. In 2015, as word of Flynn's interest in the Trump campaign spreads, the London-to-Langley spy ring fattens the file with more alarmist dreck -- that Flynn had gone to a Russian Television gala and so forth. By February 2016, when it is reported that he has joined the Trump campaign as an adviser, the spy ring moves into more concerted action.

It had also extended its radar to Carter Page, George Papadopoulos, and Paul Manafort. Peter Strzok, the FBI's liaison to Brennan, could have already clued Brennan in to Page and Manafort (both were already known to the FBI from previous cases), but Brennan needed British intelligence for Papadopoulos and it delivered. Either through human or electronic intelligence (or both), it reported back to Brennan the young campaign volunteer's meetings in Italy and London with Professor Joseph Mifsud, whose simultaneous ties to British intelligence and Russia are well known.

The stench of entrapment that hangs over this part of the story is unmistakable, and the spy ring's treatment of Papadopoulos looks flat out cruel. Every figure who plays a key role in tripping him up -- Mifsud, the Australian diplomat Alexander Downer, and Stefan Halper -- has ties to British intelligence.

David Ignatius, who is the Washington Post's stenographer for John Brennan, dropped a wonderful crumb in his passive-aggressive column about Stefan Halper this week -- "Stefan Halper is just another middleman." A middleman between whom? The answer is British intelligence and Brennan/Comey. As if to punctuate this point, Ignatius -- after belittling Halper as a gossipy academic who is no "James Bond," a sign that his handlers will burn him and profess ignorance of his entrapping methods (when this happens, remember Comey's "tightly regulated" tweet) -- turns to a "former British intelligence officer" to vouch for Halper's credibility. This unnamed former British intelligence officer adopts a very knowing, almost proprietary, tone, as if to acknowledge that the spying on the Trump campaign was a British-American venture from the start. Ignatius writes, "A former British intelligence officer who knows Halper well describes him as 'an intensely loyal and trusted U.S. citizen [who was] asked by the Bureau to look into some disconcerting contacts' between Russians and Americans."

"Intensely loyal and trusted," "asked by the Bureau" -- how would he know? These are the insiderish phrases of a handler or fellow member of the ring.

The size of the London-Langley spy ring isn't known but its existence is no longer in doubt. In light of it, Obama State Department official Evelyn Farkas's bragging bears reexamination. It is obvious that gossip about the transatlantic ring had spilled out to State Department circles and other Obama orbits, generating chatter even from a relatively minor figure like Farkas (who may have just been repeating what she had heard at a cocktail party after she left the administration):

I had a fear that somehow that information would disappear with the senior people who left. So it would be hidden away in the bureaucracy, and that the Trump folks if they found out how we knew what we knew about the Trump folks, the Trump staff's dealings with Russians, that they would try to compromise those sources and methods, meaning we would no longer have access to that intelligence. So I became very worried because not enough was coming out into the open and I knew there was more.

Whispers of the ring's work had picked up by the time Brennan had formed his "inter-agency taskforce" at Langley and Comey's official probe began. Brennan was presiding over a "turf-crossing operation that could feed the White House information," as revealingly put by Michael Isikoff and David Corn in Russian Roulette. The operation also crossed an ocean, placing a central scene of the spying in London as the ring oafishly built its file.

What started in late 2015 with promise ended in panic, with British sources for the alleged Trump-Russia collusion going silent or mysteriously disappearing. A few days after Trump's inauguration, the director of GCHQ, Robert Hannigan, abruptly resigned, prompting the Guardian to wonder if the sudden resignation was related to "British concerns over shared intelligence with the US." All of this raises plenty of questions, but one conclusion about this epic fiasco requires no spying: the fingerprints of the British are all over it. Tags Politics Newspaper Publishing Tobacco - NEC

[May 27, 2018] The Dummies Guide To The Russia Collusion Hoax Who, What, Where, When, Why by Roger Kimball

Notable quotes:
"... As it turns out, George Papadopoulos made several new friends in London. There was Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor living in London who has ties to British intelligence. It was Mifsud - who has since disappeared - who told Papadopoulos in March 2016 that the Kremlin had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... A cabal of CIA and FBI operatives, including the Director of the CIA, John Brennan, along with other members of the intelligence "community," prominently including James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and various members of the Obama administration, colluded to undermine Donald Trump's campaign. ..."
"... It is banana republic behaviour, but it looks now as if those responsible for this effort to undermine American democracy and repeal the results of a free, open, and democratic election will be exposed. Let's hope that they are also held to account ..."
"... Certainly they will be able to do it with Comey, Brennen, Clapper, McCabe, Strzok, Page and the rest of the sweet potatoes who got paid to set up candidate and then President Trump, don't they? ..."
"... "The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power" - Orwell ..."
"... Anyone that's part of this anti-constitutional movement should be purged from government and barred for life from participating in government in any capacity. ..."
"... Don't forget Trump interviewed Mueller for the FBI position just days before Rosenputz made him the special counsel. That, in and of itself, is a conflict of interest. If that idiot Sessions had any balls, he would've stepped in and pointed that out. ..."
May 27, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Authored by Roger Kimball via Spectator USA, For your eyes only: A short history of Democrat-spy collusion

How highly placed members of one administration mobilised the intelligence services to undermine their successors...

Who, what, where, when, why? The desiderata school teachers drill into their charges trying to master effective writing skills apply also in the effort to understand that byzantine drama known to the world as the Trump-Russia-collusion investigation.

Let's start with "when." When did it start? We know that the FBI opened its official investigation on 31 July 2016. An obscure, low-level volunteer to the Trump campaign called Carter Page was front and centre then. He'd been the FBI's radar for a long time. Years before, it was known, the Russians had made some overtures to him but 1) they concluded that he was an "idiot" not worth recruiting and 2) he had actually aided the FBI in prosecuting at least two Russian spies.

But we now know that the Trump-Russia investigation began before Carter Page. In December 2017, The New York Times excitedly reported in an article called "How the Russia Inquiry Began" that, contrary to their reporting during the previous year, it wasn't Carter Page who precipitated the inquiry. It was someone called George Papadopoulous, an even more obscure and lower-level factotum than Carter Page. Back in May 2016, the twenty-something Papadopoulous had gotten outside a number of drinks with one Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat in London and had let slip that "the Russians" had compromising information about Hillary Clinton. When Wikileaks began releasing emails hacked from the Democratic National Committee in June and July, news of the conversation between Downer and Papadopoulos was communicated to the FBI. Thus, according to the Times , the investigation was born.

There were, however, a couple of tiny details that the Times omitted. One was that Downer, an avid Clinton supporter, had arranged for a $25 million donation from the Australian government to the Clinton Foundation. Twenty-five million of the crispest, Kemo Sabe. They also neglected say exactly how Papadopoulos met Alexander Downer.

As it turns out, George Papadopoulos made several new friends in London. There was Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor living in London who has ties to British intelligence. It was Mifsud - who has since disappeared - who told Papadopoulos in March 2016 that the Kremlin had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Then there is Stefan Halper, an American-born Cambridge prof and Hillary supporter. Out of the blue, Halper reached out to Papadopoulos in September 2016. He invited him to meet in London and then offered Papadopoulos $3,000 to write a paper on an unrelated topic. He also pumped him about "Russian hacking." "George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?" Halper is said to have asked him. He also made sure Papadopoulos met for drinks with his assistant, a woman called Azra Turk, who flirted with him over the Chardonnay while pumping him about Russia.

Halper also contacted Carter Page and Sam Clovis, Trump's campaign co-chair. Is Stefan Halper, the "spy" on the Trump campaign, at the origin of the Trump-Russia meme?

Not really. The real fons et origo is John Brennan, Director of the CIA under Obama. As Trump's victories in the primaries piled up, Brennan convened a "working group" at CIA headquarters that included Peter Strzok, the disgraced FBI agent, and James Clapper, then Director of National Intelligence, in order to stymie Trump's campaign.

So much of this story still dwells in the tenebrous realm of redaction. But little by little the truth is emerging, a mosaic whose story is gradually taking shape as one piece after the next completes now this face, now another.

There are details yet to come, but here is the bottom line, the irreducible minimum ...

A cabal of CIA and FBI operatives, including the Director of the CIA, John Brennan, along with other members of the intelligence "community," prominently including James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, and various members of the Obama administration, colluded to undermine Donald Trump's campaign.

Like almost everyone else, they assumed that Hillary Clinton was a shoo-in, so they were careless about covering their tracks.

If Hillary had won, the department of Justice would have been her Department of Justice, John Brennan would still be head of the CIA, and the public would never have known about the spies, the set-ups, the skulduggery.

But Hillary did not win. For the last 16 months, we've watched as that exiled cabal shifted its efforts from stopping Trump from winning to a desperate effort to destroy his Presidency. Thanks to the patient work of Devin Nunes, Chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, and a handful of GOP Senators, that effort is now disintegrating.

What is being exposed is the biggest political scandal in the history of the United States : the effort by highly placed - exactly how highly placed we still do not know - members of one administration to mobilise the intelligence services and police power of the state to spy upon and destroy first the candidacy and then, when that didn't work, the administration of a political rival.

It is banana republic behaviour, but it looks now as if those responsible for this effort to undermine American democracy and repeal the results of a free, open, and democratic election will be exposed. Let's hope that they are also held to account.


JerseyJoe -> nmewn Sun, 05/27/2018 - 07:33 Permalink

Judge Jeanine does a great summary.

Justice With Judge Jeanine 5/26/18 | Breaking Fox News | May 26, 2018

Stan522 -> JerseyJoe Sun, 05/27/2018 - 08:07 Permalink

If the proof is there, does America have the balls to indict, prosecute and then jail a former president who happens to have black skin?

Certainly they will be able to do it with Comey, Brennen, Clapper, McCabe, Strzok, Page and the rest of the sweet potatoes who got paid to set up candidate and then President Trump, don't they?

Corruption! It's what's for breakfast. - Judas Sessions

"The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power"
- Orwell

JasperEllings -> macholatte Sun, 05/27/2018 - 11:22 Permalink

Important to note that all of these illegal DOJ actions have been undertaken in the context of a political movement calling itself "Resistance" whose openly stated goal is to destroy the candidacy and presidency of the people's chosen leader. And whose implicit goal has been to ensure one-party rule, eliminate the people from involvement in self governance and implement an anti-American globalist agenda.

Anyone that's part of this anti-constitutional movement should be purged from government and barred for life from participating in government in any capacity.

Try going to work and announcing to your boss that you're part of a movement to destroy the company from within. See if you keep your job.

Cigarshopper -> macholatte Sun, 05/27/2018 - 11:58 Permalink

Don't forget Trump interviewed Mueller for the FBI position just days before Rosenputz made him the special counsel. That, in and of itself, is a conflict of interest. If that idiot Sessions had any balls, he would've stepped in and pointed that out.

[May 27, 2018] The Code Name Crossfire Hurricane Undermines The FBI s Russia Story by Lee Smith

So Strzok was involved with this part of the story too. Strzokgate now has distinct British accent and probably was coordinated by CIA and MI6.
Harper was definitely acted like an "agent provocateur", whose job was to ask leading questions to get Trump campaign advisers to say things that would corroborate-or seem to corroborate-evidence that the FBI believed it already had in hand. It looks like among other things Halper was tasked with the attempt elaborate on the claims made in Steele's September 14 dossier memo: "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and considering disseminating it."
London was the perfect place for such dirty games -- the territory where the agent knew he could operate safely.
"Halper's fishing expedition therefore came up with nothing to suggest the Steele dossier was true. The real story is therefore the continuing attempt to assert that the dossier, or key parts of it, are true, after large-scale investigations by the FBI, and now by special counsel Robert Mueller, have failed to turn up any evidence of a plot hatched between Trump and Vladimir Putin to take over the White House."
"... So, how many "informants" targeted the Trump campaign? Were they being paid by the U.S. government? What are their names? What were they doing? ..."
Notable quotes:
"... The New York Times' ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... The New York Times ..."
"... So, how many "informants" targeted the Trump campaign? Were they being paid by the U.S. government? What are their names? What were they doing? ..."
"... Under whose authority were they spying on a political campaign? Did FBI and DOJ leadership sign off? Did FBI director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch know about it? What about other senior Obama administration officials? CIA Director John Brennan? Did President Obama know the FBI was spying on a presidential campaign? Did Hillary Clinton know? What about Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta? ..."
May 27, 2018 | thefederalist.com

The New York Times' 4,000-word report last week on the Federal Bureau of Investigation probe of Donald Trump's 2016 campaign's possible ties to Russia revealed for the first time that the investigation was called "Crossfire Hurricane."

The name, explains the paper, refers to the Rolling Stones lyric "I was born in a crossfire hurricane," from the 1968 hit "Jumpin' Jack Flash." Mick Jagger, one of the songwriters, said the song was a "metaphor" for psychedelic-drug induced states. The other, Keith Richards, said it "refers to his being born amid the bombing and air raid sirens of Dartford, England, in 1943 during World War II."

Investigation names, say senior U.S. law enforcement officials, are designed to refer to facts, ideas, or people related to the investigation. Sometimes they're explicit, and other times playful or even allusive. So what did the Russia investigation have to do with World War II, psychedelic drugs, or Keith's childhood?

The answer may be found in the 1986 Penny Marshall film named after the song, "Jumpin' Jack Flash." In the Cold War-era comedy, a quirky bank officer played by Whoopi Goldberg comes to the aid of Jonathan Pryce, who plays a British spy being chased by the KGB.

The code name "Crossfire Hurricane" is therefore most likely a reference to the former British spy whose allegedly Russian-sourced reports on the Trump team's alleged ties to Russia were used as evidence to secure a Foreign Intelligence Service Act secret warrant on Trump adviser Carter Page in October 2016: ex-MI6 agent Christopher Steele.

Helping Spin a New Origin Story

It is hardly surprising that the Times refrained from exploring the meaning of the code name. The paper of record has apparently joined a campaign, spearheaded by the Department of Justice, FBI, and political operatives pushing the Trump-Russia collusion story, to minimize Steele's role in the Russia investigation.

After an October news report showed his dossier was funded by the Clinton campaign and Democratic National Committee, facts that further challenged the credibility of Steele's research, the FBI investigation's origin story shifted.

In December, The New York Times published a "scoop " on the new origin story. In the revised narrative, the probe didn't start with the Steele dossier at all. Rather, it began with an April 2016 meeting between Trump campaign adviser George Papadopoulos and a Maltese professor named Joseph Mifsud. The professor informed him that "he had just learned from high-level Russian officials in Moscow that the Russians had 'dirt' on Mrs. Clinton in the form of 'thousands of emails.'"

Weeks later, Papadopoulos boasted to the Australian ambassador to London, Alexander Downer, that he was told the Russians had Clinton-related emails. Two months later, according to the Times , the Australians reported Papadopoulos' boasts to the FBI, and on July 31, 2016, the bureau began its investigation.

Further reinforcement of the new origin story came from congressional Democrats. A January 29 memo written by House Intelligence Committee minority staff under ranking member Rep. Adam Schiff further distances Steele from the opening of the investigation. "Christopher Steele's raw reporting did not inform the FBI's decision to initiate its counterintelligence investigation in late July 2016. In fact, the FBI's closely-held investigative team only received Steele's reporting in mid-September."

Last week's major Times article echoes the Schiff memo. Steele's reports, according to the paper, reached the "Crossfire Hurricane team" "in mid-September."

Yet the new account of how the government spying campaign against Trump started is highly unlikely. According to the thousands of favorable press reports asserting his credibility, Steele was well-respected at the FBI for his work on a 2015 case that helped win indictments of more than a dozen officials working for soccer's international governing body, FIFA. In July 2016, Steele met with the agent he worked with on the FIFA case to show his early findings on the Trump team's ties to Russia.

The FBI took Steele's reporting on Trump's ties to Russia so seriously it was later used as evidence to monitor the electronic communications of Trump campaign adviser Carter Page. But, according to Schiff and the Times , the FBI somehow lost track of reports from a "credible" source who claimed to have information showing that the Republican candidate for president was compromised by a foreign government. That makes no sense.

The code name "Crossfire Hurricane" is further evidence that the FBI's cover story is absurd. A reference to a movie about a British spy evading Russian spies behind enemy lines suggests the Steele dossier was always the core of the bureau's investigation into the Trump campaign.

Was Halper an Informant, Spy, Or Agent Provocateur?

Taken together with the other significant revelation from last Times story, the purpose and structure of Crossfire Hurricane may be coming into clearer focus. According to the Times story: "At least one government informant met several times with [Trump campaign advisers Carter] Page and [George] Papadopoulos, current and former officials said."

As we now know, the informant is Stefan Halper, a former classmate of Bill Clinton's at Oxford University who worked in the Nixon, Ford, and Reagan administrations. Halper is known for his good connections in intelligence circles. His father-in-law was Ray Cline , former deputy director of the Central Intelligence Agency. Halper is also reported to have led the 1980 Ronald Reagan campaign team that collected intelligence on sitting U.S. President Jimmy Carter's foreign policy.

So what was Halper doing in this instance? He wasn't really a spy (a person who is generally tasked with stealing secrets) or an informant (a person who provides information about criminal activities from the inside). Rather, it seems he was more like an agent provocateur, whose job was to ask leading questions to get Trump campaign advisers to say things that would corroborate -- or seem to corroborate -- evidence that the bureau believed it already had in hand.

It appears Halper's job was to induce inexperienced Trump campaign figures to say things.

Halper met with at least three Trump campaign advisers: Sam Clovis, Page, and George Papadopoulos. The latter two he met with in London, where Halper had reason to feel comfortable operating.

Halper's close contacts in the intelligence world weren't limited to the CIA. They also include foreign intelligence officials like Richard Dearlove , the former head of the United Kingdom's foreign intelligence service, MI6. According to a Washington Times report , Halper and Dearlove are partners in a UK consulting firm, Cambridge Security Initiative.

Dearlove is also close to Steele. According to the Washington Post , Dearlove met with Steele in the early fall of 2016, when his former charge shared his "worries" about what he'd found on the Trump campaign and "asked for his guidance."

London was therefore the perfect place for Halper to spring a trap -- outside the direct purview of the FBI, but on territory where he knew he could operate safely. It appears Halper's job was to induce inexperienced Trump campaign figures to say things that corroborated the 35-page series of memos written by Steele -- the centerpiece of the Russiagate investigation -- in order to license a broader campaign of government spying against Trump and his associates in the middle of a presidential election.

Halper Reached Out to Trump Campaign Members

Chuck Ross's reporting in The Daily Caller provides invaluable details and insight. As Ross explained in The Daily Caller back in March, Halper emailed Papadopoulos on September 2, 2016 with an invitation to write a research paper, for which he'd be paid $3,000, and a paid trip to London. According to Ross, "Papadopoulos and Halper met several times during the London trip," with one meeting scheduled for September 13 and another two days later.

Ross writes: "According to a source with knowledge of the meeting, Halper asked Papadopoulos: 'George, you know about hacking the emails from Russia, right?' Papadopoulos told Halper he didn't know anything about emails or Russian hacking." It seems Halper was looking to elaborate on the claims made in Steele's September 14 dossier memo : "Russians do have further 'kompromat' on CLINTON (e-mails) and considering disseminating it."

Halper's fishing expedition therefore came up with nothing to suggest the Steele dossier was true.

Had Papadopoulos confirmed that a shadowy Maltese academic had told him in April about Russians holding Clinton-related emails, presumably that would have entered the dossier as something like, "Trump campaign adviser PAPADOPOULOS confirms knowledge of Russian 'kompromat.'"

Another Trump campaign adviser Halper contacted was Page. They first met in Cambridge, England at a July 11, 2016 symposium. Halper's partner Dearlove spoke at the conference, which was held just days after Page had delivered a widely reported speech at the New Economic School in Moscow. According to another Ross article reporting on Page and Halper's interactions, the Trump adviser "recalls nothing of substance being discussed other than Halper's passing mention that he knew then-campaign chairman Paul Manafort."

Page and Manafort both figure prominently in the Steele dossier's July 19 memos. According to the document , Manafort "was using foreign policy advisor, Carter PAGE, and others as intermediaries." Page had also, according to the dossier, met with senior Kremlin officials -- a charge he later denied in his November 2, 2017 testimony before the House Intelligence Committee. Evidently, he also gave Halper nothing to use in verifying the charges made against him.

Halper's fishing expedition therefore came up with nothing to suggest the Steele dossier was true. The real story is therefore the continuing attempt to assert that the dossier, or key parts of it, are true, after large-scale investigations by the FBI, and now by special counsel Robert Mueller, have failed to turn up any evidence of a plot hatched between Trump and Vladimir Putin to take over the White House.

Using Spy Powers on Political Opponents Is a Big Problem

That portions of the American national security apparatus would put their considerable powers -- surveillance, spying, legal pressure -- at the service of a partisan political campaign is a sign that something very big is broken in Washington. Our Founding Fathers would not be surprised to learn that the post-9/11 surveillance and spying apparatus built to protect Americans from al-Qaeda has now become a political tool that targets Americans for partisan purposes. That the rest of us are surprised is a sign that we have stopped taking the U.S. Constitution as seriously as we should.

The damage done to the American press is equally large. Since the November 2016 presidential election, a financially imperiled media industry gambled its remaining prestige on Russiagate. Yet after nearly a year and a half filled with thousands of stories feeding the Trump-Russia collusion conspiracy, last week still represented a landmark moment in American journalism. The New York Times , which proudly published the Pentagon Papers, provided cover for an espionage operation against a presidential campaign.

The New York Times , which proudly published the Pentagon Papers, provided cover for an espionage operation against a presidential campaign.

There are significant errors and misrepresentations in the article that the Times could've easily checked, if it weren't in such a hurry to hide the FBI and DOJ's crimes and abuses. Perhaps most significantly, the Times avoided asking the key questions that the article raised with its revelation that "at least one government informant" met with Trump campaign figures.

So, how many "informants" targeted the Trump campaign? Were they being paid by the U.S. government? What are their names? What were they doing?

Under whose authority were they spying on a political campaign? Did FBI and DOJ leadership sign off? Did FBI director James Comey and Attorney General Loretta Lynch know about it? What about other senior Obama administration officials? CIA Director John Brennan? Did President Obama know the FBI was spying on a presidential campaign? Did Hillary Clinton know? What about Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta?

These questions are sure to be asked. What we know already is that the Times reporters did not ask them, because they do not bother to indicate that the officials interviewed for the story had declined to answer. That they did not ask these questions is evidence the Times is no longer a newspaper that sees its job as reporting the truth or holding high government officials responsible for their crimes. Lee Smith is the media columnist at Tablet.

[May 23, 2018] Framing the Trump Campaign as Lackey's of Russia by Publius Tacitus

Notable quotes:
"... The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election https://theintercept.com/20... ..."
"... Put the two together - Mifsud and Halper - and you get a clear effort by the CIA and FBI to "entrap" hapless Trump associates into the Russiagate narrative as a deliberate project to undermine the Trump campaign and the subsequent Trump Presidency. ..."
"... It is worth noting that Halper was paid $1,058,161 by the Department of Defense - I presume for his work as an "informant". ..."
"... I think it is insane that Rosenstein keeps getting away with telling the House Intelligence Committee to go jump in a lake. ..."
"... Did you know that Trump refuses to use a secure cellphone? https://www.politico.com/st... ..."
"... However, to further flesh out the ever-clearer role of MI6 in the set-up, you might want to cast an eye at this recent post from Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com that ties together Papadapoulos, Mifsud, Richard Dearlove, and Stefan Halper, a dual-national (UK & US) who had been active in the Trump campaign. A rather dodgy dude, from appearances... ..."
"... Because nobody thought Trump would win. It waq only after the election that the heat was really cranked up, in order make it clear to Trump that he may be titular president, but he is not the one in charge. ..."
"... if Papadopoulos was actually a secret FBI asset, perhaps Papadopoulos was trying hard to become an important member of the Trump campaign in order to compromise or entrap both Trump and members of the campaign with his (fake) info about being an expert on Russia who had met Putin and had access to lots of Russian-held dirt about Hillary. If Mifsud's whereabouts are known, the House Intel Committee really ought to call him as a witness. ..."
"... Mifsud's belated efforts to cover his tracks failed. His denials don't matter. The Statement of Offense establishes the "facts." You are missing the key point -- how would anyone know about thousands of "stolen" emails on 26 April when the so-called hack of the DNC and Clinton did not occur until 31 May? ..."
May 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

There are still many unanswered questions, but the evidence that now is part of the public record removes any doubt that British and US Intelligence services collaborated in a devious and fabricated scheme to portray the Trump campaign as intent on collaborating with Russia. The evidence was planted and cleverly fabricated. It was done through highly classified intelligence channels, which created a paper trail and provided prima facie "evidence" that individuals with tenuous ties to the Trump campaign where seeking meetings with Russian officials. What was not reported, however, was the fact that the original impetus for those reporting on those communications originated with an individual who appears to be an MI-6 intelligence asset. His name is Joseph Mifsud and I believe that evidence ultimately will establish that he was directed to contact and then feed incriminating information to George Papadopoulos. That information became the foundation of creating a counter intelligence investigation of Donald Trump and his campaign.

First a word about Joseph Mifsud. He is currently missing. But the public record on him strongly suggests that he was working as an intelligence asset of the United Kingdom's MI-6. Elizabeth Vos at Disobedient Media provides an excellent review of Mifsud and his links to British intel ( her article appears to have been taken down , but it is solid and I saved a copy):

Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese scholar with an eclectic academic history who Quartz described as an "enigma," while legacy press has enthusiastically characterized him as a central personality in the Trump-Russia scandal. The New York Times described Mifsud as an "enthusiastic promoter of President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia", citing his regular involvement in the annual meetings of the Valdai Discussion Club, a Russian-based think-tank, as well as three short articles he wrote in support of Russian policies.

Mifsud strongly denied claims that he was associated with Russian intelligence, telling Italian newspaper Repubblica that he was a member of the European Council on Foreign Relations and the Clinton Foundation, adding that his political outlook was "left-leaning." Last month, Slate reported Mifsud had 'disappeared', as did some of the other figures linking the UK to the Trump-Russia scandal.

Mifsud's alleged links to Russian intelligence are summarily debunked by his close working relationship with Claire Smith, a major figure in the upper echelons of British intelligence. A number of Twitter users recently observed that Joseph Mifsud had been photographed standing next to Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee at Mifsud's LINK campus in Rome. Newsmax and Buzzfeed later reported that the professor's name and biography had been removed from the campus' website, writing that the mysterious removal took place after Mifsud had served the institution for "years."

The FBI got its foot in the door to investigate Trump for Russian ties because of "intelligence" about George Papadopoulos. But that intelligence was fabricated. Let me show you how this happened. Let's go to the Statement of Offense filed against Papadopoulos . It states that Papadopoulos made "material false statements and material omissions to the FBI:"

Papadopoulos claimed that his interactions with Joseph Mifsud occurred before Papadopoulos "became a foreign policy advisor to the Campaign."

Defendant PAPADOPOULOS further told the investigating agents that the professor was "a nothing" and "just a guy talk[ing] up connections or something." In truth and in fact, however, defendant PAPADOPOULOS understood that the professor had substantial connections to Russian government officials (and had met with some of those officials in Moscow immediately prior to telling defendant PAPADOPOULOS about the "thousands of emails") and, over a period of months, defendant PAPADOPOULOS repeatedly sought to use the professor's Russian connections in an effort to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and Russian government officials.

Defendant PAPADOPOULOS claimed he met a certain female Russian national before he joined the Campaign and that their communications consisted of emails such as,'"Hi, how are you?"'In truth and in fact, however, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the female Russian national on or about March 24, 2016, after he had become an adviser to the Campaign; he believed that she had connections to Russian government officials; and he sought to use her Russian connections over a period of months in an effort to arrange a meeting between the Campaign and Russian government officials.

Pay close attention to the actual facts. Papadopoulos met with Mifsud in Italy on 14 March 2016. Although both shared an affiliation prior to that 14 March meeting with the London Centre of International Law Practice, they were not buddies nor in regular communication. According to the NY Times , Mifsud had little interest in Papadopoulos until the latter was named a Trump foreign policy advisor.

Traveling in Italy that March, Mr. Papadopoulos met Joseph Mifsud, a Maltese professor at a now-defunct London academy who had valuable contacts with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Mr. Mifsud showed little interest in Mr. Papadopoulos at first.

But when he found out he was a Trump campaign adviser, he latched onto him, according to court records and emails obtained by The New York Times. Their joint goal was to arrange a meeting between Mr. Trump and President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia in Moscow, or between their respective aides.

Only one tiny problem--Mifsud met in Italy with Papadopoulos on the 14th of March but George was not announced publicly as an advisor until ONE WEEK later, on the 21st. So how did Joseph Mifsud know about Papadopoulos' new job? Why was Mifsud so eager to meet with Papadopoulos?

Once Papdopolous was announced, Mifsud kicked into overdrive trying to introduce George to Russians. On 24 March Mifsud hosted Papadopolous, who reported the meeting to Stephen Miller on the Trump campaign:

Papadopoulos: "just finished a very productive lunch with a good friend of mine, [Mifsud ] . . . ‐ who introduced me to both Putin's niece and the Russian Ambassador in London ‐ who also acts as the Deputy Foreign Minister."

"The topic of the lunch was to arrange a meeting between us and the Russian leadership to discuss U.S.-Russia ties under President Trump. They are keen to host us in a 'neutral' city, or directly in Moscow. They said the leadership, including Putin, is ready to meet with us and Mr. Trump should there be interest. Waiting for everyone's thoughts on moving forward with this very important issue."

Here is what you need to understand. When Papadopoulos communicated to persons in the Trump campaign the results of his meetings with Mifsud and Mifsud's Russian contacts, that information was relayed from the UK to America via telephone and email. Those conversations, without one doubt, were intercepted and put into a Top Secret intel reports (known in intel circles as SIGINT) by GCHQ.

It would be damning if Papadopoulos had initiated the contact with Russian sources and was lighting up the web with requests for info about Russians willing to work with or help Trump. But that did not happen. The impetus to talk about Russia originated with Mifsud, who, based on circumstantial evidence, was a British intelligence asset and was directed to target and bait Papadopoulos. It was Mifsud who raised the specter of the Russians targeting Hillary Clinton (see pp 6-7 of the Statement of Offense):

On or about April 26, 2016, defendant PAPADOPOULOS met the Professor for breakfast at a London hotel. During this meeting, the Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that he had just returned from a trip to Moscow where he had met with high-level Russian government officials. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS that on that trip he (the Professor) learned that the Russians had obtained "dirt" on then-candidate Clinton. The Professor told defendant PAPADOPOULOS, as defendant PAPADOPOULOS later described to the FBI, that "They [the Russians] have dirt on her; the Russians had emails of Clinton; "they have thousands of emails."

Mifsud provided the Russian information. Not Papadopoulos. Mifsud's mission of feeding Papadopoulos "Russian intelligence," which the later then reported back to the Trump campaign produced the casus belli (of sorts) to justify opening an FBI counter intelligence investigation. The FBI also was ensnared, most likely. It does not appear the FBI was briefed immediately on these matters. Instead, John Brennan and Jim Clapper built up a pretty sizable intel file, filled with SIGINT reports from the UK's GCHQ, which contained American names and reports of efforts to broker a meeting with Vladimir Putin. Of course they (Clapper and Brennan) conveniently failed to mention to the FBI that the information originated with a UK plant. But it did provide legal cover for unmasking the identities of Trump campaign personnel.

This was not the only "information dump" in place. MI-6 also helped ensure that there was an "independent" source of intelligence--human intelligence. Hence the Steele Dossier, with the first reports being produced in June 2016. It is this combination of SIGNALS INTELLIGENCE and HUMAN INTELLIGENCE, which persuaded the FBI that something serious was going on. While it may be possible that Comey and McCabe conspired initially with Brennan and Clapper, I do not think that is what happened. Comey and McCabe were duped by Brennan and Clapper into believing that there was actual malfeasance underway with the Trump campaign. They were naive, even stupid, but not engaged in sedition.

What I have outlined above is the circumstantial case for how the so-called intelligence was generated to create a feasible foundation for opening a counter intelligence investigation of President Trump and his campaign. But if Vegas allowed a bet on this scenario I would bet my house and feel confident of collecting a big payoff.


richardstevenhack , a day ago

Meanwhile, we also have an FBI informant who was a CIA spy who ran a spying operation for a previous election campaign. Nothing like hiring people with experience!

The FBI Informant Who Monitored the Trump Campaign, Stefan Halper, Oversaw a CIA Spying Operation in the 1980 Presidential Election https://theintercept.com/20...

Put the two together - Mifsud and Halper - and you get a clear effort by the CIA and FBI to "entrap" hapless Trump associates into the Russiagate narrative as a deliberate project to undermine the Trump campaign and the subsequent Trump Presidency.

James Thomas -> richardstevenhack , a day ago
It is worth noting that Halper was paid $1,058,161 by the Department of Defense - I presume for his work as an "informant".

I think it is insane that Rosenstein keeps getting away with telling the House Intelligence Committee to go jump in a lake.

BradleyKSherman -> richardstevenhack , a day ago
Red herring. Trump (and Clinton) were informed that surveillance was in place: https://www.nbcnews.com/new...

Did you know that Trump refuses to use a secure cellphone? https://www.politico.com/st...

Fred -> BradleyKSherman , 12 hours ago
Bradley,

July comes after April in the calendar. "Weeks after..." is even further after that. Try reading the actual article. Then read the publicly available ones that state how Comey left out details in that briefing. Nice try though.

Publius Tacitus -> BradleyKSherman , 12 hours ago
Total bullshit and irrelevant. The briefing each received was routine and had nothing to do with the clandestine campaign to frame Trump and his team as colluding with the Russians. Is that the best you got?
Publius Tacitus -> richardstevenhack , a day ago
Yes. That is it in a nutshell.
JerseyJeffersonian , a day ago
Well, done, PT.

However, to further flesh out the ever-clearer role of MI6 in the set-up, you might want to cast an eye at this recent post from Justin Raimondo at antiwar.com that ties together Papadapoulos, Mifsud, Richard Dearlove, and Stefan Halper, a dual-national (UK & US) who had been active in the Trump campaign. A rather dodgy dude, from appearances...

https://original.antiwar.co...

Carry on with your good spade work and interpretation.

JerseyJeffersonian

Publius Tacitus -> JerseyJeffersonian , a day ago
Thanks for the link. However, Raimondo's piece is dreadful. He fails to grasp what actually happened. I will do a longer piece that will connect the dots.
James Doleman , 16 hours ago
If that's true why didn't they leak it before the election? Seems a bit useless otherwise.
Sid Finster -> James Doleman , 14 hours ago
Because nobody thought Trump would win. It waq only after the election that the heat was really cranked up, in order make it clear to Trump that he may be titular president, but he is not the one in charge.
Publius Tacitus -> James Doleman , 13 hours ago
If what is true? Can you try to be more descriptive in the point you are raising.
seesee2468 , a day ago
Thank you very much for this very penetrating article. I think it should also be mentioned that Mifsud himself explicitly denies most of the allegations quoted in the Statement of Offense, a situation that opens up the possibility that many of Papadopoulos' later confessions to the FBI regarding Mifsud were just as fictional as the earlier statements for which he was arrested.

Mifsud told The Telegraph last year that many of the contents of the alleged April 26 conversation with Papadopoulos, quoted in your article, have no basis in reality.

Mifsud denied that he pushed Papadopoulos toward the Russian government. Instead, he says he introduced Papadopoulos to 1) the director of an academic Russian think tank and 2) experts connected with the EU.

Mifsud also said he never told Papadopoulos that he had just returned from Russia after meeting with senior Russian government officials, and he also denied he had mentioned anything about the Russians allegedly having lots of "dirt" about Hillary. In addition, Mifsud thought the claim that he had introduced a female "Russian national" to Papadopoulos was completely ridiculous.

Why might Papadopoulos have made up fictional stories and told them to the FBI and the Trump campaign? No one knows, but perhaps Papadopoulos wanted to please the FBI by telling them what he thought they wanted to hear. As for the Trump campaign, The Telegraph comments: "Papadopoulos also appeared to over-exaggerate the extent of his Russian contacts in messages to the Trump campaign, according to court documents. In one email sent to the Trump campaign Mr Papadopoulos says he has just been introduced to the Russian Ambassador in London.

He has since admitted the pair never met." Possibly Papadopoulos wanted to impress the Trump campaign and make them think he was an important figure with crucial info. Or, if Papadopoulos was actually a secret FBI asset, perhaps Papadopoulos was trying hard to become an important member of the Trump campaign in order to compromise or entrap both Trump and members of the campaign with his (fake) info about being an expert on Russia who had met Putin and had access to lots of Russian-held dirt about Hillary. If Mifsud's whereabouts are known, the House Intel Committee really ought to call him as a witness.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk...

Publius Tacitus -> seesee2468 , 13 hours ago
Mifsud's belated efforts to cover his tracks failed. His denials don't matter. The Statement of Offense establishes the "facts." You are missing the key point -- how would anyone know about thousands of "stolen" emails on 26 April when the so-called hack of the DNC and Clinton did not occur until 31 May?
David Lewis , a day ago
the risks of pre-emption...by covertly instigating a crime to a party one suspects as criminal,,,one may miss out on the chance to prosecute a self-initiated crime

[May 21, 2018] There's no real Left in the UK anymore, either. The Blairites are still a force with the Labour party. Even the old Left newspapers - The Guardian, The Observer - are just neocon and neoliberal mouthpeces

May 21, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Bevin Kacon | May 20, 2018 1:50:01 PM | 12

There's no real Left in the UK anymore, either. The Blairites are still a force with the Labour party and that party is known as The Red Tories - especially in Scotland - for the obvious reason!

Even the old Left newspapers - The Guardian, The Observer - are no longer such, as has been evidenced of late. I no longer read the UK press - Private Eye is my 'paper' reading - and would not trust one word broadcast by the BBC and, I am sorry to say, Channel 4.

bevin , May 20, 2018 3:04:03 PM | 16
The Guardian and The Observer have never been socialist papers. They were liberal, just like the democrats in the United States were liberal. And liberals, who are the advance guard of capitalism, can hardly be called 'of the left'.
The only opponents of capitalism and imperialism are socialists or nationalists, of a kind rarely seen outside the third world periphery of the system since 1917.
Anyone who sees the fascists and crooks surrounding Trump as being opponents of anything except the human race is almost as daft as someone who sees the Democrats as part of the left.
But the real prize for idiocy goes to those sad souls who see the FBI, CIA, MI6 and their clones as anything but- deepest apologies here to the Mafia and their ilk- criminal gangs, of the worst kind.

[May 12, 2018] Julian Assange: There is something very odd about the Joseph Mifsud story and the role of the UK in the 2016 US presidential election

Notable quotes:
"... In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets ..."
"... You might find this article on mifsud of interest.. there are some earlier ones on that site too worth a read.. the gist of the articles are essentially mifsud is a british or cia intel asset, as opposed to how he is portrayed in the west.. ..."
May 12, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: WJ | May 12, 2018 3:50:46 PM | 96

Julian Assange

@JulianAssange
There is something very odd about the Joseph Mifsud story and the role of the UK in the 2016 US presidential election:
(thread)
5:07 PM · Mar 22, 2018

DEVELOPING: A major new front is opening in the political espionage scandal. In summer 2016, Brennan with his FBI liaison Strzok, along with help from Kerry @ State, were trying to set Russian espionage traps for minor players in the Trump campaign through cultivated intel assets

-- Paul Sperry (@paulsperry_) May 11, 2018

james , May 12, 2018 4:18:00 PM | 105
@96 wj... You might find this article on mifsud of interest.. there are some earlier ones on that site too worth a read.. the gist of the articles are essentially mifsud is a british or cia intel asset, as opposed to how he is portrayed in the west..

@99 / 100 a p.. thanks for your perspective and your many fine posts! i guess we can wait and see how it unfolds..

[May 04, 2018] The Empire Is Crumbling, But Not Dead, and Desperate for War

May 04, 2018 | larouchepac.com

Let us review: Every effort by the British to bring down the government of the United States under President Donald Trump has failed. MI6 agent Christopher Steele's dodgy dossier now stands exposed as the only basis for the launching of Trumpgate by the corrupt Obama intelligence team, and the perpetrators are themselves now facing criminal prosecution; the Skripal case has disappeared from the media, as the connections to the same Christopher Steele were coming to the fore; the Syrian chemical weapons fraud concocted by the British-run White Helmets has now been exposed internationally as a Nazi-like staged affair to justify a military assault. That assault, in which Trump was tricked into going along with the British and the French, effectively declared that the international law established after World War II, through the United Nations, to prevent another world war, was dead.

The Empire will not go quietly into the night. Bibi Netanyahu's antics -- claiming "proof" that Iran is still developing nuclear weapons -- is being ridiculed even by former Israeli intelligence officials as re-packaged news, already known by the IAEA, and proving nothing. But the British have always used the Israeli right-wing, and the Saudi Royal family, to provoke divisions and, when necessary, to start wars. With Trump having cooperated with Putin in defeating ISIS in Syria, and swearing that he wants to get the U.S. out of Syria altogether and "stop being the world's policeman," the British are desperately pulling every possible string to drag the U.S. into more wars.

The same situation exists in Ukraine. Poroshenko today launched his "Joint Forces" operation, consolidating the National Guard, the National Police, and the disparate neo-Nazi militias under central army control, committed to a military solution to the Donbas.

A new war in Syria or Ukraine could quickly explode into war with Russia, and a new world war, this time with nuclear weapons.

And yet, as demonstrated in Korea, when the United States works with China and Russia, miracles can happen. The "permanent crisis" in Korea, like the "permanent crisis" in the Middle East -- both the Arab-Israeli conflict and the Sunni-Shi'a conflict -- have been intentionally maintained by the British and their assets as cockpits for war between East and West, to keep the major powers divided, to the benefit of the British Empire which controls the financial system centered in the City of London and Wall Street.

But the New Silk Road is threatening that "divide and conquer" mentality. The win-win policy of China's Belt and Road Initiative, transforming the "Third World" into modern agro-industrial nation states through modern infrastructure development, has demonstrated that conflicts based on ethnicity, religion, territorial issues and the like can be overcome based on advancing the common interests of all nations and all peoples.

The role of the United States in this global crisis is determining. With Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic summit with Xi Jinping last week, the three great cultures of Russia, China, and India are now working together in creating a New Paradigm for mankind. Lyndon LaRouche has long insisted that the "Four Powers" of Russia, China, India and the United States is the necessary combination needed to end the world of Empire once and for all.

President Trump has repeatedly stressed that being friends with Russia and China "is a good thing, not a bad thing," which is the core reason that British intelligence launched the Russiagate coup attempt in the first place. If Trump is to survive, the American people must identify the British role, free Trump of the British coup attempt, and back his best impulses to join fully with America's natural allies in Russia and China, through full participation in the New Silk Road.

LaRouchePAC organizers across the country are reporting the strong response to this call to end the Empire, to join the BRI, and to end the containment of the American people by the Wall Street-controlled "two-party system." Trump has, in this case, shown the way, attacking Republicans and Democrats with equal vigor when they peddle the need to confront Russia and China. The new paradigm is not only within reach, but is absolutely necessary if the British war plan is to be defeated.

[May 04, 2018] London-Based Empire Exposed Door Open for Trans-Atlantic Economic Change

May 04, 2018 | larouchepac.com

With well-deserved doubt greeting every strategic claim coming from the City of London and its allied forces on Wall Street and in Brussels, resulting from the ongoing exposure of their lies, e.g. on "Russiagate" and the use of "chemical weapons", there is an unprecedented opportunity to break with the Old Paradigm on its weakest flank, the lie that the economy is strong and growing.

[May 04, 2018] The Empire Based in London Won't Give Up: They Must, and Can Be Defeated

May 03, 2018 | larouchepac.com

https://www.youtube.com/embed/-yNuoa6qyFk?wmode=opaque&controls=&rel=0

With one provocation after another, each more transparently false than the previous one, the war faction of City of London imperial oligarchs and their Wall Street neo-con/neo-lib partners continue their efforts to sabotage the potential of the New Paradigm, which is emerging in Eurasia to be a worldwide movement, with breathtaking speed.

Though Russiagate, the Skripal poisoning, and the Douma chemical weapons False Flag hoax have been exposed as originating in the diseased minds of British intelligence circles, they are at it again, with Bibi Netanyahu claiming he has "proof" that Iran never ended its nuclear program, attempting to trap the U.S. into yet another disastrous war in the Middle East, and possible nuclear confrontation with Russia.

[May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... A McClatchy journalist investigated further and came to the same conclusion as I did. The 'leak' to the New York Times was disinformation. ..."
"... Russia has not pinned the Novichok to Sweden or the Czech Republic. It said, correctly, that several countries produced Novichok. Russia did not blame the UK for the 'nerve gas attack' in Syria. Russia says that there was no gas attack in Douma. ..."
"... The claims of Russian disinformation these authors make to not hold up to scrutiny. Meanwhile there pieces themselves are full of lies, distortions and, yes, disinformation. ..."
"... Wait for an outbreak of hostilities on the Ukraine-Donbass front shortly before the beginning of the World Cup competition which is as internationally important as the Olympic Games -- as they did in 2014 with Maidan and 2016 with the Sochi Winter Olympics drug uproar, the CIA will create chaos that will take the emphasis off any Russian success, since as to them, anything negative regarding Russia is a positive for them. ..."
"... No traces of chemical weapons have been found in Douma. This means that not only the US/UK/French airstrikes were illegal under international law but even their political justification was inherently flawed. Similarly, in the Salisbury affair, no evidence of Russian involvement has been presented, while the two myths on which the British case was built (the Russian origin of the chemical substance used and the existence of proof of Russian responsibility) have been shattered. ..."
"... Given the lack of facts, the Tory leadership seems to be adopting a truly Orwellian logic: that the main proof of Russian responsibility are the Russian denials! It is hard to see how they will be able to sell this to their international partners. Self-respecting countries of G20 would not be willing to risk their reputation. ..."
"... The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote." ..."
"... Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime, "whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: "Whataboutism" is the attempt to understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?" ..."
"... Whataboutism seems to deny that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth. ..."
"... 1984, anyone? ..."
"... The absurd story that the OPCW says there was a 100gm/100mg who knows which on the door and other sites is just so stupid its painful. ..."
"... Presumably the Skripals touch the cutlery, plates and wine glasses in the restaurant, so why weren't the staff there infected as they must have had to pick up the plates etc after the meal. Even the door to the entrance of the restaurant should be affected as they would have to push it open, thus leaving the chemical for other people to touch. Nope, nothing in this stupid story adds up and the OPCW can't even get the amounts of the chemical right. ..."
"... Biggest problem with the world today is lazy insouciant citizens. ..."
"... One very important point Lavrov made was the anti-Russian group consists of a very small number of nations representing a small fraction of humanity; ..."
"... while they have some economic and military clout, it's possible for the rest of the world's nations to sideline them and get on with the important business of forming a genuine Multipolar World Order, which is what the UN and its Charter envisioned. ..."
"... Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy' disinformation. ..."
"... Yes, exactly. The Western hegemony, i.e. the true "Axis of Evil" led by the US, and including the EU and non-Western allies, have invented the Perpetual Big Lie™. ..."
"... Witnesses? They're either confederates, dupes, or terrified by coercion. Evidence and/or technical analysis? All faked! A nominally reliable party, e.g. the president of the Czech Republic, makes statements that undermine the Big Lie Nexus? Again-- he's either been bought off or frightened into making such inconvenient claims. Or he's just a mischievous liar. ..."
"... And, as I seemingly never get tired of pointing out, the Perpetual Big Lie™ strategy arose, and succeeds, because the "natural enemies" of authoritarian government overreach have been coerced or co-opted to a fare-thee-well. So mass-media venues, and even supposedly independent technical and scientific organizations, are part of the Perpetual Big Lie™ apparatus. ..."
"... Putting Kudrin -- an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington Consensus -- in charge of Russia's international outreach would be equal to putting Bill Clinton in charge of a girls' school. ..."
"... In the Guardian I only read the comments, never the article. Here, I read both. That is the difference between propaganda and good reporting. ..."
May 04, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

The Grauniad is slipping deeper into the disinformation business: Revealed: UK's push to strengthen anti-Russia alliance is the headline of a page one piece which reveals exactly nothing. There is no secret lifted and no one was discomforted by a questioning journalist.

Like other such pieces it uses disinformation to accuse Russia of spreading such.

The main 'revelation' is stenographed from a British government official. Some quotes from the usual anti-Russian propagandists were added. Dubious or false 'western' government claims are held up as truth. That Russia does not endorse them is proof for Russian mischievousness and its 'disinformation'.

The opener:

The UK will use a series of international summits this year to call for a comprehensive strategy to combat Russian disinformation and urge a rethink over traditional diplomatic dialogue with Moscow, following the Kremlin's aggressive campaign of denials over the use of chemical weapons in the UK and Syria.
...
"The foreign secretary regards Russia's response to Douma and Salisbury as a turning point and thinks there is international support to do more," a Whitehall official said. "The areas the UK are most likely to pursue are countering Russian disinformation and finding a mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons."

There is a mechanism to enforce accountability for the use of chemical weapons. It is the Chemical Weapon Convention and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). It was the British government which at first rejected the use of these instruments during the Skripal incident:

Early involvement of the OPCW, as demanded by Russia, was resisted by the British government. Only on March 14, ten days after the incident happened and two days after Prime Minister Theresa may had made accusations against Russia, did the British government invite the OPCW. Only on March 19, 15 days after the incident happen did the OPCW technical team arrive and took blood samples.

Now back to the Guardian disinformation:

In making its case to foreign ministries, the UK is arguing that Russian denials over Salisbury and Douma reveal a state uninterested in cooperating to reach a common understanding of the truth , but instead using both episodes to try systematically to divide western electorates and sow doubt.

A 'common understanding of the truth' is an interesting term. What is the truth? Whatever the British government claims? It accused Russia of the Skripal incident a mere eight days after it happened. Now, two month later, it admits that it does not know who poisoned the Skripals:

Police and intelligence agencies have failed so far to identify the individual or individuals who carried out the nerve agent attack in Salisbury, the UK's national security adviser has disclosed.

Do the Brits know where the alleged Novichok poison came from? Unless they produced it themselves they likely have no idea. The Czech Republic just admitted that it made small doses of a Novichok nerve agent for testing purposes. Others did too.

Back to the Guardian :

British politicians are not alone in claiming Russia's record of mendacity is not a personal trait of Putin's, but a government-wide strategy that makes traditional diplomacy ineffective.

Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, famously came off one lengthy phone call with Putin – she had more than 40 in a year – to say he lived in a different world.

No, Merkel never said that. An Obama administration flunky planted that in the New York Times :

Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany told Mr. Obama by telephone on Sunday that after speaking with Mr. Putin she was not sure he was in touch with reality, people briefed on the call said. "In another world," she said.

When that claim was made in March 2014 we were immediately suspicious of it:

This does not sound like typically Merkel but rather strange for her. I doubt that she said that the way the "people briefed on the call" told it to the Times stenographer. It is rather an attempt to discredit Merkel and to make it more difficult for her to find a solution with Russia outside of U.S. control.

A day later the German government denied (ger) that Merkel ever said such (my translation):

The chancellery is unhappy about the report in the New York Times. Merkel by no means meant to express that Putin behaved irrational. In fact she told Obama that Putin has a different perspective about the Crimea [than Obama has].

A McClatchy journalist investigated further and came to the same conclusion as I did. The 'leak' to the New York Times was disinformation.

That disinformation, spread by the Obama administration but immediately exposed as false, is now held up as proof by Patrick Wintour, the Diplomatic editor of the Guardian , that Russia uses disinformation and that Putin is a naughty man.

The British Defense Minister Gavin Williamson wants journalists to enter the UK reserve forces to help with the creation of propaganda:

He said army recruitment should be about "looking to different people who maybe think, as a journalist: 'What are my skills in terms of how are they relevant to the armed forces?'

Patrick Wintour seems to be a qualified candidate.

Or maybe he should join the NATO for Information Warfare the Atlantic Council wants to create to further disinform about those damned Russkies:

What we need now is a cross-border defense alliance against disinformation -- call it Communications NATO. Such an alliance is, in fact, nearly as important as its military counterpart.

Like the Guardian piece above writer of the NATO propaganda lobby Atlantic Council makes claims of Russian disinformation that do not hold up to the slightest test:

By pinning the Novichok nerve agent on Sweden or the Czech Republic, or blaming the UK for the nerve gas attack in Syria, the Kremlin sows confusion among our populations and makes us lose trust in our institutions.

Russia has not pinned the Novichok to Sweden or the Czech Republic. It said, correctly, that several countries produced Novichok. Russia did not blame the UK for the 'nerve gas attack' in Syria. Russia says that there was no gas attack in Douma.

The claims of Russian disinformation these authors make to not hold up to scrutiny. Meanwhile there pieces themselves are full of lies, distortions and, yes, disinformation.

The bigger aim behind all these activities, demanding a myriad of new organizations to propagandize against Russia, is to introduce a strict control over information within 'western' societies.

Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy' disinformation.

That scheme will be used against anyone who deviates from the ordered norm. You dislike that pipeline in your backyard? You must be falling for Russian trolls or maybe you yourself are an agent of a foreign power. Social Security? The Russians like that. It is a disinformation thing. You better forget about it.


c1ue , May 4, 2018 2:27:27 PM | 1

Excellent article, in an ongoing run of great journalism.
I am curious - have you read this? https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ST/
It purports to be a book by an American military man intimately familiar with the covert ops portion of the US government. The internal Kafka-esque dynamics described certainly feel true.
Mike Maloney , May 4, 2018 2:44:12 PM | 3
One of the reasons newspapers are getting worse is the economics. They aren't really viable anymore. Their future is as some form of government sanctioned oligopoly. Two national papers -- a "left" and a "right" -- and then a handful of regional papers. All spouting the same neoliberal, neoconservative chicanery.
CD Waller , May 4, 2018 2:57:20 PM | 4
Genuine journalist Matt Taibbi warned of this sort of branding of disparate views as enemy a month ago. He was also correct. Evil and insidious. The enemy of a free society.
chet380 , May 4, 2018 2:58:22 PM | 5
Wait for an outbreak of hostilities on the Ukraine-Donbass front shortly before the beginning of the World Cup competition which is as internationally important as the Olympic Games -- as they did in 2014 with Maidan and 2016 with the Sochi Winter Olympics drug uproar, the CIA will create chaos that will take the emphasis off any Russian success, since as to them, anything negative regarding Russia is a positive for them.
WJ , May 4, 2018 3:02:57 PM | 6
The later history of the 20th century will one day be read as the triumph and normalization of the Nazi state through liberal democratic capitalism.
Laguerre , May 4, 2018 3:07:19 PM | 7
I agree that it's difficult to see how the drive to renew the Cold War is going to be stopped. I presume that, with the exception of certain NeoCon circles, there isn't a desire for Hot War. Certainly not in the British sources you quote. Britain wouldn't want Hot War with Russia. It's all a question of going to the limit for internal consumption. Do a 1984, in order to keep the population in-line.
james , May 4, 2018 3:11:05 PM | 8
thanks b... i can't understand how any intelligent thinking person would read the guardian, let alone something like the huff post, and etc. etc... why? the propaganda money that pays for the white helmets, certainly goes to these outlets as well..

the uk have gone completely nuts! i guess it comes with reading the guardian, although, in fairness, all british media seems very skewed - sky news, bbc, and etc. etc.

it does appear as though Patrick Wintour is on Gavin Williamson's propaganda bandwagon/payroll already... in reading the comments and articles at craig murrays site, i have become more familiar with just how crazy things are in the uk.. his latest article freedom no more sums it up well... throw the uk msm in the trash can... it is for all intensive purposes, done..

mk , May 4, 2018 3:31:41 PM | 9
Meanwhile, OPCW chief Uzumcu seems to have been pranked again, this time by his own staff (this is how I interpret it):

He claimed that the amount of Novichok found was about 100 g and therefore more than research laboratories would produce, i.e. this was weaponized Novichok.

http://www.startribune.com/large-dose-of-nerve-agent-was-used-in-spy-s-poisoning-watchdog-says/481687061/

However, the story is being retracted right now because OPCW staff says it was only 100 mg .

Uzumcu looks like a fool.

b , May 4, 2018 3:49:03 PM | 10
The Russian embassy in the UK must be reading MoA. It just now tweeted this press release: Embassy press officer comments on the Guardian article concerning a new British anti-Russian strategy
Q: What is our reaction to the Guardian article on a "comprehensive strategy" to "deepen the alliance against Russia" to be pursued by the UK Government at international forums?

A: Judging by the publication, the main current challenge for Whitehall is to preserve the anti-Russian coalition that the Conservatives tried to build after the Salisbury incident. This task is challenging indeed. The "fusion doctrine" promoted by the national security apparatus has led to the Western bloc taking hasty decisions that, as life has shown, were not based on any facts.

No traces of chemical weapons have been found in Douma. This means that not only the US/UK/French airstrikes were illegal under international law but even their political justification was inherently flawed. Similarly, in the Salisbury affair, no evidence of Russian involvement has been presented, while the two myths on which the British case was built (the Russian origin of the chemical substance used and the existence of proof of Russian responsibility) have been shattered.

Given the lack of facts, the Tory leadership seems to be adopting a truly Orwellian logic: that the main proof of Russian responsibility are the Russian denials! It is hard to see how they will be able to sell this to their international partners. Self-respecting countries of G20 would not be willing to risk their reputation.

karlof1 , May 4, 2018 3:52:31 PM | 11
Hmmm... My reply to c1ue went sideways it seems. Yes, The late Mr. Prouty's book's the real deal and the website hosting his very rare book is a rare gem itself. Click the JFK at page top left to be transported to that sites archive of writings about his murder. The very important essay by Prouty's there too.
WJ , May 4, 2018 3:53:30 PM | 12
The detail of b's analysis that stands out to me as especially significant and brilliant is his demolition of the Guardian's reuse of the Merkel "quote."

This one detail tells us so much about how propaganda works, and about how it can be defeated. Successful propaganda both depends upon and seeks to accelerate the erasure of historical memory. This is because its truths are always changing to suit the immediate needs of the state. None of its truths can be understood historically. b makes the connection between the documented but forgotten past "truth" of Merkel's quote and its present reincarnation in the Guardian, and this is really all he *needs* to do. What b points out is something quite simple; yet the ability to do this very simple thing is becoming increasingly rare and its exercise increasingly difficult to achieve. It is for me the virtue that makes b's analysis uniquely indispensable.

Related to the above, consider the nature of the recently christened thought-crime, "whataboutism." The crime may be defined as follows: "Whataboutism" is the attempt to understand a truth asserted by propaganda by way of relation to other truths it has asserted contemporaneous with or prior to this one. It is to ask, "What about this *other* truth? Does this *other* truth affect our understanding of *this* truth? And if so, how does it?"

Whataboutism seems to deny that each asserted truth stands on its own, and has no essential relation to any other past, present, or future asserted truth.

Jose Garcia , May 4, 2018 3:56:03 PM | 13
1984, anyone?
john wilson , May 4, 2018 4:03:04 PM | 14
The absurd story that the OPCW says there was a 100gm/100mg who knows which on the door and other sites is just so stupid its painful. This implies that the Skripals both closed the door together and then went off on their day spreading the stuff everywhere, yet no one else was contaminated (apart from the fantasy policeman).

Presumably the Skripals touch the cutlery, plates and wine glasses in the restaurant, so why weren't the staff there infected as they must have had to pick up the plates etc after the meal. Even the door to the entrance of the restaurant should be affected as they would have to push it open, thus leaving the chemical for other people to touch. Nope, nothing in this stupid story adds up and the OPCW can't even get the amounts of the chemical right.

ken , May 4, 2018 4:03:13 PM | 15
The problem is,,, most know it's all BS but find it 'easier' to believe or at most ignore, as then there is no responsibility to 'do something'. Biggest problem with the world today is lazy insouciant citizens. (Yes,,, I'm a PCR reader) :))
karlof1 , May 4, 2018 4:05:15 PM | 16
b @10--

Did you catch the Lavrov interview I linked to on previous Yemen thread? As you might imagine, the verbiage used is quite similar. One very important point Lavrov made was the anti-Russian group consists of a very small number of nations representing a small fraction of humanity; and that while they have some economic and military clout, it's possible for the rest of the world's nations to sideline them and get on with the important business of forming a genuine Multipolar World Order, which is what the UN and its Charter envisioned.

I won't omit linking to Craig Murray's conclusion :

"I cannot sufficiently express my outrage that Leeds City Council feels it is right to ban a meeting with very distinguished speakers, because it is questioning the government and establishment line on Syria. Freedom of speech really is dead."

Ort , May 4, 2018 4:22:35 PM | 17
Anything that may not confirm to the 'truth' as prescribed from above must be overwhelmed with an onslaught of more lies or, if that does not work, be discredited as 'enemy' disinformation.
_______________________________________

Yes, exactly. The Western hegemony, i.e. the true "Axis of Evil" led by the US, and including the EU and non-Western allies, have invented the Perpetual Big Lie™.

This isn't a new insight, but it's worth repeating. It struck me anew while I was listening to a couple of UK "journalists" hectoring OPCW Representative Shulgin, and directing scurrilous and provocative innuendo disguised as "questions" to Mr. Shulgin and the Syrian witnesses testifying during his presentation.

It flashed upon me that there is no longer a reasonable expectation that the Perpetual Big Liars must eventually abandon, much less confess, their heinous mendacity. Just as B points out, there are no countervailing facts, evidence, rebuttals, theories, or explanations that can't be countered with further iterations of Big Lies, however offensively incredible and absurd.

Witnesses? They're either confederates, dupes, or terrified by coercion. Evidence and/or technical analysis? All faked! A nominally reliable party, e.g. the president of the Czech Republic, makes statements that undermine the Big Lie Nexus? Again-- he's either been bought off or frightened into making such inconvenient claims. Or he's just a mischievous liar.

And, as I seemingly never get tired of pointing out, the Perpetual Big Lie™ strategy arose, and succeeds, because the "natural enemies" of authoritarian government overreach have been coerced or co-opted to a fare-thee-well. So mass-media venues, and even supposedly independent technical and scientific organizations, are part of the Perpetual Big Lie™ apparatus.

Even as the Big Liars reach a point of diminishing returns, they respond with more of the same. I wish I were more confident that this reprehensible practice will eventually fail due to the excess of malignant hubris; I'm not holding my breath.

Passer by , May 4, 2018 4:24:44 PM | 18

Is Putin capitulating? Pro US Alexei Kudrin could join new government to negotiate "end of sanctions" with the West.

Former finance minister Alexei Kudrin will be brought back to "mend fences with the West" in order to revive Russia's economy. Kudrin has repeatedly said that unless Russia makes her political system more democratic and ends its confrontation with Europe and the United States, she will not be able to achieve economic growth. Russia's fifth-columnists were exalted: "If Kudrin joined the administration or government, it would indicate that they have agreed on a certain agenda of change, including in foreign policy, because without change in foreign policy, reforms are simply impossible in Russia," said Yevgeny Gontmakher . . . who works with a civil society organization set up by Mr. Kudrin. "It would be a powerful message, because Kudrin is the only one in the top echelons with whom they will talk in the west and towards whom there is a certain trust."

Putting Kudrin -- an opponent of de-dollarization and an upholder of the Washington Consensus -- in charge of Russia's international outreach would be equal to putting Bill Clinton in charge of a girls' school.

It would mark Putin's de facto collapse as a leader. We shall know very soon. Either way, if anyone wondered what the approach to Russia would be from Bolton and Pompeo, we now know: they will play very hard ball with Putin, regardless of what he does (or doesn't do), and with carefree readiness to risk an eventual snap.

https://archive.is/1Ynms#selection-1641.0-1641.66

Formerly T-Bear , May 4, 2018 4:57:25 PM | 21
@ 20 Laguerre

Certainly looks like @ 18 is a fine example of what b is presenting.

A good way to extract one's self from the propaganda is to refuse using whatever meme the disinformation uses, e.g. that Sergei Skripal was a double agent -- that is not a known, only a convenient suggestion.

Military intelligence is far better described as military information needed for some project or mission. Not surreptitious cloak and dagger spying. This is not to say Sergei Scripal was a British spy for which he was convicted, stripped of rank and career and exiled through a spy swap. To continue using Sergei Scripal was a double agent only repeats and verifies the disinformation meme and all the framing that goes with it. Find some alternative to what MSM produces that does not embed truthiness to their efforts.

Peter Schmidt , May 4, 2018 5:08:52 PM | 23
In the Guardian I only read the comments, never the article. Here, I read both. That is the difference between propaganda and good reporting.
Emily Dickinson , May 4, 2018 5:09:00 PM | 24
@Michael Weddington 19

I realize it's from one of the biggest propaganda organs in the world... take this New York Times report of the OPCW's retraction with a 100 grams -- 100mg? -- of salt:

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/05/04/world/europe/opcw-skripal-attack.html

karlof1 , May 4, 2018 5:12:57 PM | 25
Passer by @18--

This same narrative was put forth in 2016 and is just as false now as then. As I posted on Yemen thread earlier, Putin on 5 May is likely to announce the formation of a Stavka.

Kudrin is a neoliberal and as such is an enemy of humanity and will never again be allowed to hold a position of power within Russia's government. Let him emigrate to the West like his fellow parasites and teach junk economics at some likeminded university.

jalp , May 4, 2018 5:30:35 PM | 26
Anyone seen this reported elsewhere? https://www.rt.com/news/425810-white-helmets-us-funding-freeze/

[May 03, 2018] The Skripal Case and Bombing Syria Six Things We Learned About Modern Britain

Brits reinvented McCarthyism...
May 03, 2018 | sputniknews.com

... ... ...

1. The presumption of innocence doesn't apply to NeoCon targets.

The Skripal and Douma Incidents Are Parts of One Plan to Bring Russia Down – Chemist Innocent until proven guilty? Not if you're in the line of fire of the Endless War Lobby, comrade. Russia was accused of trying to poison the Skripals before a proper criminal investigation had even begun. The Syrian government was blamed for a chemical weapons attack, before we had independently verification that a chemical weapons attack had even taken place. The 'Official Narrative' on both cases has unravelled spectacularly. No 'smoking gun' evidence of either Russian involvement in the Skripal case or of the Douma CW attack has been produced. On the contrary, witnesses testified last week at The Hague that the Douma attack didn't happen.

But we're expected not to notice -- as the news cycle -- conveniently for the accusers- moves on to other stories.

2. Rupert Murdoch's Times newspaper plays an utterly pernicious role in British public life.

It was the Times which demanded action from Theresa May against Russia. It was the Times which has demanded (repeatedly, and again after the Skripal incident) that Ofcom acted against Russian media in the UK, such as RT. It was the Times, which accuses Russian media of peddling 'fake news', which reported Sergei Skripal as dead on its 12th March front page .

It was The Times which, on 14th March, falsely reported that 'almost 40' people had needed treatment in Salisbury, prompting Dr Stephen Davies, Comsultant in Emergency Medicine to write to the paper stating 'May I clarify that no patients have experienced symptoms of nerve agent poisoning in Salisbury and there have only ever been three patients with significant poisoning.'

​It was The Times, which on the day the US/UK and France launched illegal attacks on Syria in response to the unverified chemical weapons attack at Douma, carried a front page attack on British academics who dare to challenge the War Party line on Syria. It was The Times which smeared other critics of western foreign policy as 'Russian trolls', including a peace campaigner from Finland who had been battling cancer.

​John Wight has called the Times, the in-house organ of the neocon Henry Jackson Society. Its days as Britain's respected newspaper of record have certainly long gone.

3. Britain is only what is called a 'Democracy'.

Labour Leader Under Fire From Party MPs for Stance on Skripal Poisoning

Just think back to that Parliamentary debate on 14th March. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn was attacked from his own side, for his cautious approach towards the government's unproven claims about the Skripal case. To add insult to injury a number of Labour MPs then signed Early Day Motion 1071 - which stated 'This House unequivocally accepts the Russian state's culpability for the poisoning of Yulia and Sergei Skripal'. Labour's Shadow Defence Secretary Nia Griffith showed her support for Theresa May by saying 'We very much accept what the Prime Minister said.'

Corbyn, coming under enormous Establishment pressure did buckle, saying the Russian authorities 'needed to be held to account', even though later he still quite rightly insisted that 'absolute evidence' was needed.

READ MORE: UK Shouldn't 'Rush Ahead of Evidence' in Skripal Investigation -- Jeremy Corbyn

In bombing Syria on 14th April, Theresa May not only refused to recall Parliament, she also ignored public opinion which showed only 20% in favour of air strikes. In a genuine democracy that would have ruled out action. But May treated public opinion with utter contempt. That wonderful passage from 'The Comments of Moung Ka' by the Edwardian comic writer Saki springs readily to mind.

'The people of Britain are what is called a Democracy' said Moung Ka. 'A Democracy?' questioned Moung Thwa. What is that?'

'A Democracy' broke in Moung Shooglay eagerly, 'is a community that governs itself according to its own wishes and interests by electing accredited representatives who enact its laws and supervise and control their administration. It's aim and object is government of the community in the interests of the community'.

'Then', said Moung Thwa, turning to his neighbour, 'If the people of Britain are a Democracy-'

'I never said they were a Democracy', interrupted Moung Ka placidly.

'Surely we both heard you!', exclaimed Moung Thwa.

'Not correctly, said Moung Ka; 'I said they are what is called a Democracy'.

4. The 'free press' doesn't act as you'd expect a 'free press' to act.

The striking thing about the Skripal case and Syria bombings from a journalist's point of view has been the uniformity of the media coverage.

Right-wing papers like the Telegraph and liberal ones like The Guardian have taken exactly the same stance ie anti-Russian and anti-Syrian government. Whether its because of DSMA-Notices (see 6, below), or not, there's been no proper questioning of the UK government's claims about Salisbury -- and not much on Syria either. Investigative journalism? What's that?

The mainstream media is actually less diverse in its opinions now (on the things that really matter) than at the time of the Iraq war where publications like the New Statesman (now a 'centrist' Blairite organ), spoke out strongly against intervention. If you want a different perspective on Skripals and Syria you have had to tune in to Russian media, such as Sputnik and RT, and that of course is threatened by the NeoCon Thought Police, who want everyone to be singing from the same pro-war hymn sheet.

5. The role of the security services in the promotion of 'official narratives' is very important.

Every time a wheel has come off the Skripal narrative, we've been fed information to bolster it from 'official sources'. After the head of Porton Down said that the laboratory there was unable to confirm that the nerve agent allegedly used to poison the Skripals came from Russia, the line was pushed that 'intelligence-led assessments' pointed to Russian guilt. Could we see these 'assessments'? Of course not! We just have to believe that they're there. Then as the 'nerve handle placed on the door' theory began to gain a head of steam we were told that 'British Intelligence' had 'evidence' that Russia had been testing the nerve agent on door handles prior to 3rd March. Could we see this 'evidence'? No, of course not.

Alex Thomson of C4 News reported on 12th March that a 'D-Notice' had issued by the UK authorities to stop the media from fully identifying Sergei Skripal's MI6 handler who lived nearby.

​Were other DSMA-Notices issued too regarding the reporting of Salisbury? If it was so clear that Russia did it, why would they bother?

6. The British public aren't mugs (or sheep).

​Despite all the propaganda, all the hysterical headlines, all the blatantly biased coverage, the British haven't bought it. Literally or metaphorically. Inside the Tent gatekeepers have relentlessly attacked those brave individuals who have questioned the official narratives, but its these

individuals- smeared as 'crackpots' and 'conspiracy theorists' who the public are turning to for their analysis. Compare the number of retweets the former UK Ambassador to Uzbekistan Craig Murray gets when he publishes on the Skripal case, with those who try and denigrate him. My own Twitter following has increased by several thousands since early March. Citizen Halo got a big boost in followers after she was smeared by The Times. After the lies told about Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya people no longer tamely accept what the NeoCon Establishment tells us. We're at an 'Emperor's New Clothes' moment in British politics where more and more people have found the courage to say out loud 'The Emperor has no clothes!'. The elite have been lying to us and they know that we know they've been lying. The question is: what are we going to do about it?

Follow Neil Clark on Twitter

Support his AntiStalker Legal Fund (vs. a Times journalist)

The views and opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Sputnik.

[Apr 29, 2018] The Guardian has become tabloid.

Apr 29, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Posted by: Quentin | Apr 22, 2018 12:29:41 PM | 7

The Carla Ortiz and Jimmy Dore exchange is fascinating. Each in her/his own way is superb. The Guardian has become boulevard press = tabloid. Nearly every day before and even after the US election Mrs. Clinton gloated on the front page. Bernie Sanders was no where to be seen nearly until the election. Now the Guardian is priming its readers for the stomach-churning royal wedding coming up. No, no more Guardian for me. And they have the gall to ask for money to turn out articles praising the White Helemts. No! Curtis , Apr 22, 2018 12:32:23 PM | 8

Anonymous 4
BBC took on Vannessa Beeley recently, too. Will NYT and WaPo be next? The anti-Russia agenda continues along with the anti-truth-in-Syria agenda.

AriusAmerican 5
During the Bush II fiasco, there were anti-war protests. The protests disappeared after Obama took office. And he was given a Nobel Peace Prize for talking about peace. But everyone went along with Obama's wars. No protests. And that's how they like it. They want support and tend to get it from the MSM and party lackeys. And if they don't get support, the one thing they don't want are massive protests, calls to congress, etc. As long as there's little to no resistance their war agenda continues.

Curtis , Apr 22, 2018 12:49:24 PM | 9
PS
The HuffPoUK article tears into Beeley but at the bottom has a Russian submission to the Security Council of a report she did of the White Helmets. That report negates the article/story! HuffPoUK claims this is part two of a series and that part three will "look at evidence presented against the White Helmets." That should be interesting.

Anonymous2 | Apr 22, 2018 1:50:23 PM | 12

Curtis

"The anti-Russia agenda continues along with the anti-truth-in-Syria agenda."

I dont get it why these journalists are against finding out what happend (since we dont know that yet)? Most of these morons have no idea about the conflict at all, and all of a sudden start writing like they are veteran journalists and have profound knowledge about Syria.

Why is there such a hatred? Is it brainwashing?


[Apr 25, 2018] I'm as irritated as anybody by Brit-chauvinism, but their eminent contribution to the technical and philosophical foundations of modern society from Newton and Bacon through Locke, Smith, and Burke to Maxwell, Whitehead, and Turing is undeniable.

Before Great Britain became Petty Britain it was really great...
Apr 25, 2018 | www.unz.com

Thirdeye , April 26, 2018 at 12:11 am GMT

@L.K

I'm as irritated as anybody by Brit-chauvinism, but their eminent contribution to the technical and philosophical foundations of modern society – from Newton and Bacon through Locke, Smith, and Burke to Maxwell, Whitehead, and Turing – is undeniable.

[Apr 21, 2018] It s a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as much despicable behavior and murder as the next. ..."
"... Tucker Carlson of Fox News has it nailed down.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28aYkLRlm0 ..."
"... This "civil war" has been nothing but a war for Syrian resources waged by western proxies. ..."
"... So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention. ..."
Apr 21, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

wheelbarrow1 , 13 Apr 2018 14:37

Why is the prime minister of the United Kinkdom on the phone discussing whether or not to bomb a Sovereign country with the highly unstable, Donald Trump?

Can she not make up her own mind? Either she thinks it's the right thing to do or it isn't. Hopefully, the person on the other end of the phone was not Trump but someone with at least half a brain.

Proof, let's have some proof. Is that too much to ask? Apparently so. Russia is saying it's all a put up job, show us your facts. We are saying, don't be silly, we're British and besides, you may have done this sort of thing before.

It is perfectly possible that the British government manufactured the whole Salisbury thing. We are capable of just as much despicable behavior and murder as the next.

Part of the Great British act's of bravery and heroism in the second world war is the part played by women agents who were parachuted into France and helped organize local resistance groups. Odette Hallowes, Noor Inayat Khan and Violette Szabo are just a few of the many names but they are the best known. What is not generally know is that many agents when undergoing their training in the UK, were given information about the 'D' day landings, the approx time and place. They were then dropped into France into the hands of the waiting German army who captured and tortured and often executed them.

The double agent, who Winston Churchill met and fully approved of the plan was Henri Dericourt, an officer in the German army and our man on the ground in France. Dericourt organized the time and place for the drop off of the incoming agents, then told the Germans. The information about the 'D' day invasion time and place was false. The British fed the agents (only a small number) into German hands knowing they would be captured and the false information tortured out of them.

Source :- 'A Quiet Courage' Liane Jones.

It's a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria.

I_Wear_Socks , 13 Apr 2018 14:37
From The Guardian articles today that I have read on Syria, it makes absolutely clear that if you in any way question the narrative forwarded here, that you are a stupid conspiracy theorist in line with Richard Spencer and other far-right, American nutcases.

A more traditional form of argument to incline people to their way of thinking would be facts. But social pressure to conform and not be a conspiratorial idiot in line with the far-right obviously work better for most of their readers. My only surprise it that position hasn't been linked with Brexit.

ChairmanMayTseTung , 13 Apr 2018 14:37
Did anyone see the massive canister that was shown on TV repeatedly that was supposed to have been air-dropped and smashed through the window of a house, landed on a bed and failed to go off.

The bed was in remarkable condition with just a few ruffled bedclothes considering it had been hit with a metal object weighing god knows what and dropped from a great height.

MartinSilenus -> ChairmanMayTseTung , 13 Apr 2018 14:36
"More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate"

The Defoliant Agent Orange was used to kill jungles, resulting in light getting through to the dark jungle floors & a massive amount of low bush regrowing, making the finding of Vietcong fighters even harder!

It was sprayed even on American troops, it is a horrible stuff. Still compared to Chlorine poison gas, let alone nerve gases, it is much less terrible. Though the long term effects are pretty horrible.

"Some 45 million liters of the poisoned spray was Agent Orange, which contains the toxic compound dioxin"
http://theconversation.com/agent-orange-exposed-how-u-s-chemical-warfare-in-vietnam-unleashed-a-slow-moving-disaster-84572

120Daze , 13 Apr 2018 14:36
Who needs facts when you've got opinions? Non more hypocritical than the British. Its what you get when you lie and distort though a willing press, you get found out and then nobody believes anything you say.anymore. The white helmets are a western funded and founded organisation, they are NOT independent they are NOT volunteers, The UK the US and the Dutch fund them to the tune of over $40 million. They are a propaganda dispensing outlet. The press shouldn't report anything they release because it is utterly unable to substantiate ANY of it, there hasn't been a western journalist in these areas for over 4 years so why do the press expect us to believe anything they print? Combine this with the worst and most incompetent Govt this country has seen for decades and all you have is a massive distraction from massive domestic troubles which the same govt has no answers too.
LiviaDrusilla -> Bangorstu , 13 Apr 2018 14:36
LOL are you having a larf?

The same organisation that receives millions of quid in funding from USAID?

Whose 'executive director' used to work for USAID?

Who have campaigned for 'no fly zones' (ie US bombing)?

Who are affiliated to the Iranian terrorist group MEK?

Who only happen to run hospitals in 'rebel' held areas?

You have a strange idea of 'politically neutral'. Your 'NGO' are fighting for an Islamist state. Enjoy them.

Dominique2 , 13 Apr 2018 14:32
https://www.theguardian.com/world/shortcuts/2013/sep/01/winston-churchill-shocking-use-chemical-weapons

""I am strongly in favour of using poisoned gas against uncivilised tribes," [Winston Churchill] declared in one secret memorandum."

The current condemnation by the international community and international law is good and needs enforcement. But no virtue signalling where there is none.

CaptTroyTempest -> StoneRoses , 13 Apr 2018 14:27
But we're still awaiting evidence that a chemical attack has been carried out in Douma, aren't we? And if an attack was carried out, by whom. But before these essential points are verified, you feel that a targeted military response is justified. Are you equally keen for some targeted military response for the use of chemical weapons, namely white phosphorus, in Palestine by the Israaeli military? Unlike Douma, the use of these chemical weapons in the occupied territories by the IDF's personnel is well documented. But we haven't attacked them yet. Funny that.
CMYKilla , 13 Apr 2018 14:26
Instead of "chemicals" why not just firebomb them - you know like we did to entire cities full of women and children in WW2?

Hamburg 27 July 1943 - 46,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Kassel 22 October 1943 - 9,000 civilians killed 24,000 houses destroyed in a firestorm
Darmstadt 11 September 1944 - 8,000 civilians killed in a firestorm
Dresden 13/14th February - 25,000 civilians killed in a firestorm

Obviously we were fighting Nazism and hadn't actually been invaded - and he is fighting Wahhabism and has had major cities overrun...

Maybe if Assad burnt people to death rather than gassing them we would make a statue of him outside Westminster like the one of Bomber Harris?

Tom1982 , 13 Apr 2018 14:24
Remember the tearful Kuwaiti nurse with her heartrending story of Iraqi troops tipping premature babies out of their incubators after the invasion in 1990? The story was published in pretty much every major Western newspaper, massively increased public support for military intervention............................and turned out to be total bullshit.

Is it too much too ask that we try a bit of collective critical thinking and wait for hard evidence before blundering into a military conflict with Assad; and potentially Putin?

BlutoTheBruto , 13 Apr 2018 14:21
Didn't General Mattis quietly admit at there was no evidence for the alleged Sarin attacks last year by Assad?

http://www.newsweek.com/now-mattis-admits-there-was-no-evidence-assad-using-poison-gas-his-people-801542

Hmmmm.... call me skeptical for not believing it this time around.

AwkwardSquad , 13 Apr 2018 14:19
Well, this is the sort of stuff that the Israelis would be gagging for. They want Assad neutralised and they are assisting ISIS terrorists on the Golan Heights. They tend to their wounded and send them back across the border to fight Assad. What better than to drag the Americans, Brits and French into the ring to finish him off. Job done eh?

Are you sure you are not promoting an Israeli agenda here Jonathan?

Incidentantally what did we in the west do when the Iraqis were gassing the Iranians with nerve agents in the marshes of southern Iraq during the Iran Iraq War? Did we intervene then? No, we didn't we allowed it to happen.

I say stay out it.

dannymega -> fripouille , 13 Apr 2018 14:18
Come on frip, you have to admit there was absolutely no motive for Assad's forces to carry out this attack. Why do you think the Guardian and other main stream media outlets are not even considering the possibility the Jihadi rebels staged it to trigger western intervention? I know, I know.. it's all evil Assad killing his own people for no other reason than he likes butchering people... blah blah. The regime change agenda against Syria has been derailed, no amount of false flag attacks can change the facts on the ground.
Preshous , 13 Apr 2018 14:18
Tucker Carlson of Fox News has it nailed down.... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M28aYkLRlm0
ChairmanMayTseTung , 13 Apr 2018 14:16
More than 40 years after the US sprayed millions of litres of chemical agents to defoliate vast swathes of Vietnam and in the full knowledge it would be have a catastrophic effect on the health of the inhabitants of those area, Vietnam has by far the highest incidence of liver cancer on the planet.

Then more recently we have the deadly depleted uranium from US shells that innocent Iraqis are inhaling as shrill voices denounce Assad.

CodeNameTwiglet , 13 Apr 2018 14:15
The Syrian people are heroically resisting and defeating western imperialism. This "civil war" has been nothing but a war for Syrian resources waged by western proxies.

So now, In desperation borne out of their impending defeat, the imperialists have staged a chemical attack in a last throw of the dice to gain popular support for an escalation in military intervention. Like military interventions of the past, it is being justified in the name of humanitarian intervention.

But if we have a brief browse of history we can see that US & UK governments have brought only death, misery and destruction on the populations it was supposedly helping. Hands off Syria.

[Apr 20, 2018] As the British government release shedloads of crocodile tears over their paid for White Helmet video footage, and moan like spiteful children how they want to bomb more people, let look at some other inconvenient facts

Apr 20, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

Metreemewall , 13 Apr 2018 15:27

This post by Just in Thyme has just been mode rated:

"As the British government release shedloads of crocodile tears over their paid for White Helmet video footage, and moan like spiteful children how they want to bomb more people, let look at some other inconvenient facts.

The Yemeni Ministry of Human Rights announced on March 25 that the Saudi-led war had left 600,000 civilians dead and injured since March 2015. The United Nations says a record 22.2 million Yemenis are in need of food aid, including 8.4 million threatened by severe hunger. Meanwhile the Saudis shovel their bits of silver into the empty coffers of the NATO warmongers.

Who said money cannot buy influence, Its was the UK that backed Britain backed Saudi Arabia's election to the United Nations top human right's body as part of a vote trading deal – despite the Gulf State's appalling abuse record. Secret cables reportedly show that Britain approached Saudi Arabia about the trade ahead of the 2013 election for membership of the Human Rights Council (UNHRC). The Saudi regime has executed 135 people since January on charges ranging from murder to witchcraft.

The lynch mob government, we all voted for, and this is what democracy is really all about???"

Would anyone like to say why?

[Apr 16, 2018] British Propaganda and Disinformation An Imperial and Colonial Tradition by Wayne MADSEN

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and "regime change." IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly "The Daily Telegraph," "The Times," "Financial Times," Reuters, "The Guardian," and "The Economist," ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers). ..."
"... After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Somalia's Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad's, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont's turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State. ..."
"... Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the "New York Herald Tribune" and a former US ambassador to London. ..."
Apr 16, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

When it comes to creating bogus news stories and advancing false narratives, the British intelligence services have few peers. In fact, the Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) has led the way for its American "cousins" and Britain's Commonwealth partners – from Canada and Australia to India and Malaysia – in the dark art of spreading falsehoods as truths. Recently, the world has witnessed such MI-6 subterfuge in news stories alleging that Russia carried out a novichok nerve agent attack against a Russian émigré and his daughter in Salisbury, England. This propaganda barrage was quickly followed by yet another – the latest in a series of similar fabrications – alleging the Syrian government attacked civilians in Douma, outside of Damascus, with chemical weapons.

It should come as no surprise that American news networks rely on British correspondents stationed in northern Syria and Beirut as their primary sources. MI-6 has historically relied on non-official cover (NOC) agents masquerading primarily as journalists, but also humanitarian aid workers, Church of England clerics, international bankers, and hotel managers, to carry out propaganda tasks. These NOCs are situated in positions where they can promulgate British government disinformation to unsuspecting actual journalists and diplomats.

For decades, a little-known section of the British Foreign Office – the Information Research Department (IRD) – carried out propaganda campaigns using the international media as its platform on behalf of MI-6. Years before Syria's Bashar al-Assad, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, Libya's Muammar Qaddafi, and Sudan's Omar al-Bashir became targets for Western destabilization and "regime change." IRD and its associates at the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) and in the newsrooms and editorial offices of Fleet Street broadsheets, tabloids, wire services, and magazines, particularly "The Daily Telegraph," "The Times," "Financial Times," Reuters, "The Guardian," and "The Economist," ran media smear campaigns against a number of leaders considered to be leftists, communists, or FTs (fellow travelers).

These leaders included Indonesia's President Sukarno, North Korean leader (and grandfather of Pyongyang's present leader) Kim Il-Sung, Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser, Cyprus's Archbishop Makarios, Cuba's Fidel Castro, Chile's Salvador Allende, British Guiana's Cheddi Jagan, Grenada's Maurice Bishop, Jamaica's Michael Manley, Nicaragua's Daniel Ortega, Guinea's Sekou Toure, Burkina Faso's Thomas Sankara, Australia's Gough Whitlam, New Zealand's David Lange, Cambodia's Norodom Sihanouk, Malta's Dom Mintoff, Vanuatu's Father Walter Lini, and Ghana's Kwame Nkrumah.

After the Cold War, this same propaganda operation took aim at Serbian President Slobodan Milosevic, Sinn Fein leader Gerry Adams, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, Somalia's Mohamad Farrah Aidid, and Haiti's Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Today, it is Assad's, Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban's, and Catalonian independence leader Carles Puigdemont's turn to be in the Anglo-American state propaganda gunsights. Even Myanmar leader Aung San Suu Kyi, long a darling of the Western media and such propaganda moguls as George Soros, is now being targeted for Western visa bans and sanctions over the situation with Muslim Rohingya insurgents in Rakhine State.

Through IRD-MI-6-Central Intelligence Agency joint propaganda operations, many British journalists received payments, knowingly or unknowingly, from the CIA via a front in London called Forum World Features (FWF), owned by John Hay Whitney, publisher of the "New York Herald Tribune" and a former US ambassador to London.

It is not a stretch to believe that similar and even more formal relationships exist today between US and British intelligence and so-called British "journalists" reporting from such war zones as Syria, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Afghanistan, and the Gaza Strip, as well as from much-ballyhooed nerve agent attack locations as Salisbury, England.

No sooner had recent news reports started to emerge from Douma about a Syrian chlorine gas and sarin agent attack that killed between 40 to 70 civilians, British reporters in the Middle East and London began echoing verbatim statements from the Syrian "White Helmets" and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights.

In actuality, the White Helmets – claimed by Western media to be civilian defense first-responders but are Islamist activists connected to jihadist radical groups funded by Saudi Arabia – are believed to have staged the chemical attack in Douma by entering the municipality's hospital and dowsing patients with buckets of water, video cameras at the ready. The White Helmets distributed their videos to the global news media, with the BBC and Rupert Murdoch's Sky News providing a British imprimatur to the propaganda campaign asserting that Assad carried out another "barrel bomb" chemical attack against "his own people." And, as always, the MI-6 financed Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, an anti-Assad news front claimed to be operated by a Syrian expatriate and British national named Rami Abdel Rahman from his clothing shop in Coventry, England, began providing second-sourcing for the White Helmet's chemical attack claims.

With President Trump bringing more and more neo-conservatives, discredited from their massive anti-Iraq propaganda operations during the Bush-Cheney era, into his own administration, the world is witnessing the prolongation of the "Trump Doctrine."

The Trump Doctrine can best be explained as follows: A nation will be subject to a US military attack depending on whether Trump is facing a severe political or sex scandal at home.

Such was the case in April 2017, when Trump ordered a cruise missile attack on the joint Syrian-Russian airbase at Shayrat, Syria. Trump was still reeling from the resignation of his National Security Adviser, Lt. General Michael Flynn, in February over the mixing of his private consulting business with his official White House duties. Trump needed a diversion and the false accusation that Assad used sarin gas on the village of Khan Sheikoun on April 4, 2017, provided the necessary pabulum for the war-hungry media.

The most recent cruise missile attack was to divert the public's attention away from Trump's personal attorney being raided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, a sex scandal involving Trump and a porn actress, and a "tell-all" book by Trump's fired FBI director, James Comey.

Although these two scandals provided opportunities for the neo-cons to test Trump with false flag operations in Syria, they were not the first time such actions had been carried out. In 2013, the Syrian government was blamed for a similar chemical attack on civilians in Ghouta. That year, Syrian rebels, supported by the Central Intelligence Agency, admitted to the Associated Press reporter on the ground in Syria that they had been given banned chemical weapons by Saudi Arabia, but that the weapons canisters exploded after improper handling by the rebels. Immediately, the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights and Syrian rebel organizations operating out of Turkey claimed that Assad had used chemical-laden barrel bombs on "his own people." However, Turkish, American, and Lebanese sources confirmed that it was the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) that had badly bungled a false flag sarin nerve agent attack on Ghouta.

Few Western media outlets were concerned about a March 19, 2013, sarin nerve agent by the Bashair al-Nasr Brigade rebel group linked to the US- and British-backed Free Syrian Army. The rebels used a "Bashair-3" unguided projectile, containing the deadly sarin agent, on civilians in Khan al-Assal, outside Aleppo. At least 27 civilians were killed, and scores of others injured in the attack. The Syrian Kurds also reported the use of chemical weapons on them during the same time frame by Syrian rebel groups backed by the United States, Turkey, and Saudi Arabia. The usual propaganda operations – Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, Doctors Without Borders, the BBC, CNN, and Sky News – were all silent about these attacks.

In 2013, April 2017, and April 2018, the Western media echo chamber blared out all the same talking points: "Assad killing his own people," "Syrian weapons of mass destruction," and the "mass murder of women and children." Western news networks featured videos of dead women and children, while paid propagandists, known as "contributors" to corporate news networks – all having links to the military-intelligence complex – demanded action be taken against Assad.

Trump, now being advised by the notorious neocon war hawk John Bolton, the new National Security Adviser, began referring to Assad as an "animal" and a "monster." Bolton, along with Vice President Dick Cheney's chief of staff Irving Lewis "Scooter" Libby, helped craft similar language against Saddam Hussein prior to the 2003 US invasion and occupation of Iraq. It was not coincidental that Trump – at the urging of Bolton and other neocons – gave a full pardon to Libby on the very same day he ordered the cruise missile attack on Damascus and other targets in Syria. Libby was convicted in 2005 of perjury and illegally disclosing national security information.

The world is being asked to take, at face value, the word of patented liars like Trump, Bolton, and other neocons who are now busy joining the Trump administration at breakneck speed. The corporate media unabashedly acts as though it never lied about the reasons given by the United States and Britain for going to war in Iraq and Libya. Why should anyone believe them now?

Tags: UK al-Assad Propaganda

Wayne MADSEN Investigative journalist, author and syndicated columnist. A member of the Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ) and the National Press Club

[Mar 31, 2018] It sounds as if MI6 tries to make Russian businessmen confess if they are for or against Putin

Mar 31, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

Earlier in the month, he was paraded in the UK media as an example of Russian exiles in fear for their lives. The UK tabloids are running this story about the exiles going into hiding in Europe from MI6.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/russian-businessman-on-vladimir-putin-12238329

Posted by: Les | Mar 31, 2018 1:45:15 PM | 41 somebody , Mar 31, 2018 2:36:29 PM | 45

41

It sounds as if MI6 tries to make Russian businessmen confess if they are for or against Putin .

So some people are very serious about this new cold war.

[Mar 29, 2018] What a pack of miserable liars. And the Europeans playing along

Mar 29, 2018 | russia-insider.com

Vera Gottlieb 12 hours ago ,

Don't know where he is. The UK trying to cover up something by any chance??? What a pack of miserable liars. And the Europeans playing along...follow the leader. Dumb, dumber, dumbest.

Trauma2000 Vera Gottlieb 12 hours ago ,

What is absurd in all this is that; whilst the British have been a HateMachien fuelled vendetta against Russia for more than a century, the Europeans are not.

The HateMachine (the MSM ZioMedia) has been at the centre of every war for the last 150 years. What I don't understand is why the Europeans don't realise this.

The HateMachine is used to fuel every crises that Europe encounters. Why do the Europeans not realise that by buying into the HateMachine Russophobe antics of the U.K, they are giving credence to it and the lies that the U.K. perpetuates.

This HateMachine lie factory is used every time the U.K. wants to achieve something. It's called Blood Libel. When with the Europeans realise that the target isn't really Russia. When will the Europeans realise that the HateMachine target is Europe? The Russophobe racism is just the pretext, the pretext to get Europe to DO WHAT LONDON WANTS.

Get with the program Europe. You have been duped. You got shafted. You got spun so bad by the ZioMedia and you don't even realise it.

Europe is the one that will miss out. Not having Russia as an integrated component of Europe has cost the 'Europeans' hundreds of billions, probably trillions, of Euro's as well as their long term security.

Europe could have been number one as an integrated unit with Russia. But, now there is the perfect storm. You have driven Russia into the arms of China. And it is only because you (Europe) lack the intelligence to see through the oldest trick in the book: Nationalistic fuelled Fear Racism. You are a victim of the HateMachine. You were always the target. It is you they are trying manipulate. It is you that has been duped by then THINNEST, most BASELESS of lies the ZioMedia have ever come up with. Two people, who aren't important, got poised by a drug the UK won't identify, by perpetrators they REFUSE to identify, for an UNKNOWN MOTIVE, at at time that benefits the ZioEmpire and no-one else.

Get with the program. Europe, you got shafted. You are schmuks. You got duped; conned, had the wool pulled over your eyes; and it's going to cost you trillions in lost business and the future of your nation.... All because you really are quite STUPID!

[Mar 29, 2018] Britain targets 700 wealthy Russian investors in Britain - Fort Russ

Mar 29, 2018 | www.fort-russ.com

British Interior Minister Amber Rudd said that her agency's employees will check 700 Russians who received investment visas prior to 2015, promising to invest £ 2 million ($ 2.8 million) or more in the UK. The system of issuing investment visas has been tightened since its introduction. However, there are fears that it could still allow corrupt officials and illegal money to enter the UK. (Since when did they ever care about that? Most crooks seeks asylum in the UK and are easily granted it, as "enemies of Russia.")

Prime Minister Teresa May said earlier that in London "there is no place" for corrupt Russian elites or their money.

The United Kingdom believes that Russia is involved in the poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Nobody knows where the Skripals are – not even their own families. Media states they are in a coma and are unable to give evidence.

May also warned that London would freeze Russian state assets if they "threaten life or property of British nationals or residents of the country."

Meanwhile, Russian investments are losing ground in Britain. In 2014, the Kingdom tightened the rules for issuing visas to wealthy Russians, as well as anti-money laundering legislation. Additional checks led to the fact that fewer foreigners began to apply for British visas, including Russians, Transparency International UK data show.

According to the brokerage company Hamptons International, the proportion of Russians among luxury buyers in London has declined over the past three years.

Mr. Costelol 4 hours ago ,

Freezing "State assets" under whatever pretext, is an act of war, but then again so are "sanctions".

worldblee 4 hours ago ,

But money laundering is the UK's biggest business! How will they survive without it, unless they're planning a Saudi-style MBS "harvest" of assets from Russian lawbreakers and oligarchs seeking sanctuary in the UK?

[Mar 28, 2018] UK Government Preparing to Confiscate Russian Capital 'of Dubious Origin'

Notable quotes:
"... enforce a newly passed law that will allow the government to confiscate or freeze any Russian capital "of dubious origin" - a measure clearly intended to permit a crackdown on Russian oligarchs living in London. ..."
"... Carrying out such a crackdown would be one way to show that the UK government is interested not only in the perfunctory expulsion of diplomats, but also the in making life more difficult for some Russian oligarchs and other businessmen who call London home. ..."
Mar 28, 2018 | russia-insider.com

Sword of Damocles to be held over the heads' of Russian oligarchs in London and ensure they remain anti-Putin Tyler Durden 18 hours ago | 3,018 98 Countries around the world have announced that they would expel Russian diplomats in a show of solidarity with the UK, but now the Queen's government is taking things one step further :

It's preparing to enforce a newly passed law that will allow the government to confiscate or freeze any Russian capital "of dubious origin" - a measure clearly intended to permit a crackdown on Russian oligarchs living in London.

According to Defense Secretary Gavin Williamson, warrants for the seizure of Russian capital and assets of doubtful origin have already been issued, according to Sputnik News. The goal is to ensure that any property attained by unknown means is registered, according to the law. Williams said during his speech that Russia's goal was to divide Europe, but that actions of solidarity by Estonia and other European countries have shown "that's not possible."

Wilson promised that the government would work diligently during the coming days and weeks until this problem is solved. Relations between the two countries have markedly worsened since the poisoning of former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia earlier this month. Prime Minister Theresa May has said she's doubtful Skripal will recover - and that more than 100 bystanders have sought medical treatment.

The Russian side has denied all the accusations and suggested participating jointly in the investigation. However, Moscow's request for samples was ignored. Moscow in turn also expelled 23 UK diplomats and ordered the British Council to stop its activities in Russia in response to London's move.

Williamson has been a fan of bellicose language toward Russia in the wake of the attack.

He famously said earlier this month that Russia "should go away and shut up" while responding to a question about Moscow's statements that it would expel British diplomats (which it did), as RT notes.

Carrying out such a crackdown would be one way to show that the UK government is interested not only in the perfunctory expulsion of diplomats, but also the in making life more difficult for some Russian oligarchs and other businessmen who call London home.


slavix 18 hours ago ,

Brits are all for expropriating expropriated :) (Sounds familiar?)
Will they return the stolen wealth to the Russian people? Not a chance ;)

Vtran slavix 17 hours ago ,

Not just Stolen wealth of Russia

What about the Stolen Wealth from the African, Asian country's ?

Mr. Costelol Vtran 17 hours ago ,

Yes, Serbian gold as well.... the list is long.

tom Mr. Costelol 12 hours ago ,

Libyan gold, saved up by Colonel Qadafi to provide backing for his planned "African dinar"...

mark tom 8 hours ago ,

Britain even confiscated (stole) a ship load of Libyan bank notes that had been printed in the UK for the Libyan Government.

Media Watch • 17 hours ago ,

I hope they do pursue this, as the fallout would be most interesting. Russian oligarchs have been laundering money through the London banks, enriching estate agents, law firms and bankers on the way. Will they now realize that the UK no longer has property rights? Of course, they will start repatriating their wealth. This is good for Russia and very bad for the UK. The loss of confidence in UK protecting property rights would take a beating, as it would be recognised, quite rightly, as a country of dubious jurisprudence that is applied in an ad hoc and political manner.

When you consider that a lot of the UK's income is derived from money laundering (despite the governments ludicrous attempts at corralling individual accountants and bookkeepers to act as unpaid policemen overseeing small businesses, while allowing billions to go through the property markets), the outcome for the economy is negative.

And non Russian foreign investors may remember the old saying - first they came for the Russians, but I didn't care because I was not a Russian.

AM Hants Media Watch 12 hours ago ,

Actually, not only will it be humouress and keep us entertained, but, how many other oligarchs, who invested in the UK and our corrupt politicians, react when they see how easy it was for the Government of the day to confiscate their ill-gotten gains?

Russian zionists, fleeced by British zionists, watched by the international zionists, that flock to the UK. A dog eat dog world.

Guy AM Hants 5 hours ago ,

Kinda makes you wish they would eat each other up and do the world a big favor.

AM Hants Guy 5 hours ago ,

You have a point and that would be bliss.

Guy Media Watch 5 hours ago ,

The Russian Federation had offered amnesty to the oligarchs if they would repatriate the money that had been pilfered from the Russian state during the 1990s and onwards ,basically during the Yeltsin days . Too bad they did not take advantage of the offer .

Boris Jaruselski 18 hours ago ,

It wasn't all that long ago, that the Brit's cousins to the east, have also confiscated 'dubious' capital, and have exterminated the original owners, ...which had NOTHING to do with any politics whatsoever, but ALL to do with GREEEEEED!

Nationalist Globalist Oligarch 15 hours ago ,

So a pack of thieves threatens to steal the ill gotten gains of a pack of thieves?

Sad, I thought the "Russian" oligarch could only trust the legal system of the West?

Perhaps this will teach the worthless "Russian" oligarchs to invest their loot in Russia instead of the UK?

zencowboy61 Nationalist Globalist Oligarch 15 hours ago ,

Excellent point....You want to play with rothschilds fake money ...you will goose step in line with the company policy...or we take back our monopoly money.

Nationalist Globalist Oligarch zencowboy61 15 hours ago ,

Clearly that is how the rules are set up, which is a shame no bothered to notice before they swore off their own economy, at least the Chinese weren't so gullible, thankfully they ran over the CIA agent on Tienanmen Square!

AJ Nationalist Globalist Oligarch 12 hours ago ,

I doubt these oligarghs would keep all their booty in one country for this exact reason. They likely have stashes all over the world, Switzerland, Kayman Islands, shell companies acting as fronts etc

Linda Wren AJ 9 hours ago ,

Exactly.

wilmers13 AJ 2 hours ago ,

The owner of the shopping centre that burned in Siberia has businesses in Australia.

Стефан Евгений Nationalist Globalist Oligarch 7 hours ago ,

Putin, warned them years ago this can happen.

mark Nationalist Globalist Oligarch 8 hours ago ,

Perhaps they will kidnap all these oligarchs, take them to the Dorchester, hang them upside down and turn them over to Blackwater torturers until they hand over their billions.

It worked fine in Shady Wahabia.

URSULARICHES mark 7 hours ago ,

I know someone's dad who alleges to have been in the British army working for top American officers in NK, as a chef. He claims to have been unfairly tortured. One of his sons hobbies involves torturing people, rapes, threatening their kids, electric shocks to the head, e;ectric shocks to puppies, lacing foodstuffs with dried and wet anti freeze, antifreeze in pets water bowls, managing to sneak into homes in different ways, lots of injections including psychoactive drugs and caustic soda. He also at least used to hypnotize kids to commit suicide and he has drowned a nun in Hereford. The air conditioning system of one's car is tampered with and carpets covered in mercury from old thermometers and light bulbs. You are really unwell and do not know why and your memory is tampered with and obliterated. LNA Chichester UK. Check your home for nasty bogeymen and bolt the doors once in. If your keys go missing even for half an hour, replace them or get special keys which cannot readily be copied.

mark Nationalist Globalist Oligarch 8 hours ago ,

You can't steal my money!
I stole it fair and square!

Nightcrawler136 17 hours ago ,

In the first week of this Charade £7billon pounds left the UK all Russian money, does make me wonder how much more liquidity the UK Banks have to lose before May etc realise their shooting themselves in the foot again! 😂

Mr. Costelol Nightcrawler136 17 hours ago ,

I'm not so interested in British liquidity but British loonacy - they want others to do the shooting amongst themselves. Ukraine comes to mind? DPRK, Iran, Yemen, Serbia, Africa (pick a spot).... are all candidates.

Nightcrawler136 Mr. Costelol 16 hours ago ,

I live in the UK the government has gone mad, Corbyn is the only voice of reason left and he's a bloody idiot!

Guy Nightcrawler136 5 hours ago ,

I don't agree that Corbyn is an idiot . He has to watch how he plays his cards so that he wins the next election .Which he will by the way. But they are after him big time .He has a lot of forces working against him .A Corbyn win would be good for the people of the UK IMHO.

Mr. Costelol Nightcrawler136 16 hours ago ,

I agree, decent folk avoid entering politics, yet we all are threatened by the political circus. Heaven, help us.

zencowboy61 Mr. Costelol 15 hours ago ,

circus yes...in america just getting into politics on a local town or country level brings with it so many perks its like a fire sale..I have a friend he got elected to a town board..all of a sudden he has all types of new projects going up around his house.....its a fire sale for those in govt.

Canis Major Nightcrawler136 13 hours ago ,

ahahaaaaa

1691 18 hours ago ,

What's new? The monarchy is used to live on stealing. I don't care about the oligarchs but still, this is nothing but stealing.

Silovik 1691 17 hours ago ,

you dont care about the oligarchs ,but cares the Kremlin

Le Ruse 18 hours ago ,

Quote:It's preparing to enforce a newly passed law that will allow
the government to confiscate or freeze any Russian capital "of dubious
origin" - a measure clearly intended to permit a crackdown on Russian
oligarchs living in London.
I'm all for it ??
Let the criminal piece of shit be robbed by their "friends" !!
Dog eat dog !!
The best move that Mother Theresa can make ...

AM Hants Le Ruse 12 hours ago ,

AS Nightcrawler states, Magintsky Law, that Browder was so desperate to get passed. Who are his biggest cheerleaders? Just a con, for politicians to go pillaging.

Why was he thrown out of Russia and why was he thrown out of America?

Those Russians, who made it to the UK, were thrown out of Russia. So they either send their money and investments back to Russia, which keeps the Kremlin happy, or it gets confiscated, which also keeps the Kremlin happy. Where will they go next?

Le Ruse AM Hants 5 hours ago ,

AM.. The putrid swamp creatures are BROKE !! In the old time, they could sail & pillage other countries (China Opium Wars ect..ect..) But today, they can only , like rats go against each other ?? Can't pillage Russia, Gospodin Putin put a stop to it .. Can't pillage China, Chinese people & leaders got wise to it .. So rob from Russian plutocrats ? & then NOVICHOK them ??
& it's fine with me, if its' fine with you ??

Robert Mcconnell 18 hours ago ,

I guess they are presuming this will pressure Russia, somehow. Perhaps the Russ ollies would blame Putin for not bending the knee? I don't know. Anyway this is all somewhat mind bogglingly insane, I've never ever seen such a wretchedly desperate performance from any guvmint anywhere at any time and I've been around a while.

BaBa Robert Mcconnell 17 hours ago ,

"guess they are presuming"

Guessing and presuming are always strategic disadvantages but forms of "thinking", although often magical.

Perhaps the opponents are illustrating another strategic disadvantage "involuntary reaction".

The opponents should be appreciated for the opportunities they continue to afford others.

The opponents are self-designated "lands of opportunities".

[Mar 28, 2018] Britain Has No Clue Why It's Punishing Russia by Mark Galeotti

Firs of all Mark Galeotti is very weak. That's incurable.
I want your money poor Pinocchio -- that the new slogan of May government. Kind of compensation for Brexit losses at Russian oligarchs expense.
What Russophobe Galiotti does not understand is that this another nail in the coffin of neoliberalism. As soon as you start to distriminate between oligarche neoliberalism stops and nationalism starts
Notable quotes:
"... Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing Putin's work for him ..."
"... He has launched a " de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31 billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's $154 billion . ..."
"... The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to undermine the regime in Moscow. ..."
Mar 28, 2018 | foreignpolicy.com

This is also a project in which further international cooperation would be crucial. Chasing that money and the influence it buys out of London but seeing it find comfortable new homes in Paris, Frankfurt, and New York is only half the job done and will do little to chasten Moscow. Although it will be difficult to persuade others to turn away tempting business, the unexpected support Britain is receiving from European Union partners in particular suggests this may be an opportune moment to convince them that in its experience this money is too toxic to be safe and that this is a Western, not just a British, problem.

Of course, the irony is that by driving out Russian money, London would in part be doing Putin's work for him . Since 2014, the Russian economy has been in the doldrums. Furthermore, Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to see elites stash their money outside his grasp.

Putin is a man who understands power better than economics, and he is unhappy to see elites stash their money outside his grasp.

He has launched a " de-offshorization " campaign to try to persuade, cajole, and intimidate oligarchs and minigarchs into bringing their money back home. Along with the stabilization of the economy as a whole, this has had some limited success. While more than $31 billion flowed out of the country last year alone, this is a dramatic fall from 2014's $154 billion .

The thought that Britain would actually be returning capital into Putin's grasp may be an uncomfortable one. After all, a third possible policy goal would be actively to seek to undermine the regime in Moscow. Overt efforts at regime change would be dangerous and likely counterproductive, but London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to weaken the Kremlin

London may feel that it should not pass up opportunities to weaken the Kremlin
, in the hope that this may tame its appetite for playing confrontational geopolitics.

... ... ...

Mark Galeotti is a senior research fellow at the Institute of International Affairs Prague and a visiting fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations.

[Mar 28, 2018] Forget policies, the Stormy Daniels affair shows how far US politics has sunk by Ben Jakobs

Mar 28, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

As the porn star's allegations show, discourse in Washington is shifting to something more tawdry and celebrity-oriented

... The idea of a porn star appearing on network television to share details of a sexual encounter with the US commander in chief would have been intellectually confounding at any other moment in time. Instead, the interview, which took place only few days after a former Playboy playmate, Karen McDougal , talked about her affair with Trump, seemed a part of the everyday political landscape in 2018.

... Trump may seem like an aberration but instead he may be an inflection point. It's possible that after over two centuries of presidential campaigns with governors, senators and the occasional general, American politics is shifting to something more tawdry and more celebrity-oriented. The often spoken and rarely met ideal in the United States is that political debates should be about issues. But, after a political campaign where candidates debated penis size on a debate stage, it may be the legacy of Trump that politics has permanently descended to locker-room talk.

[Mar 27, 2018] An important British diplomat saw British control of the greater part of the world as the natural order of things

Notable quotes:
"... If the USA empire could have been established and maintained, without a CIA, I doubt. Empires are ruthless, 'perfidious Albion' was the expression for the British empire. ..."
Mar 27, 2018 | www.unz.com

jilles dykstra , Next New Comment March 27, 2018 at 5:24 pm GMT

@redmudhooch

Depends on what you see as bad. If the USA empire could have been established and maintained, without a CIA, I doubt. Empires are ruthless, 'perfidious Albion' was the expression for the British empire.

Ian Hernon, 'Britain's Forgotten Wars, Colonial Campaigns of the 19th Century', 2003, 2007, Chalford -- Stroud

How an important British diplomat saw British control of the greater part of the world as the natural order of things

Lord Vansittart, 'The Mist Procession, The autobiography of LORD VANSITTART', London 1958

Great pity that death prevented the biography from going furher than 1938.

The machinations of Vansittart during the thirties are described in

Philip M. Taylor, 'The Projection of Britain, British Overseas Publicity and Propaganda 1919-1939′, Cambridge 1981
and Lawrence R. Pratt, 'East of Malta, West of Suez', London, 1975

The ideas of Vansittart's friend Leeper one finds in Sir Reginald Leeper, 'When Greek Meets Greek', London 1950

He more or less ruled Greece from 1945 to say 1950.

[Mar 27, 2018] Perfidious Albion: An Introduction to the Secret History of the British Empire

Mar 27, 2018 | thesaker.is

Abraxas on March 26, 2018 , · at 2:01 pm UTC

This is why Britain is called Perfidious Albion = dirty politics.

Search for article: Perfidious Albion: An Introduction to the Secret History of the British Empire
https://redice.tv/news/perfidious-albion-an-introduction-to-the-secret-history-of-the-british-empire

Mulga Mumblebrain on March 26, 2018 , · at 4:01 pm UTC
Two reasons for the descent of 'the West' into neo-Nazism stand out. First, the West was ALWAYS fascistic, racist, hyper-aggressive, destructive, parasitical and genocidal. Just summon up the shades of the hundreds of millions killed, directly or indirectly, through Western Imperialism, colonialism, settler genocide and economic exploitation even to the extent of causing Holocausts of mass death through famine, as in India, and ask them about the great and glorious West and its stinking 'Moral Values'. Not to forget the tens of millions of Westerners themselves killed in Western internecine wars, or through class hatred, or herded into gas-chambers or made to lie in mass graves then be shot along with their children because they were of the wrong religion, or the same, but they crossed themselves in the wrong direction. German Nazism simply expressed a rather pure essence of true 'Western' moral values, and its mission, and many of its personnel and methods, were simply taken over the USA after WW2.
Of course, the non-Western world was not a collection of lands of milk and honey, but by any rational calculus Western ideology involves a qualitatively different and incessant aggression and cancerous expansion, as manifest in that prototypical Western creation-capitalism. There the lust and capacity for total destruction, as EVERYTHING, living and inanimate is transmuted into the dead stuff of money, is unbounded, but this planet being finite, and the exploiters not having yet escaped to bleed alien worlds anew white and lifeless, capitalism has only succeeded in drowning us on this planet in the waste and filth of its excesses, of which poisoning we will shortly succumb.
And, second, the rise to global dominance through control of Western politics, fakestream media and the other brainwashing mechanisms and finance, of the Zionazi elite centred in Israel, and in the Jewish Diaspora elites, has delivered a final coup de grace to the West, and hence, the world that the West is now in the process of attacking, everywhere, for the crimes of not obeying orders from the likes of vermin like Theresa May, John Bolton and the execrable Macron.
These Zionazi elites are pretty unprecedented in their absolute arrogance and never-ending demands. Currently they have embarked on a veritable firestorm of hatred, invective and false accusations in order to destroy Jeremy Corbyn in the UK. If they cannot destroy Corbyn, they are very happy to destroy UK Labour, because they no longer control it as they did under their stooge, Blair. The whole stinking process is operating in open collusion with the UK fakestream media hate-machine, the reeking corpse of the late UK Guardian leading the way. The Jewish elite grandees leading the onslaught openly declare that it is UK Labour support for the Palestinians and 'Leftwing policies' and criticism of Israel that is motivating their typical exercise in Talmudic hatred. So, the work of hundreds of thousands of Labour supporters invigorated by Corbyn, who have worked, honestly and determinedly, over years and decades, to attempt to make the UK a better, more decent, society that the filthy dystopia created by the Tories and Blairites, is to all be destroyed by a tiny cabal of racist supremacists who see all goyim as their inferiors. A cabal that does not even represent all Jews, although they typically claim that they do, a favourite tactic of these anti-goyite thugs. Many Jews support Corbyn, knowing full well that he is a life-long anti-racist, unlike the Zionazi thugs who traduce him, who are among the vilest racists extant.
This Zionazi thuggery, and numerous other examples like the criminalisation of the BDS Movement or ANY criticism of Israel or Zionazism, as 'antisemitic', is bound to create a good deal of hatred in return. But that is PRECISELY what the Zionazi elites WANT-hatred is the very essence of their existence. Hatred of the Palestinians. Hatred of Arabs. Hatred of Moslems. Hatred of any goyim that do not share these hatreds, or dare to oppose Zionazism. These people, and they do only represent a fraction of Jewry, just as the worst of any community are only a generally small fraction, are the most dangerous and destructive creatures in existence, in my opinion. They hate Russia for thwarting their ambitions to destroy Syria as they did Iraq and Libya. They hate China for not ever going to become supine stooges like the Western kakastocrats. And, as Bibi, Bennett, Sharon, Begin and scores of other hideous Zionazi psychopaths show, they mix a series of ancient and modern psychoses into a maelstrom of hatred and destructiveness seen in policies like the Samson Option, the Oded Yinon Plan and the drive for endless war against their myriad goy enemies, that simply guarantees Israel's eventual destruction, and that, so they often promise, of us all.
Occasional Poster on March 26, 2018 , · at 5:05 pm UTC
To all friends on this blog,

Look beyond the superficial details of the West's hostile actions, and take heart. NOTHING has changed about the West's intentions to Russia, other than that the pretence is over. West is full of good people, but the leaderships kneel to a hidden power. It has been that way for a long time.

The worst possible strategic position was for Russia not to know that, or to be divided by an enduring pro-west movement.

Russia is now besieged, but it always was, without really knowing it. Now there is clarity, and the country can unite.

So take heart. Even on this blog, some will not be able to come to terms today, with West's treachery. As a Serb, I saw it all before, it is not new, it was always there. Russia was always in the cross-hairs, and now it is their turn again.

There is one chain of command in the west, and it is indeed an empire. If Russia has awoken from it's naivety, slumber, and need to believe in an imaginary friend, who always had a hidden knife, then we are good.

I expect every effort will now be made to derail the world cup. Pardon the pun, but it will be another own goal. Zog showed itself, and we can see its true intentions.

Muriel on March 26, 2018 , · at 5:36 pm UTC
Yes, Russia was naive in it's belief that the US was their 'partner'. I cringe every time I hear Putin say that. US is NOT their partner, does NOT want Russia to be sovereign, wants only a vassal Russia, where everything is open to their taking. I'm glad that Putin and many Russians are now losing some of their naivety and are finally realizing that US does NOT have Russia's interests at heart at all, but is, in reality, a treacherous, envious rival that would love to see all Russians bleed and die, if that meant US could take over the land and assets. The vassal EU and the totally repugnant UK are willing to follow US lead anywhere it takes them – even like lemmings over a cliff, which is what's happening now. The cliff is WWIII of which there will be NO winners.
Ky on March 26, 2018 , · at 8:04 pm UTC
England is not vassal but master who is running the show of hatred and inciting usa to fight her war against russia and chi
Anonymous on March 26, 2018 , · at 11:24 pm UTC
England is the most deeply penetrated of the British colonies. The British 'City of London' is the heart of darkness.
Anonymous on March 26, 2018 , · at 9:07 pm UTC
Putin was making an offer when he referred to the 'west' as partners. Take it in that regard. Putin does not seem to be silly nor naive. But by referring to the west as partners, he was extending an olive branch and make an offer to the west. That offer has by now obviously been declined.
proper gander on March 26, 2018 , · at 6:13 pm UTC
@ Occasional Poster

I knew the world cup was unlikely when the US was knocked out from qualifying by .. Guatemala. It was the biggest dive ever in football. No complaints back home from a cancellation, I thought.

TRM on March 26, 2018 , · at 8:59 pm UTC
T&T knocked them out. 2-1 was the score.
Anonymous on March 26, 2018 , · at 9:16 pm UTC
The world cup is proceding as planned. A nuclear war might prevent it, but otherwise its still on.

Notice that all that's been done is 'diplomatic boycotts'. That's a purely symbolic measure, and all it means is that Russia won't have to host a group of government officials who otherwise would take an all expense paid vacation to a futbol tourney.

The English football coach said very openly that he doesn't care what BoJoke says or thinks. And there is no way the English would withdraw their futbol team. Germany is also very unlikely to refuse to defend their championship. German fans are highly unlikely to pass up a short trip to see their team play. And so far even German politicians aren't going the symbolic diplomatic boycott route. Same with most other EU countries.

ioan on March 26, 2018 , · at 5:33 pm UTC
What is going on against Corbyn is disgusting, it seems they have gone now in a frontal attack on all fronts.
It is a sign that something is nearing it's end phase.
TRM on March 26, 2018 , · at 8:57 pm UTC
https://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/MURDER.HTM

Gengis Khan was not western. The Chinese are not western. The Soviets were not western (not Russian either BTW).

It is a human condition that every group is guilty of.

Anonymous on March 26, 2018 , · at 10:24 pm UTC
The west funded and supported the Russian revolution and installed the communists. Those communists were also harbored in the west before the revolution. Germany and the U.S. were financially backing that coup.

[Mar 27, 2018] Perfidious Albion The Fatally Wounded British Beast Lashes Out LaRouchePAC

Mar 18, 2018 | larouchepac.com
20180318-perfidious-albion-leaflet-1.pdf

by Barbara Boyd, [email protected]

This statement explores the strategic significance of major events in the world starting in February of 2018. Our goal is to precisely situate Theresa May's March 12–14 mad effort to manufacture a new "weapons of mass destruction" hoax using the same people (the MI6 intelligence grouping around Sir Richard Dearlove) and script (an intelligence fraud concerning weapons of mass destruction) which were used to draw the United States into the disastrous Iraq War. The Skripal poisoning fraud also directly involves British agent Christopher Steele, the central figure in the ongoing coup against Donald Trump. This time the British information warfare operation is aimed at directly provoking Russia while maintaining their targeting of the U.S. population and President Trump.

As the fevered war-like media coverage and hysteria surrounding the case makes clear, a certain section of the British elite seems prepared to risk everything on behalf of their dying imperial system. Despite the hype, economic warfare and sanctions appear to be the British weapons of choice. Putin, as we shall see, recently called the West's nuclear bluff. With their Russiagate coup against Donald Trump fizzling, exposing British agent Christopher Steele and a slew of his American friends to criminal prosecution, a new tool was desperately needed to back the President of the United States into the British geopolitical corner shared by most of the American establishment. The tool is an intelligence hoax, a tried and true British product.

According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal who spied for Great Britain in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004 was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve agent "of a type developed by the former Soviet Union." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the LinkedIn profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on the Trump dossier.

Theresa May and her foreign minister Boris Johnson insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning, described as an act of war, and that is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. In fact, there is a substantial doubt whether the putative nerve agent, Novichok, even exists. No plausible motive has been provided as to why Putin would order such a provocative murder now, ahead of the World Cup, when the Russiagate coup against him in the United States has lost all momentum. Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia.

Thus, just like Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise of raw power. The Anglo- American establishment instructed us, with respect to Steele: "trust him, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier, just note that he is backed by very important intelligence agencies who could cook your goose if you object." The same can be said for Teresa May's crazed assertions now.

A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Sunday Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China.

As visitors to the LaRouchePAC website know, Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia, the center of all British geopolitical fantasies since the time of Halford MacKinder. Moreover, China's Belt and Road Initiative now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future, while neo-liberal economies continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive mound of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion. It is estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion with over-the-counter derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the derivatives collapse.

In this strategic geometry, President Trump's support of peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign and his personal friendship with President Xi, marked him for the relentless coup against him waged by the British and their U.S. friends.

On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new physical principles which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse; its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.

It is very clear that a strategic choice now confronts the human race. In 1984, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a very profound document, "Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." In it, he developed the concrete basis for peace between the two superpowers at the moment when the U.S. had adopted the LaRouche/Reagan doctrine of strategic defense. Both Reagan and LaRouche had proposed that the Russians and the United States cooperate in building and developing strategic defense against offensive nuclear weapons based on new physical principles, thereby eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.

According to the LaRouche Doctrine, "The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) the unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation states, and b) cooperation among sovereign states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all."

Both China, in President Xi's October Address to the Party Congress, and Russia, in Putin's March 1 address, have set a course to produce "technological progress capable of being shared in by all," outlining major infrastructure projects and dedicating massive funding to exploring the frontiers of science, technology, and space exploration. Donald Trump, in both his campaign and his presidency, has embraced similar views. The British and their American friends, however, are devotees of a completely different and failing economic system, a system soundly rejected in Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and most recently in the Italian elections.

Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax.

The Coup Against Trump Begins to Be Reversed; British Are Exposed as Actual U.S. Election Meddlers

On February 2, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a memo demonstrating that the Obama Justice Department and FBI committed an outright fraud on the FISA court in obtaining surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a volunteer to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The bogus warrant applications relied heavily on the dirty British dossier authored by MI6's "former" Russian intelligence chief, Christopher Steele, who had been paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to paint Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate, a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the House Intelligence memo and other aspects of its investigation, Steele confided to Bruce Ohr, a high official in the DOJ, that he, Steele, hated Trump with a passion and would do "anything" to prevent Trump's election. Steele was using the fact of an FBI investigation of his allegations as part of a "full spectrum" British information warfare campaign conducted against candidate Trump with the full complicity of Obama's intelligence chiefs. 1 Peter Van Buren, "Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 U.S. Election?" American Conservative, February 15, 2018. None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications about Carter Page were revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The House Intelligence Committee memo was quickly followed by a declassified letter on February 5, in which Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham referred Christopher Steele to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution based on false statements he made to the FBI about his contacts with the news media. No doubt the criminal referral sent chills down the spines not only of Christopher Steele and his British colleagues but also of those Obama officials conspiring against Trump.

In the same week, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he would be conducting investigations of the role of the Obama State Department and intelligence chiefs in the circulation and use of Christopher Steele's dirty dossier. These investigations have been widely reported to focus on John Brennan and James Clapper: Brennan for widely promoting the dirty British work product and Clapper for leaks associated with BuzzFeed's publication and legitimization of the dirty British work product. Remind yourself every time you hear media explosions against Trump by either Clapper (Congressional perjurer and proponent of the theory that the Russians are genetically predisposed to screw the United States) or Brennan (gopher for George Tenet's perpetual war and torture regime and Grand Inquisitor for Barack Obama's serial assassinations by baseball card). They are next in the barrel, so to speak.

The January 11, 2017 BuzzFeed publication of the Steele dossier was meant to permanently poison Trump's incoming administration and is the subject of libel suits in both Florida and London. In the London case, the British are ready to invoke the Official Secrets Act to protect Christopher Steele. In the Florida case, Steele has been ordered to sit for deposition despite numerous delays and stalling tactics.

The Congressional investigation of the State Department is focused on John Kerry, Kerry's aide Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland, and Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Nuland utilized Christopher Steele as a primary intelligence source while running the U.S. regime change operations in Ukraine in alliance with neo-Nazis. She greenlighted Steele's initial meetings with the FBI about Donald Trump. Winer deployed himself to vouch for Steele with various news publications collaborating with British agent Steele and his U.S. employer, Fusion GPS, in Steele's media warfare operations against Trump.

On March 12, the House Intelligence Committee announced that it had completed its Russia investigation. It stated that it found "no collusion, coordination, or conspiracy between the Trump campaign and Russia." Its draft final report was to have been provided to the Democrats on the Committee on March 13 for comment and then submitted to declassification review.

On March 15, four U.S. Senators from the Senate Judiciary Committee, Senators Chuck Grassley, Lindsey Graham, John Cornyn, and Thom Tillis, called for the appointment of a Special Counsel to investigate the DOJ and FBI with respect to the Russiagate investigation. They particularly focused on the use of the Steele dossier, FISA abuse, the disclosure of classified information to the press, and the criminal investigation and case of former Trump National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. Separately, House Oversight Chairman Trey Gowdy and House Judiciary Chairman Bob Goodlatte have asked the Justice Department to appoint a Special Counsel on similar grounds.

On March 16, James Comey's Deputy FBI Director, Andrew McCabe, was fired as the result of recommendations by the FBI's Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR). The OPR recommendation resulted from Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz's investigation of McCabe's actions with respect to the Clinton email investigation and the Clinton Foundation. McCabe claimed that this was part of a plot against himself, Comey, and Special Counsel Robert Mueller. Michael Horowitz, however, is an actual Washington straight shooter appointed to his post by Barack Obama. The OPR is the FBI's own disciplinary agency. Horowitz's report is expected to be extremely critical of McCabe, citing a "lack of candor," (i.e., lying) with respect to the investigation. Whatever the corrupt media might claim, the facts here have been thoroughly investigated by McCabe's former FBI subordinates. They think his lies and other actions disgrace the FBI and don't entitle him to a pension.

Horowitz's report on the Clinton investigations, which already unearthed the texts between former Russiagate lead case agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, proclaiming their hatred of Donald Trump and the need for an "insurance policy" against his election, is expected to be released very soon. According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Strzok/Page texts also reveal that Strzok was a close friend of U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Contreras sits on the FISA court, took Michael Flynn's guilty plea, and then promptly recused himself from Michael Flynn's case for reasons which remain undisclosed.

Despite its exoneration of the President, and thorough discrediting of the British Steele operation, the House Intelligence Committee dangerously accepts the myth that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, the DCCC, and the emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, and then provided the hacked information to WikiLeaks for publication. It states, however, that Putin's intervention was not in support of Donald Trump, as previously claimed by Obama's intelligence chiefs. The Senators seeking a new Special Counsel also salute this dangerous fraud.

As we have previously reported, the myth that Putin hacked the Democrats and provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, has been substantively refuted by the investigations of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In summary, the evidence points to a leak rather than a hack in the case of the DNC. Further, the NSA would have the evidence of any such hack or hacks, according to former NSA technical director Bill Binney, and would have provided it, even if in a classified setting. It is clear that the NSA has no such evidence. It is also clear that the U.S. and the British have cyber warfare capabilities fully capable of creating "false flag" cyber war incidents.

North Korea Talks Planned; Russia and China Continue to Create the Conditions for a New Human Renaissance

In addition to the fizzling of the coup, the Western elites otherwise suffered through February and March. To the shock of the entire smug Davos crowd, Donald Trump, working with Russia, China, and South Korea, appears to have gotten Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table concerning denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Substantive talks have been scheduled for May. The breakthrough was announced by President Trump and South Korea on March 8.

On March 1, President Putin gave his historic two-hour address to the Russian assembly and the Russian people. Like President Xi's address to the Chinese Party Congress in October of 2017, Putin focused on the goal of deeply reducing poverty in Russian society. Xi vowed in October to eliminate it from Chinese society altogether. In addition, Putin emphasized that Russia would undertake a huge city-building project across its vast rural frontiers and dramatically expand its modern infrastructure, including Russia's digital infrastructure. He put major emphasis on directing funds to basic scientific and technological progress. He emphasized that harnessing and stimulating the creative powers of individual human beings was the true driver of all economic progress. Those knowledgeable in the West could not help but recognize the suppressed formulas for continuing economic prosperity advocated by Alexander Hamilton and advanced by Lyndon LaRouche.

China's Belt and Road Initiative also continued to advance. Great infrastructure projects are popping up throughout the world, including most specifically in Africa, which had been consigned to be a permanent primitive looting ground for Western interests. Among the recent breakthroughs is the great project to refurbish Lake Chad, a project known as "Transaqua," involving the Italian engineering firm Bonifica, the Chinese engineering and construction firm PowerChina, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which represents the African countries directly benefiting from the project.

But the biggest strategic news of the last six weeks was contained in the last part of President Putin's speech. He showed various weapons, developed by Russian scientists in the wake of the U.S. abrogation of the ABM treaty and the Anglo-American campaign of color revolutions and NATO base-building in the former Soviet bloc. The weapons, based on new physical principles, render U.S. ABM defenses obsolete, together with many utopian U.S. war fighting doctrines developed under the reigns of Obama and Bush. Putin emphasized that the economic and "defense" aspects of his speech were not separate. Rather, the scientific breakthroughs were based on an in-depth economic mobilization of the physical economy. He stressed that Russia's survival was dependent upon marshaling continuous creative breakthroughs in basic science and the high technology spinoffs which result, and their propagation through the entire population. He stressed that such breakthroughs are the product of providing an actually human existence to the entire society.

Compare what Russia and China have set out to accomplish with the physical economy of the earth, and the second and third paragraphs of Lyndon LaRouche's prescription for a durable peace in the LaRouche Doctrine: "The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary, economic, and political relations between dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as 'developing nations.' Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace on this planet.

"Insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the planet to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common interest. This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of a durable peace between those two powers."

This is the perspective which has the British terrified and acting out, insanely. Were Trump, Putin, and Xi to enter into negotiations based on the LaRouche Doctrine, a breakthrough will have occurred for all of mankind, a breakthrough to a permanent and durable peace. No neo-liberal, post-industrial, unipolar order can match this, no matter how much Mr. Heath, Ms. May, or Boris Johnson rant and rave about it.

Christopher Steele's British Playground

As is well known by now, Christopher Steele was a long time MI6 agent before "retiring" to form his own extremely lucrative private intelligence firm. The firm is said to have earned $200 million since its formation. Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal. Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for Steele's firm and lived in the same town as Skripal.

Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker , as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose:

Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare.

Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for the disastrous and genocidal Iraq War.

Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time frame in which this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. According to Jane Mayer's account, Steele called this Project Charlemagne, completing his report in April, 2016, just before he undertook his hit job against Donald Trump. In his report, Steele claimed that Russia was interfering in the politics of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey. He claimed that Russia was conducting social media warfare aimed at "inflaming fear and prejudice and had provided opaque financial support to favored politicians." He specifically targeted Silvio Berlusconi and Marine La Pen. Steele also suggested that Russian aid was given to "lesser known right wing nationalists" in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, implying that the Russians were behind Brexit, with an overall goal of destroying the European Union.

Aside from Skripal's relationship to the central figure in the British led coup against Donald Trump, there are questions whether the nerve agent the British claim was used on the Skripals even exists, and even more troubling questions for Theresa May's "Russia did it" claim, if it does.

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray reports that the British chemical weapons laboratory at Porton Down, just 8 miles from where the Skripals were found, is unsure about what substance, if any, was actually involved in the Skripal poisoning. According to Murray's sources at Porton Down, the scientists were pressured to say that it was a nerve agent of a "type developed by Russia." This is supposed to refer to a whole family of chemical weapons, the Novichoks, which were supposedly produced in the 1980s in a Soviet laboratory in Uzbekistan. This production facility was completely dismantled by the United States, according to multiple accounts. Dr. Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at Porton Down as of 2016, and a colleague of the murdered British Iraq War dissident David Kelly, called the existence of Novichoks speculative, noting that "no independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published."

The main account supporting the existence of the chemical weapons cited by Theresa May was written by a Soviet dissident chemist named Vil Mirzayanov who now lives in the United States and published a book about his work at the Uzbekistan laboratory. In his much-publicized book, Mirzayanov sets out the formulas for the claimed substances. According to the Wall Street Journal of March 16, that publicity led to Novichok's chemical structure being leaked, making it readily available for reproduction elsewhere. Ralf Trapp, a France-based consultant and expert on the control of chemical and biological weapons, told the Journal, "The chemical formula has been publicized and we know from publications from then-Czechoslovakia that they had worked on similar agents for defense in the 1980s . I'm sure other countries with developed programs would have as well."

But it does not seem that those "other countries" include Russia. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the independent agency charged by treaty with investigating claims like those just made by the British government, certified in September of 2017 that the Russian government had destroyed its entire chemical weapons program, inclusive of its nerve agent production capabilities. In addition to Mirzayanov, Seamus Martin, writing in the Irish Times of March 14, posits, based on personal knowledge, that Novichoks were widely expropriated by East Bloc oligarchs and criminal elements in the Russian economic chaos of the 1990s.

Thus, Novichoks are the product of the mind of a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States whose formulas have been widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts. Porton Downs, the very laboratory now asserting their existence, stated as of 2016 that even this published "fact" was to be substantially doubted.

Further trouble for May's attempted hoax is found in the condition of the Skripals and a police officer who went to their home. All were made critically ill, although they are still alive. Yet emergency personnel who treated the Skripals, allegedly the victims of a deadly and absolutely lethal nerve poison, suffered no ill effects whatsoever.

The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British intelligence directed oligarch Boris Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European politician seeking sane relations with Putin.

Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.

In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation. Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. Corbyn also pointed out that these oligarchs had contributed millions to May's Conservative party. The reaction by the British media, May's conservatives, and Tony Blair's faction of the Labor Party was to paint Corbyn as a Putin dupe, including photo-shopped images of the Labor leader in a Russian winter hat in front of the Kremlin widely circulated in the news media.

The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs who service each other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another.

[Mar 27, 2018] Pretty slick operation of foreign office which bind EU to anti Russian course

Mar 27, 2018 | eadaily.com

Russian foreign Ministry spokesman Maria Zakharova commented on the decision on the mass expulsion of Russian diplomats from EU countries in connection with the position of solidarity in the case of poisoning ex-Colonel of GRU Sergei Skripal.

"When London leaves the EU, nothing will bind him to obligations within the framework of a common foreign policy. Want to begin the game closer, I will want to delete. But the remaining countries in the European Union will be bound by the circular ties of anti-Russian solidarity, once imposed by the British. Looks like Britain out those counties under "All as one, and all under one -- the new motto presented by London to Brussels, -- Zakharova explained. -- Brexit has not been canceled, and the divorce process is in full swing. That means that the country which leaves the European Union, exploits the factor of solidarity and imposes the remaining deterioration in relations with Russia."

As reported by Colossal today, Donald Tusk announced the beginning of the campaign of anti-Russian solidarity of the EU in connection with the "business Skripal". Russian diplomats will be sent to 14 EU countries, as well as Canada. Earlier, the United States announced the expulsion of 60 employees of the diplomatic mission of the Russian Federation and the suspension of the Russian Consulate in Seattle.

More details: https://eadaily.com/ru/news/2018/03/26/zaharova-massovaya-antirossiyskaya-solidarnost-vygodna-londonu-no-ne-es

[Mar 27, 2018] The Threat to Western Democracy Starts at Home by Shlomo Ben-Ami

Notable quotes:
"... Daily Mail ..."
"... Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy ..."
Mar 26, 2018 | www.project-syndicate.org

The Western liberal order is not in crisis because of Russian disinformation campaigns and electoral interference. Western democracies must take responsibility for a crisis that, ultimately, is homegrown – nurtured by its leaders' own failure to confront effectively the challenges of globalization.

MADRID – Four days before the United Kingdom's 1924 election, the Daily Mail published a letter purportedly written by Comintern Chairman Grigori Zinoviev, calling on British Communists to mobilize "sympathetic forces" in the Labour Party to support an Anglo-Soviet treaty and to encourage "agitation-propaganda" in the armed forces. The letter was found to be fake – forged by anti-Bolshevik White Russians or perhaps Britain's own secret service – but not before it caused the defeat of the UK's first Labour government.

Today's Russian disinformation campaigns, part of the Kremlin's hybrid war against Western democracies, seem to have much in common with the infamous Zinoviev letter. But is their impact really comparable? Would Western democracies really look different today without Russian subterfuge?

According to Gérard Araud, France's ambassador to the United States, Russian electoral interference and manipulation, if left unchecked, could pose an "existential threat" to Western democracies. In other words, an autocrat ruling over an impoverished country with an oil-addicted economy smaller than that of Brazil is supposed to be capable of bringing down the world's major democracies.

France's own presidential election last year seems to challenge Araud's reading. Russia's cyber-campaign against the centrist Emmanuel Macron – meant to aid the far-right candidate Marine Le Pen – included everything from the publication of baseless claims that Macron is gay to the diffusion of fake documents claiming that he has an offshore bank account. Yet, today, Macron is France's president, and Le Pen is struggling to rebrand her party.

This is not to say that Russia cannot be a dangerous spoiler. Nor is it to diminish the risks of social media warping users' view of reality by facilitating the spread of biased and even outright false news (though many experts believe that the Internet is far more effective at producing "slacktivism" than actual political mobilization).

But the Western liberal order is not in crisis because of Russia. Western democracies must take responsibility for a crisis that, ultimately, is homegrown – nurtured by its leaders' own failure to confront effectively the challenges of globalization.

The most worrying feature of the 2016 US presidential election was not the Russian trolls and bots that attempted to sow opposition to Hillary Clinton. Rather, it was that 61 million American citizens blindly believed the flagrant lies of Donald Trump, the most uneducated and mendacious presidential candidate in US history. It did not help, of course, that Clinton – enabled by an obstinate Democratic Party establishment – ran a weak and visionless campaign that ignored the mounting anger of millions of voters who felt left behind by globalization.

Moreover, it was not Russian President Vladimir Putin who created the ethical crisis afflicting Western capitalism. That was achieved by US bankers, who, taking advantage of deregulation and financial interconnectedness, misguided the global economy to the 2008 financial meltdown. US politicians then refused to implement adequate new banking regulations, much less punish those who had caused the crisis and profited handsomely along the way. In Europe, similar ethical and political failures in response to globalization have fueled widespread support for populists of the right and left.

Populist parties once confined to the political fringe did not win nearly half the vote in Italy's recent election because of Russian disinformation campaigns. They won because of mounting anger toward a corrupt political establishment that has failed to address major economic problems, from financial instability to high youth unemployment. Italy's persistent regional inequalities were also on vivid display: whereas the prosperous north favored the anti-immigrant League party, the more populist Five Star Movement received most of its support in the poorer south.

Putin may benefit from such electoral outcomes, but that doesn't make him responsible for them. National politicians – from the Brexiteers to Trump – are the ones espousing divisive policies, refusing to acknowledge the importance of cooperation and ethics in policymaking, lambasting traditional elites and state institutions, and praising autocrats, including Putin himself. The campaign slogan of Italy's League party – "Italians first" – could not be a more direct tribute to Trump's nationalist approach.

Media have served to reinforce these narratives. Yes, Russians have been found to be behind some of the "fake news" spread via social media. But in the UK, for example, tabloids owned by Rupert Murdoch and Jonathan Harmsworth, better known as Lord Rothermere, did much more to sow opposition to the European Union before the Brexit vote.

History, too, has played a role. The Euroskepticism of Eastern Europe's "illiberal democracies" reflects deep-seated religious and authoritarian traditions, which have impeded these societies' internalization of the EU's post-modern culture of secular tolerance and universal values. Poland's combination of fierce anti-Russian sentiment and extreme religious nationalism illustrates this dynamic.

The fact is that the West is beset by deep social inequalities, reinforced in recent decades by poorly managed globalization. At the same time, its political establishment has become increasingly disconnected from the public, much as it did in interwar Europe – a development that fueled the rise of fascism and populist authoritarianism . This dynamic is particularly apparent in the EU, where many decisions are in the hands of a distant and unaccountable bureaucracy lacking in sufficient democratic legitimacy.

Russia does not pose an existential threat to Western democracy. The Soviet Union represented a far more formidable challenge, and it ended up collapsing under the weight of its own economic failure. Russia's internal problems – not just economic stagnation, but also demographic decline – are of a similar scale.

But this does not mean that Western democracy is safe. To protect it, Western leaders must confront their own shortcomings. That means upgrading institutions, improving democratic accountability, reducing economic and social inequality, and striving to ensure that globalization works for all.

[Mar 27, 2018] Perfidious Albion The Fatally Wounded British Beast Lashes Out by Barbara Boyd

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the LinkedIn profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on the Trump dossier. ..."
"... Theresa May and her foreign minister Boris Johnson insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning, described as an act of war, and that is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. In fact, there is a substantial doubt whether the putative nerve agent, Novichok, even exists. ..."
"... Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. ..."
"... Thus, just like Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise of raw power. The Anglo- American establishment instructed us, with respect to Steele: "trust him, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier, just note that he is backed by very important intelligence agencies who could cook your goose if you object." The same can be said for Teresa May's crazed assertions now. ..."
"... Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal. Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for Steele's firm and lived in the same town as Skripal. ..."
"... Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker , as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose: ..."
"... Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for the disastrous and genocidal Iraq War. ..."
"... Aside from Skripal's relationship to the central figure in the British led coup against Donald Trump, there are questions whether the nerve agent the British claim was used on the Skripals even exists, and even more troubling questions for Theresa May's "Russia did it" claim, if it does. ..."
"... Dr. Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at Porton Down as of 2016, and a colleague of the murdered British Iraq War dissident David Kelly, called the existence of Novichoks speculative, noting that "no independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published." ..."
"... The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British intelligence directed oligarch Boris Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European politician seeking sane relations with Putin. ..."
"... Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich. ..."
"... In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation. Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. ..."
"... The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs who service each other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another. ..."
Mar 18, 2018 | LaRouchePAC
Skripal Poisoning a Desperate British Attempt to Resurrect Their American Coup

by Barbara Boyd, [email protected]

This statement explores the strategic significance of major events in the world starting in February of 2018. Our goal is to precisely situate Theresa May's March 12–14 mad effort to manufacture a new "weapons of mass destruction" hoax using the same people (the MI6 intelligence grouping around Sir Richard Dearlove) and script (an intelligence fraud concerning weapons of mass destruction) which were used to draw the United States into the disastrous Iraq War. The Skripal poisoning fraud also directly involves British agent Christopher Steele, the central figure in the ongoing coup against Donald Trump. This time the British information warfare operation is aimed at directly provoking Russia while maintaining their targeting of the U.S. population and President Trump.

As the fevered war-like media coverage and hysteria surrounding the case makes clear, a certain section of the British elite seems prepared to risk everything on behalf of their dying imperial system. Despite the hype, economic warfare and sanctions appear to be the British weapons of choice. Putin, as we shall see, recently called the West's nuclear bluff. With their Russiagate coup against Donald Trump fizzling, exposing British agent Christopher Steele and a slew of his American friends to criminal prosecution, a new tool was desperately needed to back the President of the United States into the British geopolitical corner shared by most of the American establishment. The tool is an intelligence hoax, a tried and true British product.

According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal who spied for Great Britain in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004 was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve agent "of a type developed by the former Soviet Union." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the LinkedIn profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on the Trump dossier.

Theresa May and her foreign minister Boris Johnson insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning, described as an act of war, and that is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. In fact, there is a substantial doubt whether the putative nerve agent, Novichok, even exists. No plausible motive has been provided as to why Putin would order such a provocative murder now, ahead of the World Cup, when the Russiagate coup against him in the United States has lost all momentum. Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia.

Thus, just like Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise of raw power. The Anglo- American establishment instructed us, with respect to Steele: "trust him, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier, just note that he is backed by very important intelligence agencies who could cook your goose if you object." The same can be said for Teresa May's crazed assertions now.

A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Sunday Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China.

As visitors to the LaRouchePAC website know, Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia, the center of all British geopolitical fantasies since the time of Halford MacKinder. Moreover, China's Belt and Road Initiative now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future, while neo-liberal economies continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive mound of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion. It is estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion with over-the-counter derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the derivatives collapse.

In this strategic geometry, President Trump's support of peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign and his personal friendship with President Xi, marked him for the relentless coup against him waged by the British and their U.S. friends.

On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new physical principles which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse; its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.

It is very clear that a strategic choice now confronts the human race. In 1984, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a very profound document, "Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R." In it, he developed the concrete basis for peace between the two superpowers at the moment when the U.S. had adopted the LaRouche/Reagan doctrine of strategic defense. Both Reagan and LaRouche had proposed that the Russians and the United States cooperate in building and developing strategic defense against offensive nuclear weapons based on new physical principles, thereby eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.

According to the LaRouche Doctrine, "The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) the unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation states, and b) cooperation among sovereign states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all."

Both China, in President Xi's October Address to the Party Congress, and Russia, in Putin's March 1 address, have set a course to produce "technological progress capable of being shared in by all," outlining major infrastructure projects and dedicating massive funding to exploring the frontiers of science, technology, and space exploration. Donald Trump, in both his campaign and his presidency, has embraced similar views. The British and their American friends, however, are devotees of a completely different and failing economic system, a system soundly rejected in Brexit, the election of Donald Trump, and most recently in the Italian elections.

Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax.

The Coup Against Trump Begins to Be Reversed; British Are Exposed as Actual U.S. Election Meddlers

On February 2, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a memo demonstrating that the Obama Justice Department and FBI committed an outright fraud on the FISA court in obtaining surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a volunteer to Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The bogus warrant applications relied heavily on the dirty British dossier authored by MI6's "former" Russian intelligence chief, Christopher Steele, who had been paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee, to paint Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate, a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the House Intelligence memo and other aspects of its investigation, Steele confided to Bruce Ohr, a high official in the DOJ, that he, Steele, hated Trump with a passion and would do "anything" to prevent Trump's election. Steele was using the fact of an FBI investigation of his allegations as part of a "full spectrum" British information warfare campaign conducted against candidate Trump with the full complicity of Obama's intelligence chiefs. 1 Peter Van Buren, "Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 U.S. Election?" American Conservative, February 15, 2018. None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications about Carter Page were revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The House Intelligence Committee memo was quickly followed by a declassified letter on February 5, in which Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham referred Christopher Steele to the Department of Justice for criminal prosecution based on false statements he made to the FBI about his contacts with the news media. No doubt the criminal referral sent chills down the spines not only of Christopher Steele and his British colleagues but also of those Obama officials conspiring against Trump.

In the same week, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he would be conducting investigations of the role of the Obama State Department and intelligence chiefs in the circulation and use of Christopher Steele's dirty dossier. These investigations have been widely reported to focus on John Brennan and James Clapper: Brennan for widely promoting the dirty British work product and Clapper for leaks associated with BuzzFeed's publication and legitimization of the dirty British work product. Remind yourself every time you hear media explosions against Trump by either Clapper (Congressional perjurer and proponent of the theory that the Russians are genetically predisposed to screw the United States) or Brennan (gopher for George Tenet's perpetual war and torture regime and Grand Inquisitor for Barack Obama's serial assassinations by baseball card). They are next in the barrel, so to speak.

The January 11, 2017 BuzzFeed publication of the Steele dossier was meant to permanently poison Trump's incoming administration and is the subject of libel suits in both Florida and London. In the London case, the British are ready to invoke the Official Secrets Act to protect Christopher Steele. In the Florida case, Steele has been ordered to sit for deposition despite numerous delays and stalling tactics.

The Congressional investigation of the State Department is focused on John Kerry, Kerry's aide Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland, and Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Nuland utilized Christopher Steele as a primary intelligence source while running the U.S. regime change operations in Ukraine in alliance with neo-Nazis. She greenlighted Steele's initial meetings with the FBI about Donald Trump. Winer deployed himself to vouch for Steele with various news publications collaborating with British agent Steele and his U.S. employer, Fusion GPS, in Steele's media warfare operations against Trump.

Horowitz's report on the Clinton investigations, which already unearthed the texts between former Russiagate lead case agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, proclaiming their hatred of Donald Trump and the need for an "insurance policy" against his election, is expected to be released very soon. According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Strzok/Page texts also reveal that Strzok was a close friend of U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Contreras sits on the FISA court, took Michael Flynn's guilty plea, and then promptly recused himself from Michael Flynn's case for reasons which remain undisclosed.

Despite its exoneration of the President, and thorough discrediting of the British Steele operation, the House Intelligence Committee dangerously accepts the myth that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, the DCCC, and the emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, and then provided the hacked information to WikiLeaks for publication. It states, however, that Putin's intervention was not in support of Donald Trump, as previously claimed by Obama's intelligence chiefs. The Senators seeking a new Special Counsel also salute this dangerous fraud.

As we have previously reported, the myth that Putin hacked the Democrats and provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, has been substantively refuted by the investigations of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity. In summary, the evidence points to a leak rather than a hack in the case of the DNC. Further, the NSA would have the evidence of any such hack or hacks, according to former NSA technical director Bill Binney, and would have provided it, even if in a classified setting. It is clear that the NSA has no such evidence. It is also clear that the U.S. and the British have cyber warfare capabilities fully capable of creating "false flag" cyber war incidents.

North Korea Talks Planned; Russia and China Continue to Create the Conditions for a New Human Renaissance

In addition to the fizzling of the coup, the Western elites otherwise suffered through February and March. To the shock of the entire smug Davos crowd, Donald Trump, working with Russia, China, and South Korea, appears to have gotten Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table concerning denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Substantive talks have been scheduled for May. The breakthrough was announced by President Trump and South Korea on March 8.

On March 1, President Putin gave his historic two-hour address to the Russian assembly and the Russian people. Like President Xi's address to the Chinese Party Congress in October of 2017, Putin focused on the goal of deeply reducing poverty in Russian society. Xi vowed in October to eliminate it from Chinese society altogether. In addition, Putin emphasized that Russia would undertake a huge city-building project across its vast rural frontiers and dramatically expand its modern infrastructure, including Russia's digital infrastructure. He put major emphasis on directing funds to basic scientific and technological progress. He emphasized that harnessing and stimulating the creative powers of individual human beings was the true driver of all economic progress. Those knowledgeable in the West could not help but recognize the suppressed formulas for continuing economic prosperity advocated by Alexander Hamilton and advanced by Lyndon LaRouche.

China's Belt and Road Initiative also continued to advance. Great infrastructure projects are popping up throughout the world, including most specifically in Africa, which had been consigned to be a permanent primitive looting ground for Western interests. Among the recent breakthroughs is the great project to refurbish Lake Chad, a project known as "Transaqua," involving the Italian engineering firm Bonifica, the Chinese engineering and construction firm PowerChina, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which represents the African countries directly benefiting from the project.

But the biggest strategic news of the last six weeks was contained in the last part of President Putin's speech. He showed various weapons, developed by Russian scientists in the wake of the U.S. abrogation of the ABM treaty and the Anglo-American campaign of color revolutions and NATO base-building in the former Soviet bloc. The weapons, based on new physical principles, render U.S. ABM defenses obsolete, together with many utopian U.S. war fighting doctrines developed under the reigns of Obama and Bush. Putin emphasized that the economic and "defense" aspects of his speech were not separate. Rather, the scientific breakthroughs were based on an in-depth economic mobilization of the physical economy. He stressed that Russia's survival was dependent upon marshaling continuous creative breakthroughs in basic science and the high technology spinoffs which result, and their propagation through the entire population. He stressed that such breakthroughs are the product of providing an actually human existence to the entire society.

Compare what Russia and China have set out to accomplish with the physical economy of the earth, and the second and third paragraphs of Lyndon LaRouche's prescription for a durable peace in the LaRouche Doctrine: "The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary, economic, and political relations between dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as 'developing nations.' Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace on this planet.

"Insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the planet to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common interest. This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of a durable peace between those two powers."

This is the perspective which has the British terrified and acting out, insanely. Were Trump, Putin, and Xi to enter into negotiations based on the LaRouche Doctrine, a breakthrough will have occurred for all of mankind, a breakthrough to a permanent and durable peace. No neo-liberal, post-industrial, unipolar order can match this, no matter how much Mr. Heath, Ms. May, or Boris Johnson rant and rave about it.

Christopher Steele's British Playground

As is well known by now, Christopher Steele was a long time MI6 agent before "retiring" to form his own extremely lucrative private intelligence firm. The firm is said to have earned $200 million since its formation. Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal. Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, according to his LinkedIn profile, worked for Steele's firm and lived in the same town as Skripal.

Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker , as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose:

Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare.

Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, creating the rationale for the disastrous and genocidal Iraq War.

Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time frame in which this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. According to Jane Mayer's account, Steele called this Project Charlemagne, completing his report in April, 2016, just before he undertook his hit job against Donald Trump. In his report, Steele claimed that Russia was interfering in the politics of France, Italy, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Turkey. He claimed that Russia was conducting social media warfare aimed at "inflaming fear and prejudice and had provided opaque financial support to favored politicians." He specifically targeted Silvio Berlusconi and Marine La Pen. Steele also suggested that Russian aid was given to "lesser known right wing nationalists" in the United Kingdom and elsewhere, implying that the Russians were behind Brexit, with an overall goal of destroying the European Union.

Aside from Skripal's relationship to the central figure in the British led coup against Donald Trump, there are questions whether the nerve agent the British claim was used on the Skripals even exists, and even more troubling questions for Theresa May's "Russia did it" claim, if it does.

Former British Ambassador Craig Murray reports that the British chemical weapons laboratory at Porton Down, just 8 miles from where the Skripals were found, is unsure about what substance, if any, was actually involved in the Skripal poisoning. According to Murray's sources at Porton Down, the scientists were pressured to say that it was a nerve agent of a "type developed by Russia." This is supposed to refer to a whole family of chemical weapons, the Novichoks, which were supposedly produced in the 1980s in a Soviet laboratory in Uzbekistan. This production facility was completely dismantled by the United States, according to multiple accounts. Dr. Robin Black, Head of the Detection Laboratory at Porton Down as of 2016, and a colleague of the murdered British Iraq War dissident David Kelly, called the existence of Novichoks speculative, noting that "no independent confirmation of the structures or the properties of such compounds has been published."

The main account supporting the existence of the chemical weapons cited by Theresa May was written by a Soviet dissident chemist named Vil Mirzayanov who now lives in the United States and published a book about his work at the Uzbekistan laboratory. In his much-publicized book, Mirzayanov sets out the formulas for the claimed substances. According to the Wall Street Journal of March 16, that publicity led to Novichok's chemical structure being leaked, making it readily available for reproduction elsewhere. Ralf Trapp, a France-based consultant and expert on the control of chemical and biological weapons, told the Journal, "The chemical formula has been publicized and we know from publications from then-Czechoslovakia that they had worked on similar agents for defense in the 1980s . I'm sure other countries with developed programs would have as well."

But it does not seem that those "other countries" include Russia. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, the independent agency charged by treaty with investigating claims like those just made by the British government, certified in September of 2017 that the Russian government had destroyed its entire chemical weapons program, inclusive of its nerve agent production capabilities. In addition to Mirzayanov, Seamus Martin, writing in the Irish Times of March 14, posits, based on personal knowledge, that Novichoks were widely expropriated by East Bloc oligarchs and criminal elements in the Russian economic chaos of the 1990s.

Thus, Novichoks are the product of the mind of a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States whose formulas have been widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts. Porton Downs, the very laboratory now asserting their existence, stated as of 2016 that even this published "fact" was to be substantially doubted.

Further trouble for May's attempted hoax is found in the condition of the Skripals and a police officer who went to their home. All were made critically ill, although they are still alive. Yet emergency personnel who treated the Skripals, allegedly the victims of a deadly and absolutely lethal nerve poison, suffered no ill effects whatsoever.

The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British intelligence directed oligarch Boris Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European politician seeking sane relations with Putin.

Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.

In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation. Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. Corbyn also pointed out that these oligarchs had contributed millions to May's Conservative party. The reaction by the British media, May's conservatives, and Tony Blair's faction of the Labor Party was to paint Corbyn as a Putin dupe, including photo-shopped images of the Labor leader in a Russian winter hat in front of the Kremlin widely circulated in the news media.

The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs who service each other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another.

[Mar 26, 2018] United front against Kremlin is a coup for Theresa May by Catherine Philp

Looks like this is carefully planned operation, not an incident
Mar 26, 2018 | thetimes.co.uk

United front against Kremlin is a coup for Theresa May

Catherine Philp, Diplomatic Correspondent

The largest mass expulsion of Russian spies from the West is a significant diplomatic achievement for Theresa May at a time when she could badly use one.

Her failure to persuade Donald Trump to back the Paris climate agreement or make him see the wisdom of the Iran nuclear deal has undermined Britain's claim to act as a bridge between Europe and the United States.

Similarly, Brexit means Britain is loosening its bonds with Europe, relinquishing its role in steering the EU's relations with the rest of the world.

[Mar 26, 2018] The US expulsions were part of "a coordinated effort"

You are guilty because I am hungry: neoliberal Forth Reich punishes dissident Russia.
Mar 26, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

The Russian government called the expulsions "a provocative gesture" and said it would retaliate in kind, raising the prospect of further tit-for-tat expulsions, as the US and Europe left the door open for additional measures. The Kremlin said Vladimir Putin would make the final decision, and the Russian embassy in the US launched a poll on Twitter asking which US consulate in Russia should be closed.

The US has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian officials who Washington says are spies, including a dozen based at the United Nations, and told Moscow to shut down its consulate in Seattle, which would end Russian diplomatic representation on the west coast.

The EU members Germany, France and Poland are each to expel four Russian diplomats with intelligence agency backgrounds. Lithuania and the Czech Republic said they would expel three, and Denmark, Italy and the Netherlands two each. Estonia, Latvia, Croatia, Finland, Hungary, Sweden and Romania each expelled one Russian. Iceland announced it would not be sending officials to the World Cup in Russia .

Ukraine, which is not an EU member, is to expel 13 Russian diplomats, while Albania, an EU candidate member, ordered the departure of two Russians from the embassy in Tirana. Macedonia, another EU candidate, expelled one Russian official.

Canada announced it was expelling four diplomatic staff serving in Ottawa and Montreal who the Canadian government said were spies. A pending application from Moscow for three more diplomatic posts in Canada is being denied.

Raj Shah, a White House spokesperson, told reporters Monday that the US expulsions were part of "a coordinated effort".

He added that Donald Trump "spoke with many foreign leaders, European allies and others and encouraged them to join with the United States in this announcement".

[Mar 26, 2018] Trump orders expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats, closure of Seattle consulate -- RT US News

Notable quotes:
"... abused their privilege of residence" ..."
"... "engaged in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security." ..."
Mar 26, 2018 | www.rt.com

President Donald Trump has ordered the expulsion of 60 Russian diplomats and the closure of the Russian consulate in Seattle. It comes in response to the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury, which the UK has blamed on Russia. The move follows major diplomatic pressure by the UK on its allies to follow their lead in expelling Russian diplomats. The Russian embassy in Washington had previously urged Trump not to heed the "fake news " on Skripal's poisoning.

British Prime Minister Theresa May has accused Moscow of being behind the poisoning of the former spy Skripal and his daughter in the town of Salisbury in early March.

Breaking: US to expel 48 Russian embassy workers in Washington, D.C. and 12 at the Russian mission to the U.N. U.S. says they were intel officers using diplo status as cover. pic.twitter.com/mRuwY8Tes6

-- Patrick Tucker (@DefTechPat) March 26, 2018

Of the 60 diplomats expelled, 12 formed part of the Russian mission to the United Nations. In a statement, US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley said the 12 Russians in question had " abused their privilege of residence" in the US and had "engaged in espionage activities that are adverse to our national security."

[Mar 24, 2018] Assange Suggests British Government Was Involved In Plot To Bring Down Trump by Steve Watson

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections ..."
"... In a series of tweets Thursday night, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange suggested that there is evidence indicating that the British government and intelligence agencies were involved in a plot to bring down the Trump presidency. Assange laid out the possible role that he believes MI6 and the government played in the so called 'dirty dossier' scandal ..."
"... Misfud worked in Riyadh for a "think tank" run by the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal. (BBC) ..."
"... Misfud and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link university in Rome and appear to be both present in this phone https://t.co/HAbldyx73m pic.twitter.com/xtaGEiZxQG ..."
"... It was Alexander Downer in London, closely associated with Hakluyt (now Holdingham Group Ltd) a private MI6 outfit, that met with Papadopulos. The FBI used AD's statement about Misfud to open the FISA interception warrants against the Trump camp. https://t.co/O9wT5ufPQE ..."
Mar 23, 2018 | www.infowars.com

" We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections "

351 Comments

In a series of tweets Thursday night, Wikileaks founder Julian Assange suggested that there is evidence indicating that the British government and intelligence agencies were involved in a plot to bring down the Trump presidency. Assange laid out the possible role that he believes MI6 and the government played in the so called 'dirty dossier' scandal :

There is something very odd about the Joseph Mifsud story and the role of the UK in the 2016 US presidential election:
(thread)

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

1/ Boris Johnson met with Misfud on 19 Oct 2017 (Politico) https://t.co/SYxQZMMWMn

But who's the guy on the right? pic.twitter.com/VzIc8vVeTz

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

Assange notes that back in November, British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was pictured meeting with Joseph Mifsud, a professor with strong Kremlin ties who also worked for a group run by the former head of Saudi intelligence.

2/ Misfud worked in Riyadh for a "think tank" run by the former head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Turki al Faisal. (BBC) https://t.co/rBYoTIWE2X pic.twitter.com/6quB4oYFCk

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

3/ Misfud and Claire Smith of the UK Joint Intelligence Committee and eight year member of the UK Security Vetting panel both trained Italian security services at the Link university in Rome and appear to be both present in this phone https://t.co/HAbldyx73m pic.twitter.com/xtaGEiZxQG

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

Assange notes that The FBI used MI6 associate Alexander Downer's statement about Misfud to open the FISA interception warrants against the Trump camp:

4/ It was Alexander Downer in London, closely associated with Hakluyt (now Holdingham Group Ltd) a private MI6 outfit, that met with Papadopulos. The FBI used AD's statement about Misfud to open the FISA interception warrants against the Trump camp. https://t.co/O9wT5ufPQE

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

Assange then highlights how each move by the British government and its associates aided the opposition campaign against Trump:

5/ It was former UK MI6 officer Christopher Steele who compiled the smear filled "Steel Dossier" funded by Hillary Clinton

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

6/ The UK government approved of giving the Steele dossier to the Obama FBI

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

7/ It was the UK government that issued a press suppression notice (DA Notice) about Steele https://t.co/Wwj7fWWCqX

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

8/ Steele used former UK ambassador Sir Andrew Wood to funnel the dossier to the Trump hating Senator John McCain; seemingly deliberately moving the handover out of London, to Canada. https://t.co/hzMAuTasFn

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

9/ UK government TV then "verified" the dossier. The reporter? Paul Wood, a reporter who has been repeatedly operated within UK military and intelligence covert operation zones. https://t.co/jyN0XLHgKj pic.twitter.com/vKpk7Cbzzg

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

10/ CIA Director John Brennan: https://t.co/G9yWuJaI6Y

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 22, 2018

Assange followed up with a tweet concerning election interference at the hands of the British government.

"We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren't operating from Moscow Instead, they are British, Eton educated, and have close ties to Her Majesty " https://t.co/14nQXGa90H

-- Julian Assange (@JulianAssange) March 23, 2018

Clearly the Wikileaks head is suggesting that rather than 'muh Russians' being the shady actors trying to rig the election in favor of Trump, of which there has been no evidence, it may in fact have been British government and intelligence operatives attempting to rig the election to stop Trump getting into office.

[Mar 23, 2018] Skripal Poisoning a Desperate British Attempt To Resurrect Their American Coup by Barbara Boyd

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal, who spied for Great Britain in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004, was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve agent "of a type developed by Russia." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the London Daily Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on that dossier. ..."
"... Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia, and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia. ..."
"... A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Daily Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China. Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China. Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China. ..."
"... China's "Belt and Road Initiative" now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future. At the same time, the neo-liberal economies of the trans-Atlantic region continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive piles of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. ..."
"... Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax. ..."
"... None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications involving Carter Page were revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein. ..."
"... Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation. ..."
"... A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason. ..."
"... Steele described his business to Luke Harding as primarily providing research and reports to competing and feuding Russian oligarchs, many of whom use London as a base of operations. This is obviously a perfect cover for intelligence operations. It is also a very violent theater of operations. The oligarchs intersect both Western intelligence operations and Russian organized crime. They engage in deadly gang warfare. ..."
"... Steele and his partners are mentored by Sir Richard Dearlove, former head of MI6 and a critical player in the infamous "sexing up" and fabrication of the claim that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, ..."
"... Steele had been tasked to claim that Russia was interfering in Western elections during the entire post-Ukraine coup time-frame, when this black propaganda line began to be circulated widely. ..."
"... The background to Porton Down's reluctance, is of course former Prime Minister Blair's phony dossier on Iraqi WMD, which Lyndon LaRouche fought, alongside the late British arms expert David Kelly, who exposed the "dodgy dossier," at the time. ..."
"... Thus, after being disclosed by a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States, novichoks have been widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts. ..."
"... The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs, each of which services the other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another. ..."
Mar 18, 2018 | www.larouchepub.com

Skripal Poisoning a Desperate British Attempt To Resurrect Their American Coup

by Barbara Boyd

[ Print version of this article ]

March 18 -- In this report, we will explore the strategic significance of major events in the world starting in February 2018. Our goal is to precisely situate British Prime Minister Theresa May's March 12-14 mad effort to manufacture a new "weapons of mass destruction" hoax based on the alleged Skripal poisoning, using the same people (the MI6 intelligence grouping around Sir Richard Dearlove) and script (an intelligence fraud concerning weapons of mass destruction) which were used to draw the United States into the disastrous Iraq War.

The Skripal poisoning fraud also directly involves British agent Christopher Steele, the central figure in the ongoing coup against Donald Trump. This time the British information warfare operation is aimed at directly provoking Russia, while maintaining the targeting of the U.S. population and President Trump.

As the fevered, war-like media coverage and hysteria surrounding the case make clear, a certain section of the British elite seems prepared to risk everything on behalf of its dying imperial system. Despite the hype, economic warfare and sanctions appear to be the British weapons of choice -- Vladimir Putin, as we shall see, recently called the West's nuclear bluff. With the British "Russiagate" coup against Donald Trump fizzling, exposing British agent Christopher Steele and a slew of his American friends to criminal prosecution, a new tool was desperately needed to back the President of the United States into the British geopolitical corner shared by most of the American establishment. The tool they are using to do this is an intelligence hoax, a tried-and-true British product.

According to the British spy tale, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, Sergei Skripal, who spied for Great Britain in Russia from the early 1990s until 2004, was poisoned, along with his daughter, on March 4 in Salisbury, England, using a nerve agent "of a type developed by Russia." In 2010, Skripal had been exchanged in a spy swap between the United States and Russia. He had served six years in a Russian prison for spying for Britain. He had been living in the open in Britain for the last eight years. Skripal's MI6 recruiter and handler, Pablo Miller, listed himself as a consultant to Orbis Business Intelligence, Christopher Steele's British company, on his LinkedIn profile. When the London Daily Telegraph called attention to the Orbis reference, it was removed from the profile. Steele, who worked on the Trump dossier through his company Orbis, has denied that Miller worked directly on that dossier.

Theresa May and her foreign minister, Boris Johnson, insist there is only one person who could be responsible for the poisoning -- described as an act of war -- and that person is Vladimir Putin. No evidence has been offered to support this claim. No plausible motive has been provided as to why Putin would order such a provocative murder now, ahead of the World Cup, when the Russiagate coup in the United States has lost all momentum.

Rather than following the protocols of the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), which require that evidence of the alleged agent be presented to Russia, the eccentric and unpopular May instead delivered an ultimatum to Russia, and whipped up war fever throughout the UK. She now seeks to pull Donald Trump and NATO into ever more aggressive moves against Russia.

Thus, as with Christopher Steele's dirty dossier against Donald Trump, the British claims against Putin are an evidence-free exercise of raw power. The Anglo-American establishment instructs us: "trust this, ignore the stinky factless content presented in this dossier -- just note that it is backed by very important intelligence agencies which could cook your goose if you object."

A short statement of the reasons why the British are now staging the Skripal provocation can be found in a March 14 London Daily Telegraph call to arms by Allister Heath, who rants: "We need a new world order to take on totalitarian capitalists in Russia and China. Such an alliance would dramatically shift the global balance of power, and allow the liberal democracies finally to fight back. It would endow the world with the sorts of robust institutions that are required to contain Russia and China. Britain needs a new role in the world; building such a network would be our perfect mission." Across the pond, as they say, a similar foundational statement was made by 68 former Obama Administration officials who have formed a group called National Security Action, aimed at securing Trump's impeachment and attacking Russia and China.

Russia and China have embarked on a massive infrastructure building project in Eurasia, the center of all British geopolitical fantasies since the time of Halford Mackinder. China's "Belt and Road Initiative" now encompasses more than 140 nations in the largest infrastructure-building project ever undertaken in human history. This project is a true economic engine for the future. At the same time, the neo-liberal economies of the trans-Atlantic region continue to see their productive potentials sucked dry by the massive piles of debt they have created since the 2008 financial collapse. This debt is now on a hair trigger for implosion. It is estimated by banking insiders that the City of London is sitting on a derivatives powderkeg of $700 trillion, with over-the-counter derivatives accounting for another $570 trillion. The City of London will bear the major impact of the coming derivatives collapse.

In this strategic geometry, President Trump's support for peaceful collaboration with Russia during the campaign, and his personal friendship with China's President Xi Jinping, have marked him for the relentless coup-drive waged by the British and their U.S. friends.

On top of that, President Putin delivered a mammoth strategic shock on March 1, showing new Russian weapons systems based on new physical principles, which render present U.S. ABM systems and much of current U.S. war-fighting doctrine obsolete, together with the vaunted first strike capacity with which NATO has surrounded Russia. Not only is the West sitting on a new financial collapse, its vaunted military superiority has just been flanked.

It is very clear that a strategic choice now confronts the human race. In 1984, Lyndon LaRouche wrote a very profound document, " Draft Memorandum of Agreement Between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. " In it, he developed the concrete basis for peace between the two superpowers at the moment when the United States had adopted the LaRouche/Reagan doctrine of strategic defense. Both Reagan and LaRouche had proposed that the Russians and the United States cooperate in building and developing strategic defense against offensive nuclear weapons, based on new physical principles, thereby eliminating the threat of nuclear annihilation.

According to the LaRouche Doctrine, "The political foundation for durable peace must be: a) the unconditional sovereignty of each and all nation states, and b) cooperation among sovereign states to the effect of promoting unlimited opportunities to participate in the benefits of technological progress, to the mutual benefit of each and all."

Both China, in President Xi's October Address to the Party Congress, and Russia, in Putin's March 1 address to the Federal Assembly, have set a course to produce technological progress capable of being shared in by all. They both outline major infrastructure projects and dedicating massive funding to exploring the frontiers of science, technology, and space exploration. Donald Trump, in both his campaign and his presidency, has embraced similar views. The British and their American friends, however, are devotees of a completely different and failing economic system, a system soundly rejected in Brexit, in the election of Donald Trump, and most recently in the Italian elections.

Just look at the events of February and March from this standpoint. It is no accident that Christopher Steele turns up, smack dab in the middle of the Skripal poisoning hoax.

Exposure of British as U.S. Election Meddlers Weakens Anti-Trump Coup

On Feb. 2, the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence released a memo demonstrating that the Obama Justice Department and FBI committed an outright fraud on the FISA court in obtaining surveillance warrants on Carter Page, a volunteer for Donald Trump's 2016 presidential campaign. The bogus warrant applications relied heavily on the dirty British dossier authored by MI6's "former" Russian intelligence chief, Christopher Steele, who had been paid by Hillary Clinton's campaign and the Democratic National Committee to paint Donald Trump as a Manchurian candidate -- as a pawn of Russian President Vladimir Putin.

According to the House Intelligence memo and other aspects of its investigation, Steele confided to Bruce Ohr, a high official in the DOJ, that he, Steele, hated Trump with a passion and would do "anything" to prevent Trump's election. Steele was using the fact of an FBI investigation of his allegations as part of a "full spectrum" British information warfare campaign conducted against candidate Trump with the full complicity of Obama's intelligence chiefs. (See Peter Van Buren, " Christopher Steele: The Real Foreign Influence in the 2016 U.S. Election? " The American Conservative, February 15, 2018.) None of the true facts about the actual motive for, and sponsors of, the DOJ applications involving Carter Page were revealed to the FISA Court in the filings made by former Deputy Attorney General Sally Yates, former FBI Director James Comey, or current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein.

The House Intelligence Committee memo was quickly followed by a declassified letter on Feb. 5, in which Senators Chuck Grassley and Lindsay Graham referred Christopher Steele to the Department of Justice (DOJ) for criminal prosecution, based on false statements he made to the FBI about his contacts with the news media. No doubt the criminal referral sent chills down the spines not only of Christopher Steele and his British colleagues, but also of those former Obama officials conspiring against Trump.

In the same week, House Intelligence Chairman Devin Nunes announced that he would be conducting investigations into the role of the Obama State Department and intelligence chiefs in the circulation and use of Christopher Steele's dirty dossier. These investigations have been widely reported to focus on John Brennan and James Clapper -- Brennan for widely promoting the dirty British work product, and Clapper for leaks associated with BuzzFeed's publication and legitimization of the dirty British work product. Remind yourself every time you hear media explosions against Trump by either Clapper (congressional perjurer and proponent of the theory that the Russians are genetically predisposed to screw the United States) or Brennan (gopher for George Tenet's perpetual war and torture regime and Grand Inquisitor for Barack Obama's serial
assassinations by baseball card). They are next in the barrel, so to speak.

The January 11, 2017 BuzzFeed publication of the Steele dossier was meant to permanently poison Trump's incoming administration, and is the subject of libel suits both in Florida and London. In the London case, the British are ready to invoke the Official Secrets Act to protect Christopher Steele. In the Florida case, Steele has been ordered to sit for deposition despite numerous delays and stalling tactics.

The Congressional investigation of the State Department is focused on John Kerry, Kerry's aide Jonathan Winer, Victoria Nuland, and Clinton operative Cody Shearer. Nuland utilized Christopher Steele as a primary intelligence source while running the U.S. regime change operations in Ukraine in alliance with neo-Nazis. She greenlighted Steele's initial meetings with the FBI about Donald Trump. Winer deployed himself to vouch for Steele to various news publications collaborating with British agent Steele and his U.S. employer, Fusion GPS, in Steele's media warfare operations against Trump.

Horowitz's report on the Clinton investigations -- which have already unearthed the texts between former Russiagate lead case agent Peter Strzok and his mistress, FBI lawyer Lisa Page, proclaiming their hatred of Donald Trump and the need for an "insurance policy" against his election -- is expected to be released very soon. According to the House Intelligence Committee, the Strzok/Page texts also reveal that Strzok was a close friend of U.S. District Court Judge Rudolph Contreras. Contreras sits on the FISA court, took Michael Flynn's guilty plea, and then promptly recused himself from Michael Flynn's case for reasons which remain undisclosed.

Despite its exoneration of the President and thorough discrediting of the British Steele operation, the House Intelligence Committee dangerously accepts the myth that the Russians hacked the Democratic National Committee, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, and the emails of Clinton Campaign Chairman John Podesta, and then provided the hacked information to WikiLeaks for publication. Its final report states, however, that Putin's intervention was not in support of Donald Trump, as previously claimed by Obama's intelligence chiefs. The Senators seeking a new Special Counsel also salute this dangerous fraud.

As we have previously reported, the myth that Putin hacked the Democrats and provided the hacked emails to WikiLeaks, has been substantively refuted by the investigations of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS). In summary, the evidence points to a leak rather than a hack in the case of the DNC. Further, the NSA would have the evidence of any such hack or hacks, according to former NSA technical director Bill Binney, and would have provided it, even if in a classified setting. It is clear that the NSA has no such evidence. It is also clear that the United States and the British have cyber warfare capabilities fully capable of creating "false flag" cyber war incidents.

North Korea Talks Planned, While Russia and China Continue to Create the Conditions for a New Human Renaissance

In addition to the fizzling of the coup, the Western elites suffered through February and March for additional reasons. To the shock of the entire, smug Davos crowd, Donald Trump, working with Russia, China, and South Korea, appears to have gotten Kim Jong-un to the negotiating table concerning denuclearization of the Korean peninsula. Substantive talks have been scheduled for May. The breakthrough was announced by President Trump and South Korea on March 8.

On March 1, President Putin gave his historic two-hour address to the Russian Federal Assembly and the Russian people. Like President Xi's address to the Chinese Party Congress in October 2017, Putin focused on the goal of deeply reducing poverty in Russian society. Xi vowed in October to eliminate poverty from Chinese society altogether by 2020. In addition, Putin emphasized that Russia would undertake a huge city-building project across its vast rural frontiers and dramatically expand its modern infrastructure, including Russia's digital infrastructure. He put major emphasis on directing funds to basic scientific and technological progress. He emphasized that harnessing and stimulating the creative powers of individual human beings is the true driver of all economic progress.

China's Belt and Road Initiative also continued to advance. Great infrastructure projects are popping up throughout the world, including most specifically in Africa, which had been consigned to be a permanent, primitive looting-ground for Western interests. Among the recent breakthroughs is the great project to refill Lake Chad, a project known as "Transaqua," involving the Italian engineering firm Bonifica, the Chinese engineering and construction firm PowerChina, and the Lake Chad Basin Commission, which represents the African countries directly benefiting from the project. But the biggest strategic news of the last six weeks was contained in the last part of President Putin's speech. He showed various weapons, developed by Russian scientists in the wake of the U.S. abrogation of the ABM treaty and the Anglo-American campaign of color revolutions and NATO base-building in the former Soviet bloc. These weapons, based on new physical principles, render U.S. ABM defenses obsolete, together with many U.S. utopian war-fighting doctrines developed under the reigns of Obama and Bush. Putin emphasized that the economic and "defense" aspects of his speech were not separate. Rather, the scientific breakthroughs were based on an in-depth economic mobilization of the physical economy. He stressed that Russia's survival was dependent upon marshalling continuous creative breakthroughs in basic science and the high-technology spinoffs which result, and their propagation through the entire population. He stressed that such breakthroughs are the product of providing an actually human existence to the entire society.

Compare what Russia and China have set out to accomplish with respect to the physical economy of the Earth, with the second and third paragraphs of Lyndon LaRouche's prescription for a durable peace in the LaRouche Doctrine:

The most crucial feature of present implementation of such a policy of durable peace is a profound change in the monetary, economic, and political relations between dominant powers and those relatively subordinated nations often classed as "developing nations." Unless the inequities lingering in the aftermath of modern colonialism are progressively remedied, there can be no durable peace on this planet.

Insofar as the United States and the Soviet Union acknowledge the progress of the productive powers of labor throughout the planet to be in the vital strategic interests of each and both, the two powers are bound to that degree and in that way by a common interest. This is the kernel of the political and economic policies of practice indispensable to the fostering of a durable peace between those two powers.

This is the perspective which has the British terrified and acting-out, insanely. Were Trump, Putin, and Xi to enter into negotiations based on the LaRouche Doctrine, a breakthrough will have occurred for all of mankind, a breakthrough to a permanent and durable peace. No neo-liberal, post-industrial, unipolar order can match this, no matter how much Allister Heath, Ms. May, or Boris Johnson rant and rave about it.

Christopher Steele's British Playground

As is well known by now, Christopher Steele was a long-time MI6 agent before "retiring" to form his own extremely lucrative private intelligence firm. The firm is said to have earned $200 million since its formation. Steele was an MI6 agent in Moscow around the time Skripal was recruited. He also later ran the MI6 Russia desk and would have known everything there was to know about Skripal. Pablo Miller, who recruited Skripal, worked for Steele's firm according to Miller's LinkedIn profile, and lived in the same town as Skripal.

Since Steele has been discredited in the United States, a huge fawning publicity campaign has been undertaken on his behalf. The campaign involves journalists who have collaborated directly with Steele in his smear job against Trump. Books by Luke Harding and Michael Isikoff seek to rebuild Steele's reputation.

A fawning piece by Jane Mayer in the New Yorker, as implausible as it is long, has been foisted on the public for the same reason.

There are some fascinating facts, however, in all this fawning prose:

Leaving aside Sergei Skripal's relationship with the central figure in the British-led coup against Donald Trump, it is clear that the May government's claim that he and his daughter were poisoned by a "novichok" nerve-agent, even if it is true, by no means makes a case that Putin's government was responsible. (It is of interest that as we were going to press on March 19, the foreign ministers of the European Union, after a briefing by British Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson that indicted Putin as responsible, issued a statement which condemned the poisoning of Skripal and his daughter, but pointedly failed to blame Putin or Russia.)

Craig Murray, a former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan who maintains contacts in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, wrote March 16 that Britain's chemical-warfare scientists at Porton Down, "are not able to identify the nerve agent as being of Russian manufacture, and have been resentful of the pressure being placed on them to do so. Porton Down would only sign up to the formulation of a type developed by Russia, after a rather difficult meeting where this was agreed as a compromise formulation. The Russians were allegedly researching, in the novichok program, a generation of nerve agents which could be produced from commercially available precursors such as insecticides and fertilizers. This substance is a novichok in that sense. It is of that type. Just as I am typing on a laptop of a type developed by the United States, though this one was made in China."

The background to Porton Down's reluctance, is of course former Prime Minister Blair's phony dossier on Iraqi WMD, which Lyndon LaRouche fought, alongside the late British arms expert David Kelly, who exposed the "dodgy dossier," at the time.

"To anybody with a Whitehall background this has been obvious for several days," Murray continues. "The government has never said the nerve agent was made in Russia, or that it can only be made in Russia. The exact formulation of a type developed by Russia was used by Theresa May in Parliament, used by the U.K. at the UN Security Council, used by Boris Johnson on the BBC yesterday and, most tellingly of all, 'of a type developed by Russia,' is the precise phrase used in the joint communique‚ issued by the U.K., U.S.A., France, and Germany yesterday."

The main account of the chemical weapons cited by Theresa May was written by a Soviet dissident chemist named Vil Mirzayanov who now lives in the United States and published a book about his work at the Soviets' Uzbekistan chemical-warfare laboratory. In his much-publicized book, Mirzayanov sets out the formulas for the claimed substances. According to the March 16 Wall Street Journal, that publicity led to the novichoks' chemical structure being leaked, making them readily available for reproduction elsewhere. Ralf Trapp, a France-based consultant and expert on the control of chemical and biological weapons, told the Journal, "The chemical formula has been publicized and we know from publications from then-Czechoslovakia that they had worked on similar agents for defense in the 1980s. I'm sure other countries with developed programs would have as well."

But it does not seem that those "other countries" include Russia. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW), the independent agency charged by treaty with investigating claims like those just made by the British government, certified in September 2017 that the Russian government had destroyed its entire chemical weapons program, inclusive of its nerve agent production capabilities. In addition to Trapp's account, Seamus Martin, writing in the March 14 Irish Times, posits, based on personal knowledge, that novichoks were widely expropriated by East Bloc oligarchs and criminal elements in the Russian economic chaos of the 1990s.

Thus, after being disclosed by a dissident Russian chemist living in the United States, novichoks have been widely copied by other countries, according to the press accounts.

Further trouble for May's attempted hoax is found in the condition of the Skripals and of a police officer who went to their home. All were made critically ill, although they are still alive. Yet the emergency personnel who treated the Skripals, allegedly the victims of a deadly and absolutely lethal nerve poison, suffered no ill effects whatsoever.

The Skripal poisoning is being compared in the British press to the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko in 2006. The former KGB and FSB officer was granted asylum in London and worked for the infamous anti-Putin British-intelligence-directed oligarch Boris Berezovsky in information warfare and other attacks on the Russian state, inclusive of McCarthyite accusations against any European politician seeking sane relations with Putin.

Litvinenko's case officer was none other than Christopher Steele, and Christopher Steele conducted MI6's investigation of the case, which, of course, found Putin himself culpable. Berezovsky's use of the disgraced British PR firm Bell, Pottinger is also credited with a significant role in public acceptance of this result. Berezovsky was a prime suspect in organizing the murder of American journalist Paul Klebnikov. Many believe that Berezovsky arranged Litvinenko's demise. Berezovsky himself died in Britain in mysterious circumstances following the loss of a major court case to another Russian oligarch, Roman Abramovich.

In the parliamentary debate in which Theresa May issued her provocation, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn cautioned against a rush to judgment and pointed to the bloody playing field of Russian oligarchs and Russian organized crime as alternative areas for investigation. Had Corbyn added to that mix, "Western intelligence agencies," he would have been entirely on the right track. Corbyn also pointed out that these oligarchs had contributed millions to May's Conservative Party. The reaction by the British media, May's Conservatives, and Tony Blair's faction of the Labour Party was to paint Corbyn as a Putin dupe, including photoshopped images of the Labour leader in a Russian winter hat in front of the Kremlin.

The insane McCarthyite reactions to Corbyn's simple statements of fact show that he hit the nail on the head. If you want to find Skripal's poisoners, then, like Edgar Allen Poe, you must take in the whole picture first. The field of play involves the British intelligence services and the anti-Putin Russian oligarchs, each of which services the other, acting on behalf of British strategic objectives. It is no accident that the coup against Donald Trump and the latest British intelligence fraud, putting the entire world in peril, absolutely intersect one another.

[Mar 22, 2018] Russia meddling in the US election? The evidence continues to point to the British

Notable quotes:
"... However, Cambridge Analytica is a mere offshoot of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) – an organisation with its roots deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment. ..."
"... aide de camp ..."
"... Indeed, it seems evident that the organisation is a product of murky alliances formed between venture capitalists and former British military and intelligence officers. Unsurprisingly, they also happen to be closely tied to the higher echelons of the Conservative party. ..."
"... International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren't operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers. Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty's government. ..."
Mar 22, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Originally from: Bella Caledonia it's time to get above ourselves

Liam O Hare on the deep connections between Cambridge Analytica's parent company Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) and the Conservative Party and military establishment, 'Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.'

The scandal around mass data harvesting by Cambridge Analytica took a new twist on Monday. A Channel 4 news undercover investigation revealed that the company's Eton-educated CEO Alexander Nix offered to use dirty tricks – including the use of bribery and sex workers – to entrap politicians and subvert elections. Much of the media spotlight is now on Cambridge Analytica and their shadowy antics in elections worldwide, including that of Donald Trump. However, Cambridge Analytica is a mere offshoot of Strategic Communication Laboratories (SCL Group) – an organisation with its roots deeply embedded within the British political, military and royal establishment. Indeed, as the Observer article which broke the scandal said "For all intents and purposes, SCL/Cambridge Analytica are one and the same."

Like Cambridge Analytica, SCL group is behavioral research and strategic communication company. In 2005, SCL went public with a glitzy exhibit at the DSEI conference, the UK's largest showcase for military technology. It's 'hard sell' was a demonstration of how the UK government could use a sophisticated media campaign of mass deception to fool the British people into the thinking an accident at a chemical plant had occurred and threatened central London. Genuinely.

Board members include an array of Lords, Tory donors, ex-British army officers and defense contractors. This is scandal that cuts to the heart of the British establishment.

SCL Group says on its website that it provides "data, analytics and strategy to governments and military organizations worldwide." The organisation boasts that it has conducted "behavioral change programs" in over 60 countries and its clients have included the British Ministry of Defence, the US State Department and NATO. A freedom of information request from August 2016, shows that the MOD has twice bought services from Strategic Communication Laboratories in recent years. In 2010/11, the MOD paid £40,000 to SCL for the "provision of external training". Meanwhile, in 2014/2015, it paid SCL £150,000 for the "procurement of target audience analysis".

In addition, SCL also carries a secret clearance as a 'list X' contractor for the MOD. A List X site is a commercial site on British soil that is approved to hold UK government information marked as 'confidential' and above. Essentially, SCL got the green light to hold British government secrets on its premises. Meanwhile, the US State Department has a contract for $500,000 with SLC. According to an official , this was to provide "research and analytical support in connection with our mission to counter terrorist propaganda and disinformation overseas." This was not the only work that SCL has been contracted for with the US government, the source added.

In May 2015, SCL Defense, another subsidiary of the umbrella organisation, received $1 million (CAD) to support NATO operations in Eastern Europe targeting Russia.

The company delivered a three-month course in Riga which taught "advanced counter-propaganda techniques designed to help member states assess and counter Russia's propaganda in Eastern Europe".

The NATO website said the "revolutionary" training would "help Ukrainians better defend themselves against the Russian threat". What is clear is that all of SCL's activities were inextricably linked to its Cambridge Analytica arm. As recently as July 2017, the website for Cambridge Analytica said its methods has been approved by the "UK Ministry of Defence, the US State Department, Sandia and NATO" and carried their logos on its website.

Mark Turnbull, who joined Alexander Nix at the secretly filmed meetings, heads up SCL Elections as well as Cambridge Analytica Political Global.

His profile at the University of Exeter Strategy and Security Institute boasts of his record in achieving "campaign success via measurable behavioural change" in "over 100 campaigns in Europe, North and South America, Asia, Africa and the Caribbean". Turnbull previously spent 18 years at Bell Pottinger, heading up the Pentagon funded PR drive in occupied Iraq which included the production of fake al-Qaeda videos. Turnbull's involvement is just one sign of the sweeping links the company has with powerful Anglo-American political and military interests.

The firm is headed up by Nigel Oakes, another old Etonian, who, according to the website PowerBase has links to the British royals and was once rumoured to be an Mi5 spy. In 1992, Oakes described his work in a trade journal as using the "same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level."

The President of SCL is Sir Geoffrey Pattie, a former Conservative MP and the Defence Minister in Margaret Thatcher's government. Pattie also co-founded Terrington Management which lists BAE Systems and Lockheed Martin among its clients. One of the company's directors' is wine millionaire and former British special forces officer in Borneo and Kenya, Roger Gabb, who in 2006 donated £500,000 to the Conservative party.

Gabb was also fined by the Electoral Commission for failing to include his name on an advert in a number of local newspapers arguing for a Leave vote in the Brexit referendum. SCL's links to the Conservative party continues through the company's chairman and venture capitalist Julian Wheatland. He also happens to be chairman of Oxfordshire Conservatives Association.

The organisation has also been funded by Jonathan Marland who is the former Conservative Party Treasurer, a trade envoy under David Cameron, and a close friend of Tory election strategist Lynton Crosby.Property tycoon and Conservative party donor Vincent Tchenguiz was also the single largest SCL shareholder for a decade.

Meanwhile, another director is Gavin McNicoll, founder of counter-terrorism Eden Intelligence firm who ran a G8 Plus meeting on Financial Intelligence Cooperation at the behest of the British government. Previous board members include Sir James Allen Mitchell, the former Prime Minister of the previous British colony St. Vincent and the Grenadines. Mitchell has been a privy counselor on the Queen's advisory board since 1985. The British military and royal establishment links to SCL are further highlighted through another director Rear Admiral John Tolhurst, a former assistant director of naval warfare in the Ministry of Defence and aide de camp to the Queen. The Queen's third cousin, Lord Ivar Mountbatten, was also sitting on SCL's advisory board but it's unclear if he still holds that role.

The above examples barely scrape the surface of just how deep the ties go between the UK defence establishment and Strategic Communication Laboratories.

Indeed, it seems evident that the organisation is a product of murky alliances formed between venture capitalists and former British military and intelligence officers. Unsurprisingly, they also happen to be closely tied to the higher echelons of the Conservative party.

International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren't operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers.

Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty's government.

Rick Merlotti 21 March 2018 at 06:09 PM

Russian meddling in our election? The evidence continues to point to the British...

" International deception and meddling is the name of the game for SCL. We finally have the most concrete evidence yet of shadowy actors using dirty tricks in order to rig elections. But these characters aren't operating from Moscow intelligence bunkers. Instead, they are British, Eton educated, headquartered in the city of London and have close ties to Her Majesty's government. "

http://bellacaledonia.org.uk/2018/03/20/scl-a-very-british-coup/

[Mar 21, 2018] Who is judging the judges

Mar 21, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

one of our recommended browsers . Report


Aquinasotic , 30 Mar 2014 04:27

At present there is no way of disciplining a retired judge who trades on his former title of "Judge" and his rank of QC to give advice to lay people (without any up-to-date knowledge of law or professional indemnity insurance) and then speak on their behalf as a McKenzie Friend in Court.

I know of a case where this actually happened - a retired Chancery Circuit Judge intervened in a case involving a religious charity when he has no known connection to the faith in question. His intervention was distinctly unhelpful for the parties and impeded the proper administration of justice. But nothing could be done about his unprofessional and meddling behaviour.

Cynical007 -> JohntheLith , 26 Mar 2014 16:32
Journalists are not state officials, and do not have the power to imprison citizens. There is no right to be a judge (so state regulation of judges is legitimate) whereas there is a right to freedom of speech (so state regulation of journalism is not legitimate).
Cynical007 -> HybridMoments , 26 Mar 2014 16:31

The move to a system of locally elected (ie, accountable) judges is long overdue.

A tribunal consisting of elected politicians is not a real court.

profester , 26 Mar 2014 06:29
Judges are lawyers: a rapacious breed drawn predominantly from and representing the "highest" stratum of society. They are expert at presenting one-sided arguments, whatever the facts and evidence. They provide "blue chip justice" favouring that social segment that can afford to hire lawyers and so keep the legal sector in work. They know how to wear down complainants (often of limited means) with unjustified decisions that have to be appealed at every stage of proceedings. They are assisted by absurb laws which deem them virtually infallible in jurisdictions such as the Employment Tribunal, where it is, in practice, not an "error of law" to find something impossible to be true or to make a finding contrary to the weight of evidence, or without evidential basis (and invariably favouring the employer). Even when an indefatigable complainant succeeds in an appeal against a rotten judgement, they often find their case "remitted" for a rehearing before the same biased tribunal or another made up of the friends and colleagues of the first, and likewise of the employer. Many contributors here, and all employment lawyers, know this to be true, yet this unjust system persists. What criticisms of it there are focus on ultimately minor issues such as whether one should have to pay fees to lodge complaints, rather than the more important issue of its institutional racialism and the virtual impossibility of Black people being successful in complaints against members of the establishment within it.
pictish22 , 25 Mar 2014 21:59
You also need to remember that judges work within a system which is controlled by politics, press start complaining about high number of car thefts, car thieves suddenly start getting jailed while house breakers do not.

There are also other parts of the system for instance social work reports, often made about people who know the systems inside out, know exactly what to say and when to say it. Lawyers who are simply there to lie, on both sides of the case with full knowledge they are doing it. Police who are more concerned about getting results than actually justice. And finally the judges themselves who all appear to have totally different interpretations of the law, I have seen grown men break down when they find out they are getting 1 judge over another and that was just the lawyers.

newthought -> profester , 25 Mar 2014 20:03
Judicial lies are far from confined to racism-motivated instances. The whole system of "justice" is the biggest scam on the planet. That's why they don't allow recording of your own hearing.
newthought -> HybridMoments , 25 Mar 2014 19:56
The judiciary regularly get away with complete and utter cheap lies in their judgments. They are unaccountable as it only takes two more judges to refuse permission to challenge the lies and that's the end of the matter. In one of my cases I asked to audio-record (my own case). Both the judge and government barrister insisted I would not be alllowed to record. The reason for this refusal of recording is so that there is no record of the filthy lies judges deploy in the smaller civil court rooms where there are no reporters. One important subset of lies is about the limitation act. Supposedly fact means possibility, knowledge means suspicion, and was means might be - well that's what high court judges say these words mean, and the fact that loads of dictionaries say otherwise is of no power against them.
We need every litigant to have the right to record their own cases.
Ministryoftruth -> HybridMoments , 25 Mar 2014 19:51
Americans have elected judges. This has not stopped Judicial malfeasance there, it can actually create new forms of it.
Ursultana , 25 Mar 2014 18:34
And perhaps that needs review. After all, they are all members of same brotherhood or society, and all operate from under Londons Bar .So is no independence at all.
Violator -> HybridMoments , 25 Mar 2014 17:21

The move to a system of locally elected (ie, accountable) judges is long overdue.

Good grief! What an appalling idea.

JohntheLith -> Hywelliau , 25 Mar 2014 17:20
Ok, but... The Press "often" have more influence on Society than the Judiciary. Ergo, who needs to watched more?
arvindkc77 , 25 Mar 2014 16:45
My recent experience of JCIO is not entirely sanguine. I represented myself in a child custody case in Birmingham. The Cafcass favored my child to stay with me. The Circuit Judge presiding over the case, lied in his judgment three times in order to favor my ex. When I took the matter to the appeal in High Court, the Law Lord presiding practically said that because the Circuit Judge is experienced, he is entitled to lie. I was quite gobsmacked. JCIO were completely unmoved by my protestations. It is apparent that truth is diminished if you are a layman fighting the excesses of establishment.
whitecross , 25 Mar 2014 14:44
Corruption is the word and has been for some time.
Vizier , 25 Mar 2014 13:56
I have to say I think that most magistrates are firmly in the pockets of the police. So really most of them are corrupt.
Vizier -> theacademic , 25 Mar 2014 13:53
"When normal people face such baseless allegations, the case is struck out, or a responsible prosecutor stops it"

Or rather the ordinary person is found guilty and spends years in prison.

JaniceP , 25 Mar 2014 13:15
The internet is awash with people who have been unfairly treated by the Justice system. Court observers have commented on the familiarity between Judges and business men in employment tribunal cases, and the employee losing, and also losing an appeal. Has anybody ever tried to get an employment judge's notes from the case? Impossible. Ultimately when the judge says the notes are not to be released under any circumstances (why not if they have nothing to hide) and the Trbunal President when asked under a data protection request, tells you that the data controller, is, yes the original judge who won't release them under any circumstances, is it any wonder that people have no faith in the British Justice system, or should we rename it Old Boys Network system?
gogogob , 25 Mar 2014 12:54
It is reassuring to learn that judges get fair hearing. At least somebody does!
Gordon Bell , 25 Mar 2014 12:21
The corrupt protecting the corrupt!
I refer to the Porton Down cover-up that involved the killing of 39 Porton Down veterans who died as a result of being injected with a bacteria derived from salmonella - abortus equi - in an altered state. (source FOI) Upper Tribunal Judge Edward Jacobs (unlike Judge Brian Kennedy QC) who ordered details of the deaths to be made public) did purposely support the MoD by allowing them to keep secret ALL facts related to the killings. Judge Edward Jacobs also ignored a 3.72 million pounds fraudulent payment (stolen from public funds) awarded to Martyn Day Senior Partner with the London law firm Leigh Day & Co. It was Martyn Day who supposedly represented 39 family members of deceased veterans. In effect Jacobs by his very silence and by allowing crimes of this nature to be kept under wraps did himself become party to the crime.
ripteam , 25 Mar 2014 12:16
Was the judge who handed down six months to a student for stealing a water bottle ever investigated for serious misconduct?

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/poll/2011/aug/12/riots-water-theft-punishment

theacademic -> Robthablob , 25 Mar 2014 11:56
yes, though that was a later comment.
Robthablob -> theacademic , 25 Mar 2014 11:44
"The comments in this section so far could hardly be more wrong" I don't know, I though Patrick Logicman was spot on with his "But then you couldn't tell them from janitors" remark above.
Hywelliau -> JohntheLith , 25 Mar 2014 11:30
Yes but in the midst of the usual press anarchy, a few wise words from Joshua are surely not out of order?

The predilection of cheap jack town magistrates describing themselves as Judges, takes some beating. The powers of local authorities to press their own non-criminal "charges" can be rather unpleasant, and quite happy to present fictitious evidence in abundance, backed up by such "judges".

ID7776906 -> profester , 25 Mar 2014 11:28
If you review most Laws in Britain,USA Canada,etc they were enacted worded and favored the very rich and property owners when passed. Judge`s hands are really tied to the laws of the land and it is the rich bias and regulations that keep the poor in their place that Judges are restricted by when looking to dispense justice [as far as the law allows].

Same applies to the Police they didn`t make the laws.The Justice system and the Police have been deliberately kept apart from society so they identify more with conservatism and the status quo and even identify with it as elitists.

theacademic -> Ozymandius , 25 Mar 2014 11:27
The difference is that the father needs to be suspended in case the allegations prove to be true, because something important is alleged. Here the allegations against the judges seem to be about nothing - nothing obviously wrong has happened even if the facts are true.
DigitalAsian , 25 Mar 2014 11:19
In my experience of the judiciary in criminal trials is that they do have a tendency to protect the Police and even on the odd occasion pervert the course of justice to protect them. You cannot assume that any judge will be impartial in any case or inquiry especially if police corruption is being investigated or has been alleged. In my view you trust a judge to be independent and impartial at your own risk.
Ozymandius , 25 Mar 2014 10:56
Suspending a judge from duty pending investigation is rather like a judge confining a separated father to a supervised contact centre while his ex's phony allegations are looked into. All rather unnecessary but what do you do?
profester , 25 Mar 2014 10:45
My experience of the judiciary convinces me that it functions principally to protect the establishment. This is perhaps seen most blatantly in the employment tribunal, where judges make virtually unchallengeable findings of "fact" that contradict incontrovertible evidence that they simply ignore in order to exculpate defendants in race and religous discrimination cases. Sometimes they collude with defendants to pervert the course of justice by accepting fabricated documents as genuine, despite the existence of the genuine documents showing their inauthenticity (which they do not mention as they are irreconcilable with the documents that they wish to represent as genuine). Sometimes, they make important findings based on key documents that they have never seen, which the claimant dispute ever existed and the defendants claim they have lost. At other times, the judges just simply lie about the evidence if that is required to discredit the complainant. Such phenomena are well-documented (e.g., http://www.irr.org.uk/news/culture-of-disbelief-why-race-discrimination-claims-fail-in-the-employment-tribunal/). However, maybe because sex, drugs and death are not involved - and it only affects Blacks, after all - no-one seems at all interested, no programmes get made about this or articles get written in the mainstream media even when prominent journalists have the evidence of its occurrence.
PatrickLogicman , 25 Mar 2014 10:21
It is a tradition in this country that, freedom of speech notwithstanding, judges do not respond to attacks on them in the media. This means that we often hear the attack, but not the defence. Let me illustrate this with an example from history which shows that judges can be right, even when non-lawyers think they are obviously wrong.

If the media and some members of Parliament had got their own way, Mr. Justice Grantham would have been sacked after instructing a jury in strong terms that a prison warder charged with manslaughter, against whom the evidence of guilt was overwhelming, was nevertheless not guilty. It transpired about two years later that the single prosecution witness had lied: the "victim" was dead before the warder entered the room. I understand that the warder was named Mitchell and, despite being acquitted, did not get his job back.

Had Mr. Justice Grantham been sacked he could not have investigated the Adolph Beck case, the true facts might never have come out and we might still not have a criminal appeals process.

"The credit for resolving this miscarriage of justice lay firstly with the 1904 trial judge, Mr Justice Grantham, who had lingering doubts about Beck's guilt and had delayed concluding the case despite apparently strong prosecution evidence and procedures. It was in this period of delay, before being sentenced, that the crucial arrest of the real offender took place."
Source - historybytheyard.co.uk

PatrickLogicman -> photonal , 25 Mar 2014 09:42
"The whole judicial system needs an overall."

Each? But then you couldn't tell a judge from a janitor. They tried that in China. It didn't work. Call me old-fashioned, but I rather like the wigs and gowns.

;-)

theacademic , 25 Mar 2014 09:38
The comments in this section so far could hardly be more wrong. Perhaps self-regulation does not work for most professions, but in the case of judges it seems to "over-work" and the desire to ensure that judges are seen as people of integrity seems to take over at times. On the basis of JR's article, there seems very clearly to be no substance in the allegations against either Fulford or Thornton. When normal people face such baseless allegations, the case is struck out, or a responsible prosecutor stops it. So the impression here is that the regulator is afraid to be thought to sweeping things under the carpet and so the process continues - and absurdity is piled onto absurdity when the judges are even suspended from work in the meantime.

Turenne and Shetreet's book, referred to in the text, notes instances when judges not only face complaints but actually receive criticism for doing things which others can do and might even be expected to do. For example, it seems that judges should plead guilty to minor traffic offences if they are guilty, and should not seek technical ways that might exist to defeat the charges (ie ways that are not based on the merits of the case). This may be a good idea, of course, but it further ridicules any notion that the regulator is soft.

worksforcommunityorg , 25 Mar 2014 09:23
I have for many decades thought that most judges are daft old fools, out of touch with reality. My opinion has been confirmed by many examples.

I'm not up enough with the law to be able to suggest a better alternative, those who know what they are talking about should do that. However, I was pleased to see the web site linked to in the article , which seems to be a small step in the right direction.

photonal , 25 Mar 2014 09:11
The whole judicial system needs an overall.

Justice and access to it should be a cornerstone of our society - except that in its current form, it is reduced to a cleverly disguised commodity - whereby the 'truth' / 'justice' can be purchased by paying for expensive lawyers.

anusplatt , 25 Mar 2014 08:41
This age old practice of letting "professionals" regulate themselves is thankfully in decline but not quickly enough. They didn't regulate themselves, they protected each other like brothers in crime. Lawyers, police, bankers, religious institutions, doctors banded together to give themselves maximum benefit. And the pompous indignation when Joe Public dared to question them. I have always felt that these groups pulled the wool over our eyes. I laugh at the term "professional" often they are far from it.
JohntheLith , 25 Mar 2014 08:01

Who is judging the judges?
We know a lot more about judicial complaints than we used to but it remains the case that judges themselves judge judges

I find it amusing that a journalist in a National Newspaper is writing an article about a group of self interested people being able to judge themselves.

Who handles complaints about newspapers? I'll give you a clue with a quote fro the Press Complaints Commission's website:

The Press Complaints Commission is currently in a phase of transition; and it will soon be replaced by a new structure of independent self-regulation for the newspaper and magazine industries.

Self-regulation. Sounds a bit like what the judges do.

I smell hypocrisy.

sonofblake , 25 Mar 2014 07:57
One of the key elements of the English judiciary is that it is NOT elected. The executive and legislature are the elected bits and thus the judiciary must defer to them in terms of law-making and keep to their own province of interpreting the law - true it can be a fuzzy line at times but it is a hugely important part of the functioning of the rule of law. Elected judges would be a disaster for many reasons.
HybridMoments , 25 Mar 2014 07:30
What the UK judiciary gets away with is utterly horrifying. That they palm it off as 'isolated cases' is bad enough, but hiding behind the pretence that people 'don't know the facts' is even worse.

The move to a system of locally elected (ie, accountable) judges is long overdue.

[Mar 18, 2018] Meet Hillary Clinton s Other, More Powerful And Shadowy Oppo Research Firm

Notable quotes:
"... Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , 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. ..."
"... Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking " ..."
"... When the drunken junior Trump foreign policy adviser George Papodopoulous boasted in a London bar in May 2016 about Russian intelligence operatives peddling hacked emails that were damaging to Clinton, his most interested listener, according to The New York Times , was Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the U.K. ..."
"... The News Corp. Australian Network quoted an unnamed British diplomatic source explaining that Hakluyt "operates in the shadows, it's not exactly open and transparent and so any serving, and that's the difference, serving diplomat with access to sensitive information and insight associating with the group raises a worry in Whitehall." Whitehall is the British government's equivalent to the White House. ..."
"... Downer's continued involvement with Hakluyt locates the shadowy operation in the world of the Clintons. As previously reported by LifeZette, it was Downer in 2006 who as Australian foreign minister signed a memorandum of understanding with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation. ..."
"... Downer is also connected to another firm of great importance in the international intelligence world. That would be China's telecommunications giant Huawei, on whose Australian board he served for several years, beginning in 2011. U.S. intelligence experts have long described Huawei as a tool of Chinese espionage in America. ..."
"... The link between Clinton and Hakluyt is ironic considering the former secretary of state's strong commitment to liberal Democratic environmental causes. Hakluyt's record includes being caught planting spies in Greenpeace and other environmental groups on behalf of energy giants British Petroleum (BP) and Shell. ..."
Mar 18, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

Fusion GPS has gotten all the headlines. But there was a second, even more powerful and mysterious opposition research and intelligence firm lurking about with significant political and financial links to former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and her 2016 campaign for president against Donald Trump.

Meet London-based Hakluyt & Co. , 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.

Whereas Fusion GPS was created by three former Wall Street Journal reporters with links to the U.S. intelligence community, Hakluyt -- with offices in London, New York, Singapore, Tokyo and Sydney -- was founded by an enterprising trio of former British intelligence operatives with deep connections throughout the world's official and corporate corridors of power and influence.

Hakluyt is described by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism's Henry Williams as " one of the more secretive firms within the corporate investigations world " and as "a retirement home for ex-MI6 [British foreign intelligence] officers, but it now also recruits from the worlds of management consultancy and banking "

The firm's "style appears to be much more in the mold of the Christopher Steele dossier. Clients pay for pages of well-sourced prose from Hakluyt's contacts across the globe," Williams wrote.

Hakluyt isn't familiar to the American public. But what has become well-known in recent days is the role played by one of the London firm's most visible figures in drawing the FBI into the world of Trump-Russia collusion allegations, a world largely created by Steele in the infamous dossier bearing his name.

When the drunken junior Trump foreign policy adviser George Papodopoulous boasted in a London bar in May 2016 about Russian intelligence operatives peddling hacked emails that were damaging to Clinton, his most interested listener, according to The New York Times , was Alexander Downer, Australian high commissioner to the U.K.

It was Downer who told the FBI of Papodopoulos' comments, which became one of the "driving factors that led the FBI to open an investigation in July 2016 into Russia's attempts to disrupt the election and whether any of President Trump's associates conspired," The Times reported.

Downer, a long-time Aussie chum of Bill and Hillary Clinton, had been on Hakluyt's advisory board since 2008. Officially, he had to resign his Hakluyt role in 2014, but his informal connections continued uninterrupted, the News Corp. Australian Network reported in a January 2016 exclusive:

But it can be revealed Mr. Downer has still been attending client conferences and gatherings of the group, including a client cocktail soirée at the Orangery at Kensington Palace a few months ago.

His attendance at that event is understood to have come days after he also attended a two-day country retreat at the invitation of the group, which has been involved in a number of corporate spy scandals in recent times.

The News Corp. Australian Network quoted an unnamed British diplomatic source explaining that Hakluyt "operates in the shadows, it's not exactly open and transparent and so any serving, and that's the difference, serving diplomat with access to sensitive information and insight associating with the group raises a worry in Whitehall." Whitehall is the British government's equivalent to the White House.

Downer's continued involvement with Hakluyt locates the shadowy operation in the world of the Clintons. As previously reported by LifeZette, it was Downer in 2006 who as Australian foreign minister signed a memorandum of understanding with Bill Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.

The memorandum committed $25 million from the Australian government to the foundation for HIV/AIDs programs in China, Papua New Guinea, and Vietnam. A subsequent audit was unable to account for how those funds were spent.

Earlier this year, the FBI asked retired Australian police detective Michael Smith to provide information he uncovered concerning the 2006 deal -- suggesting the bureau's investigation of the Clinton Foundation is focused on the controversial charity's domestic and international activities.

Downer is also connected to another firm of great importance in the international intelligence world. That would be China's telecommunications giant Huawei, on whose Australian board he served for several years, beginning in 2011. U.S. intelligence experts have long described Huawei as a tool of Chinese espionage in America.

But 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.

Jonathan Selib of Brooklyn, New York, listed himself as a "consultant" and his employer as Hakluyt when he made four contributions totaling $3,200 to Hillary for America and one contribution worth $2,350 to the Hillary Victory Fund during the Democratic presidential primary. Selib also contributed to the congressional campaigns of Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.) and John Lewis of Montana. Selib was formerly chief of staff for Sen. Max Baucus (D-Mont.).

Another Hakluyt executive, Holly Evans, contributed $500 to Hillary for America the day after Selib's June 27, 2016, donations to the same Clinton campaign entity. Evans listed Rye, New York, as home and described herself as a Hakluyt "executive." Her résumé includes stints advising Vice President Dick Cheney and working on the National Security Council during the second Bush administration.

The link between Clinton and Hakluyt is ironic considering the former secretary of state's strong commitment to liberal Democratic environmental causes.

A third Hakluyt executive, Andrew Exum of Washington, D.C., made multiple contributions to several Democratic congressional candidates, including Elisa Slotkin in Michigan and Daniel Helmer of Virginia. Exum served as a U.S. Army infantry officer and as former deputy assistant secretary of defense under then-President Barack Obama. He has also been a contributing editor of Atlantic magazine.

The link between Clinton and Hakluyt is ironic considering the former secretary of state's strong commitment to liberal Democratic environmental causes. Hakluyt's record includes being caught planting spies in Greenpeace and other environmental groups on behalf of energy giants British Petroleum (BP) and Shell.

[Mar 17, 2018] Was any poisonous gas present in the Skripal bench area. Looks highly unlikely

Yes, it certainly looks like a provocation, the "false flag" operation. The Brits and the Banks needed the US and the EU to join the fight.
Notable quotes:
"... The most plausible goal of the whole "Operation Skripal" was poisoning UK-Russia relations and hopefully bringing the US and EU to impose new round of sanctions on Russia. In this sense it reminds Litvinenko case (which brought huge propaganda benefits to the UK and the hysteria lasted several months, if memory does not fail me). ..."
"... One thing I can't understand in "Operation Skripal" is how such an assassination (if we assume that this is an assassination) was accomplished. ..."
"... The gas (if it really exists, which is yet another question) supposedly is really deadly. If this was not gas but some substance infused with this agent (which would be extremely strange and risky method), you need to get it into the drinks, which means 100% chances of your detection. ..."
"... Moreover in case of the gas the difficulties look insurmountable -- to get it to the victim you need to mix components and shortly after spray it from a short distance, hoping the you mixed them correctly. The place where Skripals were found unconscious is a really bad place for such an exercise as there probably several cameras which record the events on the bench. ..."
"... So IMHO it looks like assassination without an assassin ..."
"... suggested traces of the opiate fentanyl -- a synthetic toxin many times stronger than heroin -- had been detected at the scene. ..."
Mar 15, 2018 | www.unz.com

likbez , March 16, 2018 at 3:48 am GMT

@Kiza

Kiza,

Why of course the people don't want war. Why should some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece? Naturally the common people don't want war: neither in Russia, nor in England, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But after all it is the leaders of a country who determine the policy and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy or fascist dictorship, or a parliament or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked (by a Russian sounding chemical weapon Novichok), and denounce the peace makers for lack of patriotism (https://www.craigmurray.org.uk - Craig Murray has been most viciously attacked for not accepting the official story without any evidence) and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.

Hermann Göring

That's a perfectly applicable variation of the famous quote.

The most plausible goal of the whole "Operation Skripal" was poisoning UK-Russia relations and hopefully bringing the US and EU to impose new round of sanctions on Russia. In this sense it reminds Litvinenko case (which brought huge propaganda benefits to the UK and the hysteria lasted several months, if memory does not fail me).

BTW exiled Russian oligarchs like Khodorkovski ( https://www.voltairenet.org/article168007.html ) also could easily stage such a false flag operation using their interconnections with both Russia and Israel.

One thing I can't understand in "Operation Skripal" is how such an assassination (if we assume that this is an assassination) was accomplished.

The gas (if it really exists, which is yet another question) supposedly is really deadly. If this was not gas but some substance infused with this agent (which would be extremely strange and risky method), you need to get it into the drinks, which means 100% chances of your detection.

Moreover in case of the gas the difficulties look insurmountable -- to get it to the victim you need to mix components and shortly after spray it from a short distance, hoping the you mixed them correctly. The place where Skripals were found unconscious is a really bad place for such an exercise as there probably several cameras which record the events on the bench.

Unless it was the daughter who did this (in this case authorities have definitely all the necessary evidence of the crime committed) chances of an attacker to survive such an attack are slim, and changes not being recorded on one or more camera are virtually non existent.

If there was a human assassin, he/she risks to be immediately dead or severely injured as even in minimal concentrations such a gas reliably kills a person within two minutes or so. Antidote might help to survive, but how effective it is depends on the dose you can get.

If some robotic disperser was used, then it will be found as unlike in case of an explosive device the activation does no destroy it.

Also unclear why target the daughter, unless we are dealing with some botched amateur false flag operation in best traditions of ISIS Syria false flag operations.

Moreover, Skripals spent around an hour on a bench in a comatose state and were helped by a doctor who was not affected in any way. See timeline at

http://www.businessinsider.com/who-is-sergei-skripal-timeline-2018-3#march-3-240-pm-skripals-33-year-old-daughter-yulia-arrives-in-the-uk-via-london-heathrow-airport-relatives-said-she-was-visiting-from-moscow-17

But later a policeman was affected. Very strange.

So IMHO it looks like assassination without an assassin . There are some absurd statements that the poison was spiked in their drinks either in the pub or at the restaurant:

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5742909/sergei-skripal-spy-russian-assassin-poison-hit-pub/

One possible scenario is that Skripal and his daughter were narcoaddicts and did it to themselves The initial reports (see, for example, https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/5733372/ex-russian-spy-sergei-skripal-poisoned-salisbury-feared-life-cops/ ) suggested traces of the opiate fentanyl -- a synthetic toxin many times stronger than heroin -- had been detected at the scene.

Later their collapse was used to stage a false flag operation, when in fact there was no any gas involved, and at this point, a grandiose propaganda show with the decontamination of the area started.

[Mar 15, 2018] The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation. Which means that from now on the investigation is highly politicized and tainted in a sense that it will be conducted by people who proved the existence of Iraq WMD in the past: ..."
"... This is one step further from the "self-indictment as a formal proof" used in Show Trials. Now it looks like "suspicion is the formal proof." ..."
"... Both cyberspace and poisoning with exotic chemical agents proved to be a perfect media for false flag operations designed to poison relations between nations and fuel war-style demonization. ..."
Mar 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

likbez 14 March 2018 at 11:40 PM

The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation. Which means that from now on the investigation is highly politicized and tainted in a sense that it will be conducted by people who proved the existence of Iraq WMD in the past:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-43402506

Moscow refused to meet Mrs May's midnight deadline to co-operate in the case, prompting Mrs May to announce a series of measures intended to send a "clear message" to Russia.

These include:

  • Expelling 23 diplomats
  • Increasing checks on private flights, customs and freight
  • Freezing Russian state assets where there is evidence they may be used to threaten the life or property of UK nationals or residents
  • Ministers and the Royal Family boycotting the Fifa World Cup in Russia later this year
  • Suspending all planned high-level bilateral contacts between the UK and Russia
  • Plans to consider new laws to increase defences against "hostile state activity"

Mrs May told MPs that Russia had provided "no explanation" as to how the nerve agent came to be used in the UK, describing Moscow's response as one of "sarcasm, contempt and defiance".

The use of a Russian-made nerve agent on UK soil amounted to the "unlawful use of force", she said.

So it looks more and more like a well planned multi-step propaganda operation, not an impromptu action on the part of GB. Kind of replica of Russian election influence witch hunt in the USA with the replacement of cyberspace and elections with chemical agents and poisoning.

So inconsistencies that were pointed in this thread (such as the mere fact that three people exposed are still alive) do not matter anymore.

The verdict now is in.

This is one step further from the "self-indictment as a formal proof" used in Show Trials. Now it looks like "suspicion is the formal proof."

Both cyberspace and poisoning with exotic chemical agents proved to be a perfect media for false flag operations designed to poison relations between nations and fuel war-style demonization.

Sad...

[Mar 11, 2018] Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by government when it surrendered its hard drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction in the wake of the Snowden revelations

Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC...
Notable quotes:
"... Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank God for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional US Empire. ..."
"... But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by coming to the homeland. ..."
"... The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire" military buildup in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapons and Old Bush promised Nato wouldn't expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / military /congressional industrial complex. ..."
Mar 11, 2018 | off-guardian.org

Thomas Prentice says March 9, 2018

Cleary the Guardian was swallowed up by England's fascist regime controlled by the City of London when it surrendered its hard drives to the regime for examination and/or destruction in the wake of the Snowden revelations.

The Guardian ownerships also sold their souls -- although the Guardian had already been in decline before they nabbed Glenn Greenwald. When he left, the Guardian lost ALL presumptive credibility.

Now The Guardian is just an organ of regime propaganda like the BBC (thank God for OffGuardian) and here is the island nation AGAIN asserting its dominance over the whole world, but this time on behalf of his brawnier brother, the EUSE, aka Exceptional US Empire.

One wonders how much longer the Russians will put up with this now that it is CLEAR that -- for the first time ever -- the Russians have complete military and nuclear superiority over "The West."

I'll bet Putin won't invade Ukraine, Germany, France, Brussels and England from the North and from the sea in the wintertime.

The Big Problem Is That Americans are afraid -- frightened -- but they are NOT afraid or frightened of a particular thing -- it is a generic fright. So they are no longer afraid of nuclear war. Trotsky said America was the strongest nation but also the most terrified' and nothing has changed except military and nuclear superiority along with economic clout has shifted to Russia and China. Were Americans afraid of nuclear war -- or say, of an invasion from Saskatchewan or Tamaulipas -- there might be hope.

But somewhere along the time beginning with Clinton, Americans didn't worry their pretty little heads about nuclear war or American wars on everybody anywhere any longer so long as it didn't disturb their creature comforts and shopping and lattes by coming to the homeland.

The Nuclear Freeze movement was, after all, a direct response to Reagan's "evil empire" military buildup in the 1980s and then voila he and Gorbachev negotiated away a whole class of nuclear weapons and Old Bush promised Nato wouldn't expand. Hope. Then that sneaky little bastard Clinton started expanding Nato on behalf of the Pentagon / CKIA / NSA / military /congressional industrial complex.

None of this suggests that it will end pretty.

[Mar 10, 2018] Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko s death.

Highly recommended!
There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time.
It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'

In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background, which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.'

There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.

This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.

And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area.

Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.

The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.

In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry – the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.

Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier, which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.

(See http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/20/what-really-happened-robert-levinson-cia-iran-454803.html .)

Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio 4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets, backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.

The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available – evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.

Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.

What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest a sale had been completed.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.

All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder. For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.

(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews both with Mogilevich and Levinson at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/panorama/transcripts/transcript_06_12_99.txt )

In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.

Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions north of the Litani.

These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.

What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.

Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking 'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.

Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.

So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.

All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate Russia in supplying materials.

There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)

It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional, Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.

It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here, a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.

Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.

In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.

Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain, but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)

That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:

'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear limited life components and you can read for weeks).'

(For this and other articles by Kaszeta, as also his bio, see http://strongpointsecurity.co.uk ')

What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility, in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of ones which lasted longer.

For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.

What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.

In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'

According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?

As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.

In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties, and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another day.

A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.

Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.

Posted at 03:42 PM in As The Borg Turns , Habakkuk , Russia , Russiagate | Permalink


james , 03 February 2018 at 04:33 PM

thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..

it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..

JohnB , 03 February 2018 at 05:17 PM
David,

Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.

turcopolier , 03 February 2018 at 06:02 PM
james

It is the closest of all international intelligence relationships. It started in WW2. Before that the Brits were though of as a potential enemy. pl

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 03 February 2018 at 06:10 PM
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
catherine , 03 February 2018 at 06:22 PM
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.

Re: Levinson

# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.

# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson went to Jablonski with it.

# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson? The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing came of it.

I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.

Ishmael Zechariah , 03 February 2018 at 06:54 PM
DH,

As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.

I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".

Be safe.

Ishmael Zechariah

Rd , 03 February 2018 at 07:31 PM
Babak Makkinejad said in reply to turcopolier...

The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
..and US is the one who has been paying for it since 1979!!!

kooshy said in reply to Ishmael Zechariah... , 03 February 2018 at 08:21 PM
IZ
My guess is, that he is unpredictable, instantaneous and therefore can't be consistent and reliable, useful idiot needs to be predictable.
kooshy , 03 February 2018 at 08:43 PM
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. "

David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making. Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

different clue , 03 February 2018 at 08:49 PM
Ishmael Zechariah,

( reply to comment 6),

I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.

It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate.

And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.

So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.

Jack , 03 February 2018 at 08:54 PM
David,

Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.

In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.

Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century endorsed her.

Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in. Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling the Borg pundits.

SmoothieX12 -> kooshy... , 03 February 2018 at 09:51 PM
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.

Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:10 PM
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.
kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:24 PM
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier on atlantic side.
catherine said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:21 AM
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''

The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.

'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'

In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]

'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'

State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union

aleksandar , 04 February 2018 at 04:41 AM
David,

About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS.

Fred said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 08:40 AM
Babak,

"they got US to bail them out during WWII" And how would things have worked out had we not done so?

Fred , 04 February 2018 at 08:46 AM
David,

"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time."

Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.

Anna said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 08:48 AM
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
turcopolier , 04 February 2018 at 08:54 AM
Anna

The powerful are often remarkably ignorant. pl

Babak Makkinejad -> Fred... , 04 February 2018 at 10:08 AM
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion, did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 11:53 AM
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Kooshy said in reply to catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting, even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such an escalation.
Phodges said in reply to turcopolier ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:23 PM
Sir

It seems we are being defeated by Cicero's enemy within. Zion is achieving what no one could hope to achieve by force of arms.

David Habakkuk -> catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 01:17 PM
catherine,

In response to comment 5.

I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain more pointers.

It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.

An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian attempts to get hold of him. An extract:

'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'

(See http://defiancethebook.com/legal/habeas/petition.htm .)

Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.

Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:

'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'

(See http://konanykhin.com/news/the-konanykhine-case.html .)

So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has changed.

For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:

'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [£1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign passports for its "very, very special clients".

'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".

(For a 'Guardian report, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/sep/23/julianborger ; for the actual testimony, see http://archives-financialservices.house.gov/banking/92299ger.pdf .)

Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter, Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:

'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'

(For the transcript presented in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ )

When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.

(For the first part of the exchanges of comments, the second apparently having become unavailable, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2008/07/litvinenko_killing_had_state_i.html )

She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator, David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.

Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.

What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary claim about Shvets:

'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.

'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.

'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'

Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling her as to the side for which he was working.

It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.

An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria' was actually credible.

This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking, and for similar action against Syria.

Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.

There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.

A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing. This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High') might be a start.

Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')

The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one feel as though one wanted to throw up.

Thomas , 04 February 2018 at 01:24 PM
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.}

No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.

SmoothieX12 -> Anna... , 04 February 2018 at 01:39 PM
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.

My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.

Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.

Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.

james said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 04 February 2018 at 03:01 PM
there seems to be no shortage of money for these blatant propaganda exercises..
Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 04:14 PM
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914. Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
begob , 04 February 2018 at 05:20 PM
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 06:20 PM
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.

The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.

spy killer , 04 February 2018 at 06:55 PM
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
English Outsider -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 07:23 AM
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google also allows searches with more than one term. This link -

https://twitter.com/pat_lang

- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories" on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.

If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.

"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.

The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations" (hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many of the contributors know it from inside.

In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible, but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.

jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 08:11 AM
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.

So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.

Babak Makkinejad -> jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 08:29 AM
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Sid Finster said in reply to Jack... , 05 February 2018 at 10:26 AM
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.

The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.

Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.

Sid Finster said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 05 February 2018 at 10:31 AM
Explain Marshall Miller's role in this, please. He is someone I know quite well. I also know one of the Chalupas.
begob said in reply to jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 10:56 AM
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat of the BEF.
turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 11:18 AM
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break - David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 11:19 AM
Yes, I am Iranian. All "Babak"s are Iranians - except some obscure ones that are Rus - Babakov.
Anna , 05 February 2018 at 02:07 PM
The hard, blinding truth: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Thomas said in reply to turcopolier ... , 05 February 2018 at 02:08 PM
Colonel,

This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.

Richardstevenhack , 05 February 2018 at 02:36 PM
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.

And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.

Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."

Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.

Seriously, read this! The whole thing!

Rampant abuse and possible contempt of Court: what you need to know about the GOP memo
http://theduran.com/rampant-abuse-contempt-court-analysis-gop-memorandum/

blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 03:25 PM
Sen Grassley releases memo heavily redacted by DOJ/FBI.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-05/grassley-graham-blast-fbi-censoring-memo-calling-criminal-probe-trump-dossier

"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "

I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI is lying.

What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that are based on classified documents.

turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 04:38 PM
FM

We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status. You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are, in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you. You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl

Kooshy said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 04:46 PM
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from Northeestern
blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 04:55 PM
...would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

Aye. Aye. Sir!

+1

That is why some of us believe the Patriot Act and FISA are both unpatriotic and unconstitutional. SCOTUS disagrees with the few of us.

Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 05:03 PM
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist. I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians - they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
English Outsider , 05 February 2018 at 06:31 PM
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.

David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because of that.

The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as "salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling around unsupervised?

The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but for the general public, that bit more untenable.

So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.

I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?

kooshy , 05 February 2018 at 07:49 PM
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type, they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 07:59 PM
EO

Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to pay him until he left UK service. pl

English Outsider , 06 February 2018 at 05:10 AM
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.

Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK side.

English Outsider -> Cortes... , 06 February 2018 at 05:53 AM
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about the "golden showers"? "

I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.

So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.

Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.

But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK get mixed up in it?

David Habakkuk -> Sid Finster... , 06 February 2018 at 06:19 AM
Sid Finster,

In response to comment 53.

When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.

A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella.

When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.

His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques, and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.

So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'

The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.

(This initial post by me, and later posts by me on that site, are at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/uid:1857/diary. Three posts David Loepp and I produced jointly in December 2012, which have a lot on Scaramella and Shvets, are on his page there, at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/de%20Gondi/diary .)

The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December 2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:

'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic- Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'

Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:

'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them [presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'

The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':

'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI. Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini. Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'

In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography – which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella which had been described in the wiretap request.

As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.

In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.

Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.

'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with him.'

From a fax dated 7 November 2005:

'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re: Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'

From a fax dated 5 December 2005:

'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'

In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be in a chaotic state.

However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus justifications.

Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.

(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)

And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence in the Inquiry.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.

Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.

The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')

Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 09:40 AM
Thank you David Habakkuk. Truly sordid and deplorable. WWIII to be initiated on basis of lies.
Jack , 06 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
David

You may already know this but Steele was a no show in a UK court for a deposition on the libel suit.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/05/christopher-steele-is-no-show-in-london-court-in-civil-case-over-dossier.amp.html

Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 01:18 PM
I know something of spectroscopy.

The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis itself or its instrumentation.

The paragraph that you have quoted:

"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."

And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics - which did not and could not exist in this situation.

LeaNder , 07 February 2018 at 09:16 AM
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there is to know?

I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.

Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.

By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.

According to Google search there are no other links then your articles here:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf

**********

JAN RICHARD BÆRUG
The Collapsing Wall. Hybrid Journalism.
A Comparative Study of Newspapers and
Magazines in Eight Countries in Europe

Available online. Haven't read it yet, but journalism as hidden public relations transfer belt would be one of my minor obsessions. ...

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 07 February 2018 at 11:23 AM
I wonder too; their command of the English idiom is very au currant - noticed "opt in/opt out" reference? Too American.

They clearly are not native speakers of German.

LeaNder said in reply to kooshy... , 07 February 2018 at 12:30 PM
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_Island#Economy

Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.

Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those?

The German link is different. How about the Iranian?

or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?

LeaNder said in reply to LeaNder... , 07 February 2018 at 01:14 PM
correcting myself #94:

another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s

I see Sergei seems to share my interest in the literary genre:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Ivanov#Personal

[Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this. ..."
"... Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky. ..."
"... it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep.. ..."
"... I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence". ..."
"... It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate. ..."
"... And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that. ..."
"... Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ..."
"... They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040 ..."
"... In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. ..."
"... State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union ..."
"... About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS ..."
"... No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming. ..."
"... Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons. ..."
"... Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing. ..."
"... Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program. ..."
"... IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war. ..."
"... The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. ..."
"... A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella. ..."
"... Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear. ..."
Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

Steele, Shvets, Levinson, Litvinenko and the 'Billion Dollar Don.'

In the light of the suggestion in the Nunes memo that Steele was 'a longtime FBI source' it seems worth sketching out some background, which may also make it easier to see some possible reasons why he 'was desperate that Donald Trump not get elected and was passionate about him not being president.'

There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this.

This agenda has involved hopes for 'régime change' in Russia, whether as the result of an oligarchic coup, a popular revolt, or some combination of both. Also central have been hopes for a further 'rollback' of Russia influence in the post-Soviet space, both in areas now independent, such as Ukraine, and also ones still part of the Russian Federation, notably Chechnya.

And, crucially, it involved exploiting the retreat of Russian power from the Middle East for 'régime change' projects which it was hoped would provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area.

Important support for these strategies was provided by the 'StratCom' network centred around the late Boris Berezovsky, which clearly collaborated closely with MI6. As was apparent from the witness list at Sir Robert Owen's Inquiry into the death of Alexander Litvinenko, which produced a report based essentially on a recycling of claims made by the network's members, key players were on your side of the Atlantic – notably Alex Goldfarb, Yuri Shvets, and Yuri Felshtinsky.

The question of what links these had, or did not have, with elements in U.S. intelligence agencies is thus a critical one.

In making some sense of it, the fact that one key figure we know to have been involved in this network was missing at the Inquiry – the former FBI agent Robert Levinson, who disappeared on the Iranian island of Kish in March 2007 – is important.

Unfortunately, I only recently came across a book on Levinson published in 2016 by the 'New York Times' journalist Barry Meier, which is now hopefully winging its way across the Atlantic. From the accounts of the book I have seen, such as one by Jeff Stein in 'Newsweek', it seems likely that its author did not look at any of the evidence presented at Owen's Inquiry.

(See http://www.newsweek.com/2016/05/20/what-really-happened-robert-levinson-cia-iran-454803.html .)

Had he done so, Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko's death. A Radio 4 programme on 16 December 2006, presented by the veteran BBC presenter Tom Mangold, had been wholly devoted to an account by Shvets, backed up by Levinson. Both of these were, like Litvinenko, supposed to be impartial 'due diligence' operatives.

The notion that any of them might have connections with Western intelligence agencies was not considered. The – publicly available – evidence of the involvement of Shvets, whose surname means 'cobbler' or 'shoemaker' in Ukrainian, in the processing of the tapes of conversations involving the former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma supposedly recorded by Major Melnychenko, which had played a crucial role in the 2004-5 'Orange Revolution' was not mentioned.

Still less was it mentioned that claims that the – very dangerous – late Soviet Kolchuga system, which made it possible the kind of identification of incoming aircraft which radar had traditionally done, without sending out signals which made the destruction of the facilities doing it possible, had been sold by Kuchma to Iraq had proven spurious.

What Shvets had done had been to take – genuine – audio in which Kuchma had discussed a possible sale, and edit it to suggest a sale had been completed.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

As a former television current affairs producer, I can talk to you of the marvels which London audio editors can produce, very happily. Unfortunately, the days when not all BBC and 'Guardian' journalists were corrupt stenographers for corrupt and incompetent spooks, as Mangold and his like have been for Steele and Levinson, are long gone.

All this has become particularly relevant now, given that Simpson has placed the notorious Jewish Ukrainian mobster Semyon Mogilevich and the 'Solntsevskaya Bratva' mafia group centre stage in his accounts not simply of Trump and Manafort, but also of William Browder. For most of the 'Nineties, Levinson had been a, if not the, lead FBI investigator on Mogilevich.

(On this, see the 1999 BBC 'Panorama' programme 'The Billion Dollar Don', also presented by Tom Mangold, which has extensive interviews both with Mogilevich and Levinson at

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/panorama/transcripts/transcript_06_12_99.txt )

In the months leading up to Levinson's disappearance, a key priority for the advocates of the strategy I have described was to prevent it being totally derailed by the patently catastrophic outcome of the Iraqi adventure.

Compounding the problem was the fact that this had created the 'Shia Crescent', which in turn exacerbated the potential 'existential threat' to Israel posed by the steadily increasing range, accuracy and numbers of missiles available to Hizbullah in hardened positions north of the Litani.

These, obviously, provided both a 'deterrent' for that organisation and Iran, and also a radical threat to the whole notion that somehow Israel could ever be a 'safe haven' for Jews, against the supposedly ineradicable disposition of the 'goyim' sooner or later to, as it were, revert to type. The dreadful thought that Israel might not be necessary had to be resisted at all costs.

What followed from the disaster unleashed by the – Anglo-American – 'own goal' in toppling Saddam was, ironically, a need on the part of key players to 'double down.' Above all, it was necessary for many of those involved to counter suggestions from the Russian side that going around smashing up 'régimes' that one might not like sometimes blew up in one's face.

Even more threatening were suggestions from the Russian side that it was foolish to think one could use jihadists without risking 'blowback', and that there might be an overwhelming common interest in combating Islamic extremism.

Another priority was to counter the pushback in the American 'intelligence community' and military, which was to produce the drastic downgrading of the threat posed by the Iranian nuclear programme in the November 2007 NIE and then the resignation of Admiral William Fallon as head of 'Centcom' the following March.

So in 2005 Shvets came to London. He and his audio editors had another 'bite at the cherry' of the Melnychenko tapes, so that material that did in fact establish that both the SBU and FSB had collaborated with Mogilevich could be employed to make it seem that Putin had a close personal relationship with the mobster.

All kinds of supposedly respectable American and British academics, like Professors Karen Dawisha and Robert Service, have fallen for this, hook, line and sinker. It gives a new meaning to the term 'useful idiot.'

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

In a letter sent in December that year by Litvinenko to the 'Mitrokhin Commission', for which his Italian associate Mario Scaramella was a consultant, this was used in an attempt to demonstrate that Mogilevich, while acting as an agent for the FSB and under Putin's personal 'krysha', had attempted to supply a 'mini atomic bomb' – aka 'suitcase nuke' – to Al Qaeda. Shortly after the letter was sent Scaramella departed on a trip to Washington, where he appears to have got access to Aldrich Ames.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

At precisely this time, as Meier explains, Levinson was in the process of being recruited by a lady called Anne Jablonski who then worked as a CIA analyst. It appears that she was furious at the failure of the operational side at the Agency to produce evidence which would have established that Iran did indeed have an ongoing nuclear programme, and she may well have hoped would implicate Russia in supplying materials.

There are grounds to suspect that one of the things that Berezovsky and Shvets were doing was fabricating such 'evidence.' Whether Levinson was involved in such attempts, or genuinely looking for evidence he was convinced must be there, I cannot say. It appears that he fell for a rather elementary entrapment operation – which could well have been organised with the collaboration of Russian intelligence. (People do get fed up with being framed, particular if 'régime change' is the goal.)

It also seems likely that, quite possibly in a different but related entrapment operation, related to propaganda wars in which claims and counter claims about a polonium-beryllium 'initiator' as the crucial missing part which might make a 'suitcase nuke' functional, Litvinenko accidentally ingested fatal quantities of polonium. A good deal of evidence suggests that this may have been at Berezovsky's offices on the night before he was supposedly assassinated.

It was, obviously, important for Steele et al to ensure that nobody looked at the 'StratCom' wars about 'suitcase nukes.' Here, a figure who has played a key role in such wars in relation to Syria plays an interesting minor one in the story.

Some time following the destruction of the case for an immediate war by the November 2007 NIE, a chemical weapons specialist called Dan Kaszeta, who had worked in the White House for twelve years, moved to London.

In 2011, in addition to founding a consultancy called 'Strongpoint Security', he began a writing career with articles in 'CBRNe World.' Later, he would become the conduit through which the notorious 'hexamine hypothesis', supposedly clinching proof that the Syrian government was responsible for the sarin incidents at Khan Sheikhoun, Ghouta, Saraqeb, and Khan Al-Asal, was disseminated.

Having been forced by the threat of a case being opened against them under human rights law into resuming the inquest into Litvinenko's death, in August 2012 the British authorities appointed Sir Robert Owen to conduct it. (There are many honest judges in Britain, but obviously, if one sets out to find someone who will 'cover up' for the incompetence and corruption of people like Steele, as Lord Hutton did before him, you can find them.)

That same month, a piece appeared in 'CBRNe World' with the the strapline: 'Dan Kaszeta looks into the ultimate press story: Suitcase nukes', and the main title 'Carry on or checked bags?' Among the grounds he gives for playing down the scare:

'Some components rely on materials with shelf life. Tritium, for example, is used in many nuclear weapon designs and has a twelve year half-life. Polonium, used in neutron initiators in some earlier types of weapon designs, has a very short halflife. US documents state that every nuclear weapon has "limited life components" that require periodic replacement (do an internet search for nuclear limited life components and you can read for weeks).'

(For this and other articles by Kaszeta, as also his bio, see http://strongpointsecurity.co.uk ')

What Kaszeta has actually described are the reasons why polonium is a perfect 'StratCom' instrument. In terms of scientific plausibility, in fact there were no 'suitcase nukes', and in any case 'initiators' using polonium had been abandoned very early on, in favour of ones which lasted longer.

For 'StratCom' scenarios, as experience with the 'hexamine hypothesis' has proved, scientific plausibility can be irrelevant.

What polonium provides is a means of suggesting that Al Qaeda have in fact got hold of a nuclear device which they could easily smuggle into, say, Rome or New York, or indeed Moscow, but there is a crucial missing component which the FSB is trying to provide to them. By the same token, of course, that missing component could be depicted as one that Berezovsky and Litvinenko are conspiring to suppl to the Chechen insurgents.

In addition, the sole known source of global supply is the Avangard plant at Sarov in Russia, so the substance is naturally suited for 'StratCom' directed against that country, which its intelligence services would – rather naturally – try to make 'boomerang.'

According to Glenn Simpson, Christopher Steele is a 'boy scout.' This seems to me quite wrong – but, even if it were true, would you want to unleash a 'boy scout' into these kinds of intrigue?

As it is not clear why Kaszeta introduced his – accurate but irrelevant – point about polonium into an article which was concerned with scientific plausibility, one is left with an interesting question as to whether he cut his teeth on 'StratCom' attempting to ensure that nobody seriously interested in CBRN science followed an obvious lead.

In relation to the question of whether current FBI personnel had been involved in the kind of 'StratCom' exercises, I have been describing, a critical issue is the involvement of Shvets and Levinson in the Alexander Khonanykhine affair back in the 'Nineties, and the latter's use of claims about the Solntsevskaya to prevent the key figure's extradition. But that is a matter for another day.

A corollary of all this is that we cannot – yet at least – be absolutely confident that the account in the Nunes memo, according to which Steele was suspended and then dismissed as an FBI source for what the organisation is reported to define as 'the most serious of violations' – the unauthorised disclosure of a relationship with the organisation – is necessarily wholly accurate.

Who did and did not authorise which disclosures to the media, up to and including the extraordinary decision to have the full dossier, including claims about Aleksej Gubarev and the Alfa oligarchs, in flagrant disregard of the obvious risks of defamation suits, and who may be trying to pass the buck to others, remains I think less than totally clear.

Posted at 03:42 PM in As The Borg Turns , Habakkuk , Russia , Russiagate | Permalink


james , 03 February 2018 at 04:33 PM

thanks david... fascinating overview and conjecture..

it seems to me the usa and uk have been tied at the hip for a very long time... when it comes to foreign affairs policy and wars - the one will always vouch for the other without hesitation... it tells me the relationship is really deep..

JohnB , 03 February 2018 at 05:17 PM
David,

Thank you very. As ever you have illuminated a few more things for me. Kaszeta's involvement is interesting. He is someone I am in the middle of researching in relation to Higgins and Bellingcat.

turcopolier , 03 February 2018 at 06:02 PM
james

It is the closest of all international intelligence relationships. It started in WW2. Before that the Brits were though of as a potential enemy. pl

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 03 February 2018 at 06:10 PM
I think the English are using you, they are unsentimental empirical people that only do these that benefit the Number One.
The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
catherine , 03 February 2018 at 06:22 PM
That Newsweek piece about Levinson is very superficial to me.

Re: Levinson

# Who suggested to who 'first' the Iran caper...Anne Jablonski to Levinson or Levinson to Jablonski? It was reported earlier by Meier that in December 2005, when Levinson was pitching Jablonski on projects he might take on when his CIA contract was approved he sent her a lengthy memo about Dawud's potential as an informant.

# Ira Silverman, the Iran hating NBC guy, pitched a Iraq caper to Levinson with Dawud Salahuddin, as his Iran contact and Levinson went to Jablonski with it.

# And what was with Boris Birshstein, a Russian organized crime figure who had fled to Israel and Oleg Deripaska, the "aluminum czar" of Russia whose organized crime contacts have kept him from entering the United States jumping in to help find Levinson? The FBI allowed Deripaska in for two visits in 2009 in exchange for his alleged help in locating Levinson but obviously nothing came of it.

I think there were more little agents/agendas in this than Levinson and Jablonski and US CIA.

Ishmael Zechariah , 03 February 2018 at 06:54 PM
DH,

As usual a wonderful analysis. I admire your insight, integrity and courage. I wish you could write more on why the Borg is so much against Trump, even though they have Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference for them.

I and my friends consider it a given that most, if not all, anglo-zionist moves in the ME are to "provide a definitive solution to the – inherently intractable – security problems of a Jewish settler state in the area. " It is an open secret that the izzies are the reason why a few Russians, some Turks, lots of Kurds and countless Arabs are dying in the Syrian battlefields. Another open secret: the takfiris and kurds have been, and are, supported by the West. That the "masters of the universe™" have been conceiving and doubling down on such disastrous policies give lie to their much-vaunted "intelligence".

Be safe.

Ishmael Zechariah

Rd , 03 February 2018 at 07:31 PM
Babak Makkinejad said in reply to turcopolier...

The chief beneficiary of the Coup in Iran was England and not US.
..and US is the one who has been paying for it since 1979!!!

kooshy said in reply to Ishmael Zechariah... , 03 February 2018 at 08:21 PM
IZ
My guess is, that he is unpredictable, instantaneous and therefore can't be consistent and reliable, useful idiot needs to be predictable.
kooshy , 03 February 2018 at 08:43 PM
"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. "

David as usual fascinating work connecting the dots. One question that comes to my mind is about the above point you are making. Is it your understanding or believe that these IC individuals on both side of Atlantic, are pursuing/forcing their (on behalf of the Borg) foreign policy agenda outside of their respected seating governments? If not, why is it that incoming administration cannot stop them? So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

different clue , 03 February 2018 at 08:49 PM
Ishmael Zechariah,

( reply to comment 6),

I am not David Habakkuk, obviously. But I will venture a little opinion anyway. It is not enough that the Borgists get their policy preferences. If it were, then Kushner, Adelson and Co. running interference would be enough for them.

It is the very FACT of Trump even getting elected at ALL which outrages and terrifies them so much. They are used to seeing themselves as successful manipulators and engineers of every major event. They were engineering the whole electoral battlespace to get Clinton elected. The mere fact of Trump's victory in the teeth of their Electoral Engineering for Clinton is an act of defiance which they will not tolerate.

And if they fail to bring Trump down at all, they will stand revealed as being defeatable. And this is their big fear. That if people see they have defeated the Borg once on keeping Trump in the teeth of Borg's efforts, that people might try to defeat and smash down the Borg on another issue. And then another. And then another after that.

So that is why the Borg cares so much. They view the Trump election as an insurgency, and they view themselves as waging a counterinsurgency, which they dare not lose.

Jack , 03 February 2018 at 08:54 PM
David,

Thanks for your analysis. I always enjoy and learn from your posts. I wish you would post more often.

In my non-expert opinion, the Borg and the media were all in for Hillary. They were convinced that she was gonna win. To curry favor with the Empress who would be certainly crowned after the election they were eager and convinced that their lawlessness would become a badge for promotion and plum positions in her administration. In their conceit, they believed they could kill two birds with one stroke. They could vilify Putin and create the mass hysteria to checkmate him, while at the same time disparage and frame Trump as The Manchurian Candidate to seal their certain electoral victory.

Unfortunately for them voters in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin didn't buy their sales pitch despite the overwhelming media barrage from all corners. Even news publications who have only endorsed Republican candidates for President for over a century endorsed her.

Trump's election win caused panic among the political establishment, the media and the Deep State. They were already all-in. Their only choice was to double down and get Trump impeached. Now their conspiracy is beginning to unravel. They are doing everything possible to forestall their Armageddon. Of course they have many allies. This battle is gonna be interesting to watch. Trump is clearly getting many Congressional Republicans on side as his base of Deplorables remains solidly behind him. That is what's befuddling the Borg pundits.

SmoothieX12 -> kooshy... , 03 February 2018 at 09:51 PM
So far I can't see any strategic changes on US foreign policy toward ME or Russia, at tactical level yes but not fundamentally.

Because it is not possible to do on fundamental level yet, especially with US foreign policy establishment and so called consensus being built almost entirely, in ideological and, most importantly, cadres senses, on the ultimate exceptionalist agenda in which Russia is the ultimate obstacle and enemy. Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. This swamp (Borg, deep state, etc.) still thinks that it can use Cold War 1.0 Playbook and address very real and dangerous American economic issues. They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with.

Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:10 PM
They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.
kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 03 February 2018 at 10:24 PM
You are right CWII is very much desired and on agenda, but i am not sure of setup, the setup/board has been changed tremendously and IMO benefits the Asian side of Bosphorus, for one thing technology is no longer exclusive, and financial burden is heavier on atlantic side.
catherine said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:21 AM
''Establishment in saturated with neocons and likes. They are the swamp. ''

The locust keep trying and trying, destruction is their life's work.

'1977-1981: Nationalities Working Group Advocates Using Militant Islam Against Soviet Union'

In 1977 Zbigniew Brzezinski, as President Carter's National Security Adviser, forms the Nationalities Working Group (NWG) dedicated to the idea of weakening the Soviet Union by inflaming its ethnic tensions. The Islamic populations are regarded as prime targets. Richard Pipes, the father of Daniel Pipes, takes over the leadership of the NWG in 1981. Pipes predicts that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will "explode into genocidal fury" against Moscow. According to Richard Cottam, a former CIA official who advised the Carter administration at the time, after the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1978, Brzezinski favored a "de facto alliance with the forces of Islamic resurgence, and with the Republic of Iran." [Dreyfuss, 2005, pp. 241, 251 - 256]

'November 1978-February 1979: Some US Officials Want to Support Radical Muslims to Contain Soviet Union'

State Department official Henry Precht will later recall that Brzezinski had the idea "that Islamic forces could be used against the Soviet Union. The theory was, there was an arc of crisis, and so an arc of Islam could be mobilized to contain the Soviets." [Scott, 2007, pp. 67] In November 1978, President Carter appointed George Ball head of a special White House Iran task force under Brzezinski. Ball recommends the US should drop support for the Shah of Iran and support the radical Islamist opposition of Ayatollah Khomeini. This idea is based on ideas from British Islamic expert Dr. Bernard Lewis, who advocates the balkanization of the entire Muslim Near East along tribal and religious lines. The chaos would spread in what he also calls an "arc of crisis" and ultimately destabilize the Muslim regions of the Soviet Union

aleksandar , 04 February 2018 at 04:41 AM
David,

About relation Steele-MI6, well, you never leave your IS. Or to put it in another way, you are never out of the scope of your past IS.

Fred said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 08:40 AM
Babak,

"they got US to bail them out during WWII" And how would things have worked out had we not done so?

Fred , 04 February 2018 at 08:46 AM
David,

"There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time."

Yes, that is what appears to be just what is coming to light. I wonder just what position Trey Gowdy is going to have since he won't be running for re-election. The rage from the left is palpable. I'm sure the next outraged guy on the left will know how to shoot straighter than the ones who shot up Congressman Scalise or the concert goers at Mandalay Bay.

Anna said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 08:48 AM
"They are wrong, since most of them didn't read the playbook correctly to start with."
-- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.
turcopolier , 04 February 2018 at 08:54 AM
Anna

The powerful are often remarkably ignorant. pl

Babak Makkinejad -> Fred... , 04 February 2018 at 10:08 AM
England preferred NAZI Germany to USSR, this is well known. As to what would have happened, the outcome of the war, in my opinion, did not depend on US participation in the European Theatre. All of Europe would have become USSR satellite or joined USSR.
jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 04 February 2018 at 11:53 AM
"unsentimental empirical people"? Absolutely disagree with you. Now the Iranians, they strike me as a singularity unsentimental people. Just general impressions, mind you.
Kooshy said in reply to catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
Yes, US was the first country to proudly deliver Manpads to be used by "rebels" (Mojahadin later Taleban) against USSR in Afghanistan back in 80s. And, as per the architect of support for the rebels (Zbigniew Brzezinski) very proud of it with no regret. With that in mind, I don't see how western politicians, the western governments and their related proxy war planers, will be regretting, even sadden, once god forbid we see passenger planes with loved ones are shot down taking off or landing at various western airports and other places around the word. Just like how superficialy with crocodile tears in their eyes they acted in aftermath of the terrorist events in various western cities in this past 16 years. Gods knows what will happens to us if the opposite side start to supply his own proxies with lethal anti air weapons. "Proudly", I don't think anybody in west cares or will regret of such an escalation.
Phodges said in reply to turcopolier ... , 04 February 2018 at 12:23 PM
Sir

It seems we are being defeated by Cicero's enemy within. Zion is achieving what no one could hope to achieve by force of arms.

David Habakkuk -> catherine... , 04 February 2018 at 01:17 PM
catherine,

In response to comment 5.

I think it likely that what Meier produces is only a 'limited hangout', and am hoping that when the book arrives it will contain more pointers.

It is important to be clear that one is often dealing with people playing very complicated double games.

An interesting document is the 'Petition for Writ of Habeus Corpus' made on behalf of Khodorkovsky's close associate Alexander Konanykhin back in 1997,when the Immigration and Naturalization Service were – apparently at least – cooperating with Russian attempts to get hold of him. An extract:

'During the immigration hearing FBI SA Robert Levinson, an INS witness, confirmed that in 1992 Petitioner was kidnapped and afterwards pursued by assassins of the Solntsevskaya organized criminal group. This organized criminal group is reportedly the largest and the most influential organized criminal group in Russia, and operates internationally.'

(See http://defiancethebook.com/legal/habeas/petition.htm .)

Note the similarities between the 'StratCom' that Khonanykin and his associates were producing in the 'Nineties, and that which Simpson and his associates have been producing two decades later.

Another useful example is provided by a 2004 item in the 'New American Magazine', reproduced on Konanykhin's website:

'One of those who testified on behalf of Konanykhine was KGB defector Yuri Shvets, who declared: "I have a firsthand knowledge on similar operations conducted by the KGB." Konanykhine had brought trouble on himself, Shvets continued, when he "started bringing charges against people who were involved with him in setting up and running commercial enterprises. They were KGB people secretly smuggling from Russia hundreds of millions of dollars . This is [a] serious case, and I know that KGB ... desperately wants to win this case, and everybody who won't step to their side would face problems."'

(See http://konanykhin.com/news/the-konanykhine-case.html .)

So – 'first hand knowledge', from a Ukrainian nationalist – look at what the Chalupas have been doing, it seems not much has changed.

For a rather different perspective on what Konanykhin had actually been up to, from someone in whose honesty – if not always judgement – I have complete confidence, see the testimony of Karon von Gerhke-Thompson to the House Committee on Banking and Financial Services hearings on Russian Money Laundering. In this, she described how she had been approached by him in 1993:

'"Konanykhine alleged that Menatep Bank controlled $1.7bn [£1bn] in assets and investment portfolios of Russia's most prominent political and social elite," she recalled. She said he wanted to move the bank's assets off shore and asked her to help buy foreign passports for its "very, very special clients".

'In her testimony to the committee Ms Von Gerhke-Thompson said she informed the CIA of the deal, and the agency told her that it believed Mr Konanykhine and Mr Khodorkovsky "were engaged in an elaborate money laundering scheme to launder billions of dollars stolen by members of the KGB and high-level government officials".

(For a 'Guardian report, see https://www.theguardian.com/world/1999/sep/23/julianborger ; for the actual testimony, see http://archives-financialservices.house.gov/banking/92299ger.pdf .)

Coming back to Steele's 'StratCom', in July 2008, an item appeared on the 'Newnight' programme of the BBC – which some of us think should by then have been rechristened the 'Berezovsky Broadcasting Corporation' – in which the introduction by the presenter, Jeremy Paxman, read as follows:

'Good evening. The New Russian President, Dmitri Medvedev, was all smiles and warm words when he met Gordon Brown today. He said he was keen to resolve all outstanding difficulties between the two countries. Yada yada yada. Gordon Brown smiled, but he must know what Newsnight can now reveal: that MI5 believes the Russian state was involved in the murder of Alexander Litvinenko by radioactive poisoning. They also believe that without their intervention another London-based Russian, Boris Berezovsky, would have been murdered. Our diplomatic editor, Mark Urban, has this exclusive report.'

(For the transcript presented in evidence to Owen's Inquiry, see http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/ )

When Urban repeated the claims on his blog, there was a positive eruption from someone using the name 'timelythoughts', about the activities of someone she referred to as 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist' – when I came across this later, it was immediately clear to me that she was Karon von Gerhke, and he was Shvets.

(For the first part of the exchanges of comments, the second apparently having become unavailable, see http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/newsnight/markurban/2008/07/litvinenko_killing_had_state_i.html )

She then described a visit by Scaramella to Washington, details of which had already been unearthed by my Italian collaborator, David Loepp. Her claim to have e-mails from Shvets, from the time immediately prior to Litvinenko's death, directly contradicting the testimony he had given, fitted with other evidence I had already unearthed.

Later, we exchanged e-mails over a quite protracted period, and a large amount of material that came into my possession as a result was submitted by me to the Inquest team, with some of it being used in posts on the 'European Tribune' site.

What I never used publicly, because I could only partially corroborate it from the material she provided, was an extraordinary claim about Shvets:

'He was responsible for bringing in a Kremlin initiative that was walked Vice President Cheney's office on a US government quid pro quo with the Kremlin FSB SVR involving the arrest of Mikhail Khodorkovsky – a cease and desist on allegations of a politically motivated arrest of Khodorkovsky, violations of rules of law and calls from Russia's expulsion from the G 8 in exchange for favorable posturing of U.S. oil companies on Gazprom's Shtokman project and intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria, all documented in reports I submitted to the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence and MI6.

'Berezovsky's DS could not be on both sides on that isle. His Kremlin FSB SVR sources had been vetted by the CIA and by the National Security Council. They proved to be as represented. As we would later learn, however, he was on Berezovsky's payroll at same time. The FSB SVR general he was coordinating the Kremlin initiative through was S. R. Subbotin, the same FSB SVR general who was investigating Berezovsky's money laundering operations in Switzerland during the same timeframe. His FSB SVR sources surrounding Putin were higher than any Lugovoy could have ever hoped to affiliate with.

'R. James Woolsey (former CIA DCI), Marshall Miller (former law partner of the late CIA DCI William Colby), who I coordinated the Kremlin initiative through that Berezovsky's DS had brought in were shocked to learn that he was affiliated with Berezovsky and Litvinenko. He was in Berezovsky's inner circle and engaged in vetting Russian business with Litvinenko. He operated Berezovsky's Ukraine website, editing and dubbing the now infamous Kuchma tapes throughout the lead up to the elections in the Ukraine. Berezovsky contributed $41 million to Viktor Yushchenko's campaign, which he used in an attempt to force Yushchenko to reunite with Julia Tymoschenko. It failed but would succeed later after Berezovsky orchestrated a public relations initiative through Alan Goldfarb in the U.S. on behalf of Tymoschenko.'

Having got to know Karon von Gerhke quite well, and also been able to corroborate a great deal of what she told me about many things, and discussed these matters with her, it is absolutely clear to me that she was neither fabricating nor fantasising. What later became apparent, both to her and to me, was that in the 'double game' that Shvets was playing, he had succeeded in fooling her as to the side for which he was working.

It seems likely however that the reason Shvets could do what he did was that quite precisely that many high-up people in the Kremlin and elsewhere were playing a 'double game.' In this, Karon von Gerhke's propensity for indiscretion – of which I, like others, was both beneficiary and victim – could be useful.

An exercise in 'positioning', which could be used to disguise the fact that Shvets was indeed 'Berezovsky's disinformation specialist', could be used to make it appear that 'intelligence on weapon sales during the Yeltsin era to Iraq, Iran and Syria' was actually credible.

This could have been used to try to rescue Cheney, Bush and their associates from the mess they had got into as a result of the failure of the invasion to provide any evidence whatsoever supporting the case which had been made for it. It could also have been used to provide the kind of materials justifying military action against Iran for which Levinson and Jablonski were looking, and for similar action against Syria.

Among reasons for bringing this up now is that we need to make sense of the paradox that Simpson – clearly in collusion with Steele – was using Mogilevich and the 'Solnsetskaya Bratva' both against Manafort and Trump and against Browder.

There are various possible explanations for this. I do not want to succumb to my instinctive prejudice that this may have been another piece of 'positioning', similar to what I think was being done with Shvets, but the hypothesis needs to be considered.

A more general point is that people in Washington and London need to 'wise up' to the kind of world with which they are dealing. This could be done quite enjoyably: reading some of Dashiell Hammett's fictions of the United States in the Prohibition era, or indeed buying DVDs of some of the classics of 'film noir', like 'Out of the Past' (in its British release, 'Build My Gallows High') might be a start.

Very much of the coverage of affairs in the post-Soviet space since 1991 has read rather as though a Dashiell Hammett story had been rewritten by someone specialising in sentimental children's, or romantic, fiction (although, come to think of it, that is really what Brigid O'Shaughnessy does in 'The Maltese Falcon.')

The testimony of Glenn Simpson seems a case in point. The sickly sentimentality of these people does, rather often, make one feel as though one wanted to throw up.

Thomas , 04 February 2018 at 01:24 PM
"They act and believe that they are Olympians. You have to wait for them to age and die before any substantive change in Fortress West's posture; say 2040.}

No, three years at tops and could be much sooner if dimes starting dropping by exposed people that don't want to take the fall for their superiors whom they always detested. One possible thing to get the process started sooner is if the recent Russian Intelligence delegation to DC that Smoothie mentions on another thread gave the current administration, as a diplomatic courtesy of course, the audio recordings of Madame Sectary Nuland's infamous mental meltdown at Kaliningrad. No telling what beans were spilled in her moment of panic, but I am willing to bet key names were dropped. Either way the time is coming.

SmoothieX12 -> Anna... , 04 February 2018 at 01:39 PM
- If they have read the important books at all... The ongoing scandal has been revealing a stunning incompetence of the "deciders." Too often they look comical, ridiculous, undignified. This is dangerous, considering their power.

My coming book is precisely about that. Especially, once American policy-makers who saw and experienced war (Ike, George Marshall's generation) departed things started to roll down hill with Reagan bringing on board a whole collection of neocons.

Unawareness is always dangerous, a complete blackout in relations between two nuclear powers is more than dangerous--it is completely reckless. Again, the way CW 1.0 is perceived in the current US "elites" it becomes extremely tempting to repeat it. Electing Hillary was another step in unleashing CW 2.0 by people who have no understanding of what they were doing.

Obama started crushing US-Russian relations before any campaigns were launched and before Trump was even seriously considered a GOP nominee, let alone a real contender. New confrontation hinged on HRC being elected. In fact, she was one of the major driving forces behind a serious of geopolitical anti-Russian moves. Visceral Russo-phobia became a feature in HRC campaign long before any Steele's Dossier. This was a program.

james said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 04 February 2018 at 03:01 PM
there seems to be no shortage of money for these blatant propaganda exercises..
Babak Makkinejad -> SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 04:14 PM
I think the failure of Deciders is nothing new - Fath Ali Shah attacking Russia, or the abject failure of the Deciders in 1914. Europe is still not where she was in 1890.
begob , 04 February 2018 at 05:20 PM
I read the post and responses early on, so forgive me if this point has been addressed in the meantime. If the memo information on non-disclosure of material evidence to the warrant issuing court is accurate, as soon as that information came to the attention of the authorities (clearly some time ago) there was a duty on them (including the judge(s) who issued the warrants) to have the matter brought back before the court toot sweet. If that had happened it would surely be in the public domain, so on the assumption the prosecutors and maybe even the judge didn't see the need to review the matter, even purely on a contempt/ethics basis, the memo information only seems convincing if the FISA system is a total sham. I really doubt that.
kooshy said in reply to SmoothieX12 ... , 04 February 2018 at 06:20 PM
IMO, the bigger problem for American not shying away from wars, or being silent about them , is when your home, your mom and dad' home, the town you grew up in, are immune and away from the war.

The security and safety of the two oceans, encourages or at least, in an all volunteer military makes it a secondary problem for regular people, to worry about. As I remember that wasn't the case at the end of VN war when i first landed here. At that time even though the war was on the other side of the planet and away from homeland, still people, especially young ones in colleges were paying more attention to the cost of war.

spy killer , 04 February 2018 at 06:55 PM
Diana West has uncovered some interesting "Red Threads" (6 part article at dianawest-dot-net) on all the Fusion GPS folks. Seems ole Russian speaking Nellie Ohr got herself a ham radio license recently. Wonder why she would suddenly need one of those? They are all Marxists with potential connections back to Russia.
English Outsider -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 07:23 AM
Been there. I am also a latecomer to SST. You have to read the back numbers. How? My IT expertise dates from the dawn of the internet and was lamentable then but I find Wayback sometimes allows easier searches than the SST search engine. A straight search on google also allows searches with more than one term. This link -

https://twitter.com/pat_lang

- gets you to a chronological list and for recent material is sometimes quicker than fiddling around with search engines. "Categories" on the RH side is useful but then you don't get some very informative comments that cross-refer.

If those sadly elementary procedures fail resort to the nearest infant. There's a blur of fingers on the keyboard and what you want then usually appears. Never ask them how they did it. They get so fed up when you ask them to explain it again.

"Who is David Habakkuk?" That's a quantum computer sited, from internal evidence you pick up from time to time, somewhere in the Greater London area. Cross references like you wouldn't believe and over several fields, so maybe he's two quantum computers.

The "Borg"?. Try Wittgenstein. Likely a prog but you can't be choosy these days. Early on in "Philosophical Investigations" (hope I get this right) he discusses the problem of how you can view as an entity something that has ill-defined or overlapping boundaries. The "Borg" is that "you know it when you see it" sort of thing. A great merit of this site is that the owner and many of the contributors know it from inside.

In general you may regard your new found site as a microcosm of the great battle that is raging in the West. It's a battle between the (probably apocryphal but adequately stated) Roveian view of reality that regards truth as an adjunct to or as a by-product of ideology and Realpolitik and the objective view of reality as something that is damned difficult to get at, and sometimes impossible, but that has a truth in it somewhere that is independent of the views and convictions of the observer. It's a battle that's never going to be won but unless it tilts back closer to common sense it can certainly be lost and the West with it.

jonst said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 08:11 AM
Clearly the Labor Party in the UK preferred the USSR to Nazi Germany. (cepting that short interlude where the Soviets signed the Agreement with Hitler, and the Left Organized Leadership all across Europe, for the most part, lined up with Hitler). But for the most part, Labor was Left.
Elements (the ones that won out in the end) of the Conservative Party loathed both Hitler and Stalin. An element of the Conservative Party was sympathetic, but only up to a certain point, with the Nazis. This ended in 1939, sept.

So I don't think it fair, or accurate, to say 'England prefered the Nazis....and even if it not those things, it certainly not "well known", except to the people who have used the false premise to butter their wounds from supporting Stalin in his Pact with Hitler. Or are inclined to bash the British in general.

Babak Makkinejad -> jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 08:29 AM
All right, perhaps I should have said "The English Government". Google "Litvinov", you may discover how the English Government pushed Stalin to make a deal with Hitler to buy USSR time.
Sid Finster said in reply to Jack... , 05 February 2018 at 10:26 AM
Witness the infamous State Department protest memo calling for more war on Syria.

The State Department employees that signed that memo were sure that HRC would win and that their diligent work in pushing the Deep State agenda would sure be rewarded.

Since entering office, Trump appears to have taken the line that if he gives the Deep State everything it demands, he will be allowed to remain in office, even if he is not allowed to remain in power.

Sid Finster said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 05 February 2018 at 10:31 AM
Explain Marshall Miller's role in this, please. He is someone I know quite well. I also know one of the Chalupas.
begob said in reply to jonst... , 05 February 2018 at 10:56 AM
jonst That's broadly accurate, but specifically Attlee brought the motion of no confidence in Chamberlain, which the conservative appeasers won but which led to Churchill's opportunity. Attlee was essential in cabinet to Churchill's resistance after the retreat of the BEF.
turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 11:18 AM
FM
What are you doing here? You said you dislike the military. Are you really in the Spanish Basque country? Bilbao maybe? break - David Habakkuk is a private scholar of the Litvinenko murder and Soviet/Russian politics and intelligence affairs. His surname comes from Wales where in the 18th (?) Century the ancestral village were all "chapel" and changed their surnames to Old Testament names. His father was master of one of the Cambridge colleges and David is himself a graduate of Cambridge. pl
Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 11:19 AM
Yes, I am Iranian. All "Babak"s are Iranians - except some obscure ones that are Rus - Babakov.
Anna , 05 February 2018 at 02:07 PM
The hard, blinding truth: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/05/will-conspiracy-trump-american-democracy-go-unpunished/
"In keeping silent about evil, in burying it so deep within us that no sign of it appears on the surface, we are implanting it, and it will rise up a thousand fold in the future. When we neither punish nor reproach evildoers, we are not simply protecting their trivial old age, we are thereby ripping the foundations of justice from beneath new generations." – Aleksandr I. Solzhenitsyn
Thomas said in reply to turcopolier ... , 05 February 2018 at 02:08 PM
Colonel,

This troll showed up recently at b's place doing the same accusations. There is group that is running sacred and pulling out all the stops in "info ops" side of the spectrum. The damn fools don't or, most probably, won't get thru their thick heads and even thicker hearts that it is a failed strategy that turns bystanders into their opponents.

Richardstevenhack , 05 February 2018 at 02:36 PM
Here for your edification is the definitive analysis of the GOP memo by Alexander Mercouris over at The Duran.

And it is a masterpriece - and quite long, possibly his longest analysis of anything so far. He buries the counterarguments being passed around by the Democratic opposition and the anti-Trump media.

Mercouris writes on legal affairs alongside his foreign policy stuff and he writes with a lawyer's precision. And in this article he points out that the GOP memo is writter as a legal document - probably by Trey Gowdy - with additional political insertions by Nunes. So it should properly be referred to as the "GOP memo" or the "Gowdy memo", not the Nunes memo."

Why this is important is that the GOP memo is basically written as a defense lawyer would in contesting a case -- this case being the FISA warrant application. Which means its orientation is proving failure to disclose relevant and material information to the FISA court and in some cases rising to the point of contempt of court.

Seriously, read this! The whole thing!

Rampant abuse and possible contempt of Court: what you need to know about the GOP memo
http://theduran.com/rampant-abuse-contempt-court-analysis-gop-memorandum/

blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 03:25 PM
Sen Grassley releases memo heavily redacted by DOJ/FBI.

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-05/grassley-graham-blast-fbi-censoring-memo-calling-criminal-probe-trump-dossier

"Seeking transparency and cooperation should not be this challenging," Grassley said in a statement after posting a heavily redacted version of the criminal referral that he and GOP Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina sent to the Justice Department last month. " The government should not be blotting out information that it admits isn't secret. "

I suppose DOJ/FBI believe that by obstructing, stalling and obfuscating they can buy time and that the Republicans in Congress will get tired of the games and go home. This seems like a pretty straightforward memo, highlighting the discrepancy between Steele's court filings and the FBI's version of Steele's discussions with them. Grassley is pointing out that either Steele or the FBI is lying.

What is interesting is the difference in process and ability between the House & Senate. The House can release their memos on its own, even if not declassified by the Executive, whereas the Senate requires the Executive to declassify it's memos that are based on classified documents.

turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 04:38 PM
FM

We have not had a self declared communist on SST before although LeaNder in her youth may have come close to that exalted status. You might want to read the wiki on me and the CV I have posted on the blog to avoid tedious accusations of this or that. I am thought by some to have some knowledge of the ME so please do not try to lecture me about how much you love the Arabs. I speak their language and have lived with them for a long time. There are people who write to SST who are pro-Trump and some who are anti-Trump. I seek a mixture of views so long as personal insult and invective are eschewed. Personally, I do not belong to a political party and would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

Trump is the constitutionally and legally elected president of the United States. Your descriptors with regard to him are, in my opinion, only plausible if seen from the point of view of various kinds of leftist including Marxist-Leninists like you. You sound very smug and self-satisfied but we will see if you can have an open mind at all. pl

Kooshy said in reply to Babak Makkinejad... , 05 February 2018 at 04:46 PM
Found him, Ali Babacan XVPM, XFM and M of finance. Yes god forbid, if he is a decendent of Ardisher Babakan and another claimant to Iranian throne, which CIA and Soros can jump on.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ali_Babacan MBA from Northeestern
blue peacock , 05 February 2018 at 04:55 PM
...would describe myself as an original intent, strict constructionist.

Aye. Aye. Sir!

+1

That is why some of us believe the Patriot Act and FISA are both unpatriotic and unconstitutional. SCOTUS disagrees with the few of us.

Babak Makkinejad -> Fatima Manoubia... , 05 February 2018 at 05:03 PM
I do not believe Trump is a misogynists - he stated publicly that he likes beautiful women. I also do not think he is a racist. I think he is the first US leader in many decades who has been willing to publicly talk about US problems. For most other US politicians - they largely live in "the best of all possible worlds".
English Outsider , 05 February 2018 at 06:31 PM
Colonel - sincere apologies if my comment above disrupted the discussion on a fascinating article.

David Habakkuk - I should say that "Quantum Computer" referred solely to the ability to gather and collate great amounts of material. It's an ability I admire. On Steele, you are among other things setting out something that is unfamiliar to me though not to most others here, I imagine, and that is the milieu in which he is or was working as a UK Intelligence operative. That you have also done in previous articles; it doesn't seem to be a particularly savoury milieu. As far as Steele's US activities are concerned, from you I'm not getting the picture of a lone operative, all ties with MI6 neatly severed, working solo in the States on some chance assignment in 2016. I'm getting the picture of someone still very much in the swim and selected because of that.

The only problem with that second picture is the dossier, or the 30% or so of it - what Comey, I think it was, described as "salacious and unverified". Surely that's got to be amateur night. Not something that a practised professional working with other professionals would put his hand to. Does that not support the picture of an ex-operative who's gone off the rails and is fumbling around unsupervised?

The Steele affair touched a nerve. One is always I suppose aware that IC professionals are getting up to all sorts and it doesn't seem improbable that "all sorts" includes political stuff and smear campaigns. But it's not heaps of corpses in Syria or farm boys being sent to certain death in the Ukraine. And even within the UK Intelligence Community and their contractors or whatever they're called, compared with what our IC people have done in the ME or compared with what one fears Hamish de Bretton Gordon might have got himself involved in, Christopher Steele's just a choirboy. Nevertheless there's something deeply repellent about what he did. Whatever your view of Trump there he was, newly elected, obviously wanting to make a go of it, and already faced with difficulties. Then some chancer throws "Golden Showers" in his face and makes his position, not maybe for the insiders but for the general public, that bit more untenable.

So from a UK perspective the question of whether Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK becomes important. If he was truly working solo then that from a UK point of view is regrettable but one of those things. In that case MI6 would just have to tighten up its controls on what ex-operatives get up to, put out the appropriate disclaimers, and that's the end of it as far as the UK is concerned. But if Golden Showers and the rest of it was a "Welcome Mr President" from UK IC professionals as a group then those professionals should be hung drawn and quartered together with whoever set them on.

I've read your article several times now and apart from the fact that much of what you pull together isn't material I'm up on, it doesn't seem to me that you're definitely coming to one conclusion or the other. There are many more facts to come out so perhaps this question is premature, but do you think Steele was acting in concert with others in the UK or was he, at least as far as the UK is concerned, working solo?

kooshy , 05 February 2018 at 07:49 PM
Most Iranian females Named Fatima/ Fatimah after prophet' daughter, call themselves Fati, and if they are of aristocrat type, they are called Bibi Fati Khanam, which is honorable lady Fati and if they are westernized they become Fay or Fifi.
turcopolier , 05 February 2018 at 07:59 PM
EO

Much of your commentary seems directed to David Habakkuk and PT rather than I. I don't think the FBI would have started to pay him until he left UK service. pl

English Outsider , 06 February 2018 at 05:10 AM
Colonel - Further apologies - I should have submitted comment 79 as two items.

Yes, the question about Steele was in response to DH's article. The UK side of the affair is I suppose only a small part of the question you and your Committee are examining but it's a dubious part however one looks at it. Although it's early days yet I was hoping DH, with his encyclopaedic knowledge of the UK intelligence scene, might feel able to cast more light on that UK side.

English Outsider -> Cortes... , 06 February 2018 at 05:53 AM
Cortes - " ... where, exactly, do you expect the great public to look beyond the initial scabrously defamatory storytelling about the "golden showers"? "

I don't think one can expect the public, at least in the UK, to look very far beyond the initial scandal. The investigations and enquiries presently under way in the US are complex and are taking place in a different system. This member of the UK public wouldn't be able to give you a coherent account of those enquiries and I doubt many of my fellows could.

So we have to take on trust, most of us, what we're told. As far as I can tell the underlying theme from the BBC and the media is generally that Trump is subverting the American Justice system in order to ensure his own misdemeanours aren't investigated.

Some of us take that as gospel. Others of us assume that the politicians and the media are untrustworthy and ignore them. I doubt many of us go into much more detail than that. Therefore the original story will stick in our minds.

But for some in the UK there are questions in there as well. How come the UK got mixed up in all this? How much did the UK get mixed up in it?

David Habakkuk -> Sid Finster... , 06 February 2018 at 06:19 AM
Sid Finster,

In response to comment 53.

When I belatedly started looking at the Litvinenko mystery, as a result of a strange email provoked by comments of mine on SST which arrived in my inbox in March 2007 from someone who turned out to be a key protagonist, it was rather obvious that improvised and chaotic 'StratCom' operations had been put into place on both the Russian and British sides to cover up what had happened.

A particular interesting feature of those on the British side – in which we now know Christopher Steele must have played a leading role – were the bizarre gyrations those responsible were going through trying to explain away the extraordinary fact that when he had broken the story of his poisoning, Litvinenko had pointed the finger of suspicion at his Italian associate Mario Scaramella.

When I started delving, I came across some very interesting pieces on Scaramella and related matters posted on the 'European Tribune' website by a Rome-based blogger using the name 'de Gondi' in the period after the story broke.

His actual name is David Loepp, by profession he is an artisan jeweller specialising in ancient and traditional goldsmith techniques, and I already knew and respected his work from his contributions to the transnational internet investigation into the Niger uranium forgeries – an earlier MI6 clusterf**ck.

So in May 2008 I posted a longish piece on that site, setting out the problems with the evidence about the Litvinenko case as I saw them, in the hope of reactivating his interest. This paid off in spades, when he linked to, and translated a key extract from, the request from Italian prosecutors to use wiretaps of conversations with Senator Paolo Guzzanti in connection with their prosecution of Scaramella for 'aggravated calumny.'

The request, which up to not so long ago was freely available on the website of the Italian Senate, was denied, but the extensive summaries of the transcripts provided a lot of material.

(This initial post by me, and later posts by me on that site, are at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/uid:1857/diary. Three posts David Loepp and I produced jointly in December 2012, which have a lot on Scaramella and Shvets, are on his page there, at http://www.eurotrib.com/user/de%20Gondi/diary .)

The extract from the wiretap request which David Loepp posted, which like Litvinenko's letter containing the claims he and Yuri Shvets had concocted about Putin using Mogilevich to attempt to supply Al Qaeda with a 'mini nuclear bomb' is dated 1 December 2005, contains key pointers to the conspiracy. It concludes:

'A passage on Simon Moghilevic and an agreement between the camorra to search for nuclear weapons lost during the Cold War to be consigned to Bin Laden, a revelation made by the Israeli. According to Scaramella the circle closes: camorra, Moghilevic- Russian mafia- services- nuclear bombs in Naples.'

Subsequent conversations make clear that Scaramella left on 6 December 2005 for Washington, on a trip where he was to meet Shvets. The summary of a report on this to Guzzanti reads:

'12) conversation that took place on number [omissis] on December 18, 2005, at 9:41:51 n. 1426, containing explicit references to the authenticity of the declarations of Alexander Litvinenko acquired by Scaramella, to the trustworthiness of the affirmations made by Scaramella in his reports to the commission and to the meetings Scaramella had with Talik after having denounced them [presumably Talik and his alleged accomplices]. (They can talk with HEIMS thanks to the help of MILLER. SHVEZ says that he had been a companion of CARLOS at the academy; SHVEZ has already made declarations and is willing to continue collaboration. Guzzanti warns that a document in Russian arrived in commission in which the name of SCARAMELLA appears several times, these [sic] say that directives to the contrary had been given to Litvinenko. Scaramella says that he went to the meeting with TALIK in the company of two treasury [police] and a cop, Talik spoke of a person from the Ukrainian GRU who would be willing to talk and a strange Chechen ring in Naples. Assassination attempt against the pope, CASAROLI was a Soviet agent.)'

The summary of a later conversation also refers to 'MILLER':

'conversation that took place on number [omissis] on January 13, 2006, at 11:22:11 n. 2287, containing references to Scaramella's sources in relation to facts referred in the Commission, the means by which they were obtained by Scaramella from declarations made abroad, the role of Litvinenko, also on the occasion of declarations made by third parties and the credibility of the news and theses given by Scaramella to the commission (Scaramella reads a text in English on the relation between the KGB and PRODI. Guzzanti asks if its credibility can be confirmed and if the taped declarations can be backed up; Scaramella answers that there were two testimonies, Lou Palumbo and Alexander (Litvinenko), and that the registration made in London at the beginning of the assignment [Scaramella's?] had been authenticated by a certain BAKER of the FBI. As he translates the text from English, Scaramella notes that the person testifying does not say he knows Prodi but only that he thinks that Prodi ...; all those who worked for the person testifying in Scandinavia said that Prodi was "theirs." The affair in Rimini, Bielli is preparing the battle in Rimini. Meetings with MILLER for the three things that are needed. Polemic about Pollari over the pressure exerted on Gordievski.)'

In the exchanges on my May 2008 post, I mentioned and linked to some extraordinary comments on a crucial article by Edward Jay Epstein, in which Karon von Gerhke claimed that his sceptical account fitted with what her contacts in the British investigation had told her. When that July I came across her equally extraordinary claims in response to the BBC's Mark Urban piece of stenography – which Steele may also have had a hand in organising – I found she was referring to precisely that visit to Washington by Scaramella which had been described in the wiretap request.

As you can perhaps imagine, the fact that 'Miller' had featured in the conversations with Guzzanti both as a key contact, who could introduce Scaramella to Aldrich Ames (which is who 'Heims' clearly is), and with whom there had been meetings about 'the three things that are needed' made me inclined to take seriously what Karon von Gerhke said about his role.

In December 2008, I put up another post on 'European Tribune', putting together the material from David Loepp and that from Karon von Gerhke – but not discussing the references to 'Miller.' As I had hoped, this led to her getting in touch.

Among the material with which she supplied me, which I in turn supplied to the Solicitor to the Inquest, were covers of faxes to John Rizzo, then Acting General Counsel of the CIA. From a fax dated 23 October 2005.

'John: See attached email to Chuck Patrizia. Berezovsky alleges he is in possession of a copy of a classified file given to the CIA by Russia's FSB, which he further alleges the CIA disseminated to British, French, Italian and Israeli intelligence agencies implicating him in business associations with the Mafia and to ties with terrorist organizations. Yuri Shvets was authorised/directed by Berezovsky to raise the issue with Bud McFarlane scheduled for Thursday. McFarlane is unaware the issue will be raised with him.'

From a fax dated 7 November 2005:

'John: I am attaching an email exchange between Yuri Shvets and me re: 1) article he published on his Ukraine website on alleged sale of nuclear choke to Iran, which I reproached him on as having been planted by Berezovsky and 2 the alleged FSB/CIA document file that Berezovsky obtained from Scaramella, which Yuri acknowledges in his e-mail to me. Like extracting wisdom teeth to get him to put anything on paper, especially in an e-mail! [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is the source McFarlane referred Yuri to re: Berezovsky's visa issue. She proposed meeting Berezovsky in London. Alleged it would take a year to clear up USG issues and even then could not guarantee him a visa. She too has access to USG intelligence on Berezovsky. Open book.'

From a fax dated 5 December 2005:

'John. From Mario Scaramella to Yuri Shvets to my ears, the DOJ has authorised Mario Scaramella to interview Aldrich Ames with regard to members of the Italian Intelligence Service agent recruited by Ames for the KGB. Scaramella, as you may recall, is who gave Boris Berezovsky's aide, a former FSB Colonel [LITVINENKO – DH], that alleged document number to the FSB file that the CIA disseminated on Berezovsky – a file that Bud McFarlane's "Madam Visa" [NAME REDACTED BY ME – DH] is alleged is totting off to London for a meeting with Berezovsky, who has agreed to retain her re: his visa issue. Quid pro quo's with Berezovsky and Scaramella on the CIA agent currently facing kidnapping charges for the rendition of the Muslim cleric? Scott Armstrong has a most telling file on Scaramella. Not a single redeeming quality.'

In the course of very extensive exchanges with Karon von Gerhke subsequently, we had some rather acute disagreements. It was unfortunate that her filing was a shambles – a crucial hard disk failed without a backup, and the 'hard copies' appeared to be in a chaotic state.

However, the only occasion when I can recall having reason to believe that was deliberately lying to me was when David Loepp unearthed a cache of documentation including the full Italian text of the letter from Litvinenko containing the 'StratCom' designed to suggest that Putin had attempted to supply a 'mini nuclear bomb' to Al Qaeda. Having been asked to keep this between ourselves for the time being, Karon insisted on immediately sending it to her contacts in Counter Terrorism Command, and then produced bogus justifications.

Time and again, moreover, I found that I could confirm statements that she made – see for example the two posts I put up on the legal battles following the death in February 2008 of Berezovsky's long-term partner Arkadi 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili in June and July 2009, which were based on careful corroboration of what she told me.

(I should also say that I acquired the greatest respect for her courage.)

And while Owen and his team suppressed all the evidence from her, and almost all of that from David Loepp, which I had I provided to them, the dossier about Berezovsky is described in a statement made by Litvinenko in Tel Aviv in April 2006, presented in evidence in the Inquiry.

(See http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613090333/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/evidence .)

Other evidence, moreover, strongly inclines me to believe that there were overtures for a 'quid pro quo', purporting to come from Putin, but that this was a ruse orchestrated by Berezovsky.

Part of the purpose of this would almost certainly have been to supply probably bogus 'evidence' about arms sales in the Yeltsin years to Iraq, Iran and Syria. Moreover, I think there was an article on the second 'Fifth Element' site run by Shvets about the supposed sale of a nuclear 'choke' – whatever that is – to Iran.

The likelihood of the involvement of elements in the FBI in these shenanigans seems to quite high, given what has already emerged about the activities of Levinson. Also relevant may be the fact that the 'declaration' which was part of the attempt to frame Romano Prodi was authenticated, in London, by 'a certain BAKER of the FBI.')

Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 09:40 AM
Thank you David Habakkuk. Truly sordid and deplorable. WWIII to be initiated on basis of lies.
Jack , 06 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
David

You may already know this but Steele was a no show in a UK court for a deposition on the libel suit.

http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2018/02/05/christopher-steele-is-no-show-in-london-court-in-civil-case-over-dossier.amp.html

Babak Makkinejad -> David Habakkuk ... , 06 February 2018 at 01:18 PM
I know something of spectroscopy.

The critical issue here is the provenance of the samples and not the sophistication of the techniques used in the analysis itself or its instrumentation.

The paragraph that you have quoted:

"To figure out signatures based on various synthetic routes and conditions, Chipuk says that the synthetic chemists on his team will make the same chemical threat agent as many as 2,000 times in an ..." reeks of intellectual intimidation - trying to brow-beat any skeptic by the size of one's instrument - as it were."

And then there is a little matter of confidence level in any of the analysis - such things are normally based on prior statistics - which did not and could not exist in this situation.

LeaNder , 07 February 2018 at 09:16 AM
David, it's no doubt interesting to watch how attention on Victor Ivanov in another deficient inquiry on the British Isles, was managed in that inquiry. If I may, since he pops up again in the Steele dossier. You take what's available? Is that all there is to know?

I know its hard to communicate basics if you are deeply into matters. Usually people prefer to opt out. It's getting way too complicated for them to follow. You made me understand this experience. But isn't this (fake) intelligence continuity "via" Yuri Svets what connects your, no harm meant I do understand your obsession with the case, with what we deal with now in the Steele Dossier? Again, one of the most central figures is Ivanov.

Of course later reports in the Steele Dossier go hand in hand with a larger public relations campaign. Creating reality? Irony alert: as informer/source I would by then know what the other side wants to hear.

By the way, babbling mode, I found your Tom Mangold transcription. It felt it wasn't there on the link you gave. I used the date, and other search terms. Maybe I am wrong. Haven't looked at what the judge ruled out of the collection. Yes, cozy session/setting.

According to Google search there are no other links then your articles here:
http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf ">https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf">http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20160613093555/https://www.litvinenkoinquiry.org/files/2015/04/HMG000513wb.pdf

**********

JAN RICHARD BÆRUG
The Collapsing Wall. Hybrid Journalism.
A Comparative Study of Newspapers and
Magazines in Eight Countries in Europe

Available online. Haven't read it yet, but journalism as hidden public relations transfer belt would be one of my minor obsessions. ...

Babak Makkinejad -> turcopolier ... , 07 February 2018 at 11:23 AM
I wonder too; their command of the English idiom is very au currant - noticed "opt in/opt out" reference? Too American.

They clearly are not native speakers of German.

LeaNder said in reply to kooshy... , 07 February 2018 at 12:30 PM
why California, Kooshy #18? California among other things left this verbal trace, since I once upon time thought a luggage storage in SF might be free/available now: this is my home, lady.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kish_Island#Economy

Tourists from many -- but not all -- foreign nations wishing to enter Kish Free Zone from legal ports are not required to obtain any visa prior to travel. For those travelers, upon-arrival travel permits are stamped valid for 14 days by Kish officials.

Who are the not all? Can we assume Britain is not one of those?

The German link is different. How about the Iranian?

or isn't this the Kish we are talking about?

LeaNder said in reply to LeaNder... , 07 February 2018 at 01:14 PM
correcting myself #94:

another Ivanov. I struggled with names (...) in Russian crime novels, admittedly. But that's long ago from times Russian crime and Russian money flows and rogues getting hold of its nuclear material surfaced more often in Europe. 90s

I see Sergei seems to share my interest in the literary genre:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sergei_Ivanov#Personal

[Mar 06, 2018] In Her Majesty's Secret Service: How an Agent of British Intelligence Tried (and Failed) to Prevent the Election of Donald Trump

Notable quotes:
"... Another new point in the Mayer piece, not in the above list, is an alleged meeting between the head of the British spy service GCHQ and the head of the CIA John Brennan in which GCHQ briefs Brennan about alleged interceptions of communication between Trump campaign associates and Russia. This is curious because the usual contact for such a case should have been the FBI, not the CIA. ..."
"... But some have suggested that the Brennan came up with the idea or at least directed the campaign of smearing Trump over made-up connections with Russia. For legal reasons and deniability the affair the creation of "evidence" was outsourced to the British partners. As Pat Lang, who has led large intelligence spying and counter-intelligence operations, opines : ..."
"... An unnamed, unknown, unvetted "government official" source is reported by, say, WP, which is then reported by the Times (? since when did competing newspapers use each other as confirmation?), so that official government spokespeople now report "as confirmed by multiple newspaper stories..." ..."
"... Use big words to conceal nonsense and say nothing. ..."
"... Robert Hannigan, head of GCHQ, resigned for "personal reasons" on Jan. 23 2017, a week after Trump's inauguration. ..."
Mar 06, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

... ... ...

Chuck Ross of the Daily Caller (yes, I know it is not deemed reputable) looked into some claims Mayer makes in her piece which, if true, contain new morsels on the issue. They support the standpoint that the whole dossier is fake. These points are:

  1. Steele likely knew who funded the dossier
  2. Steele used dozens of paid confidential 'collectors', not unpaid ones
  3. Steele may have earlier worked for a Kremlin-connected oligarch
  4. The salacious claims in the dossier were based on secondhand information
  5. Steele briefed Jane Mayer during the campaign
  6. A John McCain associate wanted to use dossier to force Trump to resign

Another new point in the Mayer piece, not in the above list, is an alleged meeting between the head of the British spy service GCHQ and the head of the CIA John Brennan in which GCHQ briefs Brennan about alleged interceptions of communication between Trump campaign associates and Russia. This is curious because the usual contact for such a case should have been the FBI, not the CIA.

But some have suggested that the Brennan came up with the idea or at least directed the campaign of smearing Trump over made-up connections with Russia. For legal reasons and deniability the affair the creation of "evidence" was outsourced to the British partners. As Pat Lang, who has led large intelligence spying and counter-intelligence operations, opines :

IMO there was a criminal conspiracy among various parts of the government, the Clinton Campaign and the MSM to rig the election against Trump, and it continues. pl

Posted by b on March 6, 2018 at 05:12 AM | Permalink

Comments


Pictorex , Mar 6, 2018 6:04:54 AM | 1

Very astute observations, as usual.

A more fitting title for Jane Mayer's piece would have been:

"In Her Majesty's Secret Service: How an Agent of British Intelligence Tried (and Failed) to Prevent the Election of Donald Trump"

By the way, please correct this: "They pledged guilty on unrelated issues." should read: "They pleaded guilty on unrelated issues."

J Swift , Mar 6, 2018 6:41:08 AM | 2
Nicely written piece. It just leaves you shaking your head in disbelief sometimes, the brazen repetition of utter nonsense and total lies in hopes that it will eventually start to stick. And I had also noticed some time back the rampant circular citations bootstrapped into being called evidence. An unnamed, unknown, unvetted "government official" source is reported by, say, WP, which is then reported by the Times (? since when did competing newspapers use each other as confirmation?), so that official government spokespeople now report "as confirmed by multiple newspaper stories..."

No wonder the New Yorker and their ilk stick to print rather than video...with AV media, you would be able to hear the heavy breathing and wiki-wiki-wiki sounds of turd polishing in the background.

ELRIUS , Mar 6, 2018 7:12:54 AM | 4
common core education. Use big words to conceal nonsense and say nothing.
Christian Chuba , Mar 6, 2018 7:19:27 AM | 5
And of course this one assertion by Steele is used by the Hannity's of the world to assert that Trump was the victim of a Russian misinformation campaign ...
"In the reports Steele had collected, the names of the sources were omitted, but they were described as "a former top-level Russian intelligence officer still active inside the Kremlin,""

The beauty of it is that this alleged source never has to be revealed because it would endanger the source so we have to take this Boy Scouts word for it.

lysias , Mar 6, 2018 11:49:39 AM | 21
Robert Hannigan, head of GCHQ, resigned for "personal reasons" on Jan. 23 2017, a week after Trump's inauguration.
dahoit , Mar 6, 2018 12:18:58 PM | 22
How about the report graun had today; The Russians had poisoned their ex-spy? Another made up crap. The NYer is another web of deceit, the web of zionism. All of msm is.
Ike , Mar 6, 2018 1:20:15 PM | 26
@22
The possible poisoned spy case is now being used by Boris Johnson for a possible boycott of the Moscow World Cup. It is obvious bullshit and a rerun of the litvinenko affair some years ago.

Also an Mi6 setup in my opinion. The Russians provided a shipload of LNG to alleviate gas shortages in Britain. Boris Johnson is an ungrateful sack of S--t

Erelis , Mar 6, 2018 5:35:39 PM | 49

Max Blumenthal has observed that much of what is in the "dossier" was available in the public sphere. The dossier is touted as being deep revelation totally missed a figure like Papadopoulos, who only appeared to the public after the dossier was published. Strange that.

What seems strange is that so many people in Russia were willing to divulge what would have been closely held secrets like the golden showers tape. Putin is described in the Western press as somebody who would disappear you if you even criticized his shoe laces.

[Feb 22, 2018] The US-UK Deep State Empire Strikes Back 'It's Russia! Russia! Russia!'

Notable quotes:
"... For weeks the unfolding story in Washington has been how a cabal of conspirators in the heart of the American federal law enforcement and intelligence apparat ..."
"... Are you reading this commentary? ..."
"... To the extent that Russiagate was less about Trump than ensuring that enmity with Russia will be permanent and will continue to deepen , this latest Mueller indictment is a smashing success already. ..."
Feb 22, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

There's no defense like a good offense.

For weeks the unfolding story in Washington has been how a cabal of conspirators in the heart of the American federal law enforcement and intelligence apparat colluded to ensure the election of Hillary Clinton and, when that failed, to undermine the nascent presidency of Donald Trump. Agencies tainted by this corruption include not only the FBI and the Department of Justice (DOJ) but the Obama White House, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA, plus their British sister organizations MI6 and GCHQ , possibly along with the British Foreign Office (with the involvement of former British ambassador to Russia Andrew Wood ) and even Number 10 Downing Street.

Those implicated form a regular rogue's gallery of the Deep State: Peter Strzok (formerly Chief of the FBI's Counterespionage Section, then Deputy Assistant Director of the Counterintelligence Division; busy bee Strzok is implicated not only in exonerating Hillary from her email server crimes but initiating the Russiagate investigation in the first place, securing a FISA warrant using the dodgy "Steele Dossier," and nailing erstwhile National Security Adviser General Mike Flynn on a bogus charge of "lying to the FBI "); Lisa Page (Strzok's paramour and a DOJ lawyer formerly assigned to the all-star Democrat lineup on the Robert Mueller Russigate inquisition); former FBI Director James Comey, former Associate Deputy Attorney General Bruce Ohr, former Deputy FBI Director Andrew McCabe, and – let's not forget – current Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, himself implicated by having signed at least one of the dubious FISA warrant requests . Finally, there's reason to believe that former CIA Director John O. Brennan may have been the mastermind behind the whole operation .

Not to be overlooked is the possible implication of a pack of former Democratic administration officials, including former Attorney General Loretta Lynch, former National Security Adviser Susan Rice , and President Barack Obama himself, who according to text communications between Strzok and Page "wants to know everything we're doing." Also involved is the DNC, the Clinton campaign, and Clinton operatives Sidney Blumenthal and Cody Shearer – rendering the ignorance of Hillary herself totally implausible.

On the British side we have "former" (suuure . . . ) MI6 spook Christopher Steele, diplomat Wood, former GCHQ chief Robert Hannigan (who resigned a year ago under mysterious circumstances ), and whoever they answered to in the Prime Minister's office.

The growing sense of panic was palpable. Oh my – this is a curtain that just cannot be allowed to be pulled back!

What to do, what to do . . .

Ah, here's the ticket – come out swinging against the main enemy. That's not even Donald Trump. It's Russia and Vladimir Putin. Russia! Russia! Russia!

Hence the unveiling of an indictment against 13 Russian citizens and three companies for alleged meddling in U.S. elections and various ancillary crimes.

For the sake of discussion, let's assume all the allegations in the indictment are true, however unlikely that is to be the case. (While that would be the American legal rule for a complaint in a civil case, this is a criminal indictment, where there is supposedly a presumption of innocence. Rosenstein even mentioned that in his press conference, pretending not to notice that that presumption doesn't apply to Russian Untermenschen – certainly not to Olympic athletes and really not to Russians at all, who are presumed guilty on "genetic" grounds .)

Based on the public announcement of the indictment by Rosenstein – who is effectively the Attorney General in place of the pro forma holder of that office, Jeff Sessions (R-Recused) – and on an initial examination of the indictment, and we can already draw a few conclusions:

The Mueller indictment against the Russians is a well-timed effort to distract Americans' attention from the real collusion rotting the core of our public life by shifting attention to a foreign enemy. Many of the people behind it are the very officials who are themselves complicit in the rot. But the sad fact is that it will probably work.

[Feb 22, 2018] One if by Land, Two if by Sea, Three if by GCHQ. The British are Coming! The British are Coming!

On the subject of the real motivations for Mueller and the Russophobic hysteria, I came across a Twitter user the other day who clearly gets it; @BethLynch2020 's Twitter name is "Killing Russians because Hill lost is bad actually". Outstanding.
Notable quotes:
"... Breakfast at Tiffany's ..."
"... OK if you are with her ..."
"... counter-intelligence ..."
"... influenced the election ..."
"... insurance policy ..."
"... Mueller announces another process charge, while the Flynn sentencing is on hold as a federal judge orders Mueller to provide Flynn all related documents. Then there is Nunes, Goodlatte, and Grassley with their investigation, which as this article notes is slowly reaching into Brennan, Clapper, Rice and Powers. ..."
"... Bloomberg (your link): "Manafort and Gates are accused of failing to register as agents in the U.S. for political consulting they did in Ukraine ." Question: Is Christoper Steele registered under FARA? Did anybody in the DNC/Clinton campaign/Fusion GPS know he was a "foreign person" (see the SVR 13 indictment) and thus had to register .. ..."
Feb 22, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com
Steele to drive a dagger into the heart of American democracy - our system of free and fair elections.

He doesn't look dangerous, does he? He looks like the very image of a noble ally, not like some ignoble troll. What possible deed could he have done to draw the ire eye of the American government? We know what Russian trolls did. Check the 13 Troll indictment:

"U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General."

" strategic goal to sow discord in the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. ..... derogatory information....."

Hmmmm. I'm sure this gentlemen, still under the obligations of the Official Secrets Act, is a registered foreign agent in the US, right? I'm sure Her Britannic Majesty's government is quite happy with what this "former" intelligence officer has done with his knowledge, skills, abilities and of course, contacts, to affect the special relationship between our nations.

" Ex-MI6 officer Christopher Steele, named as writer of Donald Trump memo, is 'highly regarded professional '"

I've forgotten, is it "Fake news never lies", or that "people never lie to fake news"?

"After Mr Trump won the election, an ally of John McCain, the Republican senator, visited Britain to meet Mr Steele and read the dossier for himself. ..... He was reportedly told to "look for a man wearing a blue raincoat and carrying a Financial Times under his arm" at Heathrow Airport. A copy of the dossier was eventually passed to Mr McCain. "

That sounds like a scene from an episode of Rumpole of the Bailey. Only that episode featured biscuits....... Somehow I think Victoria Nuland will eventually come into the picture here too.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2018/02/07/ex-british-spy-christopher-steele-interviewed-russia-election/

Undoubtedly what Mr. Steele found, compiled or created was presented to somebody somewhere - besides "allies" of one of Mr. Trump's political opponents - Senator McCain:

" Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, ...".

I wonder who got that into Bruce's hands? Hopefully the FBI didn't just sit on in like it was a tip about a teenager who threatened to shoot up a school or something. I'm sure a warrant to investigate could be obtained at any Federal Courthouse. It's not like we have a secret Star Chamber court where the facts never see the light of day .

What? I'm sure somebody wrote a memo. Nunes memo. Or two. Grassley-Graham memo . Wow. Something seems rather Schiffty . Sigh. "classified" It seems politicians don't trust Americans with the truth. Letting the Truth out wouldn't be good for re-election, would it?

Confused yet? Keeping track of this scandal is hard work; it could drive a man to drink.

... ... ...

Now why would anyone send a Breakfast at Tiffany's style weather report to an employee of Fusion GPS? To get the word out to who was to do what to whom? I wonder. Now what the heck does that have to do with Ohr and Steel? Ohr... right, an employee of Fusion GPS. Which just happens to employ our noble ally Mr. Steele. Ohr, who's husband just happens to be....

https://www.cnn.com/2017/12/12/politics/bruce-ohr-special-counsel/index.html

Just happens to be married to a DOJ official. Well nobody believes fake news anymore, how about we verify before we trust:

http://dailycaller.com/2018/02/14/exclusive-doj-official-bruce-ohr-hid-wifes-fusion-gps-payments-from-ethics-officials/

"Bruce Ohr, the Department of Justice official who brought opposition research on President Donald Trump to the FBI, did not disclose that Fusion GPS, which performed that research at the Democratic National Committee's behest, was paying his wife, and did not obtain a conflict of interest waiver from his superiors at the Justice Department,....."

Why there can't be any conflict with that. Let's check the official DOJ code of conduct. I know it's around here somewhere.

Crimethink - Nope, not happening here. Bellyfeel. Well a lot of that goin' on, but nope, nothing to do with integrity . Thoughtcrime- Nope. All the correct bellyfeel was happ'n. Integrity. That word is not in that dictionary, so that conduct must be OK if you are with her . Congratulations, you get to keep a job and your pension Bruce almighty . For now.

What else is in that book? Doubletalk? Naw, that's in the fake news handbook. The DOJ would never stoop that low.

Now if only somebody at the Counter Intelligence section of the FBI could get to the heart of the fbi lawyer he's banging on the side. matter about what criminal conduct was occuring. Did that FBI agent responsible for counter-intelligence talk to DOJ attorney Bruce Ohr's boss, the attorney who just happened to be.... the pièces de résistance Sally "I don't have to obey the head of the Executive Branch of Government" Yates ? I wonder what's in the record of the meetings those two had? They did keep records? Maybe something simple like that email from Susan Rice - to Susan Rice. For the record.

Well, at least after more than a year we finally have some indictments. So what kind of conduct that influenced the election is criminal, according to the indictment handed down by the Mueller team?

Count 1: ".... U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General. And U.S. law requires certain foreign nationals seeking entry to the United States to obtain a visa by providing truthful and accurate information to the government." If you have someone fly to london and get that info is that OK or is that criminal?

Count 2: "... defraud the United States by impairing, obstructing, and defeating the lawful functions of the government through fraud and deceit for the purpose of interfering with the U.S. political and electoral processes, including the presidential election of 2016." If you delete all your emails - 384 pages does that count as "impairing, obstructing and defeating the lawful functions of government"? Has the Mueller team interviewed Strzok and Page? How about not telling anyone your wife works for Fusion GPS, creator of the dossier that was essential to obtaining the FISA court indictment?

Count 3: "....... ORGANIZATION began operations to interfere with the U.S. political system, including the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Defendant ORGANIZATION received funding for its operations from .... and companies he controlled .... Defendants .... spent significant funds to further the ORGANIZATION's operations and to pay .... other uncharged ORGANIZATION employees, salaries and bonuses for their work at the ORGANIZATION."

Who paid Fusion GPS at each stage of their work? Is that criminal?

Count 4: "..... operated social media pages and groups designed to attract U.S. audiences....."

If a firm knowingly changes the ranking of social media pages others have created does that affect the "attraction of US audiences" and thus count as interference in the electoral process? How about just making sure users of social media never see the content? ex1 ex2

What a tangled tale they weave. Worthy of Hollywood, pre-Harvey. If nothing else the fallout has permanently affected some political families. What was it the Dowager Empress said in "55 days at Peking"? "The Dynasty has fallen". Just like the Hilary's. If only she had had an insurance policy .

Now that is a fine piece of art. Some people look younger when all the life has been taken out of their political careers. I wonder who did the final deed: Yates, Power, Rice? Perhaps the artist just merged a successful triumverate of legal beauties. Who gave the go-ahead? Somebody with a legal mind should dig into the weeds and figure that out.

If only we had a group of lawyers adept at trimming the verge. Sadly, I think we have too many that drank the koolaid. "What we have now is a highly corrupted system of intelligence and policymaking, one twisted to serve specific group goals, ends and beliefs held to the point of religious faith."


Kooshy , 19 February 2018 at 12:25 PM

Contrary to Mr. Muller' investigations, and what Borg and the MSM wants us to think it's actually US' closest allies, the politicly corrupting three, aka UK, Israel, and KSA who have and are meddling in US elections/internal affairs without anybody questioning their involvement in our internal politics. All these three countries are more, and most, venerable than any other allies to US' change in Trajectory of her foreign policy, with regard to their own region. They continue to meddle and insert their interests Many times against and above US' own interest under the cover of US' most dependable allies. These three country' security depends on US foreign policy. Other countries may wish to meddle and empower their choices of US statesmen, but they don't possess an unquestioned blank free security pass to freely insert themselves in US internal affairs as these three countries posses with consent of the US Borg.
Anna said in reply to Leaky Ranger... , 19 February 2018 at 01:32 PM
Leaky, here is an informed opinion of Mike Whitney: http://www.unz.com/mwhitney/goofy-indictments-divert-attention-from-criminal-abuses-at-the-fbi-and-doj/

"Robert Mueller's Friday night indictment-spree, is a flagrant and infuriating attempt to divert attention from the damning revelations in the Nunes memo (and the Graham-Grassley "criminal referral") which prove that senior-level officials at the FBI and DOJ were engaged in an expansive conspiracy to subvert the presidential elections..."

1. "the senior-level officials in the FBI and DOJ were engaged in an expansive conspiracy to subvert the presidential elections."
-- This is the most damning conclusion that speaks about violation of the US Constitution, i.e., about the treason within the national security apparatus

2. from Mueller' indictment: "U.S. law bans foreign nationals from making certain expenditures or financial disbursements for the purpose of influencing federal elections. U.S. law also bars agents of any foreign entity from engaging in political activities within the United States without first registering with the Attorney General."

-- Right. Bring on Mr. Steele and the UK' brass from the British intelligence agency Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) plus the Lobby cabal.

Jack , 19 February 2018 at 01:32 PM
Excellent Fred! Had a good laugh this morning.

Apparently much of Mueller's indictment was written up in a Radio Free Europe report from 2015. In any case this indictment opens up the question of which other foreign entities violated federal statutes? Is Mueller gonna investigate any of them? Or is it just Russia that he cares about?

It would seem Steele violated the same statutes. When is he going to be indicted by Mueller?

Jack , 19 February 2018 at 03:16 PM
Then there is John Podesta...

https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-02-19/watch-flustered-john-podesta-respond-why-russians-operatives-were-smarter-hillary

Bartiromo then goes on to break down how Podesta joined the board of the board of a small energy company in 2011 which later received $35 million from a Kremlin-funded entity. Other members of the board of Joule Unlimited included senior Russian official Anatoly Chubais and oligarch Reuben Vardanyan - a Putin appointee to the Russian economic modernization council. Podesta jettisoned his shares before the 2016 election, transferring them to his daughter via a shell corporation
Anna said in reply to Laura... , 19 February 2018 at 03:18 PM
Not everyone agrees with you: https://consortiumnews.com/2018/02/19/nunes-fbi-and-doj-perps-could-be-put-on-trial/
"House Intelligence Committee Chair Devin Nunes (R-Calif.) stated that there could be legal consequences for officials who may have misled the FISA court. "If they need to be put on trial, we will put them on trial. The reason Congress exists is to oversee these agencies that we created."

-- Here is explanation to the deprivation of the US citizenry of factual information: "One glaring sign of the media's unwillingness to displease corporate masters and Official Washington is the harsh reality that Hersh's most recent explosive investigations, using his large array of government sources to explore front-burner issues, have not been able to find a home in any English-speaking newspaper or journal. In a sense, this provides what might be called a "confidence-building" factor, giving some assurance to deep-state perps that they will be able to ride this out, and that congressional committee chairs will once again learn to know their (subservient) place."

-- This is why The Onion could be on a par with The NYT, WaPo, The New Yorker, and such. The New Yorker used to be a great journal, but under the watchful eye of the Russophobic Remnick, the journal's {sub}standards have become indistinguishable from the MSM's standards

Generalfeldmarschall von Hindenburg said in reply to turcopolier ... , 19 February 2018 at 06:16 PM
It all seems like the natural outgrowth of the RHodes-Milner Round Tables and the Atlantic Council/CFR agenda. Trump was't plucked from the pool of those groomed by the Oxford Scholar system and his family background is not finance by the anglophile claque and he doesn't seem to give a hoot about their ideology regarding perpetual domination through finance and subversion. Elites in the US have affected a posh Cambridge accent for a good century now.
Tidewater said in reply to David Habakkuk ... , 19 February 2018 at 06:19 PM
Do you know anything about the Zinoviev letter?

Isn't there an interesting comparison to be made with the Steele 'Dossier' and all that has followed? How it seems possible that both Letter and dossier could have originated in the Baltic? How both letter and dossier seem to have been designed to check any rapprochement with Russia? And have succeeded? In spite of both having howlers of mistakes in each?

I would love to hear your thinking on this.

Anna , 19 February 2018 at 10:51 PM
An impassionate and interesting suggestion by Paul Craig Roberts: https://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2018/02/19/david-nunes-president-ray-mcgovern-cia-director/
David Habakkuk -> Tidewater... , 20 February 2018 at 12:06 PM
Tidewater,

In response to #33.

I had not thought of the comparison with the Zinoviev Letter, but it is certainly a very interesting one, about which I need to think further.

Doing a quick Google search, I see that when the FCO historian Gill Bennett produced a study of the incident in 1999, her best guess was that it was commissioned by White Russian intelligence circles from forgers in Berlin or the Baltic states, most likely in Riga. And it brings one up against a question of continuing relevance – where credulity ends and active mendacity begins.

As to what is happening now, so much has been happening on so many fronts that I am finding it difficult to keep up. With regard to Steele, there is ample material available demonstrating that fabricating evidence and corrupting judicial procedures are part of his 'stock-in-trade'.

I can prove this, and I can also prove that ample evidence establishing a 'prima facie' case that he had been involved in a 'conspiracy to obstruct the course of justice' in relation to the death of Alexander Litvinenko was made available by me to Sir Robert Owen years before his Inquiry into that event opened, and suppressed by him.

In relation to current events, however, it still seems to me very much an open question how far Steele was actually involved in producing the memoranda attributed to him, and how far he was simply brought in to make it seem as though a hodge-podge put together by others was a proper intelligence product, adequate to justify FISA applications.

Another set of puzzles has to do with information from pro-Russian sources. With 'The Duran' and 'The Vineyard of the Saker', it is rather more than possible that, at least some of the time, these are channelling material from Russian intelligence. This, incidentally, is not an argument against reading them. Both Alexander Mercouris and Andrei Raevsky are highly intelligent people, whose views are commonly well worth pondering.

An ironic element, moreover, is that information channelled from Russian intelligence sources can be both important and accurate because, much of the time, these have every interest in telling the truth.

As it happens, in relation to the 'Internet Research Group', I think Russian repudiations of the suggestion that this was used in a Russian government attempt to influence the American elections are highly likely to be true.

Something so transparent, for so little gain, does not make much sense. And I agree with 'Smoothie X12': "We had a slight crisis here at work: the FBI busted our activity (not a joke)" sounds like someone trying to frame Russian intelligence, not an operative caught red-handed.

However, while I have not got to the bottom of this, I think the Scott Humor piece to which people have linked may mix up the arrests of the two FSB cybersecurity people, and one Kaspersky person, with those of the members of the 'Shaltai Boltai' group. And Mercouris earlier appeared rather too happy to suggest that the former were simply involved in criminal activity.

To my mind, the second memorandum in the dossier, and the final memorandum, read as though they could have been the product of material supplied through the contacts between the FBI and FSB cybersecurity people, with a view to laying a trap.

For one thing, if the first memorandum was a fabrication pure and simple, I would expect it to have 'meshed' better with the improvised disinformation from Alperovitch, of the 'Atlantic Council', and the former GCHQ operative pretending to run a consultancy which did not actually trade and writing for 'Lawfare' Matt Tait.

For another, I think the 'howlers' in both memoranda could have been deliberately included, in the expectation that people like Nellie Ohr might believe them – indeed, I think I may be able to detect a wicked sense of humour.

To have Steele compelled to defend himself in court against a libel suit brought by Aleksej Gubarev, in relation to claims which would be very difficult to defend, and for which he had to accept responsibility, although he was not actually responsible, might well have struck some people as, how shall one put it, 'neat.'

So I think there are a very great many inadequately explored questions about the origins of the dossier – and also that its eventual effects are very unpredictable.

Both MI6, and Steele personally, have in the past very successfully manipulated judicial processes in the U.K. in their favour.

However, they have had at least one spectacular failure, which comes of particular interest in relation to the indictment against German Khan's son-in-law, where he is apparently entering a guilty plea. It may be material here that Khan, along with his Alfa colleagues Mikhail Fridman and Petr Aven, was the subject of another memorandum which provoked a lawsuit.

Interestingly, it was the firm for which Alex Van Der Swaan works, Skadden Arps, which instructed Lord Sumption on behalf of Roman Abramovich in the case brought up against the latter by the late Boris Berezovsky. Having been given a very easy ride by the British courts up to that point, the latter found himself confronting one of the best legal minds in recent British history. As a result, Mrs Justice Gloster did not simply throw his case out, but delivered a damning and long overdue verdict on his credibility as a witness.

Whether Berezovsky's subsequent death was suicide or murder remains an open question. That if it was murder, the Russian security services were about the least likely culprits does not. (As with Stephen Curtis and 'Badri' Patarkatsishvili.)

In addition to the Gubarev suit against Steele, and his suit and that of Khan and his colleagues against BuzzFeed, suits against that company have also been brought by Carter Page and Michael Cohen.

Unfortunately, Lord Sumption is no longer practising. But the spectacle of Christopher Steele being cross-examined by some really heavyweight counsel in one or other of these cases might be a very interesting one. (I would enjoy it!)

Jack , 20 February 2018 at 12:20 PM
Mueller announces another process charge, while the Flynn sentencing is on hold as a federal judge orders Mueller to provide Flynn all related documents. Then there is Nunes, Goodlatte, and Grassley with their investigation, which as this article notes is slowly reaching into Brennan, Clapper, Rice and Powers.

https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2018/02/11/former_cia_director_john_brennan_investigated_for_perjury.html

Fred , 20 February 2018 at 12:25 PM
Robt,

So what is the actual charge? Statements to the FBI not matching what was in the "secretly" recorded meeting tapes from a later date? From the bloomberg article you linked to: "Alex Van Der Zwaan was charged Feb. 16 with lying to the FBI and Mueller's office about conversations related to his work on a report prepared by his law firm on the legitimacy of the criminal prosecution of a former Ukrainian prime minister, Yulia Tymoshenko."

"After the pro-Russian government was run out of town in 2014, the new authorities began investigating."

That's some classic doublespeak there. Just who ran whom out of town? How'd that happen? A free and fair election? Nobody got more than a tiny paper cut on the purple fingers? Let me help the poor reporters for Bloomberg:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_revolution#United_States_involvement

"In a leaked recorded phone conversation .."

"Nuland: "I think Yats is the guy who's got the economic experience the governing experience. .. We want to try to get somebody with an international personality to come out here and help to midwife this thing."

Nothing says international experience quite like getting shitcanned by the USN for using coke. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunter_Biden#U.S._Naval_Reserve

" he sits on the Chairman's Advisory Board for the National Democratic Institute (NDI). NDI is a project of the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)."

Could real news reporters of Bloomberg remind us how much money the NED spent in Ukraine and why?

Bloomberg (your link): "Manafort and Gates are accused of failing to register as agents in the U.S. for political consulting they did in Ukraine ." Question: Is Christoper Steele registered under FARA? Did anybody in the DNC/Clinton campaign/Fusion GPS know he was a "foreign person" (see the SVR 13 indictment) and thus had to register ..

Leaky:

Remind me again of the Ukrainian collusion to interfere with the US election so Donald Trump would get elected President? Perhaps Axios - founded by completely nonpolitical ex-Politico executives - could do an expose of Mr. Biden's son, the employee of Bursima and just what the Ukrainian company does.

Let me help them out: From BBCnews, 14 May 2014.
http://www.bbc.com/news/blogs-echochambers-27403003

" . "Joe Biden has been the White House's go-to guy during the Ukraine crisis, touring former Soviet republics and reassuring their concerned leaders," writes the National Journal's Marina Koren. "And now, he's not the only Biden involved in the region."....."

"The younger Mr Biden isn't the only American with political ties to have recently joined Burisma's board. Devon Archer, a former senior advisor to current Secretary of State John Kerry's 2004 presidential campaign and a college roommate of Mr Kerry's stepson HJ Heinz, signed on in April."

My, my, in less time than it took the USN to cashier the son of the Vice Present of the United States for cocaine use a Cyprus based Ukrainian gas company managed to hire him - after the Glorious kumbayah Maidan Square thingy ran Putin's puppets out of town. If only the FBI leadership during the Obama administration had been as adept with internet trolls and a 17 yo kid in Broward County Florida. But we know what the leadership of the FBI was doing, don't we?

David Habakkuk -> David Habakkuk ... , 20 February 2018 at 01:11 PM
In response to #38

Apologies.

I should have written Alex Van Der Swaan 'worked' for Skadden Arps, rather than 'works.'

Barbara Ann , 21 February 2018 at 09:25 AM
Very good Fred, thanks.

Comedy is one way of dealing with this profound idiocy and mockery surely as good a way as any to fight idiotic use of the law to undermine First Amendment rights.

I am reminded of the wags who years ago printed the RSA encryption algorithm on a T-shirt so that wearers were able to export 'Auxiliary Military Equipment' (cryptography was so-classified until 1992). Perhaps similar mockery & mass 'law-breaking' may work in this case.

http://www.cypherspace.org/adam/rsa/

On the subject of the real motivations for Mueller and the Russophobic hysteria, I came across a Twitter user the other day who clearly gets it; @BethLynch2020 's Twitter name is "Killing Russians because Hill lost is bad actually". Outstanding.

[Feb 12, 2018] I am wondering why it is that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... How did Simpson know with such confidence what the "Intelligence Community" was "saying", and who were Simpson's and Steele's sources in the "Intelligence Community"? Rooney failed to inquire. Instead, he and Simpson exchanged question and answer regarding the approach Simpson and Steele made to the FBI when they delivered their dossier. In the details of that, Simpson repeated what he had already told the Senate Judiciary Committee. ..."
"... Sources in London are divided on the question of where Steele's sources came from -- CIA, MI6, or elsewhere. What has been clear for the year in which the dossier's contents have been in public circulation is that the sources the dossier referred to as "Russian" were not. For details of the sourcing . The subsequent identification of the Maltese source Joseph Mifsud, and the Greek-American George Papadopoulos, corroborates their lack of direct Russian sources. Instead, the sources identified in the dossier were either Americans, Americans of Russian ethnic origin, or Russians with no direct knowledge repeating hearsay three or four times removed from source. ..."
"... Another reported version of the FIFA contract is that Steele, Burrows and Orbis were hired by the British Football Association to collect materials on FIFA corruption, and provide them to the FBI and other US investigators, and then to the press. The scheme's objective was reportedly to advance the British bidding for the World Cup in 2018 or 2022 by discrediting the rival bids from Russia and Qatar. Click to read . Were MI6 and CIA sources mobilized by Orbis to feed the FBI with evidence the US investigators were unable to turn up, or was Orbis the conduit through which disinformation targeting Russia was fed to make it appear more credible to the FBI, and to the media? ..."
"... US Congressional investigators have so far failed to notice the similarities between the FIFA and the Trump dossier operations. Early this month two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they have called for a Justice Department and FBI investigation of Steele for providing false information to the FBI. The provision of the US code making lying a federal crime requires the falsehoods occur "within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States." Simpson has testified that when Steele briefed the FBI on the dossier, he did so at meetings in Rome, Italy. ..."
"... With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is some evidence that Clinton and Co. actually wanted to run against Donald Trump, and tried to get their allies to manipulate the Republican primary in favor of a Trump victory (hence all the free corporate media coverage of the Donald). The dossier, fabricated or not, seems to have been one of many 'ace in the holes' that the Clinton campaign thought they could use to discredit Trump (including the Access Hollywood tape, etc.) in the general election. If so, this strategy really blew up in their face – they thought they could manipulate the process, so they could ignore the Rust Belt concerns, and that's what handed Trump the presidency. ..."
"... If the Clintonites were to admit this, however, they'd have to step down from party leadership and let the Sanders Democrats take over, and that's what this is really all about now, their effort to prevent that outcome. ..."
"... And I say "fed to him" when I'm in a generous mood, giving him the benefit of the doubt, because usually I am of the opinion that he's either a really crappy CIA agent posing as a journalist or just a garden variety rat f*!@er. A black job political operative, stitching together a few almost-believable "facts" and out-and-out fabrications with squishy words like "collusion" and "ties." ..."
"... The London experts believe the Senate Committee transcript shows Simpson and Steele were hired for the black job of discrediting the target of their research, Trump; did a poor job; failed in 2016; and now are engaged in bitter recriminations against each other to avoid multi-million dollar court penalties. ..."
"... A source at a London firm which is larger and better known than Steele's Orbis says "standard due diligence means getting to the truth. It's confidential to the client, and not leaked. There are also black jobs, white jobs, and red jobs. Black means the client wants you to dig up dirt on the target, and make it look credible for publishing in the press. White means the client wants you to clear him of the wrongdoing which he's being accused of in the media or the marketplace; it's also leaked to the press. A red job is where the client pays the due diligence firm to hire a journalist to find out what he knows and what he's likely to publish, in order to bribe or stop him. The Steele dossier on Trump is an obvious black job. Too obvious." ..."
"... A bigger bombshell, which of course none of them mentioned, is that Simpson, with his client's consent, was secretly briefing Clinton-friendly reporters on information from Steele's memos, and they used it to write stories based on "unnamed sources." He even admitted that he didn't verify the information before feeding it to the media, said he didn't feel he needed to, because it came from a trustworthy source. Where have we heard that before? ..."
"... I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing. It's well-established that the State Department often acts as a cover for the CIA, and the agency under Secretary Clinton had a strong anti-Russia faction that's on the record as meddling in Ukraine's presidential election. And how much doubt could there be that both Clintons kept the CIA connections they made while in office? ..."
"... Then there was the whole "Grizzly Steppe" report just before Trump's inauguration, presented as a consensus among "17 intelligence agencies" that the Russians "hacked the election" to help Trump win. ..."
"... I'm not 100-percent convinced that U.S. intelligence was behind the dossier, but it's enough of a possibility that I'm not writing it off as some nutty "conspiracy theory." ..."
"... Few in the NC commentariat, at least from what I saw, had any problem accepting that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded the dossier, so I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing. ..."
"... In fact I am fairly certain that it is the case, although from what I understand the FBI and MI6 were also involved. ..."
Feb 12, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

According to Simpson, "foreign intelligence services hacking American political operations is not that unusual, actually, and there's a lot of foreign intelligence services that play in American elections." He mentioned the Chinese and the Indians, not the Israelis. The Mossad, Simpson did tell the Committee, was his source for his belief that Russian intelligence has been operating through the Jewish Orthodox Chabad movement, and the Russian Orthodox Church. "The Orthodox church is also an arm of the Russian State now the Mossad guys used to tell me about how the Russians were laundering money through the Orthodox church in Israel, and that it was intelligence operations."

There are just two references in the Committee transcript to the CIA. One was a passing remark to imply the Russians cannot "break[ing] into the CIA, [so instead] you are breaking into, you know, places where, you know, an open society leaves open."

The second was a bombshell. It dropped during questioning by Congressman Thomas Rooney (right), a 3-term Republican representative from Florida with a career as an army lawyer. Rooney asked Simpson: "Do you or anyone else independently verify or corroborate any information in the dossier?"

Simpson replied by saying, "Yes. Well, numerous things in the dossier have been verified. You know, I don't have access to the intelligence or law enforcement information that I see made reference to, but, you know, things like, you know, the Russian Government has been investigating Hillary Clinton and has a lot of information about her."

Then Simpson contradicted himself, disclosing what he had just denied. "When the original memos came in saying that the Kremlin was mounting a specific operation to get Donald Trump elected President , that was not what the Intelligence Community was saying. The Intelligence Community was saying they are just seeking to disrupt our election and our political process, and that this is sort of kind of just a generally nihilistic, you know, trouble-making operation. And, you know, Chris turned out to be right, it was specifically designed to elect Donald Trump President."

How did Simpson know with such confidence what the "Intelligence Community" was "saying", and who were Simpson's and Steele's sources in the "Intelligence Community"? Rooney failed to inquire. Instead, he and Simpson exchanged question and answer regarding the approach Simpson and Steele made to the FBI when they delivered their dossier. In the details of that, Simpson repeated what he had already told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Rooney then asked what contact had been made with the CIA or "any other intelligence officials". Simpson claimed he didn't understand the question at first, then he stumbled.

Source: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180118/106796/HMTG-115-IG00-20180118-SD002.pdf -- page 61 .

What Simpson was concealing in the two pauses, reported in the transcript as hyphens, Rooney did not realize. Simpson was implying that none from Fusion GPS, his consulting company, had been in contact with the CIA, nor him personally. But Simpson left open that Steele had been in contact with the CIA. Rooney followed with a question about "anyone", but that was so imprecise, Simpson recovered his confidence to say "No". That was a cover-up -- and the House Intelligence Committee let it drop noiselessly.

Intelligence community sources and colleagues who know Simpson and Steele say Simpson was notorious at the Wall Street Journal for coming up with conspiracy theories for which the evidence was missing or unreliable. He told the Committee that disbelief on the part of his editors and management had been one of his reasons for leaving the newspaper. "One of the reasons why I left the Wall Street Journal was because I wanted to write more stories about Russian influence in Washington, D.C., on both the Democrats and the Republicans eventually the Journal lost interest in that subject. And I was frustrated that was where I left my journalism career."

When Simpson was asked "do you -- did you find anything to -- that you verified as false in the dossier, since or during?" Simpson replied: "I have not seen anything -- ". Note the hypthen, the stenographer's signal that Simpson was pausing.

"[Question]. So everything in that dossier, as far as you're concerned, is true or could be true?"

"MR. SIMPSON: I didn't say that. What I said was it was credible at the time it came in. We were able to corroborate various things that supported its credibility."

Sources in London are divided on the question of where Steele's sources came from -- CIA, MI6, or elsewhere. What has been clear for the year in which the dossier's contents have been in public circulation is that the sources the dossier referred to as "Russian" were not. For details of the sourcing . The subsequent identification of the Maltese source Joseph Mifsud, and the Greek-American George Papadopoulos, corroborates their lack of direct Russian sources. Instead, the sources identified in the dossier were either Americans, Americans of Russian ethnic origin, or Russians with no direct knowledge repeating hearsay three or four times removed from source.

So were the allegations of the dossier manufactured by a CIA disinformation unit, and fed back to the US through the British agent, Steele? Or were they a Simpson conspiracy theory of the type that failed to pass veracity testing when Simpson was at the Wall Street Journal? The House Intelligence Committee failed to inquire.

One independent clue is what financial and other links Simpson and Steele and their consulting firms, Fusion GPS and Orbis Business Intelligence, have had with US Government agencies other than the FBI, and what US Government contracts they were paid for, before the Republican and Democratic Party organizations commissioned the anti-Trump job?

The House Committee has subpoenaed business records from Fusion, but Simpson's lawyers say they will refuse to hand them over. The financial records of Steele's firm are openly accessible through the UK government company registry, Companies House. Click to read here .

Because the Trump dossier work ran from the second half of 2015 to November 2016, the financial reports of Orbis for the financial years ending March 31, 2016, and March 31, 2017, are the primary sources. For FY 2016 and FY 2017, open this link to read.

The papers reveal that Orbis was a small firm with no more than 7 employees. Steele's business partner and co-shareholder, Christopher Burrows, is another former MI6 spy. They had been hoping for MI6 support of their private business, but it failed to materialize, says an London intelligence source. "Chris Burrows is another from the same background. They all hope to be Hakluyt [a leading commercial intelligence operation in London] but didn't get the nod on departure."

They do not report the Orbis income. Instead, for 2016 the company filings indicate £155,171 in cash at the bank, and income of £245,017 owed by clients and contractors. Offsetting that figure, Orbis owed £317,848 -- to whom and for what purposes is not reported. The unaudited accounts show Orbis's profit jumped from £121,046 in 2015 to £199,223 in 2016, and £441,089 in 2017.

The financial data are complicated by the operation by Steele and Burrows of a second company, Orbis Business Intelligence International, a subsidiary they created in 2010, a year after the parent company was formed. Follow its affairs here .

According to British press reports , Orbis and Steele were paid £200,000 for the dossier. Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee the sum was much less -- $160,000 (about £114,000). Simpson's firm, he also testified, was being paid at a rate of about $50,000 per month for a total of about $320,000. If the British sources are more accurate than Simpson's testimony, Steele's takings from the dossier represented roughly half the profit on the Orbis balance-sheet.

British sources also report that a US Government agency paid for Orbis to work on evidence and allegations of corruption at the world soccer federation, Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA). Indictments in this case were issued by the US Department of Justice in May 2015 , and the following December . What role the two-partner British consultancy played in the complex investigations by teams from the Justice Department, the FBI and also the Internal Revenue Service is unclear. That Steele, Burrows and Orbis depended on US government sources for their financial well-being appears to be certain.

Another reported version of the FIFA contract is that Steele, Burrows and Orbis were hired by the British Football Association to collect materials on FIFA corruption, and provide them to the FBI and other US investigators, and then to the press. The scheme's objective was reportedly to advance the British bidding for the World Cup in 2018 or 2022 by discrediting the rival bids from Russia and Qatar. Click to read . Were MI6 and CIA sources mobilized by Orbis to feed the FBI with evidence the US investigators were unable to turn up, or was Orbis the conduit through which disinformation targeting Russia was fed to make it appear more credible to the FBI, and to the media?

US Congressional investigators have so far failed to notice the similarities between the FIFA and the Trump dossier operations. Early this month two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they have called for a Justice Department and FBI investigation of Steele for providing false information to the FBI. The provision of the US code making lying a federal crime requires the falsehoods occur "within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States." Simpson has testified that when Steele briefed the FBI on the dossier, he did so at meetings in Rome, Italy.

Now then, Part I and this sequel of the Simpson-Steele story having been read and thoroughly mulled over, what can the meaning be?

In the short run, this case was a black job assigned by Republican Party candidates for president, then the Democratic National Committee, for the purpose of discrediting Trump in favour of Hillary Clinton. It failed on Election Day in 2016; the Democrats are still trying.

In the long run, the case is a measurement of the life, or the half-life, of truth. Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote once that nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily. On his clock, that was five minutes. He didn't know the United States, or shall we say the stretch from Washington through New York to the North End of Boston. There, truth has an even shorter life. Scarcely a second.


nonsense factory , January 22, 2018 at 3:35 pm

"The primary reason I generally don't believe in conspiracies is that they can usually be better explained as the result of sheer incompetence and hubris."

I divide conspiracy notions into two categories: grand mal and petit mal . The former are generally implausible due to the large number of participants involved and while occassionally attempted, they are typically exposed pretty quickly. They may still have significant effects – for example, there was a large conspiracy to sell the Iraqi WMD story to the public, involving top levels of the British and American governments and a good section of the corporate media. That's the grand mal version.

Petit mal is your typical small criminal conspiracy. The FBI, for example, almost always includes 'conspiracy to commit mail fraud' on the list of federal charges.

With Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, there is some evidence that Clinton and Co. actually wanted to run against Donald Trump, and tried to get their allies to manipulate the Republican primary in favor of a Trump victory (hence all the free corporate media coverage of the Donald). The dossier, fabricated or not, seems to have been one of many 'ace in the holes' that the Clinton campaign thought they could use to discredit Trump (including the Access Hollywood tape, etc.) in the general election. If so, this strategy really blew up in their face – they thought they could manipulate the process, so they could ignore the Rust Belt concerns, and that's what handed Trump the presidency.

If the Clintonites were to admit this, however, they'd have to step down from party leadership and let the Sanders Democrats take over, and that's what this is really all about now, their effort to prevent that outcome.

Rhondda , January 22, 2018 at 3:57 pm

I pay pretty close attention to this topic and I must say I sometimes wonder if the Russians haven't sold the rope to the American political elite. I read all 311 pages of Simpson's testimony. I was struck that much of what he was "fed" by Steele confirmed his "OMG Russia corruption" biases.

And I say "fed to him" when I'm in a generous mood, giving him the benefit of the doubt, because usually I am of the opinion that he's either a really crappy CIA agent posing as a journalist or just a garden variety rat f*!@er. A black job political operative, stitching together a few almost-believable "facts" and out-and-out fabrications with squishy words like "collusion" and "ties."

From the embedded link in Helmer's text above: http://johnhelmer.net/glenn-simpson-chases-his-shadow-into-a-black-hole/

London due diligence firms say the record of Simpson's firm Fusion GPS and Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence operations in the US has discredited them in the due diligence market. The London experts believe the Senate Committee transcript shows Simpson and Steele were hired for the black job of discrediting the target of their research, Trump; did a poor job; failed in 2016; and now are engaged in bitter recriminations against each other to avoid multi-million dollar court penalties.

A source at a London firm which is larger and better known than Steele's Orbis says "standard due diligence means getting to the truth. It's confidential to the client, and not leaked. There are also black jobs, white jobs, and red jobs. Black means the client wants you to dig up dirt on the target, and make it look credible for publishing in the press. White means the client wants you to clear him of the wrongdoing which he's being accused of in the media or the marketplace; it's also leaked to the press. A red job is where the client pays the due diligence firm to hire a journalist to find out what he knows and what he's likely to publish, in order to bribe or stop him. The Steele dossier on Trump is an obvious black job. Too obvious."

Emphasis mine.

3.14e-9 , January 22, 2018 at 6:49 pm

Rhondaa writes:

I read all 311 pages of Simpson's testimony. I was struck that much of what he was "fed" by Steele confirmed his "OMG Russia corruption" biases.

Same here, but not just about what he was fed by Steele. Simpson claimed to have done some of his own research and said it was consistent with what he got from Steele.

I'm about three-quarters of the way through the transcript of Simpson's interrogation by the House Intelligence Committee, and I've read all 312 pages of the Senate Judiciary Committee transcript, which bears little resemblance to what was reported in the major media – shocking, I know.

Among the "bombshells" the mainstream reported was "proof" that it wasn't the dossier that launched the FBI's investigation of Trump, and therefore the dossier couldn't have been used as justification for a FISA warrant. A bigger bombshell, which of course none of them mentioned, is that Simpson, with his client's consent, was secretly briefing Clinton-friendly reporters on information from Steele's memos, and they used it to write stories based on "unnamed sources." He even admitted that he didn't verify the information before feeding it to the media, said he didn't feel he needed to, because it came from a trustworthy source. Where have we heard that before?

Few in the NC commentariat, at least from what I saw, had any problem accepting that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded the dossier, so I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing. It's well-established that the State Department often acts as a cover for the CIA, and the agency under Secretary Clinton had a strong anti-Russia faction that's on the record as meddling in Ukraine's presidential election. And how much doubt could there be that both Clintons kept the CIA connections they made while in office?

Then there was the whole "Grizzly Steppe" report just before Trump's inauguration, presented as a consensus among "17 intelligence agencies" that the Russians "hacked the election" to help Trump win.

I'm not 100-percent convinced that U.S. intelligence was behind the dossier, but it's enough of a possibility that I'm not writing it off as some nutty "conspiracy theory."

integer , January 23, 2018 at 4:16 am

Few in the NC commentariat, at least from what I saw, had any problem accepting that the DNC and the Clinton campaign funded the dossier, so I'm wondering why it's that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing.

FWIW this NC commenter has never had any problem believing that this may be the case. In fact I am fairly certain that it is the case, although from what I understand the FBI and MI6 were also involved.

Adding: Heh. I posted this before looking at Rev Kev's link to the Raimondo article, which comes to the same conclusions. Interesting times!

Scott1 , January 22, 2018 at 4:37 pm

I believe that Seth Abramson or someone put photographs to the Steele dossier showing people in the places & at the times delineated in the Steele dossier. From the very first Steele said he would not & could not reveal his sources. It was from the first indicated that it would be to the FBI & CIA to discover. He said he believed that his sources were credible.

When I was studying Intelligence services the CIA was said to be the private army of the CIA. These days I don't know exactly who the CIA works for, or answers to. I certainly don't think well of the CIA believing they are wrapped up working for their Front businesses more than focusing on the mission of spying in the interests of the American people. Of private intelligence companies I get what I can from IHS Jane's. That the CIA lost 20 assets, human beings, in China for incompetent secret communications methods would lead professionals to withhold as much of identities as possible.

For awhile there I believe Steele was worried about his own health.

David Corn at Mother Jones was reticent to break the story. So now what I see to look for is what Steele said needed to be done, & that being what Mueller is doing at the behest of the DOJ.

The US has been at war, albeit Hybrid war since the imposition of sanctions for their violations of international law as regarded the annexation of Crimea & the attack on the Ukraine. Sanctions are Economic Warfare.

That the US feels the right to engage in warfare of any kind Economic or Hot over violations of International Law leads me to believe that the UN will fail to prevent the apocalyptic riot. But that as regards Trump becomes neither here nor there, correct?

The Rev Kev , January 23, 2018 at 12:29 am

Justin Raimondo has weighed in on this story at https://original.antiwar.com/justin/2018/01/22/russsia-gate-implodes/ and he does not sound like a happy camper.

John Gilberts , January 24, 2018 at 12:25 am

William Binney, former NSA technical official and whistleblower, comments on the FISA memo, that has apparently just been released. Obviously, a major development in 'Russia-gate'.

William Binney Exposes Secret FISA Memo
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/48650.htm

[Feb 11, 2018] Corn's article exposed as a lie the information at the heart of the FBI and DOJ's FISA warrant application, simultaneously invalidating any information attributed to Steele, as well as all information that relied upon Steele's now-tainted information for corroboration

Notable quotes:
"... The FBI asked Steele if he was the source for the Isikoff report, something Steele denied. This was a lie. ..."
"... In documents submitted to a British court, Steele acknowledged that he was the source for the Isikoff article, something Simpson confirmed in his congressional testimony. ..."
"... Steele, the much-admired former British intelligence officer, had committed the ultimate sin an FBI confidential human source can commit---he lied to his handlers. ..."
"... James Baker ..."
"... The House intelligence committee majority memo specifically notes that Steele had lied to the FBI about his contact with Isikoff. ..."
"... Chuck Grassley, together with Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the subcommittee on crime and terrorism, which referred Steele to the DOJ on suspicion of lying to the FBI about the dissemination of information by Steele to the media. The referral contained a top-secret memorandum prepared by the judiciary majority staff that would, from its classification, appear to be derived from information relating to statements made by Steele to the FBI about the Isikoff article. ..."
Feb 11, 2018 | www.truthdig.com

The problem with the Isikoff report is the similarity between it and a July 20, 2016, report Steele prepared and provided to the FBI during their meeting in Rome. The FBI asked Steele if he was the source for the Isikoff report, something Steele denied. This was a lie.

In documents submitted to a British court, Steele acknowledged that he was the source for the Isikoff article, something Simpson confirmed in his congressional testimony. The Steele lie played an important role in shaping the information the FBI and DOJ provided in support of their Oct. 21, 2016, FISA warrant application targeting Page. The Isikoff article was submitted to the FISA court as corroborating evidence, along with a statement attributed to Steele denying that he was the source of the information used by Isikoff.

Steele's lies caught up with him when, on Oct. 31, 2016, David Corn wrote an article in Mother Jones titled "A Veteran Spy Has Given the FBI Information Alleging a Russian Operation to Cultivate Donald Trump," with a subtitle asking, "Has the bureau investigated this material?" Steele, the much-admired former British intelligence officer, had committed the ultimate sin an FBI confidential human source can commit---he lied to his handlers. Describing Steele (whom the article did not name) as a "credible source with a proven record of providing reliable, sensitive and important information to the US government," David Corn wrote that "the former spy told me that he was reluctant to be talking with a reporter. He pointed out this was not his common practice. 'Someone like me stays in the shadows,' he said. But he indicated that he believed this material was important, and he was unsure how the FBI was handling it. Certainly, there had been no public signs that the FBI was investigating these allegations."

The problem for the FBI was that it had used Steele's information to support its investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, mainly in the form of sworn affidavits submitted in support of a FISA warrant derived from the FBI's interactions with Steele. Corn's article exposed as a lie the information at the heart of the FBI and DOJ's FISA warrant application, simultaneously invalidating any information attributed to Steele, as well as all information that relied upon Steele's now-tainted information for corroboration. This included both Isikoff's appended article and the Papadopoulos information. As of October 2016, the FBI had yet to interview Papadopoulos. Without corroboration of the information Steele provided in his June 20, 2016, report, turned over to Gaeta on July 5, 2016, the counterintelligence investigation Strzok headed would have not been able to act on the information the Australian government provided concerning alleged barroom conversations between Papadopoulos and Downer. The "emails" allegedly alluded to by Papadopoulos that Mifsud claimed Russia possessed would have had no "hook" to corroborate them. The emails WikiLeaks released in July 2016 that triggered Strzok's investigation had either not been written at the time Papadopoulos spoke with Mifsud in April 2016 or had not yet been compiled by the malware alleged by the cybersecurity company CrowdStrike to have been behind the theft of the DNC emails.

Void of the Steele dossier as corroboration, the Papadopoulos-Mifsud conversation, as reported by Downer, simply had no legal legs to stand on, and as such would have been unusable in support of a FISA warrant application. Underscoring the seriousness the FBI attached to this issue, James Baker , the FBI's general counsel, met with Corn prior to the 2016 election. Corn specifically denies that Baker was a source for his article on Steele. The only other explanation for a Baker-Corn meeting would be for the FBI's general counsel to confirm Steele as Corn's source in support of the FBI's subsequent decision to sever relations with Steele, including the forfeiture of the $50,000 payment Steele was to have received for his work.

The FBI's decision to suspend and then sever its confidential human source relationship with Steele is reflected in the House intelligence committee majority memo, as is the FBI's decision to not give Steele the payment that had been authorized for his work on behalf of the FBI, reflected in the three October memorandums previously cited.

The House intelligence committee majority memo specifically notes that Steele had lied to the FBI about his contact with Isikoff. This helps explain the Jan. 18, 2018 , letter from the chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Chuck Grassley, together with Sen. Lindsey Graham, chairman of the subcommittee on crime and terrorism, which referred Steele to the DOJ on suspicion of lying to the FBI about the dissemination of information by Steele to the media. The referral contained a top-secret memorandum prepared by the judiciary majority staff that would, from its classification, appear to be derived from information relating to statements made by Steele to the FBI about the Isikoff article.

The role the FBI general counsel played in investigating the link between Steele and the media brings to light another important facet of the complex web woven by Steele in marketing his Fusion GPS-funded opposition research as "intelligence." Corn, in his Mother Jones article, cites communications between Sen. Harry Reid and FBI Director James Comey, in which Reid refers to "explosive information" in the possession of the FBI pertaining to Page's alleged meetings in Moscow in July 2016 with "sanctioned" Russian officials. The specificity of the information cited by Reid strongly mirrors the information contained in Steele's July 26, 2016, report detailing his sub-sources' allegations about Carter's purported meeting with Russian officials. Reid's communication with Comey closely tracks with a top-secret briefing provided to Reid by former CIA Director John Brennan, in which the information about Page was shared.

[Feb 06, 2018] FISA-Gate The Plot To Destroy Our Republic by Justin Raimondo

The key question was DNC investigation by Crowdstrike a false flag operation or not
Notable quotes:
"... According to the New York Times , after being introduced to a number of Russian contacts by a Professor Joseph Mifsud – supposedly a "Maltese academic" who has since completely disappeared – the mysterious pedagogue told Papadopoulos that the Russians had "thousands" of incriminating emails that would damage Mrs. Clinton's campaign. Although there's no evidence Papadopoulos communicated this information to the Trump campaign, the young would-be mover-and-shaker got drunk one night in a London pub and supposedly told an Australian diplomat about the emails: it's not known whether the Australian had a role in getting him in a talkative mood, but we are told the two met due to the efforts of an Israeli diplomat in London. ..."
"... The Russia-gate conspiracy theorists believe that the Trump campaign somehow had a hand in either procuring or publishing the Clinton/Podesta emails – even though no one has ever produced any evidence of this. Aside from this important lack, there are some big problems with the conspiracist thesis. To begin with, if the Trump people knew about the DNC/Podesta emails in advance, why didn't they utilize this vital information before WikiLeaks published them? And what purpose would it serve the Russians to let the Trump camp in on the operation, and risk exposure in the process? If they wanted to help Trump, all they had to do was make sure the emails were published. The collusion theory makes no sense – but, then again, Russia-gate has never made much sense. ..."
Feb 06, 2018 | original.antiwar.com
the memo " and its meaning. A simple reading reveals that allegations of skullduggery peeking by the Obama administration during the presidential campaign were entirely accurate: the memo just filled us in on the details. And while the debate has largely been over whether the proper legal procedures were followed by the FBI and administration officials in spying on Carter Page – someone only marginally connected to the Trump campaign – the real question is: why were they sneaking around Page at all?

Oh, he claimed to be an "informal advisor" to the Russian government: he had business interests in Russia and met with Russian officials. Furthermore, and most importantly, he opposed the anti-Russian hysteria that permeates official Washington, and he often said – in public speeches as well as privately – that US sanctions against Russia are a mistake.

But so what? Since when is it illegal to hold these views?

Page was never a "Russian agent," and the FBI never proved that he was or is. Instead, they submitted that phony BuzzFeed "dossier" to the FISA court as "evidence" justifying their hot pursuit of him on more than one occasion. They did so without telling the judge who paid for the dossier (it was the Clinton campaign, as Trump claimed when this first came out) and they withheld other important details about its provenance – including that it was written by Christopher Steele, a "former" British intelligence agent who openly expressed a passionate desire to see Trump defeated. Nor had they verified the information in the dossier related to Page, because they " didn't have time ," as former DNI chief James Clapper has said on numerous occasions.

Page was targeted and the information gleaned from listening in on his phone conversations, reading his email, and god knows what other sneaky intrusions, was leaked to the media in a concerted campaign to influence the outcome of the election. So, yes, there was "collusion" – except it wasn't a pact between Putin and Trump but rather an alliance between Hillary's campaign and the national security bureaucracy to get her elected. In effect, the top leadership of the FBI became an adjunct of the Clinton campaign – and, after Trump won, they executed a plan to frame him for "collusion" and oust him.

When Intelligence Committee chair Devin Nunes announced he was going public with it, the Democrats and their Republican Never-Trump allies said it meant the national security of the United States would be put in mortal danger. They trotted out the old "sources and methods" argument, which, it turned out, did not apply to the memo – because it just laid out the bare facts, and revealed neither sources nor methods. (Unless one is talking about the political methodology of the FBI scam, which involved sneaking, peaking, and then leaking).

The Deep State-Democrat fallback position is that Carter Page is really beside the point, because the real genesis of the Russia-gate probe was the investigation into 28-year-old George Papadopoulos, an "energy consultant" even more marginal to the Trump campaign than Page.

According to the New York Times , after being introduced to a number of Russian contacts by a Professor Joseph Mifsud – supposedly a "Maltese academic" who has since completely disappeared – the mysterious pedagogue told Papadopoulos that the Russians had "thousands" of incriminating emails that would damage Mrs. Clinton's campaign. Although there's no evidence Papadopoulos communicated this information to the Trump campaign, the young would-be mover-and-shaker got drunk one night in a London pub and supposedly told an Australian diplomat about the emails: it's not known whether the Australian had a role in getting him in a talkative mood, but we are told the two met due to the efforts of an Israeli diplomat in London.

If this sounds like a setup to you, then you win the door prize: your very own copy of What Happened , now going for fifty cents at the remainder table.

The Russia-gate conspiracy theorists believe that the Trump campaign somehow had a hand in either procuring or publishing the Clinton/Podesta emails – even though no one has ever produced any evidence of this. Aside from this important lack, there are some big problems with the conspiracist thesis. To begin with, if the Trump people knew about the DNC/Podesta emails in advance, why didn't they utilize this vital information before WikiLeaks published them? And what purpose would it serve the Russians to let the Trump camp in on the operation, and risk exposure in the process? If they wanted to help Trump, all they had to do was make sure the emails were published. The collusion theory makes no sense – but, then again, Russia-gate has never made much sense.

While the most fanatical anti-Trump types simply denied everything in the memo, the Beltway "libertarians" who hate Trump's guts -- and the honest liberals like Glenn Greenwald who also hate Trump's guts but who have a conscience and won't go along with the Russia-gate hoax – were reduced to finger-wagging in response to the memo's release. Why, they asked, did these very same people, like Rep. Nunes, vote to expand the Deep State's power to spy on Americans right before the memo came out?

The question answers itself. As Rep. Thomas Massie put it : "Who made the decision to withhold evidence of FISA abuse until after Congress voted to renew FISA program?" More than a few votes would no doubt have been cast differently, and perhaps the outcome would've been different. Certainly the debate would've been more extensive, and much more interesting.

What's exciting, to me at least, is the promise by Nunes that this is just the start of the revelations. Next up: the key role played by the State Department in the plot to destroy our republic and hand power over to unelected Deep State bureaucrats. And this means the important – perhaps decisive – part played by foreign actors in all this will be exposed to the light of day. If you thought there was howling about the first Nunes memo, wait until you hear the screams of pain coming from the foreign lobbyists and their "American" sock puppets over Part Two of the Nunes narrative. The real story of who is subverting our republic – and colluding with foreigners to accomplish that goal – is about to come out.

I can hardly wait!

This isn't about Trump. You may hate him. You may love him. That's irrelevant. What matters is that a powerful group of Washington insiders is trying to exercise its assumed veto power over who gets to inhabit the White House – and that is impermissible as long as the republic endures.

NOTES IN THE MARGIN

You can check out my Twitter feed by going here . But please note that my tweets are sometimes deliberately provocative, often made in jest, and largely consist of me thinking out loud.

I've written a couple of books, which you might want to peruse. Here is the link for buying the second edition of my 1993 book, Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement , with an Introduction by Prof. George W. Carey , a Foreword by Patrick J. Buchanan, and critical essays by Scott Richert and David Gordon ( ISI Books , 2008).

You can buy An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard (Prometheus Books, 2000), my biography of the great libertarian thinker, here .

Read more by Justin Raimondo

Justin Raimondo is the editorial director of Antiwar.com, and a senior fellow at the Randolph Bourne Institute. He is a contributing editor at The American Conservative , and writes a monthly column for Chronicles . He is the author of Reclaiming the American Right: The Lost Legacy of the Conservative Movement [Center for Libertarian Studies, 1993; Intercollegiate Studies Institute, 2000], and An Enemy of the State: The Life of Murray N. Rothbard [Prometheus Books, 2000]. View all posts by Justin Raimondo

[Jan 22, 2018] The CIA Bull in Glenn Simpson s Russia Shop by John Helmer

Notable quotes:
"... In criminal trials the rule for prosecuting and defending lawyers is the same. Never ask a witness a question unless you already know the answer. The corollary rule for defending lawyers is – if the answer to your question will incriminate your client, don't ask it, and hope the prosecutor fails to do his job. ..."
"... Glenn Simpson, a former employee of the Wall Street Journal in New York, is currently on trial in the US for having fabricated a dossier of allegations of Russian misconduct (bribes, sex, blackmail, hacking) involving President Donald Trump and circulating them to the press; the objective was to damage Trump's candidacy before the election of November 8, 2016. ..."
"... Simpson's collaborator in the dossier and his business partner, Christopher Steele, is facing trial in the London High Court, charged with libels he and Simpson published in their dossier. Together, they are material witnesses in two federal US court trials for defamation, one in Miami and one in New York. If they perjure themselves giving evidence in those cases, they are likely to face criminal indictments. If they tell the truth, they are likely to face fresh defamation proceedings; perhaps a civil racketeering suit for fraud; maybe a false statement prosecution under the US criminal code. ..."
"... Simpson's lawyers did all the talking; Simpson said nothing, pleading the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself. ..."
"... Although his lawyers repeatedly claimed during the earlier Senate Committee hearing that Simpson was testifying voluntarily, the House Committee recorded that Simpson was compelled to testify. "Our record today," the November 8 transcript begins, "will reflect that you have been compelled to appear today pursuant to a subpoena issued on October 4th, 2017." Simpson then told the Committee through his lawyers that he would plead the Fifth Amendment and not answer any questions. The first transcript is a record of debate between Republican and Democratic members of the Committee. ..."
"... Steele, according to the November 8 transcript, was also summoned to testify. A British citizen with home in Berkshire and office in London, he refused and the Committee recorded his "noncooperation and nontestimony." ..."
"... The second was a bombshell. It dropped during questioning by Congressman Thomas Rooney (right), a 3-term Republican representative from Florida with a career as an army lawyer. Rooney asked Simpson: "Do you or anyone else independently verify or corroborate any information in the dossier?" ..."
"... Rooney then asked what contact had been made with the CIA or "any other intelligence officials". Simpson claimed he didn't understand the question at first, then he stumbled. ..."
"... But Simpson left open that Steele had been in contact with the CIA. Rooney followed with a question about "anyone", but that was so imprecise, Simpson recovered his confidence to say "No". That was a cover-up – and the House Intelligence Committee let it drop noiselessly. ..."
"... So were the allegations of the dossier manufactured by a CIA disinformation unit, and fed back to the US through the British agent, Steele? Or were they a Simpson conspiracy theory of the type that failed to pass veracity testing when Simpson was at the Wall Street Journal? The House Intelligence Committee failed to inquire. ..."
"... One independent clue is what financial and other links Simpson and Steele and their consulting firms, Fusion GPS and Orbis Business Intelligence, have had with US Government agencies other than the FBI, and what US Government contracts they were paid for, before the Republican and Democratic Party organizations commissioned the anti-Trump job? ..."
"... According to British press reports , Orbis and Steele were paid £200,000 for the dossier. Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee the sum was much less -- $160,000 (about £114,000). Simpson's firm, he also testified, was being paid at a rate of about $50,000 per month for a total of about $320,000. If the British sources are more accurate than Simpson's testimony, Steele's takings from the dossier represented roughly half the profit on the Orbis balance-sheet. ..."
Jan 22, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
By John Helmer , the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

In criminal trials the rule for prosecuting and defending lawyers is the same. Never ask a witness a question unless you already know the answer. The corollary rule for defending lawyers is – if the answer to your question will incriminate your client, don't ask it, and hope the prosecutor fails to do his job.

Glenn Simpson, a former employee of the Wall Street Journal in New York, is currently on trial in the US for having fabricated a dossier of allegations of Russian misconduct (bribes, sex, blackmail, hacking) involving President Donald Trump and circulating them to the press; the objective was to damage Trump's candidacy before the election of November 8, 2016. Simpson was called to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on August 22, 2017; then the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence on November 8 and again on November 14, 2017. So far, Simpson's veracity and business conduct face nothing more than the court of public opinion. He has not yet been charged with criminal or civil offences. That will happen if the evidence materializes that Simpson has been lying.

Simpson's collaborator in the dossier and his business partner, Christopher Steele, is facing trial in the London High Court, charged with libels he and Simpson published in their dossier. Together, they are material witnesses in two federal US court trials for defamation, one in Miami and one in New York. If they perjure themselves giving evidence in those cases, they are likely to face criminal indictments. If they tell the truth, they are likely to face fresh defamation proceedings; perhaps a civil racketeering suit for fraud; maybe a false statement prosecution under the US criminal code.

One question for them is as obvious as its answer. Who do an American ex-journalist on US national security and an ex-British intelligence agent go to for sources on Russian undercover operations outside Russia in general, the US in particular? Answer -- first, their friends and contacts from the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA); second, their friends and contacts from the Secret Intelligence Service or MI6, as the UK counterpart is known.

Why then did the twenty-two congressmen, the members of the House Intelligence Committee who subpoenaed Simpson for interview, fail to pursue what information he and Steele received either directly from the CIA or indirectly through British intelligence?

The answer none in the US wants to say aloud is the possibility that it was the CIA which provided Simpson and Steele with names and source materials for their dossier, creating the evidence of a Russian plot against the US election, and generating evidence of Russian operations. If that is what happened, then Simpson and Steele were participants in a false-flag CIA operation in US politics.

This isn't idle speculation. It has been under investigation at the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) since Simpson and Steele decided in mid-2016 to go to the FBI to request an investigation, and then told American press to get the FBI to confirm it was investigating. At the fresh request this month from the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, the FBI is still investigating .

Simpson's appearance at the House Intelligence Committee was the sequel to his testimony before the Senate Judiciary Committee; for that story, read this .

Simpson's three lawyers from the Washington, DC, firm of Cunningham Levy Muse, who appeared with him at the Senate and House committee hearings. From left to right, Robert Muse; Joshua Levy, and Rachel Clattenburg. The firm's other name partner, Bryan Cunningham, was a CIA officer specializing in cyber operations.

The transcripts of the House Intelligence Committee were released last Thursday. Simpson's first appearance was on November 8, and can be read in full here .

Simpson's lawyers did all the talking; Simpson said nothing, pleading the US Constitution's Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself.

Although his lawyers repeatedly claimed during the earlier Senate Committee hearing that Simpson was testifying voluntarily, the House Committee recorded that Simpson was compelled to testify. "Our record today," the November 8 transcript begins, "will reflect that you have been compelled to appear today pursuant to a subpoena issued on October 4th, 2017." Simpson then told the Committee through his lawyers that he would plead the Fifth Amendment and not answer any questions. The first transcript is a record of debate between Republican and Democratic members of the Committee.

This resulted in an agreement for Simpson to testify under the subpoena but on terms his lawyers said would limit the scope of the questions which he would agree to answer.

Steele, according to the November 8 transcript, was also summoned to testify. A British citizen with home in Berkshire and office in London, he refused and the Committee recorded his "noncooperation and nontestimony."

Republicans outnumber Democrats on the House Committee, 13 to 9. Just 5 Republican members were at Simpson's November 14 appearance; 7 Democrats. The Republican committee chairman, Devin Nunes, was absent. Release of Simpson's transcript was an initiative of the Democrats. In a statement by their leader on the committee, Adam Schiff, the Democrats claimed last week "thus far, Committee Republicans have refused to look into this key area and we hope the release of this transcript will reinforce the importance of these critical questions to our investigation."

Read the November 14 testimony here .

Search the 165 pages of the transcript for the CIA, and you will find many references to the letters. There were 44 mentions of the Federal Bureau of Intelligence (FBI); 4 mentions of "British Intelligence" – the spy agency to which Steele belonged ten years ago – one mention each of the Israeli Mossad, the Chinese and Indian intelligence services.

According to Simpson, "foreign intelligence services hacking American political operations is not that unusual, actually, and there's a lot of foreign intelligence services that play in American elections." He mentioned the Chinese and the Indians, not the Israelis. The Mossad, Simpson did tell the Committee, was his source for his belief that Russian intelligence has been operating through the Jewish Orthodox Chabad movement, and the Russian Orthodox Church. "The Orthodox church is also an arm of the Russian State now the Mossad guys used to tell me about how the Russians were laundering money through the Orthodox church in Israel, and that it was intelligence operations."

There are just two references in the Committee transcript to the CIA. One was a passing remark to imply the Russians cannot "break[ing] into the CIA, [so instead] you are breaking into, you know, places where, you know, an open society leaves open."

The second was a bombshell. It dropped during questioning by Congressman Thomas Rooney (right), a 3-term Republican representative from Florida with a career as an army lawyer. Rooney asked Simpson: "Do you or anyone else independently verify or corroborate any information in the dossier?"

Simpson replied by saying, "Yes. Well, numerous things in the dossier have been verified. You know, I don't have access to the intelligence or law enforcement information that I see made reference to, but, you know, things like, you know, the Russian Government has been investigating Hillary Clinton and has a lot of information about her."

Then Simpson contradicted himself, disclosing what he had just denied. "When the original memos came in saying that the Kremlin was mounting a specific operation to get Donald Trump elected President , that was not what the Intelligence Community was saying. The Intelligence Community was saying they are just seeking to disrupt our election and our political process, and that this is sort of kind of just a generally nihilistic, you know, trouble-making operation. And, you know, Chris turned out to be right, it was specifically designed to elect Donald Trump President."

How did Simpson know with such confidence what the "Intelligence Community" was "saying", and who were Simpson's and Steele's sources in the "Intelligence Community"? Rooney failed to inquire. Instead, he and Simpson exchanged question and answer regarding the approach Simpson and Steele made to the FBI when they delivered their dossier. In the details of that, Simpson repeated what he had already told the Senate Judiciary Committee.

Rooney then asked what contact had been made with the CIA or "any other intelligence officials". Simpson claimed he didn't understand the question at first, then he stumbled.

Source: http://docs.house.gov/meetings/IG/IG00/20180118/106796/HMTG-115-IG00-20180118-SD002.pdf -- page 61 .

What Simpson was concealing in the two pauses, reported in the transcript as hyphens, Rooney did not realize. Simpson was implying that none from Fusion GPS, his consulting company, had been in contact with the CIA, nor him personally. But Simpson left open that Steele had been in contact with the CIA. Rooney followed with a question about "anyone", but that was so imprecise, Simpson recovered his confidence to say "No". That was a cover-up – and the House Intelligence Committee let it drop noiselessly.

Intelligence community sources and colleagues who know Simpson and Steele say Simpson was notorious at the Wall Street Journal for coming up with conspiracy theories for which the evidence was missing or unreliable. He told the Committee that disbelief on the part of his editors and management had been one of his reasons for leaving the newspaper. "One of the reasons why I left the Wall Street Journal was because I wanted to write more stories about Russian influence in Washington, D.C., on both the Democrats and the Republicans eventually the Journal lost interest in that subject. And I was frustrated that was where I left my journalism career."

Left: Glenn Simpson reporter for the Wall Street Journal in 1996, promoting his book, Dirty Little Secrets: The Persistence of Corruption in American Politics. Right: Simpson in Washington in August 2017.

When Simpson was asked "do you – did you find anything to -- that you verified as false in the dossier, since or during?" Simpson replied: "I have not seen anything – ". Note the hypthen, the stenographer's signal that Simpson was pausing.

"[Question]. So everything in that dossier, as far as you're concerned, is true or could be true?"

"MR. SIMPSON: I didn't say that. What I said was it was credible at the time it came in. We were able to corroborate various things that supported its credibility."

Sources in London are divided on the question of where Steele's sources came from – CIA, MI6, or elsewhere. What has been clear for the year in which the dossier's contents have been in public circulation is that the sources the dossier referred to as "Russian" were not. For details of the sourcing . The subsequent identification of the Maltese source Joseph Mifsud, and the Greek-American George Papadopoulos, corroborates their lack of direct Russian sources. Instead, the sources identified in the dossier were either Americans, Americans of Russian ethnic origin, or Russians with no direct knowledge repeating hearsay three or four times removed from source.

So were the allegations of the dossier manufactured by a CIA disinformation unit, and fed back to the US through the British agent, Steele? Or were they a Simpson conspiracy theory of the type that failed to pass veracity testing when Simpson was at the Wall Street Journal? The House Intelligence Committee failed to inquire.

One independent clue is what financial and other links Simpson and Steele and their consulting firms, Fusion GPS and Orbis Business Intelligence, have had with US Government agencies other than the FBI, and what US Government contracts they were paid for, before the Republican and Democratic Party organizations commissioned the anti-Trump job?

The House Committee has subpoenaed business records from Fusion, but Simpson's lawyers say they will refuse to hand them over. The financial records of Steele's firm are openly accessible through the UK government company registry, Companies House. Click to read here .

Because the Trump dossier work ran from the second half of 2015 to November 2016, the financial reports of Orbis for the financial years ending March 31, 2016, and March 31, 2017, are the primary sources. For FY 2016 and FY 2017, open this link to read.

The papers reveal that Orbis was a small firm with no more than 7 employees. Steele's business partner and co-shareholder, Christopher Burrows, is another former MI6 spy. They had been hoping for MI6 support of their private business, but it failed to materialize, says an London intelligence source. "Chris Burrows is another from the same background. They all hope to be Hakluyt [a leading commercial intelligence operation in London] but didn't get the nod on departure."

They do not report the Orbis income. Instead, for 2016 the company filings indicate £155,171 in cash at the bank, and income of £245,017 owed by clients and contractors. Offsetting that figure, Orbis owed £317,848 – to whom and for what purposes is not reported. The unaudited accounts show Orbis's profit jumped from £121,046 in 2015 to £199,223 in 2016, and £441,089 in 2017.

The financial data are complicated by the operation by Steele and Burrows of a second company, Orbis Business Intelligence International, a subsidiary they created in 2010, a year after the parent company was formed. Follow its affairs here .

According to British press reports , Orbis and Steele were paid £200,000 for the dossier. Simpson told the House Intelligence Committee the sum was much less -- $160,000 (about £114,000). Simpson's firm, he also testified, was being paid at a rate of about $50,000 per month for a total of about $320,000. If the British sources are more accurate than Simpson's testimony, Steele's takings from the dossier represented roughly half the profit on the Orbis balance-sheet.

British sources also report that a US Government agency paid for Orbis to work on evidence and allegations of corruption at the world soccer federation, Fédération Internationale de Football (FIFA). Indictments in this case were issued by the US Department of Justice in May 2015 , and the following December . What role the two-partner British consultancy played in the complex investigations by teams from the Justice Department, the FBI and also the Internal Revenue Service is unclear. That Steele, Burrows and Orbis depended on US government sources for their financial well-being appears to be certain.

Another reported version of the FIFA contract is that Steele, Burrows and Orbis were hired by the British Football Association to collect materials on FIFA corruption, and provide them to the FBI and other US investigators, and then to the press. The scheme's objective was reportedly to advance the British bidding for the World Cup in 2018 or 2022 by discrediting the rival bids from Russia and Qatar. Click to read . Were MI6 and CIA sources mobilized by Orbis to feed the FBI with evidence the US investigators were unable to turn up, or was Orbis the conduit through which disinformation targeting Russia was fed to make it appear more credible to the FBI, and to the media?

US Congressional investigators have so far failed to notice the similarities between the FIFA and the Trump dossier operations. Early this month two Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee announced that they have called for a Justice Department and FBI investigation of Steele for providing false information to the FBI. The provision of the US code making lying a federal crime requires the falsehoods occur "within the jurisdiction of the executive, legislative, or judicial branch of the Government of the United States." Simpson has testified that when Steele briefed the FBI on the dossier, he did so at meetings in Rome, Italy.

Now then, Part I and this sequel of the Simpson-Steele story having been read and thoroughly mulled over, what can the meaning be?

In the short run, this case was a black job assigned by Republican Party candidates for president, then the Democratic National Committee, for the purpose of discrediting Trump in favour of Hillary Clinton. It failed on Election Day in 2016; the Democrats are still trying.

In the long run, the case is a measurement of the life, or the half-life, of truth. Giuseppe di Lampedusa wrote once that nowhere has truth so short a life as in Sicily. On his clock, that was five minutes. He didn't know the United States, or shall we say the stretch from Washington through New York to the North End of Boston. There, truth has an even shorter life. Scarcely a second.


JTMcPhee , January 22, 2018 at 9:35 am

Maybe one should include this sentence preceding the selected bit, for context? "So far, Simpson's veracity and business conduct face nothing more than the court of public opinion." Less than careful, maybe artful, drafting, but the takeaway is that these guys are on trial "in the court of public opinion." Where the jury is made up of uninformed and incurious but lascivious mopes. And the Players know that the Game is outside the ken or interest of most, and immunity and impunity and opacity are the principal axes of play

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fear,_uncertainty_and_doubt And impeachment in aid of the Narrative. Some of us even do it to ourselves, without any prompting from those selling the crapified narrative. But never mind, it's all part of the species death wish, right? http://collections.museumca.org/?q=collection-item%2F2010542075

[Jan 21, 2018] Mifsud Offering Alu Tubes to Papadopoulos?

Looks like another false flag operation , now with the participation of Italian intelligence services.
Notable quotes:
"... Appears Prof. Mifsud of Maltese descent has close links to former Italian Minister of the Interior Vincenzo Scotti and the Italian Intelligence Agency. See more information from the Link Campus based in Rome. With links to a corrupt Saudi Prince, getting some sense now of a covert operation or a piggy-back Mossad act with knowledge of Intelligence gained from Five Eyes raw data ... ..."
"... "We are very excited to be partnering with the Link Campus Foundation to fund and enable important scholarship that looks to build bridges of mediation in conflict regions around the world," ..."
"... "We have respected the work of Link Campus for some time. The Centre hopes to play an important role in contributing to its efforts toward creating peace and good governance by strengthening the ability of researchers, media, and civil society to speak out and be informed on vital contemporary issues." ..."
"... "The Centre will take a very pragmatic approach to helping bring smarter and more relevant thinking to the area of conflict mediation." ..."
"... "Offering this research platform for experts is EDOF's way of trying to support those who are doing the heavy thinking as to how we can bring resolution to some of the more intractable conflicts in our world." ..."
"... Prince Turki Al Faisal said the evidence, disclosed by the United States late, was "overwhelming" and "clearly shows official Iranian responsibility". "Somebody in Iran will have to pay the price," said Prince Turki , who also served as his country's envoy to Britain and the US. ..."
"... ... Prince Turki al-Faisal , the chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, is a former director of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services and ambassador to the United States. ..."
Jan 21, 2018 | www.boomantribune.com

Appears Prof. Mifsud of Maltese descent has close links to former Italian Minister of the Interior Vincenzo Scotti and the Italian Intelligence Agency. See more information from the Link Campus based in Rome. With links to a corrupt Saudi Prince, getting some sense now of a covert operation or a piggy-back Mossad act with knowledge of Intelligence gained from Five Eyes raw data ...

[The Maltese government send a warning to Colonel Gaddafi when the F-111 fighter bombers were en route to Libya in the 1980s.]

Partenariats of EDOF

EDOF & the Link Campus Foundation
Establishing the Essam & Dalal Obaid Foundation Centre for War and Peace Studies at Link Campus University in Rome.

The EDOF Centre will work closely with the various interdisciplinary academic departments at the Link Campus University as well as with international governments and organizations in order to support experts, academics, researchers, diplomats, governments, and civil society activists in their attempts to help countries in conflict, crisis and transition around the world. The Partnership Agreement was signed in Rome on May 8, 2017.

"We are very excited to be partnering with the Link Campus Foundation to fund and enable important scholarship that looks to build bridges of mediation in conflict regions around the world," said EDOF's CEO, Dr. Nawaf Obaid . "We have respected the work of Link Campus for some time. The Centre hopes to play an important role in contributing to its efforts toward creating peace and good governance by strengthening the ability of researchers, media, and civil society to speak out and be informed on vital contemporary issues."

Professor Joseph Mefsud will be appointed the Founding Director of the Centre for a period of three years. Scholarships and bursaries will be allocated in the field of War and Peace studies. The Centre will also hold international seminars and conferences, produce research publications, and appoint Senior Fellows in the field of War and Peace studies.

According to Tarek Obaid ( 1 ), Founder of EDOF, "The Centre will take a very pragmatic approach to helping bring smarter and more relevant thinking to the area of conflict mediation." It will achieve this by having three areas of concentration: training, mentoring, and providing platforms for professional and expert seminars; building up the capacity of institutions and civic groups; and working with independent and official partners to remove barriers to free expression, robust public debate and open citizen engagement. "Offering this research platform for experts is EDOF's way of trying to support those who are doing the heavy thinking as to how we can bring resolution to some of the more intractable conflicts in our world."

[( 1 ) Source: Sarawak Report ]

Belfer Center - Nawaf Obaid Biography

Nawaf Obaid is the Visiting Fellow for Intelligence & Defense Projects at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. He is also a weekly columnist for the pan-Arab daily, Al Hayat Newspaper.

He is currently the CEO of the Essam and Dalal Obaid Foundation (EDOF).

From 2004 to 2007, he was Special Advisor for Strategic Communications to Prince Turki Al Faisal , while Prince Turki was the Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom & Ireland, and then the United States. And from 2007 to 2011, he worked with the Saudi Royal Court, where he was seconded as a Special Advisor to the Saudi Information Minister. Most recently, he served as the Special Counselor to the Saudi Ambassador to the United Kingdom from 2011 to 2015.

Joseph Mifsud: Brexit: stepping off a cliff or indipendence day?

Il 20 marzo alle ore 10:30 presso l'Università degli Studi Link Campus University, si è tenuto il convegno "Brexit: stepping off a cliff or indipendence day?"

Il convegno determina il primo atto di una collaborazione italo-britannica post Brexit, ed è stato organizzato in occasione della firma del Protocollo d'intesa tra l'Università degli Studi Link Campus University e la London School of Economics and Political Science, tenutasi lo stesso giorno nella sede dell'università romana.

Sono intervenuti: Franco Frattini - Presidente del Corso in Studi Strategici e Scienze Diplomatiche e Presidente della SIOI, Vincenzo Scotti - Presidente dell'Università degli Studi Link Campus University, Michael Cox - Direttore della LSE IDEAS e Professore di Relazioni Internazionali presso la LSE.

Link Campus University - Vincenzo Scotti, President
Portrait of a Political Leader: Vincenzo Scotti

Linked to Saudi Prince Turki Al Faisal ...

Hariri Caught In Sudairi Power Struggle - US Policy
Iranian dissident does not believe in 'Saudi ambassador' plot

Prince Turki Al Faisal said the evidence, disclosed by the United States late, was "overwhelming" and "clearly shows official Iranian responsibility". "Somebody in Iran will have to pay the price," said Prince Turki , who also served as his country's envoy to Britain and the US.

...
Prince Turki al-Faisal , the chairman of the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, is a former director of Saudi Arabia's intelligence services and ambassador to the United States.

[Jan 11, 2018] Revelations From Fusion GPS Founder Testimony

Notable quotes:
"... An extensive review of Simpson's 312-page Aug. 22 interview transcript shows that his strongest evidence for believing the dossier's accuracy is that he trusts Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the 35-page document. ..."
"... when pressed for independent evidence to support the dossier's allegations, Simpson demurred. He also refused to discuss dossier sources or to say whether he had vetted any of them. ..."
"... The revelation raises questions about why the FBI would have shared seemingly sensitive information about its sources with Steele, a former MI6 officer who now operates a private intelligence firm ..."
"... Simpson was cagey when asked whether Steele had received that information directly from the FBI, but he did not deny it. "And did Mr. Steele tell you that the FBI had relayed this information to him?" Simpson was asked. "He didn't specifically say that," said Simpson, adding that Steele "would say very generic things like I saw them, they asked me a lot of questions, sounds like they have another source or they have another source." ..."
"... Simpson's remarks generated gleeful speculation from some media outlets that a mole within Trump's orbit was a confidential source for the FBI. But sources close to Fusion told reporters on Tuesday that Simpson conflated information he had been told by Steele. NBC News reported that the Trump campaign source Simpson was referring to was George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser who recently pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts. ..."
"... A month earlier, Papadopoulos had met in April 2016 with a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud who claimed to have learned that Russian operatives had stolen "thousands" of Clinton-related emails. ..."
"... Bruce and Nellie Ohr have become two of the more intriguing figures in the dossier saga. Bruce Ohr was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department when he met with Steele before the 2016 election. He also met with Simpson just after Trump's election win. Nellie Ohr, a former CIA employee with expertise in Russia, worked for Fusion GPS on its Trump research. Neither Ohr appears by name in the Simpson transcript. ..."
"... Simpson acknowledged in a Nov. 14 interview with the House Intelligence Committee that he had met with Bruce Ohr. Ohr was demoted from his DOJ position weeks later. Fox News reported that DOJ officials were not aware of his contacts with Steele and Simpson ..."
"... Simpson was also asked whether his firm employed anyone who speaks Russian. And though Nellie Ohr seemingly speaks Russian , Simpson told Senate investigators that he did not employ anyone with that particular skill. ..."
"... Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks during an interview in Moscow, Russia November 8, 2016. ..."
"... Simpson suggested that the FBI expressed frustration with Steele during meetings in Sept. 2016 that some of the information that he had shared with the bureau was appearing in the media. ..."
"... Steele first shared his findings with an FBI acquaintance in July 2016. He met with agents again in Sept. 2016. ..."
"... "Did Mr. Steele ever indicate to you whether the FBI had asked him not to speak with the media?" one investigator asked Simpson. "I remember Chris saying at some point that they were upset with media coverage of some of the issues that he had discussed with him," replied Simpson, adding that "he never said they told him he couldn't talk to them." ..."
"... Kramer is the only person known to have handled the dossier who has not denied being BuzzFeed's source. He was recently interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee and by lawyers who represent a Russian businessman suing BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier. (RELATED: BuzzFeed's Dossier Gets Closer To Being Identified) ..."
Jan 11, 2018 | dailycaller.com

One of the biggest takeaways from Fusion GPS founder Glenn Simpson's Senate Judiciary Committee testimony is that he has no independent proof that the allegations made in the infamous Trump dossier are accurate. An extensive review of Simpson's 312-page Aug. 22 interview transcript shows that his strongest evidence for believing the dossier's accuracy is that he trusts Christopher Steele, the former British spy who compiled the 35-page document.

"Chris, as I say, has a sterling reputation as a person who doesn't exaggerate, doesn't make things up, doesn't sell baloney," Simpson, a former Wall Street Journal, told Senate investigators in the interview. But when pressed for independent evidence to support the dossier's allegations, Simpson demurred. He also refused to discuss dossier sources or to say whether he had vetted any of them. But that's not the only conclusion to be drawn from Simpson's testimony, a transcript of which was released on Tuesday by California Sen. Dianne Feinstein against the wishes of her Republican colleagues.

Here are other major revelations from Simpson's testimony.

FBI may have disclosed Russia investigation sources to Steele

Simpson suggested in his interview that Steele learned from the FBI in Sept. 2016 that the bureau had received information from inside the Trump campaign that corroborated some of the dossier's allegations.

The revelation raises questions about why the FBI would have shared seemingly sensitive information about its sources with Steele, a former MI6 officer who now operates a private intelligence firm.

In his testimony, Simpson says Steele told him during a Sept. 2016 meeting with FBI agents that the FBI "had other intelligence about this matter from an internal Trump campaign source" and that they thought Steele "might be credible" because they had other intelligence from "a human source from inside the Trump organization."

Simpson was cagey when asked whether Steele had received that information directly from the FBI, but he did not deny it. "And did Mr. Steele tell you that the FBI had relayed this information to him?" Simpson was asked. "He didn't specifically say that," said Simpson, adding that Steele "would say very generic things like I saw them, they asked me a lot of questions, sounds like they have another source or they have another source."

Simpson's remarks generated gleeful speculation from some media outlets that a mole within Trump's orbit was a confidential source for the FBI. But sources close to Fusion told reporters on Tuesday that Simpson conflated information he had been told by Steele. NBC News reported that the Trump campaign source Simpson was referring to was George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign adviser who recently pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about Russian contacts.

The New York Times reported late last month that Papadopoulos was put on the FBI's radar after he told Australian diplomat Alexander Downer in May 2016 that he had received information that Russian operatives had "dirt" on Hillary Clinton.

Papadopoulos, an energy consultant, shared that information during a booze-filled conversation with Downer at a London bar.

A month earlier, Papadopoulos had met in April 2016 with a London-based professor named Joseph Mifsud who claimed to have learned that Russian operatives had stolen "thousands" of Clinton-related emails.

Former Trump campaign foreign policy aide George Papadopoulos admitted that he misled FBI agents about his contact with Russians in order to protect Trump. (Youtube screen grab via LinkedIn)The timing of that encounter is significant because it was before it was publicly known that Russians had hacked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta's Gmail account.

It remains unclear whether Papadopoulos told anyone in the Trump campaign about Mifsud's claims. The White House has downplayed Papadopoulos' work on the campaign.

Downer, the Australian diplomat, told his colleagues about his conversation with Papadopoulos two months after it occurred. He initially brushed off the young campaign adviser's claims but passed them along after reports surfaced of Russian cyberattacks. The Australian government then contacted the FBI, which reportedly opened its counterintelligence investigation into possible collusion between the Trump campaign and Kremlin.

But why Steele and then Simpson were made privy to the FBI's knowledge of Papadopoulos and Downer remains unclear.

Simpson omits the Ohrs

Bruce and Nellie Ohr have become two of the more intriguing figures in the dossier saga. Bruce Ohr was a deputy assistant attorney general at the Justice Department when he met with Steele before the 2016 election. He also met with Simpson just after Trump's election win. Nellie Ohr, a former CIA employee with expertise in Russia, worked for Fusion GPS on its Trump research. Neither Ohr appears by name in the Simpson transcript.

Simpson insisted to investigators that he did not talk with anyone from the FBI during the Trump project. But he for some reason did not acknowledge his contact with a high-ranking DOJ official.

Simpson acknowledged in a Nov. 14 interview with the House Intelligence Committee that he had met with Bruce Ohr. Ohr was demoted from his DOJ position weeks later. Fox News reported that DOJ officials were not aware of his contacts with Steele and Simpson.

Simpson was also asked whether his firm employed anyone who speaks Russian. And though Nellie Ohr seemingly speaks Russian , Simpson told Senate investigators that he did not employ anyone with that particular skill.

"Do any Fusion employees or associates speak Russian?" Simpson was asked. "No," he said. And asked if he had any support from Russia-speaking employees, Simpson said "not in my company, at least not that I can recall."

Fusion lawyer claimed that a dossier source has been murdered

Josh Levy, who accompanied Simpson in the testimony, claimed that a dossier source has been murdered.

Levy made the statement during a line of questioning to Simpson about sources for the dossier. The lawyer interjected to say that it would be unsafe to discuss dossier sources because at least one source had been killed.

"It's a voluntary interview, and in addition to that he wants to be very careful to protect his sources. Somebody's already been killed as a result of the publication of this dossier and no harm should come to anybody related to this honest work," said Levy. (RELATED: 'Somebody's Already Been Killed' Over The Dossier, Fusion GPS Lawyer Claimed) It is unclear who Levy was referring to, though there has been speculation that a former KGB official who was found dead in the back of his car in Russia was a source for the dossier. But that Kremlin insider, Oleg Erovkinin, was found dead on Dec. 26, 2016, two weeks before the dossier was published by BuzzFeed.

Russian lawyer's inconsistent statements about Simpson encounters

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya has become a central figure in the Russia investigation because of her involvement in the June 9, 2016 Trump Tower meeting.

And one of the stranger wrinkles in that saga is Veselnitskaya's interactions with Simpson just hours before that controversial conclave.

Simpson's interview transcript confirms past reporting that he was with Veselnitskaya the day of that meeting as well as the day before and day after.

Russian lawyer Natalia Veselnitskaya speaks during an interview in Moscow, Russia November 8, 2016. REUTERS/Kommersant Photo/Yury Martyanov

But in her own testimony to the Judiciary committee, Veselnitskaya denied encountering Simpson on those days.

"Did you have contact with Glenn Simpson on June 8, 9, or 10, 2016?" reads one of the 94 questions posed to Veselnitskaya by the Senate panel.

"No, there had been no contacts with him on [sic] specified dates," she responded. (RELATED: Russian Lawyer At Trump Tower Meeting Submits Inconsistent Testimony)

Undercutting that testimony, Simpson said that Veselnitskaya attended dinners where he was also present on June 8 and June 10. They were also together in a Manhattan court room on the morning of the Trump Tower meeting.

Simpson's work with Veselnitskaya and Rinat Akhmetshin, a Russian-American lobbyist who also visited Trump Tower, has stoked speculation that the Russians provided information that ended up in the dossier.

But Simpson denied in his testimony that either Russian contact told him about the Trump Tower meeting. He also said he doubted that either provided information to Steele.

FBI was upset that Steele's findings were ending up in media reports

Simpson suggested that the FBI expressed frustration with Steele during meetings in Sept. 2016 that some of the information that he had shared with the bureau was appearing in the media.

Steele first shared his findings with an FBI acquaintance in July 2016. He met with agents again in Sept. 2016.

"Did Mr. Steele ever indicate to you whether the FBI had asked him not to speak with the media?" one investigator asked Simpson. "I remember Chris saying at some point that they were upset with media coverage of some of the issues that he had discussed with him," replied Simpson, adding that "he never said they told him he couldn't talk to them."

The only reporting that appeared to be based on Steele's findings up to that point was from Yahoo! News. The website published a Sept. 23, 2016 article based on Steele's allegations about Trump campaign adviser Carter Page.

Page is suing Yahoo!'s parent company over the article.

Longstanding relationship with John McCain associate

Simpson told investigators that he has known an associate of Arizona Sen. John McCain's "for a long time."

David Kramer, a former State Department official, was with McCain in Nov. 2016 when the Republican lawmaker was first told of the dossier by an associate of Steele's.

Kramer, McCain and Steele soon developed plans for Kramer to contact Simpson to access the dossier.

Kramer is the only person known to have handled the dossier who has not denied being BuzzFeed's source. He was recently interviewed by the House Intelligence Committee and by lawyers who represent a Russian businessman suing BuzzFeed for publishing the dossier. (RELATED: BuzzFeed's Dossier Gets Closer To Being Identified)

In his testimony, Simpson said that he has known Kramer since his days at The Wall Street Journal.

"So Chris asked me do you know David Kramer, and I said yes, I've known David Kramer for a long time," said Simpson.

"David Kramer is part of a small group of people that I'm sort of loosely affiliated with. We've all worked on Russia and are very concerned about kleptocracy and human rights and the police state that Russia has become, in particular the efforts of the Russians to corrupt and mess with our political system," Simpson added.

Simpson was "opposed to Donald Trump" before Russia investigation

Simpson insisted that his research of Trump was apolitical, but at the end of his interview he acknowledged being deeply opposed to the Republican.

"I think it's safe to say that, you know, at some point probably early in 2016 I had reached a conclusion about Donald Trump as a businessman and his character and I was opposed to Donald Trump," he said.

He defended his opposition, saying that it did not cloud his investigation of Trump's business activities or those of his campaign.

[Jan 03, 2018] Natalia Veselnitskaya, Russian lawyer at Donald Trump Jr. meeting, ready to testify to Senate

Interesting possible Browder-MI6 trace to Veselnitskaya Scandal
Jul 19, 2017 | www.cbsnews.com

She called the controversy a "very well-orchestrated story concocted by one particular manipulator," whom she identified repeatedly as American businessman Bill Browder.

Browder was once the biggest foreign investor in Russia, but he has since become a vocal critic of the country's leadership and has clashed with Putin's inner circle.

Browder was a driving force behind the Magnitsky Act, a U.S. law passed in 2012 that imposes economic sanctions and travel restrictions on Russians named as human rights abusers. Browder believes it is Putin's No. 1 priority to get the U.S. to lift the sanctions imposed under the act, which currently affect 44 Russians.

In her interview with Russian government-funded RT, Veselnitskaya called Browder "one of the greatest experts in the field of manipulating the mass media," and said she had "no doubt that this whole information campaign is being spun, encouraged and organized by that very man as revenge" for a legal settlement earlier this year which effectively saw his efforts to expose alleged Russian money-laundering in the U.S. hit a brick wall.

During Browder's appearance on "CBS This Morning" Tuesday, co-host Charlie Rose called attention to Browder's description of Veselnitskaya as "probably the most aggressive person I have ever encountered in all of my contacts with Russians" -- to which Browder replied, "Yes, she's a remarkable person. I should caveat that: she's not aggressive in a physical way."

[Jan 01, 2018] British Intervention into 2016 U.S. Election

Highly recommended!
Notable quotes:
"... [ Print version of this article ] ..."
"... MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
"... Washington Post ..."
Jan 01, 2018 | www.larouchepub.com

A Timeline and Key Players

[ Print version of this article ]

Christopher Steele, Key British Operative

• April 1990 to April 1993. MI6 agent Christopher Steele stationed in Moscow.

• 1998. British Embassy in Paris, serving officially as First Secretary Financial.

• 1999. Outed online as MI6 agent.

• 2006. MI6 Russia desk in London.

• 2009. Left MI6 to set up Orbis (22 years in MI6).

• 2010. Fusion GPS set up by Glenn Simpson in 2010.

• According to Luke Harding, author of Collusion , Simpson specialized as a journalist on the intersection between organized crime and the Russian state.

• According to Harding, Steele and Simpson knew the same FBI agents, shared expertise on Russia, and began a professional partnership.

• Harding, the author of Collusion, was a correspondent for the London Guardian in Russia from 2007 until 2011, after which he was refused re-entry to Russia. In 2011 book Mafia State, he describes Russia under Putin as a mafia state.

Chronology, 2010 to Present 2010

• In the summer of 2010, members of a New York-based FBI squad assigned to investigate "Eurasian Organized Crime" met Steele in London to discuss allegations of possible corruption in FIFA, the Zurich, Switzerland-based body that also organizes the World Cup tournament.

• FBI agent Andrew McCabe began work as a supervisory special agent at the Eurasian Organized Crime Task Force in 2003.

2014

• Steele authored more than 100 reports on Russia and Ukraine between 2014 and 2016, which were written for an unidentified private client and shared with the U.S. State Department; sent to Secretary of State John Kerry and Victoria Nuland.

• The FBI obtains a FISA warrant to surveil Paul Manafort in 2014, based on his political consulting work in Ukraine. Were Steele's reports used to obtain the 2014 authorization to surveil Manafort?

• Ukrainian President Yanukovych was forced to flee Kiev on Feb. 22, 2014, following a coup d'etat by followers of Ukrainian World War II Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera. According to Stephen Dorril, author of MI6: Inside the Covert World of Her Majesty's Secret Intelligence Service , Bandera's organization, OUN-B, was re-formed in 1946 under the sponsorship of MI6. The organization had been receiving some support from MI6 since the 1930s. Bandera was recruited by MI6 to work in London in 1948. Bandera's second in command, Mykola Lebed, was brought to New York City in the same year by the CIA's Allen Dulles.

• Flynn wrote a letter in 2014 on behalf of Supervisory Special Agent Robyn Gritz on his official Pentagon stationery. He gave a public interview in 2015 supporting Gritz and offered to testify on her behalf. His offer put him as a hostile witness in a case against McCabe, who was accused by Gritz of sexual discrimination. McCabe never recused himself from Flynn investigation.

2015

• McCabe attends a meeting in March 2015 with Clinton ally Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe, for the purpose of gaining support for his wife Jill McCabe to run for state legislature against State Senator Richard Black, a leading opponent of Obama's regime change policy and supporter of General Flynn. McCabe is now being investigated for violation of the Hatch Act.

• Donald Trump announces candidacy for President on June 16, 2015.

• GCHQ surveilled Trump associates beginning late 2015. The alleged intelligence was passed to the United States over the next several months.

2016

FEBRUARY

• Andrew McCabe in February 2016 becomes Deputy Director of FBI, gains oversight of Clinton email server investigation, despite the fact that his wife Jill McCabe received several hundreds of thousands of dollars in contributions from Clinton supporter McAuliffe. He only recuses himself on November 1, 2016 after the investigation is over.

APRIL

• The DNC and Clinton campaign in April 2016 hired Fusion GPS through Perkins Coie law firm and attorney Marc Elias.

• Fusion GPS hired Steele at end of April 2016. His first assignment to investigate Paul Manafort.

JUNE

• Steele issues his first memo in June 2016; total of 16 memos June to early Nov. 2016.

• Steele flew in June 2016 to Rome to brief his FBI contact in the Eurasian serious crime division, a unit previously supervised in New York City by Andrew McCabe.

• Robert Hannigan, head of GCHQ flew to U.S. in the Summer of 2016 to brief John Brennan. Brennan launched interagency investigation; meanwhile the FBI had already been briefed by Steele through the FBI Eurasian serious crime division contact.

JULY

• July 2. FBI led by Peter Strzok interviews Hillary Clinton.

• July 5. FBI Director James Comey reports there will be no charges against Hillary Clinton, language changed from earlier drafts from "grossly negligent" to "extremely recklessly," reportedly at insistence of Strzok.

• July 19. Trump wins the Republican nomination for President.

• July 22. WikiLeaks publishes the first DNC emails, Democrats claim Russia responsible, FBI never inspects the server.

• July. Investigation opened into collusion between Trump campaign and Russia. Document signed by Peter Strzok.

SEPTEMBER

• Steele flew back to Rome to meet the "FBI leadership team," possibly including Peter Strzok.

• According to NY Times , Steele heard back from his FBI contact that the agency wanted to see the material he collected right away, while offering to pay him $50,000.

• Later in September, Steele held meetings with the NY Times , Washington Post , Yahoo, New Yorker and CNN.

• FISA court authorized surveillance of Carter Page in Sept. 2016.

OCTOBER

• Mid-October. Steele visited New York City and met reporters again.

• Late October. Steele spoke to Mother Jones . Article appeared Oct. 31, 2016.

NOVEMBER

• Nov. 8. Andrew Weismann, now the lead attorney of Robert Mueller's Special Council team, attends Hillary Clinton's election night party.

2017

JANUARY

• Strzok, on January 24, interviews Michael Flynn. Strzok's mistress Lisa Page, an FBI lawyer, works for Andrew McCabe. Andrew McCabe called Flynn to tell him FBI agents were coming to the White House to meet with him, without telling Flynn it was a criminal investigation interview.

FEBRUARY

• CNN, on February 17, reports "The FBI interviewers believed Flynn was cooperative and provided truthful answers."

MAY

• Comey is fired May 9.

• Rosenstein appoints Mueller Special Counsel May 17.

AUGUST

• Mueller removes Strzok August 16, stonewalls Congressional requests for information on Strzok firing for nearly 4 months.

DECEMBER

• Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI on Dec. 1.

• The Washington Post and NY Times receive a leak on Dec. 2 that Strzok removed from Special Counsel team.

• Bruce G. Ohr, Associate Deputy Attorney General under Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein, ousted on Dec. 7 after House Intelligence discovered he met during the 2016 campaign with Christopher Steele. He also met shortly after the election around Thanksgiving with Glenn Simpson. It is believed that Ohr and Simpson were put in contact by Steele, whose contacts with Ohr are said by senior DOJ officials to date back to 2006. According to his biography, "Mr. Ohr was an Assistant United States Attorney in the United States Attorney's Office for the Southern District of New York (1991-99), and was Chief of the Violent Gangs Unit in that office (1998-99). Mr. Ohr joined the Criminal Division in 1999 and served as Chief of the Organized Crime and Racketeering Section until 2011, when he became Counselor for Transnational Organized Crime and International Affairs in the Criminal Division, serving in that position until November 2014." Bruce Ohr's wife Nellie Ohr works for Fusion GPS throughout the 2016 campaign.

[Dec 05, 2017] Further sabotage of the Iran deal would not bring success -- only embarrassment

This is two years old article. Not much changed... Comments sound as written yesterday. Check it out !
The key incentive to Iran deal is using Iran as a Trojan horse against Russia in oil market -- the force which helps to keep oil prices low, benefitting the USA and other G7 members and hurting Russia and other oil-producing nations. Iran might also serve as a replacement market for EU goods as Russian market is partially lost. Due to sanctions EU now lost (and probably irrevocably) Russian market for food, and have difficulties in maintaining their share in other sectors (cars, machinery) as Asian tigers come in.
Notable quotes:
"... The waning clout stems from the lobby siding with the revanchist Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whose Iran strategy since the 2012 US presidential campaign has been to unabashedly side with Republican hawks. AIPAC's alignment with the position effectively caused the group to marginalize itself; the GOP is now the only place where AIPAC can today find lockstep support. The tens of millions AIPAC spent lobbying against the deal were unable to obscure this dynamic. ..."
"... Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina took to the floor during the debate and pulled out an old trick from the run-up to the Iraq war: blaming Iran for 9/11 and saying a failure to act would result in a worse attack – is any indication, even Democrats like the pro-Israel hawk Chuck Schumer will find it untenable to sidle up to AIPAC and the Republicans. ..."
"... The problem with the right in the USA is that they offer no alternatives, nothing, nada and zilch they have become the opposition party of opposition. They rely on talking point memes and fear, and it has become the party of extremism and simplicity offering low hanging fruit and red meat this was on perfect display at their anti Iran deal rally, palin, trump, beck and phil robinson who commands ducks apparently. ..."
"... Is it any wonder the Iranians don't trust the US. After the US's spying exploits during the Iraqi WMD inspections, why are you surprised that Iran asks for 24 days notice of inspection (enough time to clear out conventional weapons development but not enough to remove evidence of nuclear weapons development). ..."
"... Most Americans don't know the CIA overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and installed the Shaw. Most Republicans know that most Americans will believe what Fox news tells them. Republicans live in an alternate universe where there is no climate change, mammon is worshiped and wisdom is rejected hatred is accepted negotiation is replaced by perpetual warfare. Now most Americans are tired of stupid leadership and the Republicans are in big trouble. ..."
"... AIPAC - Eventually everything is seen for what is truly is. ..."
"... Israel is opposed because they wish to maintain their nuclear weapons monopoly in the region ..."
"... With the threat you describe from Israel it seems only sensible for Iran to develop nuclear weapons - if my was country (Scotland) was in Iran's place and what you said is true i would only support politicians who promised fast and large scale production of atomic weapons to counter the clear threat to my nation. ..."
"... Netanyahu loves to play the victim, but he is the primary cause that Jews worldwide, but especially in the United States, are rethinking the idea of "Israel." I know very few people who willingly identify with a strident right wing government comprised of rabid nationalists, religious fundamentalists, and a violent, almost apocalyptic settler community. ..."
"... The Israeli electorate has indicated which path it wishes to travel, but that does not obligate Jews throughout the world to support a government whose policies they find odious. ..."
"... As part of this deal the US and allies should guarantee Iran protection against Israeli aggression. Otherwise, considering Israel's threats, Iran is well justified in seeking a nuclear deterrent. ..."
"... AIPAC's defeat shows that their grip on the testicles of congress has been broken. ..."
"... Their primary goal was to keep Iran isolated and economically weak. They knew full well that the Iranians hadn't had a nuclear program since 2003, but Netanhayu needed an existential threat to Israel in order to justify his grip on power. All of this charade has bee at the instigation of and directed by Israel. And they lost They were beaten by that hated schwartze and the liberals that Israel normally counts on for unthinking support. ..."
"... No doubt Netanyahu will raise the level of his anger; he just can't accept that a United States president would do anything on which Israel hadn't stamped its imprimatur. It gets tiresome listening to him. ..."
"... It is this deal that feeds the military industrial complex. We've already heard Kerry give Israel and Saudi Arabia assurances of more weapons. And that $150 billion released to Iran? A healthy portion will be spent for arms..American, Russian, Chinese. Most of the commenters have this completely backwards. This deal means a bonanza for the arms industry. ..."
"... The Iran nuclear agreement accomplishes the US policy goal of preventing the creation of the fissionable material required for an Iranian nuclear weapons program. What the agreement does not do is eliminate Iran as a regional military and economic power, as the Israelis and Saudis -- who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby American politicians and brainwash American TV viewers -- would prefer. ..."
"... Rejection equals war. It's not surprising that the same crowd most stridently demanding rejection of the agreement advocated the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. These homicidal fools never learn, or don't care as long as it's not their lives at risk. ..."
"... And how did the Republicans' foreign policy work out? Reagan created and financed Al Qaeda. Then Bush II invades Iraq with promises the Iraqis will welcome us with flowers (!), the war will be over in a few weeks and pay for itself, and the middle east will have a nascent democracy (Iraq) that will be a grateful US ally. ..."
"... I've seen Iranian statements playing internal politics, but I have never seen any actual Iranian threats. I've seen plenty about Israel assassinating people in other countries, using incendiaries and chemical weapons against civilians in other countries, conducting illegal kidnappings overseas, using terrorism as a weapon of war, developing nuclear weapons illegally, ethnically cleansing illegally occupied territories, that sort of thing. ..."
"... Iran is not a made-up country like Iraq it is as old as Greece. If the Iraq war was sold as pushover and failed miserably then an Iran war would be unthinkable. War can be started in an instant diplomacy take time. UK, France, Germany & EU all agree its an acceptable alternative to war. So as these countries hardly ever agree it is clear the deal is a good one. ..."
"... Rank and file Americans don't even know what the Iran deal is. And can't be bothered to actually find out. They just listen to sound bites from politicians the loudest of whom have been the wildly partisan republicans claiming that it gives Iran a green light to a nuclear weapon. Not to mention those "less safe" polls are completely loaded. Certain buzz words will always produce negative results. If you associate something positive "feeling safe" or "in favor of" anything that Iran signs off on it comes across as indirectly supporting Iran and skews the results of the poll. "Iran" has been so strongly associated with evil and negative all you have to do is insert it into a sentence to make people feel negatively about the entire sentence. In order to get true data on the deal you would have to poll people on the individual clauses the deal. ..."
"... American Jews are facing one of the most interesting choices of recent US history. The Republican Party, which is pissing into a stiff wind of unfavorable demographics, seems to have decided it can even the playing field by peeling Jews away from the Democrats with promises to do whatever Israel wants. So we have the very strange (but quite real) prospect of Jews increasingly throwing in their lot with the party of Christian extremists whose ranks also include violent antiSemites. ..."
"... The American Warmonger Establishment (that now fully entrenched "Military Industrial Complex" against which no more keen observer than President Dwight Eisenhower warned us), is rip-shit over the Iran Agreement. WHAT? We can't Do More War? That will be terrible for further increasing our obscene 1-percent wealth. Let's side with Israeli wingnut Netanyahu, who cynically leverages "an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye" to hold his "Power." ..."
"... AIPAC is a dangerous anti-american organization, and a real and extant threat to the sovereignty of the U.S. Any elected official acting in concert with AIPAC is colluding with a foreign government to harm the U.S. and should be considered treasonous and an enemy of the American people. ..."
Sep 14, 2015 | The Guardian

The waning clout stems from the lobby siding with the revanchist Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, whose Iran strategy since the 2012 US presidential campaign has been to unabashedly side with Republican hawks. AIPAC's alignment with the position effectively caused the group to marginalize itself; the GOP is now the only place where AIPAC can today find lockstep support. The tens of millions AIPAC spent lobbying against the deal were unable to obscure this dynamic.

We may not look back at this as a sea change – some Senate Democrats who held firm against opposition to the deal are working with AIPAC to pass subsequent legislation that contains poison pills designed to kill it – but rather as a rising tide eroding the once sturdy bipartisan pro-Israeli government consensus on Capitol Hill. Some relationships have been frayed; previously stalwart allies of the Israel's interests, such as Vice President Joe Biden, have reportedly said the Iran deal fight soured them on AIPAC.

Even with the boundaries of its abilities on display, however, AIPAC will continue its efforts. "We urge those who have blocked a vote today to reconsider," the group said in a spin-heavy statement casting a pretty objective defeat as victory with the headline, "Bipartisan Senate Majority Rejects Iran Nuclear Deal." The group's allies in the Senate Republican Party have already promised to rehash the procedural vote next week, and its lobbyists are still rallying for support in the House. But the Senate's refusal to halt US support for the deal means that Senate Democrats are unlikely to reconsider, especially after witnessing Thursday's Republican hijinx in the House. These ploys look like little more than efforts to embarrass Obama into needing to cast a veto.

If Republicans' rhetoric leading up to to their flop in the Senate – Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina took to the floor during the debate and pulled out an old trick from the run-up to the Iraq war: blaming Iran for 9/11 and saying a failure to act would result in a worse attack – is any indication, even Democrats like the pro-Israel hawk Chuck Schumer will find it untenable to sidle up to AIPAC and the Republicans.

Opponents of the deal want to say the Democrats played politics instead of evaluating the deal honestly. That charge is ironic, to say the least, since most experts agree the nuclear deal is sound and the best agreement diplomacy could achieve. But there were politics at play: rather than siding with Obama, Congressional Democrats lined up against the Republican/Netanyahu alliance. The adamance of AIPAC ended up working against its stated interests.

Groups like AIPAC will go on touting their bipartisan bona fides without considering that their adoption of Netanyahu's own partisanship doomed them to a partisan result. Meanwhile, the ensuing fight, which will no doubt bring more of the legislative chaos we saw this week, won't be a cakewalk, so to speak, but will put the lie to AIPAC's claims it has a bipartisan consensus behind it. Despite their best efforts, Obama won't be the one embarrassed by the scrambling on the horizon.

TiredOldDog 13 Sep 2015 21:47

a foreign country whose still hell bent on committing war crimes

I guess this may mean Israel. If it does, how about we compare Assad's Syria, Iran and Israel. How many war crimes per day in the last 4 years and, maybe, some forecasts. Otherwise it's the usual gratuitous use of bad words at Israel. It has a purpose. To denigrate and dehumanize Israel or, at least, Zionism.

ID7612455 13 Sep 2015 18:04

The problem with the right in the USA is that they offer no alternatives, nothing, nada and zilch they have become the opposition party of opposition. They rely on talking point memes and fear, and it has become the party of extremism and simplicity offering low hanging fruit and red meat this was on perfect display at their anti Iran deal rally, palin, trump, beck and phil robinson who commands ducks apparently.

winemaster2 13 Sep 2015 17:01

Put a Brush Mustache on the control freak, greed creed, Nentanhayu the SOB not only looks like but has the same mentality as Hitler and his Nazism crap.

Martin Hutton -> mantishrimp 12 Sep 2015 23:50

I wondered when someone was going to bring up that "forgotten" fact. Is it any wonder the Iranians don't trust the US. After the US's spying exploits during the Iraqi WMD inspections, why are you surprised that Iran asks for 24 days notice of inspection (enough time to clear out conventional weapons development but not enough to remove evidence of nuclear weapons development).

mantishrimp 12 Sep 2015 20:51

Most Americans don't know the CIA overthrew the Iranian government in 1953 and installed the Shaw. Most Republicans know that most Americans will believe what Fox news tells them. Republicans live in an alternate universe where there is no climate change, mammon is worshiped and wisdom is rejected hatred is accepted negotiation is replaced by perpetual warfare. Now most Americans are tired of stupid leadership and the Republicans are in big trouble.

ByThePeople -> Sieggy 12 Sep 2015 20:27

Is pitiful how for months and months, certain individuals blathered on and on and on when it was fairly clear from the get go that this was a done deal and no one was about cater to the war criminal. I suppose it was good for them, sucking every last dime they could out of the AICPA & Co. while they acted like there was 'a chance'. Nope, only chance is that at the end of the day, a politician is a politician and he'll suck you dry as long as you let 'em.

What a pleasure it is to see the United States Congress finally not pimp themselves out completely to a foreign country whose still hell bent on committing war crimes. A once off I suppose, but it's one small step for Americans.

ByThePeople 12 Sep 2015 20:15

AIPAC - Eventually everything is seen for what is truly is.

ambushinthenight -> Greg Zeglen 12 Sep 2015 18:18

Seems that it makes a lot of sense to most everyone else in the world, it is now at the point where it really makes no difference whether the U.S. ratifies the deal or not. Israel is opposed because they wish to maintain their nuclear weapons monopoly in the region. Politicians here object for one of two reasons. They are Israeli first and foremost not American or for political expediency and a chance to try undo another of this President's achievements. Been a futile effort so far I'd say.

hello1678 -> BrianGriffin 12 Sep 2015 16:42

With the threat you describe from Israel it seems only sensible for Iran to develop nuclear weapons - if my was country (Scotland) was in Iran's place and what you said is true i would only support politicians who promised fast and large scale production of atomic weapons to counter the clear threat to my nation.

nardone -> Bruce Bahmani 12 Sep 2015 14:12

Netanyahu loves to play the victim, but he is the primary cause that Jews worldwide, but especially in the United States, are rethinking the idea of "Israel." I know very few people who willingly identify with a strident right wing government comprised of rabid nationalists, religious fundamentalists, and a violent, almost apocalyptic settler community.

The Israeli electorate has indicated which path it wishes to travel, but that does not obligate Jews throughout the world to support a government whose policies they find odious.

Greg Zeglen -> Glenn Gang 12 Sep 2015 13:51

good point which is found almost nowhere else...it is still necessary to understand that the whole line of diplomacy regarding the west on the part of Iran has been for generations one of deceit...and people are intensely jealous of what they hold dear - especially safety and liberty with in their country....

EarthyByNature -> Bruce Bahmani 12 Sep 2015 13:45

I do trust your on salary with a decent benefits package with the Israeli government or one of it's slavish US lobbyists. Let's face it, got to be hard work pouring out such hateful drivel.

BrianGriffin -> imipak 12 Sep 2015 12:53

The USA took about six years to build a bomb from scratch. The UK took almost six years to build a bomb. Russia was able to build a bomb in only four years (1945-1949). France took four years to build a bomb. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/France_and_weapons_of_mass_destruction

The Chinese only took four years. http://www.china.org.cn/english/congress/228244.htm

steelhead 12 Sep 2015 12:48

As part of this deal the US and allies should guarantee Iran protection against Israeli aggression. Otherwise, considering Israel's threats, Iran is well justified in seeking a nuclear deterrent.

BrianGriffin -> HauptmannGurski 12 Sep 2015 12:35

"Europe needs business desperately."

Sieggy 12 Sep 2015 12:32

In other words, once again, Obama out-played and out-thought both the GOP and AIPAC. He was playing multidimensional chess while they were playing checkers. The democrats kept their party discipline while the republicans ran around like a schoolyard full of sugared-up children. This is what happens when you have grownups competing with adolescents. The republican party, to put it very bluntly, can't get it together long enough to whistle 'Yankee Doodle Dandy' in unison.

They lost. Again. And worse than being losers, they're sore, whining, sniveling, blubbering losers. Even when they've been spanked - hard - they swear it's not over and they're gonna get even, just you wait and see! Get over it. They lost - badly - and the simple fact that their party is coming apart at the seams before our very eyes means they're going to be losing a lot more, too.

AIPAC's defeat shows that their grip on the testicles of congress has been broken. All the way around, a glorious victory for Obama, and an ignominious defeat for the republicans. And most especially, Israel. Their primary goal was to keep Iran isolated and economically weak. They knew full well that the Iranians hadn't had a nuclear program since 2003, but Netanhayu needed an existential threat to Israel in order to justify his grip on power. All of this charade has bee at the instigation of and directed by Israel. And they lost They were beaten by that hated schwartze and the liberals that Israel normally counts on for unthinking support.

Their worst loss, however, was losing the support of the American jews. Older, orthodox jews are Israel-firsters. The younger, less observant jews are Americans first. Netanhayu's behavior has driven a wedge between the US and Israel that is only going to deepen over time. And on top of that, Iran is re-entering the community of nations, and soon their economy will dominate the region. Bibi overplayed his hand very, very stupidly, and the real price that Israel will pay for his bungling will unfold over the next few decades.

BrianGriffin -> TiredOldDog 12 Sep 2015 12:18

"The Constitution provides that the president 'shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two-thirds of the Senators present concur'"

http://www.senate.gov/artandhistory/history/common/briefing/Treaties.htm

Hardly a done deal. If Obama releases funds to Iran he probably would be committing an impeachable crime under US law. Even many Democrats would vote to impeach Obama for providing billions to a sworn enemy of Israel.

Glenn Gang -> Bruce Bahmani 12 Sep 2015 12:07

"...institutionally Iranclad(sic) HATRED towards the west..." Since you like all-caps so much, try this: "B.S."

The American propel(sic) actually figured out something else---that hardline haters like yourself are desperate to keep the cycle of Islamophobic mistrust and suspicion alive, and blind themselves to the fact that the rest of us have left you behind.

FACT: More than half of the population of Iran today was NOT EVEN BORN when radical students captured the U.S. Embassy in Teheran in 1979.

People like you, Bruce, conveniently ignore the fact that Ahmedinejad and his hardline followers were voted out of power in 2013, and that Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei further marginalized them by allowing the election of new President Hassan Rouhani to stand, though he was and is an outspoken reformer advocating rapprochement with the west. While his outward rhetoric still has stern warnings about anticipated treachery by the 'Great Satan', Khamenei has allowed the Vienna agreement to go forward, and shows no sign of interfering with its implementation.

He is an old man, but he is neither stupid nor senile, and has clearly seen the crippling effects the international sanctions have had on his country and his people. Haters like you, Bruce, will insist that he ALWAYS has evil motives, just as Iranian hardliners (like Ahmedinejad) will ALWAYS believe that the U.S. has sinister motives and cannot EVER be trusted to uphold our end of any agreement. You ascribe HATRED in all caps to Iran, the whole country, while not acknowledging your own simmering hatred.

People like you will always find a 'boogeyman,' someone else to blame for your problems, real or imagined. You should get some help.

beenheretoolong 12 Sep 2015 10:57

No doubt Netanyahu will raise the level of his anger; he just can't accept that a United States president would do anything on which Israel hadn't stamped its imprimatur. It gets tiresome listening to him.

geneob 12 Sep 2015 10:12

It is this deal that feeds the military industrial complex. We've already heard Kerry give Israel and Saudi Arabia assurances of more weapons. And that $150 billion released to Iran? A healthy portion will be spent for arms..American, Russian, Chinese. Most of the commenters have this completely backwards. This deal means a bonanza for the arms industry.

Jack Hughes 12 Sep 2015 08:38

The Iran nuclear agreement accomplishes the US policy goal of preventing the creation of the fissionable material required for an Iranian nuclear weapons program.

What the agreement does not do is eliminate Iran as a regional military and economic power, as the Israelis and Saudis -- who have invested hundreds of millions of dollars to lobby American politicians and brainwash American TV viewers -- would prefer.

To reject the agreement is to accept the status quo, which is unacceptable, leaving an immediate and unprovoked American-led bombing campaign as the only other option.

Rejection equals war. It's not surprising that the same crowd most stridently demanding rejection of the agreement advocated the disastrous invasion and occupation of Iraq. These homicidal fools never learn, or don't care as long as it's not their lives at risk.

American politicians opposed to the agreement are serving their short-term partisan political interests and, under America's system of legalized bribery, their Israeli and Saudi paymasters -- not America's long-term policy interests.

ID293404 -> Jeremiah2000 12 Sep 2015 05:01

And how did the Republicans' foreign policy work out? Reagan created and financed Al Qaeda. Then Bush II invades Iraq with promises the Iraqis will welcome us with flowers (!), the war will be over in a few weeks and pay for itself, and the middle east will have a nascent democracy (Iraq) that will be a grateful US ally.

He then has pictures taken of himself in a jet pilot's uniform on a US aircraft carrier with a huge sign saying Mission Accomplished. He attacks Afghanistan to capture Osama, lets him get away, and then attacks Iraq instead, which had nothing to do with 9/11 and no ties with Al Qaeda.

So then we have two interminable wars going on, thanks to brilliant Republican foreign policy, and spend gazillions of dollars while creating a mess that may never be straightened out. Never mind all the friends we won in the middle east and the enhanced reputation of our country through torture, the use of mercenaries, and the deaths and displacement of hundreds of thousands of civilians. Yeah, we really need those bright Republicans running the show over in the Middle East!

HauptmannGurski -> lazman 12 Sep 2015 02:31

That is a very difficult point to understand, just look at this sentence "not understanding the fact in international affairs that to disrespect an American president is to disrespect Americans" ... too much emperor thinking for me. We have this conversation with regard to Putin everywhere now, so we disrespect all 143 million Russians? There's not a lot of disrespect around for Japanese PM Abe and Chinese Xi - does this now mean we respect them and all Japanese and Chinese? Election campaigns create such enormous personality cults that people seem to lose perspective.

On the Iran deal, if the US had dropped out of it it would have caused quite a rift because many countries would have just done what they wanted anyway. The international Atomic Energy Organisation or what it is would have done their inspections. Siemens would have sold medical machines. Countries would grow up as it were. But as cooperation is always better than confrontation it is nice the US have stayed in the agreement that was apparently 10 years in the making. It couldn't have gone on like that. With Europe needing gazillions to finance Greece, Ukraine, and millions of refugees (the next waves will roll on with the next spring and summer from April), Europe needs business desparately. Israel was happy to buy oil through Marc Rich under sanctions, now it's Europe's turn to snatch some business.

imipak -> BrianGriffin 11 Sep 2015 21:56

Iran lacks weapons-grade uranium and the means to produce it. Iran has made no efforts towards nuclear weapons technology for over a decade. Iran is a signatory of the NPT and is entitled to the rights enshrined therein. If Israel launches a nuclear war against Iran over Iran having a medical reactor (needed to produce isotopes for medicine, isotopes America can barely produce enough of for itself) that poses no security threat to anyone, then Israel will have transgressed so many international laws that if it survives the radioactive fallout (unlikely), it won't survive the political fallout.

It is a crime of the highest order to use weapons of mass destruction (although that didn't stop the Israelis using them against Palestinian civilians) and pre-emtive self-defence is why most believe Bush and Blair should be on trial at the ICJ, or (given the severity of their crimes) Nuremberg.

Israel's right to self-defense is questionable, I'm not sure any such right exists for anyone, but even allowing for it, Israel has no right to wage unprovoked war on another nation on the grounds of a potential threat discovered through divination using tea leaves.

imipak -> Jeremiah2000 11 Sep 2015 21:43

Iran's sponsorship of terrorism is of no concern. Such acts do not determine its competency to handle nuclear material at the 5% level (which you can find naturally). There are only three questions that matter - can Iran produce the 90-95% purity needed to build a bomb (no), can Iran produce such purity clandestinely (no), and can Iran use its nuclear technology to threaten Israel (no).

Israel also supports international terrorism, has used chemical weapons against civilians, has directly indulged in terrorism, actually has nuclear weapons and is paranoid enough that it may use them against other nations without cause.

I respect Israel's right to exist and the intelligence of most Israelis. But I neither respect nor tolerate unreasoned fear nor delusions of Godhood.

imipak -> commish 11 Sep 2015 21:33

I've seen Iranian statements playing internal politics, but I have never seen any actual Iranian threats. I've seen plenty about Israel assassinating people in other countries, using incendiaries and chemical weapons against civilians in other countries, conducting illegal kidnappings overseas, using terrorism as a weapon of war, developing nuclear weapons illegally, ethnically cleansing illegally occupied territories, that sort of thing.

Until such time as Israel implements the Oslo Accords, withdraws to its internationally recognized boundary and provides the International Court of Justice a full accounting of state-enacted and state-sponsored terrorism, it gets no claims on sainthood and gets no free rides.

Iran has its own crimes to answer, but directly threatening Israel in words or deeds has not been one of them within this past decade. Its actual crimes are substantial and cannot be ignored, but it is guilty only of those and not fictional works claimed by psychotic paranoid ultra-nationalists.

imipak -> moishe 11 Sep 2015 21:18

Domestic politics. Of no real consequence, it's just a way of controlling a populace through fear and a never-ending pseudo-war. It's how Iran actually feels that is important.

For the last decade, they've backed off any nuclear weapons research and you can't make a bomb with centrifuges that can only manage 20% enriched uranium. You need something like 90% enrichment, which requires centrifuges many, many times more advanced. It'd be hard to smuggle something like that in and the Iranians lack the skills, technology and science to make them.

Iran's conventional forces are busy fighting ISIS. What they do afterwards is a concern, but Israel has a sizable military presence on the Golan Heights. The most likely outcome is for Iran to install puppet regimes (or directly control) Syria and ISIS' caliphate.

I could see those two regions plus Iraq being fully absorbed into Iran, that would make some sense given the new geopolitical situation. But that would tie up Iran for decades. Which would not be a bad thing and America would be better off encouraging it rather than sabre-rattling.

(These are areas that contribute a lot to global warming and political instability elsewhere. Merging the lot and encouraging nuclear energy will do a lot for the planet. The inherent instability of large empires will reduce mischief-making elsewhere to more acceptable levels - they'll be too busy. It's idle hands that you need to be scared of.)

Israelis worry too much. If they spent less time fretting and more time developing, they'd be impervious to any natural or unnatural threat by now. Their teaching of Roman history needs work, but basically Israel has a combined intellect vastly superior to that of any nearby nation.

That matters. If you throw away fear and focus only on problems, you can stop and even defeat armies and empires vastly greater than your own. History is replete with examples, so is the mythologicized history of the Israeli people. Israel's fear is Israel's only threat.

mostfree 11 Sep 2015 21:10

Warmongers on all sides would had loved another round of fear and hysteria. Those dark military industrial complexes on all sides are dissipating in the face of the high rising light of peace for now . Please let it shine.

bishoppeter4 11 Sep 2015 20:09

The rabid Republicans working for a foreign power against the interest of the United States -- US citizens will know just what to do.

Jeremiah2000 -> Carolyn Walas Libbey 11 Sep 2015 19:21

"Netanyahu has no right to dictate what the US does."

But he has every right to point out how Obama is a weak fool. How's Obama's red line working in Syria? How is his toppling of Qadaffi in Libya working? How about his completely inept dealings with Egypt, throwing support behind the Muslim Brotherhood leaders? The leftists cheer Obama's weakening of American influence abroad. But they don't talk much about its replacement with Russian and Chinese influence. Russian build-up in Syria part of secret deal with Iran's Quds Force leader. Obama and Kerry are sending a strongly worded message.

Susan Dechancey -> whateverworks4u 11 Sep 2015 19:05

Incredible to see someone prefer war to diplomacy - guess you are an armchair General not a real one.

Susan Dechancey -> commish 11 Sep 2015 19:04

Except all its neighbours ... not only threatened but entered military conflict and stole land ... murdered Iranian Scientists but apart from that just a kitten

Susan Dechancey -> moishe 11 Sep 2015 19:00

Israel has nukes so why are they afraid ?? Iran will never use nukes against Israel and even Mossad told nuttyyahoo sabre rattling

Susan Dechancey 11 Sep 2015 18:57

Iran is not a made-up country like Iraq it is as old as Greece. If the Iraq war was sold as pushover and failed miserably then an Iran war would be unthinkable. War can be started in an instant diplomacy take time. UK, France, Germany & EU all agree its an acceptable alternative to war. So as these countries hardly ever agree it is clear the deal is a good one.

To be honest the USA can do what it likes now .. UK has set up an embassy - trade missions are landing Tehran from Europe. So if Israel and US congress want war - they will be alone and maybe if US keeps up the Nuttyahoo rhetoric European firms can win contracts to help us pay for the last US regime change Iraq / Isis / Refugees...

lswingly -> commish 11 Sep 2015 16:58

Rank and file Americans don't even know what the Iran deal is. And can't be bothered to actually find out. They just listen to sound bites from politicians the loudest of whom have been the wildly partisan republicans claiming that it gives Iran a green light to a nuclear weapon. Not to mention those "less safe" polls are completely loaded. Certain buzz words will always produce negative results. If you associate something positive "feeling safe" or "in favor of" anything that Iran signs off on it comes across as indirectly supporting Iran and skews the results of the poll. "Iran" has been so strongly associated with evil and negative all you have to do is insert it into a sentence to make people feel negatively about the entire sentence. In order to get true data on the deal you would have to poll people on the individual clauses the deal.

It's no different from how when you run a poll on who's in favor "Obamacare" the results will be majority negative. But if you poll on whether you are in favor of "The Affordable Care Act" most people are in favor of it and if you break it down and poll on the individual planks of "Obamacare" people overwhelming approve of the things that "Obamacare does". The disapproval is based on the fact that Republican's have successfully turned "Obamacare" into a pejorative and has almost no reflection of people feelings on actual policy.

To illustrate how meaningless those poll numbers are a Jewish poll (supposedly the people who have the most to lose if this deal is bad) found that a narrow majority of Jews approve of the deal. You're numbers are essentially meaningless.

The alternative to this plan is essentially war if not now, in the very near future, according to almost all non-partisan policy wonks. Go run a poll on whether we should go to war with Iran and see how that turns out. Last time we destabilized the region we removed a secular dictator who was enemies with Al Queda and created a power vacuum that led to increased religious extremism and the rise of Isis. You want to double down on that strategy?

MadManMark -> whateverworks4u 11 Sep 2015 16:34

You need to reread this article. It's exactly this attitude of yours (and AIPAC and Netanyahu) that this deal is not 100% perfect, but then subsequently failed to suggest ANY way to get something better -- other than war, which I'm sorry most people don't want another Republican "preemptive" war -- caused a lot people originally uncertain about this deal (like me) to conclude there may not be a better alternative. Again, read the article: What you think about me, I now think about deal critics like you ("It seems people will endorse anything to justify their political views.)

USfan 11 Sep 2015 15:34

American Jews are facing one of the most interesting choices of recent US history. The Republican Party, which is pissing into a stiff wind of unfavorable demographics, seems to have decided it can even the playing field by peeling Jews away from the Democrats with promises to do whatever Israel wants. So we have the very strange (but quite real) prospect of Jews increasingly throwing in their lot with the party of Christian extremists whose ranks also include violent antiSemites.

Interesting times. We'll see how this plays out. My family is Jewish and I have not been shy in telling them that alliances with the GOP for short-term gains for Israel is not a wise policy. The GOP establishment are not antiSemtic but the base often is, and if Trump's candidacy shows anything it's that the base is in control of the Republicans.

But we'll see.

niyiakinlabu 11 Sep 2015 15:29

Central question: how come nobody talks about Israel's nukes?

hello1678 -> BrianGriffin 11 Sep 2015 14:02

Iran will not accept being forced into dependence on outside powers. We may dislike their government but they have as much right as anyone else to enrich their own fuel.

JackHep 11 Sep 2015 13:30

Netanyahu is an example of all that is bad about the Israeli political, hence military industrial, establishment. Why Cameron's government allowed him on British soil is beyond belief. Surely the PM's treatment of other "hate preachers" would not have been lost on Netanyahu? Sadly our PM seems to miss the point with Israel.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/david-cameron/10692563/David-Cameron-tells-Israelis-about-his-Jewish-ancestors.html

talenttruth 11 Sep 2015 13:12

The American Warmonger Establishment (that now fully entrenched "Military Industrial Complex" against which no more keen observer than President Dwight Eisenhower warned us), is rip-shit over the Iran Agreement. WHAT? We can't Do More War? That will be terrible for further increasing our obscene 1-percent wealth. Let's side with Israeli wingnut Netanyahu, who cynically leverages "an eye for an eye for an eye for an eye" to hold his "Power."

And let's be treasonous against the United States by trying to undermine U.S. Foreign Policy FOR OUR OWN PROFIT. We are LONG overdue for serious jail time for these sociopaths, who already have our country "brainwashed" into 53% of our budget going to the War Profiteers and to pretending to be a 19th century Neo-Colonial Power -- in an Endless State of Eternal War. These people are INSANE. Time to simply say so.

Boredwiththeusa 11 Sep 2015 12:58

At the rally to end the Iran deal in the Capitol on Wednesday, one of the AIPAC worshipping attendees had this to say to Jim Newell of Slate:

""Obama is a black, Jew-hating, jihadist putting America and Israel and the rest of the planet in grave danger," said Bob Kunst of Miami. Kunst-pairing a Hillary Clinton rubber mask with a blue T-shirt reading "INFIDEL"-was holding one sign that accused Obama, Hillary Clinton, and John Kerry of "Fulfilling Hitler's Dreams" and another that queried, "DIDN'T WE LEARN ANYTHING FROM 1938?"

His only reassurance was that, when Iran launches its attack on the mainland, it'll be stopped quickly by America's heavily armed citizenry."

That is indicative of the mindset of those opposed to the agreement.

Boredwiththeusa 11 Sep 2015 12:47

AIPAC is a dangerous anti-american organization, and a real and extant threat to the sovereignty of the U.S. Any elected official acting in concert with AIPAC is colluding with a foreign government to harm the U.S. and should be considered treasonous and an enemy of the American people.

tunejunky 11 Sep 2015 12:47

AIPAC, its constituent republicans, and the government of Israel all made the same mistake in a common episode of hubris. by not understanding the American public, war, and without the deference shown from a proxy to its hegemon, Israel's right wing has flown the Israeli cause into a wall. not understanding the fact in international affairs that to disrespect an American president is to disrespect Americans, the Israeli government acted as a spoiled first-born - while to American eyes it was a greedy, ungrateful ward foisted upon barely willing hands. it presumed far too much and is receiving the much deserved rebuke.

impartial12 11 Sep 2015 12:37

This deal is the best thing that happened in the region in a while. We tried war and death. It didn't work out. Why not try this?

[Dec 05, 2017] Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighter by Shaun Walker

This article is two years old, but still sounds current. The only difference now is that the conflict between Western nationalists and neoliberal central government of President Poroshenko became more acute. Nationalists do not understand that "The Moor has done his duty, Moor can go" and neoliberal government of Poroshenko do not need (and actually is afraid of) them.
Vr13vr: "Even in Kiev they view Western Ukrainians as strangers" Historically Kiev was a Russian speaking city. Western Ukrainians typically were called "zapadentsi".
Notable quotes:
"... Even in Kiev they view Western Ukrainians as strangers. ..."
"... So they didn't have any hate back towards the West Ukrainians. Besides, West Ukraine was sufficiently far from Donbass for Russians there not to feel threatened. ..."
"... So the Western [Ukrainians] hate towards Russians vs. Russian neutral attitude towards Ukrainians has existed for decades. ..."
"... "criminalizes the denial or justification of Russia's aggression against Ukraine" with a fine equivalent to 22 to 44,000 USD for the first offense and up to three years in prison for repeat offenders. ..."
"... But isn't it wrong that the faith of those people will depend on what EU or US will allow them to do rather than on their natural desire? How does it co-exist with all those democratic ideas. ..."
"... They key thing in all of this is to stop being naive. Learn it, remember it. Our media will only care for the "right" journalists and will throw campaigns only for them and there will be rallies only over the death of "right" people, while we won't pay attention to thousands of deaths of the "wrong" people. ..."
"... The US actively encouraged the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine, a void filled by right wing nationalists and an act that led directly to the current conflict ..."
"... In turn, the maidan coup d'etat de facto disenfranchised the culturally russian majority in SE-ukr. ..."
"... the NW-ukr neonazi bands fighting in SE-ukr are de facto foreign in SE-ukr, both culturally and geo-politically, and are there to give this majority a lesson. ..."
"... In Zakarpattia Oblast, only 410 out of 1,110 people who received draft notices came to mobilization centers, Oleg Lysenko, a representative of General Staff said recently.(kyiv news) ..."
"... For some reason that isn't quite clear to me, discussion among Western experts has overwhelmingly centered not on the imminent economic apocalypse facing Kiev, but on whether or not the United States should supply it with advanced weapons systems to beat back the Russians. ..."
"... It might be inconvenient to note, but Russia is positively crucial to Ukraine's economy not merely as a source of raw materials and energy but as a destination for industrial production that would otherwise be unable to find willing customers. According to Ukrainian government data, Russia accounted for roughly a quarter of the country's total foreign trade. The equivalent figure from the Russian side? Somewhere between 6 and 7%. Given that reality, Russia's leverage over Ukraine is obviously much greater that Ukraine's leverage over Russia. ..."
"... During the Vietnam War, the draft was a huge issue with many thousands of young men going to Canada, thousand who were in the military receiving less than honorable discharges and still others doing jail time. The war was view as an unjust war by the better educated and those who didn't have to enlist for food and shelter ("three hots and a cot"). ..."
"... The rebellion against the draft in Ukraine tells us that the war against the people in the Eastern area is an unjust war. People don't need a degree in history to understand when they are being use in ways that is not in their interest. We find only the fascist battalion who are hungry for this war. The US and EU should keep out of this internal civil struggle in Ukraine. ..."
Feb 10, 2015 | The Guardian

vr13vr -> jezzam 10 Feb 2015 18:35

The distrust between the West and the rest of Ukraine is not 14 months old. It has always existed. Since the War at the very list. Even in Kiev they view Western Ukrainians as strangers. Western Ukrainians would call everyone a moscovite, and in the East and the South, the Russians were neutral because their lives were much closer to Russia than to all this Ukrainian bullshit. So they didn't have any hate back towards the West Ukrainians. Besides, West Ukraine was sufficiently far from Donbass for Russians there not to feel threatened.

So the Western [Ukrainians] hate towards Russians vs. Russian neutral attitude towards Ukrainians has existed for decades.

Systematic

A new law to likely be approved by the Rada "criminalizes the denial or justification of Russia's aggression against Ukraine" with a fine equivalent to 22 to 44,000 USD for the first offense and up to three years in prison for repeat offenders.

Meanwhile, while the law is not approved,

In February 8 in Mariupol a rally was planned against mobilization. On the eve the adviser of Interior Minister Anton Gerashchenko said that everyone who comes there will be arrested, "Everyone who comes to the rally tomorrow against mobilization, will be delayed for several hours for identification and after fingerprinting and photographing until released. Let me remind you that I and my fellow lawmaker Boris Filatov has filed a bill to impose criminal liability for public calls for the failure of mobilization "- he wrote on his page on Facebook. As a result, the action did not take place.

http://www.gazeta.ru/politics/2015/02/10_a_6407945.shtml

vr13vr -> SallyWa 10 Feb 2015 18:25

With all the hot headed claims of how the Soviet Union just grabbed the piece of land from Poland, Ukraine has a good chance to correct those misdeeds. Give West Ukraine to Poland, Transkarpathia - to Hungary, and the South West - to Romania. That would be restoring historical injustice.

vr13vr -> SallyWa 10 Feb 2015 18:18

But isn't it wrong that the faith of those people will depend on what EU or US will allow them to do rather than on their natural desire? How does it co-exist with all those democratic ideas.

Besides, federalization may or may not protect them. Kiev may or may not adhere to rules in the future, there will be a tax issue, there will be cultural issues as Kiev will try to Ukrainize those areas subtly - you know those programs that are not anti-Russian per se but that increase Ukrainian presence, thus diluting the original population. Remaining under the same roof with Kiev and L'vov isn't really the best solution for Donbass if they want to preserve their independence and identity.

SallyWa -> VladimirM 10 Feb 2015 18:16

They key thing in all of this is to stop being naive. Learn it, remember it. Our media will only care for the "right" journalists and will throw campaigns only for them and there will be rallies only over the death of "right" people, while we won't pay attention to thousands of deaths of the "wrong" people.

theeskimo -> ridibundus 10 Feb 2015 18:02

The US actively encouraged the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine, a void filled by right wing nationalists and an act that led directly to the current conflict. Now they want to arm a leadership with no national mandate who have ceded responsibility for prosecuting their war in the east to an ultra nationalist bunch of thugs.

I think it's you who should keep up with what's happening. By the time this is over, Ukraine will be no more.

newsflashUK 10 Feb 2015 18:01

Scraping the barrel for cannon fodder by pro-NATO puppet Poroshenko regime: "The draft officers have been tapping men from 20 to 60 years old and women of 20 to 50 years old with relevant military service experience and training. The age limit for senior officers that could be mobilized is 65 years. Vladyslav Seleznev, spokesman of General Staff, said" (Kyiv news).

theeskimo -> ridibundus 10 Feb 2015 18:02

The US actively encouraged the overthrow of the democratically elected president of Ukraine, a void filled by right wing nationalists and an act that led directly to the current conflict. Now they want to arm a leadership with no national mandate who have ceded responsibility for prosecuting their war in the east to an ultra nationalist bunch of thugs.

I think it's you who should keep up with what's happening. By the time this is over, Ukraine will be no more.

newsflashUK 10 Feb 2015 18:01

Scraping the barrel for cannon fodder by pro-NATO puppet Poroshenko regime: "The draft officers have been tapping men from 20 to 60 years old and women of 20 to 50 years old with relevant military service experience and training. The age limit for senior officers that could be mobilized is 65 years. Vladyslav Seleznev, spokesman of General Staff, said" (Kyiv news).

erpiu 10 Feb 2015 17:59

The focus on Putin and geopolitics forces the actual ukr people out of the picture and blurrs understanding.

The maidan was a genuinely popular NW-ukr rebellion after NW-ukr had lost all recent pre-2014 elections to the culturally Russian majority of voters mainly in SE-ukr.

In turn, the maidan coup d'etat de facto disenfranchised the culturally russian majority in SE-ukr.

the NW-ukr neonazi bands fighting in SE-ukr are de facto foreign in SE-ukr, both culturally and geo-politically, and are there to give this majority a lesson.

USA+EU weapons would only help the punitive "pacification" of SE ukr, the place that was deciding UKR elections until the coup.

The real festering conflict is the incompatibility of the anti-Russian feelings in NW ukr (little else is shared by the various maidan factions) with the cccp/russian heritage of most people in SE ukr... that incompatibility is the main problem that needs to be "solved".

Neither the maidan coup nor yanukovich&the pre-coup electoral dominance of SE ukr voters were ever stable solutions.

newsflashUK 10 Feb 2015 17:57

In Zakarpattia Oblast, only 410 out of 1,110 people who received draft notices came to mobilization centers, Oleg Lysenko, a representative of General Staff said recently.(kyiv news)

SallyWa 10 Feb 2015 17:51

Ukraine's Economy Is Collapsing And The West Doesn't Seem To Care

For some reason that isn't quite clear to me, discussion among Western experts has overwhelmingly centered not on the imminent economic apocalypse facing Kiev, but on whether or not the United States should supply it with advanced weapons systems to beat back the Russians.

It might be inconvenient to note, but Russia is positively crucial to Ukraine's economy not merely as a source of raw materials and energy but as a destination for industrial production that would otherwise be unable to find willing customers. According to Ukrainian government data, Russia accounted for roughly a quarter of the country's total foreign trade. The equivalent figure from the Russian side? Somewhere between 6 and 7%. Given that reality, Russia's leverage over Ukraine is obviously much greater that Ukraine's leverage over Russia.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/markadomanis/2015/02/09/ukraines-economy-is-collapsing-and-the-west-doesnt-seem-to-care/

TET68HUE 10 Feb 2015 17:35

During WW 2 Draft dodging was almost unheard of. The war was perceived as "just", a righteous cause. Thus, men correctly saw it as their duty to take up arms against fascism.

During the Vietnam War, the draft was a huge issue with many thousands of young men going to Canada, thousand who were in the military receiving less than honorable discharges and still others doing jail time. The war was view as an unjust war by the better educated and those who didn't have to enlist for food and shelter ("three hots and a cot").

The rebellion against the draft in Ukraine tells us that the war against the people in the Eastern area is an unjust war. People don't need a degree in history to understand when they are being use in ways that is not in their interest. We find only the fascist battalion who are hungry for this war. The US and EU should keep out of this internal civil struggle in Ukraine.

[Dec 05, 2017] AFP Calling Americans A Great People Is Anti-American

In reality Ukraine is run by neoliberals. Still this is an interesting propaganda twist. Actually "antisemitism" bait works perfectly well in most cases.
moonofalabama.org

This, by AFP, is one of the most misleading propaganda efforts I have ever seen.

The headline:

Ukraine run by 'miserable' Jews: rebel chief

80% of the readers will not read more than that headline.

The first paragraph:

Donetsk (Ukraine) (AFP) - Ukraine's pro-Russian rebel chief on Monday branded the country's leaders "miserable" Jews in an apparent anti-Semitic jibe.

Of those 20% of the readers who will read the first paragraph only one forth will also read the second one. The "anti-semitic" accusation has thereby been planted in 95% of the readership. Now here is the second paragraph:

Alexander Zakharchenko, leader of the self-proclaimed Donetsk People's Republic, claimed that Kiev's pro-Western leaders were "miserable representatives of the great Jewish people".

Saying that George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were "miserable representatives of the great American people" would be "anti-American"? What is anti-semitic in calling "the Jewish people" "great"?

The AFP reporter and editor who put that up deserve an Orwellian reward. It is one of the most misleading quotations I have ever seen. Accusing Zakharchenko of anti-semitism when he is actually lauding Jews.

Now I do not agree with Zakharchenko. There is no such thing as "the Jewish people" in the sense of a racial or national determination. There are people of various nationalities and racial heritages who assert that they follow, or their ancestors followed, religious Jewish believes. Some of them may have been or are "great".

But that does not make them "the Jewish people" just like followers of Scientology do not make "the Scientologish people".

Posted by b at 06:51 AM | Comments (76)

jfl | Feb 3, 2015 8:27:41 AM | 4

@1

Saker has a link to the youtube, the audio in Russian with English subtitles. It begins at about 12:30.

@3

When Sarkozy came in AFP really hit the skids. Like the NYTimes and Bush XLIII.

Lysander | Feb 3, 2015 12:02:09 PM | 13
What Zacharchenko did that was unforgivable is to draw attention to the fact that Kiev's current leadership is largely Jewish. From Yats to Petro (Waltzman) Poroshenko To Igor Kolomoiski. No matter how gracefully Zach would put it, it is the content that they hate.

Not saying there is anything wrong with that, but I guess there are some who would rather you not notice.

Lone Wolf | Feb 3, 2015 2:01:47 PM | 20

Right-wing nazi-rag KyivPost has a miserable coverage of same piece. "Agence France-Presse: Russia's guy says Ukraine run by 'miserable Jews'" Zhakharchenko is "Russia's guy," his picture under the headline with a totally unrelated caption, subtitled by the first paragraph of the AFP fake "news" (sic!)"Ukraine's pro-Russian rebel chief on Monday branded the country's leaders "miserable" Jews in an apparent anti-Semitic jibe.", and a link to Yahoo news reproducing the AFP piece in full.

https://tinyurl.com/nes4o9g

Zionazi thieves stole the word "semitic" to mean "Jews," when in fact it comprehends many other languages and peoples. Zhakharchenko's AFP phony "anti-Semitic jibe" would be insulting to all these many peoples.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semitic_people

"...Semitic peoples and their languages, in ancient historic times (between the 30th and 20th centuries BC), covered a broad area which encompassed what are today the modern states and regions of Iraq, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Lebanon, Palestinian territories, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman, Yemen, Bahrain, Qatar, United Arab Emirates and the Sinai Peninsula and Malta..."

...The word "Semite" and most uses of the word "Semitic" relate to any people whose native tongue is, or was historically, a member of the associated language family.[35][36] The term "anti-Semite", however, came by a circuitous route to refer most commonly to one hostile or discriminatory towards Jews in particular...[37]

Yet another historical theft by the so-called "chosen" crooks.

[Oct 02, 2017] the unbalanced evolution of homo sapiens 'Double standard hypocrisy' Serbian president on EU denouncement of Catalan refere

Oct 02, 2017 | failedevolution.blogspot.gr

'Double standard & hypocrisy': Serbian president on EU denouncement of Catalan referendum Serbian President Aleksandar Vucic has accused the EU of hypocrisy and double-standards following its denouncement of the Catalonian referendum as illegal, while acknowledging the independence of the breakaway province of Kosovo.
" The question every citizen of Serbia has for the European Union today is: How come that in the case of Catalonia the referendum on independence is not valid, while in the case of Kosovo secession is allowed even without a referendum, " B92 quoted Vucic as saying during a news conference.
" How did you proclaim the secession of Kosovo to be legal, even without a referendum, and how did 22 European Union countries legalize this secession, while destroying European law and the foundations of European law, on which the European policy and EU policy are based? "
On Monday the European Commission echoed the Spanish government's stance that the referendum held in Catalonia was illegal, describing the events on Sunday, which saw voters being beaten by Spanish riot police, as an "internal matter". By contrast in 2010, the European Parliament adopted a resolution urging its member states to recognize Kosovo's independence.
" This is the best example of the double standards and hypocrisy of the world politics, " Vucic said.

[Sep 02, 2017] The Politics Of Desperation

Notable quotes:
"... Some will remember Walker's famous dispatch from the sharp end of the battlefield in Ukraine, in which he and his sidekick, Roland Oliphant, personally witnessed a Russian military convoy crossing into Ukraine, presumably bound for mischief in the Donbas and never got a picture. You just have to take their word for it. As I also mentioned before, Walker has his cellphone handy to snap a piccie if Aeroflot puts too much dill on his inflight meal. It's pretty hard to imagine he and his pal were on a daring mission to prove Russian military complicity in the resistance of Eastern Ukraine, and didn't bring along a single piece of equipment capable of taking a photograph. ..."
Aug 16, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Those who are regular readers here know what I think of Shaun Walker, the British Austin Powers lookalike and blabbermouth-at-large who scribes Russophobic nonsense for The Guardian , The Independent and whoever else will pay him. Naturally, since he sometimes actually lives in Moscow and writes about Russia a lot – all of it reliably sarcastic and mocking of the backward and bewildered Russian peasantry – and knows how to say "Sheremetyevo", he is regularly touted as a 'Russia expert' by the western media who feature his caustic denunciations of the Evil Empire and its wicked Emperor, Vladimir Putin.

Some will remember Walker's famous dispatch from the sharp end of the battlefield in Ukraine, in which he and his sidekick, Roland Oliphant, personally witnessed a Russian military convoy crossing into Ukraine, presumably bound for mischief in the Donbas and never got a picture. You just have to take their word for it. As I also mentioned before, Walker has his cellphone handy to snap a piccie if Aeroflot puts too much dill on his inflight meal. It's pretty hard to imagine he and his pal were on a daring mission to prove Russian military complicity in the resistance of Eastern Ukraine, and didn't bring along a single piece of equipment capable of taking a photograph.

All that notwithstanding, this is not really about Shaun Walker. He merely provided the catalyst for this post. I was reading an article awhile ago which quoted him, although of course I cannot find it now. This was around the time Russia kicked out some 600 or so employees of the United States Embassy to the Russian Federation in Moscow. Although it was too big a deal to ignore it altogether, the USA downplayed it by insisting almost none of them would be Americans, that the people let go would be almost entirely Russian 'local hires', and that the Embassy was rather looking forward to the folksy experience of teamwork and camaraderie which would see the Ambassador driving the mail truck and various diplomats sweeping the floors and taking out the trash. As if.

Anyway, for some time now Shaun Walker has been possessed of the belief that he has noticed something overlooked by the rest of the snoopy world; that back when Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats from the USA – ostensibly for Russian meddling in the American election and making Hillary lose – that would have been the time for Putin to drop the political-expulsion hammer of retaliation. But he didn't. Basically, there was no overt reaction whatever. Despite the fact that at the same time, the US government seized two Russian 'compounds'; property owned by Russia in the United States and used for diplomatic purposes.

Although Russia protested at the time – the properties were bought by the Soviet government, during the Cold War , at market prices and with US government approval and are therefore the legal property of the Soviet Union's inheritors – that the behavior was a de facto and de jure violation of international law, Russia did not react in kind.

A-HA!! says Walker. The reason for this apparent passivity is that Moscow was 'desperate' to see the return of these compounds – particularly the Maryland one, which is on Chesapeake Bay and which the Kremlin uses to covertly communicate with its submarines at sea. Please, don't laugh; I'm serious. Oh, Walker himself has never publicly aired the submarine theory, to the best of my knowledge, although he has helped via uncritical repetition to push the theory that Russia uses its diplomatic properties in the USA for 'spying'.

The cavalier confiscation of property without offering any proof at all that it is/was being used for nefarious purposes is typical of modern Washington administrations, for whom the law is useful only when it serves their purposes. But that's not really what got my attention. No, I was more interested in the over-use of the 'desperate' meme to characterize Russia; everywhere you look, Russia or Putin – or both – is 'desperate' about this or that. To hear the west tell it, through its stable of journalists, Russia has its back to the wall, as the forces of righteousness and retribution remorselessly advance. Is that the way it is, do you think?

I'll tell you up front – I don't. What I think is that the 'desperate' label belongs to Washington, as Russia tears its playhouse down, room by room, around the world.

In Syria. Remember Aleppo, which was lovingly shaped by western journalists as the Alamo of Syria, the last-ditch stand of all that was decent against the malevolent double-whammy of the merciless butcher Assad and hordes of Russian bombers indiscriminately blasting the shit out of everything? You don't hear much about Aleppo now, although you certainly would if it remained a shooting-gallery for the Syrian Arab Army. But in fact, since hostilities ceased with the SAA's taking of the city, more than 600,000 Syrians have moved back to their homes in Aleppo , according to the International Organization for Migration and as reported by fearless independent journalist Caitlin Johnstone.

Washington did everything it could, short of a preemptive strike, to stop the combined forces of Russia and the democratically-elected Syrian government from re-taking Aleppo, from frantic babbling for a cease-fire at every SAA advance to the absurd childish exhortations of wholly-owned State Department propaganda outlet Bana Albed to start World War Three rather than let Assad and Russia triumph. I'm not making that up; she (or her typist) actually tweeted, "Dear world, it's better to start 3rd world war instead of letting Russia and assad commit (hashtag) HolocaustAleppo" . Clearly, a girl after Phil Breedlove's own heart, and if you don't mind my saying so, quite an adult encapsulation from somebody who later could only parrot "Save the children of Syria" no matter what her interviewers asked her, and who can plainly not speak English .

In Ukraine. When Washington directly intervened in Ukraine's Maidan protests – which up to that time had been a somewhat desultory performance by a small crowd mostly comprised of students, but which quickly morphed under State Department direction into a muscular PR vehicle with paid-for crowds – it was all going to go like clockwork. The regime-change operation had been refined and bored and stroked through several successful operations, and it was child's play to knock over Yanukovych even though he had capitulated to all the protesters' demands except that he step down immediately, granting opposition figures significant government representation. But Washington's naive idealizations of how it would make a prosperous western-style market democracy of Ukraine ignored a few important things – such as that cutting it off from Russia also cut it off from more than half of its export market, and that its oligarchy remained entirely in place except for Yanukovych. The aforementioned non-Yanukovych oligarchy merrily continued stealing most of the GDP, since it is not a major concern of oligarchs who is in charge. Even if it were, the leader soon was one of their own .

These days, all you hear is how corruption is threatening the rebirth of Ukraine as a western acquisition, and quite a few of the western cheerleaders have grown exasperated with Ukraine's lack of progress toward 'western standards'. Even Nolan Peterson, former US Special Forces pilot and full-time Russophobe, who formerly spoke of Ukraine in the rhapsodic tones normally reserved for Mom's cooking and American Values, is annoyed . Floundering ever closer to failed-statehood, Ukraine has become the tar-baby the west doesn't want any more, but cannot let go of. Snatching Ukraine away from the Eurasian Union really hurt Russia, didn't it? In fact, there is every possibility it will one day – under a different government – be associated once more with Russia, although it will be a sadder and wiser country by that time. Who has it cost more to try the Ukrainian-remodeling project – Russia, or the west?

At home, in America. The silly effort to sell the story that Russian state hackers stole the election for Trump is falling apart, as former intelligence professionals point out that the data transfer rate of the stolen data which was taken from the DNC server was far too high to have occurred over the internet . Instead, they argue, it was much more likely to have been tapped off directly with a thumb drive (USB stick) or some such similar device. Washington's counter to this has so far been that the FSB could have access to much faster networks. I suppose they might, but why would they go to so much trouble to steal data on the Democrats, and then leave their own fingerprints all over it?

That doesn't mean the Democrats – and those for whom Russian hacking is a convenient story to be used for fomenting fear of Russia and an inability to think straight – are going to just give up, of course. No, indeed. They doubled down a long time ago and are now quadrupling down, or something. The latest frantic – yes, 'desperate' – dodge is the very convenient emergence of a Ukrainian 'malware expert' whose hacking tools were stolen by the Russian state to carry out their underhanded undertakings. He has been arrested, and is going to turn 'state's evidence' to clear his name. Absurd. 'Guccifer' the recently-famous hacker who was supposedly responsible for penetrating Clinton's server, identified as a Romanian; Romania is an EU country. That wasn't the 'Russia' flag Hillary and the Democrats were looking for, and hokey behavioral studies which suggested Guccifer was telling the truth were tossed out – he was obviously a liar. But now 'Profexer' (no word if that is his Christian name or his patronymic) has appeared and looks ready to blow the whistle on Russian hacking. Giving up is for weaklings.

We were discussing, in the later comments to the previous post, who it was who said that no Empire has lasted longer than 300 years, considering the USA celebrated its bicentennial in 1976. Although I was unable to find any reference which spelled that out – the introduction to "Legacy of Ashes", a book on the CIA, contains a quote which says no Republic has lasted more than 300 years – my search did turn up this quote, attributed to Alexander Tytler, in 1787.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship.

The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage.

If it were possible to substitute "confusion and ignorance due to being bullshitted six ways from Sunday on the true state of affairs by journalists who owe their loyalty to the political machine" for "complacency", I'd say that's just about the stage we're seeing right now.

Not much of a step from there to bondage, is it? Better get to the head of the line early; otherwise the Nerf shackles will be all gone.

[Sep 01, 2017] 20 Years On: Princess Diana's Death

Sep 01, 2017 | off-guardian.org

1. 18 months before she died, Diana wrote to two separate friends (one, her lawyer), stating that the Royal family would attempt to murder her by staging a car accident.

2. The death of Diana resolved a potentially awkward and unpleasant situation for the Royal family.

3. The press repeatedly published exaggerations and falsehoods about many areas of the case, whilst with-holding and ignoring other important evidence.

Keith Allen's 2011 documentary "Unlawful Killing" (embedded above) covers this ground, and much more. It was a brave documentary to make, given the public mood around Diana. It was, of course, widely criticised after being its premiere at the 2011 Cannes Festival. It never received a public released in this country. When it was released on YouTube in 2014, the Guardian printed a cruel and dishonest review , ignoring all content in favour of one liners. Not a surprise.

The film is hard get, especially in the UK, so I would download and share it while you have the chance.

Diana may not have been the perfect "people's princess", she probably didn't deserve the hysterical outpouring of public emotion that followed her death – very few people ever have. She probably never earned her place in Britain's pantheon of domestic saints. But she was a young woman, with two young children, dead before her time.

She was a person, and like all people, she deserves what nobody in the press is really willing to give her – an honest obituary.

michaelk says August 31, 2017

Having just watched Keith Allen's documentary, it's pretty clear why the Guardian reviewed it so negatively; Allen attacks the UK media relentlessly for its culture of studied incompetence and subservience to power. Essentially the media's role is to protect the establishment from scrutiny and divert attention away from its crimes. The final part about the media choosing to spin the jury's opinion, that Diana was unlawfully killed and this was linked to the vehicles pursuing her, into the fiction of 'just a road accident', is pretty damning. But that's what they do so well, over and over again, misdirect and cover up. Create plausible lies rather than uncover the truth.
michaelk says August 31, 2017
The 'problem' for the royal family in relation to Diana was her massive popularity with ordinary people not only in the UK but woldwide. She had charisma to burn. For whatever reason people liked what they saw and heard. Essentially, she was brought into the family in order to provide 'new blood' and 'modernize' how it was perceived. She was seen as an asset for the royal family. A face, an icon, a model. The trouble really began when Diana became too popular and too big to contain within the role she'd been alloted. She began, slowly, to question her role and the lines she'd been given, especially as her marriage was a sham. The fairytale of her marriage fell apart when she discovered that prince charming was already married whoops!

In the modern media world she became far more popular than the rest of them put together which unbalanced the entire relationship and she litterally outgrew the restrictions of her role. She became a very powerful figure, a distabilizing one by her very existance. Almost an alternative Queen in waiting. She seemed to be carving out a role for herself that was perceived as independent of the royal family and that alone made her a threat to the established order and balance within the constitution. Imagine if Diana had visited Gaza or began to speak out about the rights of the Palestinians, which isn't as far-fetched as it seems.

She might have matured and really become the 'peoples' queen' not just the peoples' princess. This idea, that the people somehow chose her to 'represent' them in opposition to the rest of the royal family is a dangerous idea that would upset and threaten an awful lot of very powerful people and institutions. So, it' not really surprising that she died the way she did. A awful lot of people heaved a long sigh of relief and a lot of problems were solved with her passing, balance and stability were restored once more to the realm.

StAug says August 31, 2017
Diana Spencer's death was of no more importance than anyone else's; she was a standard airhead of her class I only every paid particular attention to her because it was so irritating to be told that I was supposed to believe that she was "beautiful" when my own eyes could see that she was not. Having said that: it's obvious she and her lover were killed by The Royal Huns in concert with MI5/MI6; saying "perhaps it was an accident, we'll never know!" is like saying "maybe OJ was innocent!" In most murder cases, circumstantial evidence is all you have; in Diana Spencer's case, the circumstantial evidence is almost parodically unambiguous. Did she have a Death Wish or did she not, deep down, believe that They were capable of it?

In any case, why spend any time on the topic? We know the Bastards do those things and more but it's not as though she was John Lennon.

writerroddis says August 31, 2017
Good piece. My sentiments exactly. I recall at the time the indefatiguably ridiculous Julie Burchill saying Di was "a republican at heart", prompting the indefatiguably witty Mark Steel to point out that, since she'd wanted her son king we'd have to place her on the moderate wing of republicanism, wouldn't we?

Another aspect is the power the monarchy enjoys, over and above that flowing from membership of Britain's ruling class. I refer to the 'constitutional right' of the monarch to dismiss HIS/HER government. Liberals scoff – 'just a bit of archaic tradition; not worth getting fussed over'. (This despite the armed forces also swearing allegiance not to tax payer but HIS/HER MAJESTY. And despite legislation going back to the seventeenth century, used to intimidate striking miners In 84/85. Britain's ruling class has all manner of tricks up its sleeve.)

If the power of the monrachy is really nothing but colourful pageant, well, they won't mind giving it up now will they?

[Jul 02, 2017] Quite interesting Guardian piece encouraging to hate Russia and Putin while droning on about Hate Week in Orwell

Notable quotes:
"... "The use of fraudulent or forged documents should be-there's absolutely zero tolerance from us on this. If we find people submitting documents that are forged or fraudulent or they haven't disclosed full facts to us , we will not only refuse their application, they then risk a ban of 10 years from the UK if they make a subsequent application," Mackie said. ..."
Jul 02, 2017 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Pavlo Svolochenko ,

June 30, 2017 at 8:19 pm
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/jun/30/russia-putin-protests-police-arrests-tv-show?utm_referrer=https%3A%2F%2Fzen.yandex.com

Dumb Guardian article or dumbest Guardian article?

marknesop , June 30, 2017 at 8:37 pm
There you go – he's received the ultimate shock; time to go home to the Pearl of Empire and spend his dotage rambling the moors in his wellies, or watching the sea thrash the Cornish coast, or something. Time to leave Russia, in any event; he's been studying it for 45 years, and this is the best he can come up with, while he plainly does not understand it. Why does he spend his time there, if everyone is a thug and a hate leader – why, in the name of God, does he spend time in a country where people live who have never heard of George Orwell?

By the bye, if you enter the UK on a visitor's visa and then work as a journalist, you might be looking at a 10-year ban on a subsequent re-application , you parrot-faced wazzock.

"The use of fraudulent or forged documents should be-there's absolutely zero tolerance from us on this. If we find people submitting documents that are forged or fraudulent or they haven't disclosed full facts to us , we will not only refuse their application, they then risk a ban of 10 years from the UK if they make a subsequent application," Mackie said.

Pavlo Svolochenko , July 1, 2017 at 3:32 am
If he didn't pad it out with invective, the article would be one or two paragraphs at most.

The undeleted comments are the real hoot – the average guardian reader appears to be a human being who failed the Turing test.

Cortes , July 1, 2017 at 6:23 am
I wonder how the comment by "timiengels" of a day ago evaded the cull:

"Quite interesting a piece encouraging to hate Russia and Putin while droning on about 'Hate Week' in Orwell."

Reply

[May 29, 2017] Professor Russia Dossier Is Attempt to Destroy Trump s Presidency Before Inauguration by Stephen Cohen

They are throwing all kind of stuff at Trump to see if anything stick...
Notable quotes:
"... "endgame in the last chapter in an attempt to destroy Trump's presidency" ..."
"... Cohen dismissed the dossier as "essentially tabloid stuff" that he could easily purchase from so-called Russian "private intelligence agents out to make a buck". "It's scuttlebutt, it's rumor," he said, "it's junk...[that's] seen in Moscow." ..."
"... People are desperate to wound Trump to stop any type of detente with Russia, Cohen said, "these accusations [themselves] have become a grave American national security threat." ..."
Jan 11, 2017 | insider.foxnews.com

Russian Studies Professor Stephen Cohen said the publication of an unverified dossier of information regarding President-elect Donald Trump and Russia is the "endgame in the last chapter in an attempt to destroy Trump's presidency" before he takes office.

Cohen dismissed the dossier as "essentially tabloid stuff" that he could easily purchase from so-called Russian "private intelligence agents out to make a buck". "It's scuttlebutt, it's rumor," he said, "it's junk...[that's] seen in Moscow."

Cohen said mainstream media figures have been calling Trump a 'puppet of the Kremlin' for some time, which he remarked started when they decided to consider him as running with "Putin" rather than "Pence".

People are desperate to wound Trump to stop any type of detente with Russia, Cohen said, "these accusations [themselves] have become a grave American national security threat."

[Mar 17, 2017] Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump

Notable quotes:
"... Britain is one of the so-called "Five Eyes," a group of five English-speaking countries including the United States, which engage in close and intensive collaboration and intelligence sharing. Even within that context the United States and Britain have an unusually tight relationship. In the words of Stephen Lander, a former head of Britain's MI5, relations are so close that "consumers [of intelligence] in both capitals seldom know which country generated either the access or the product itself." ..."
"... Some people writing on intelligence and surveillance note that close working relations like this can allow intelligence agencies to evade domestic controls. ..."
"... The Five Eyes collaboration appears to extend the NSA's surveillance capabilities, giving the agency a way to spy on Americans without technically breaking US laws that would otherwise prohibit such spying. Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organization that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries." In other words, if US law doesn't protect the privacy rights of British citizens, and British laws don't protect the rights of Americans, then they can just spy on us, we'll spy on them, and our intelligence agencies will just swap information. This evasion of domestic privacy laws would enable essentially unlimited spying unaffected by either collection or usage rules. ..."
"... President Trump is already engaged in an unprecedented battle with large segments of his own intelligence community. Spicer's statement internationalizes the dispute. ..."
Mar 17, 2017 | economistsview.typepad.com
im1dc : March 16, 2017 at 04:45 PM , 2017 at 04:45 PM
Really? This WH is unhinged from all known and verifiable reality and a clear and present danger to our national security, peace, and prospertiy, imo, of course

"Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Not so much"

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/03/16/sean-spicer-just-suggested-that-obama-used-british-intelligence-to-spy-on-trump-not-so-much/

"Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Not so much"

By *Henry Farrell...March 16, 2017...7:12 PM

"In his daily press briefing, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer just repeated a claim that President Barack Obama had used British spies to surveil President Trump. After laying out a number of different media sources which Spicer suggested supported President Trump's contentions that he was wiretapped, he concluded:

Last, on Fox News on March 14th, Judge Andrew Napolitano made the following statement – quote – Three intelligence sources have informed Fox News that President Obama went outside the chain of command. He didn't use the NSA, he didn't use the CIA, he didn't use the FBI, and he didn't use the Department of Justice. He used GCHQ. What is that? It's the initials for the British intelligence spying agency. So simply by having two people saying to them the president needs transcripts of conversations involving candidate Trump's conversations, involving President-elect Trump, he's able to get it and there's no American fingerprints on this. Putting the published accounts and common sense together, this leads to a lot.

This is an explosive accusation.

What's GCHQ?

GCHQ - Government Communications Headquarters - is Britain's equivalent of the National Security Agency. Like the NSA, it engages in extensive international surveillance. It furthermore has a close relationship with the United States. Britain is one of the so-called "Five Eyes," a group of five English-speaking countries including the United States, which engage in close and intensive collaboration and intelligence sharing. Even within that context the United States and Britain have an unusually tight relationship. In the words of Stephen Lander, a former head of Britain's MI5, relations are so close that "consumers [of intelligence] in both capitals seldom know which country generated either the access or the product itself."

Close collaboration can lead to temptation

Some people writing on intelligence and surveillance note that close working relations like this can allow intelligence agencies to evade domestic controls. Jennifer Granick, in her new Cambridge University Press book, American Spies: Modern Surveillance, Why You Should Care, and What To Do About It, notes that Five Eyes countries aren't supposed to spy on each other's citizens. However, she says that the NSA has prepared policies that would allow it to spy on Five Eyes citizens without permission. She furthermore suggests that:

The Five Eyes collaboration appears to extend the NSA's surveillance capabilities, giving the agency a way to spy on Americans without technically breaking US laws that would otherwise prohibit such spying. Edward Snowden described the Five Eyes as a "supra-national intelligence organization that doesn't answer to the laws of its own countries." In other words, if US law doesn't protect the privacy rights of British citizens, and British laws don't protect the rights of Americans, then they can just spy on us, we'll spy on them, and our intelligence agencies will just swap information. This evasion of domestic privacy laws would enable essentially unlimited spying unaffected by either collection or usage rules.

Granick notes that if there are rules that would protect Americans from Five Eyes spying, or about the ways that the NSA, FBI or CIA could use information from foreign partners, we haven't seen them.

But don't jump to conclusions

Granick's arguments point to some important potential problems in close spying relationships. If there are rules to prevent the abuses that she fears, we don't know what they are. However, her concerns are with surveillance of ordinary citizens. It is wildly unlikely that U.S. and British intelligence agencies would secretly collaborate to monitor a U.S. presidential candidate. The political risks to both sides would be quite enormous. While critics like Granick and Snowden worry that intelligence agencies have too much unchecked power, they happily acknowledge that most members of the intelligence community are motivated by a sincere concern for American well-being. If the United States was really using foreign intelligence as a cut-out to spy illegally on the Republican candidate for president, all it would take would be one sincere objector or one worried conservative to create a scandal that would dwarf Watergate. Nor would British intelligence have any obvious motivation to collaborate in such an arrangement. The British government knows that it will have to deal with both Democratic and Republican administrations, and would have no appetite for an intrigue which would have little obvious benefit to Britain, but which could cripple the U.S.-British relationship for decades.

Nor is there any actual proof

Judge Napolitano, a Fox News television personality, does not seem to have good evidence for these extraordinary claims. As he describes it on his own website:

Sources have told Fox News that the British foreign surveillance service, the Government Communications Headquarters, known as GCHQ, most likely provided Obama with transcripts of Trump's calls. The NSA has given GCHQ full 24/7 access to its computers, so GCHQ - a foreign intelligence agency that, like the NSA, operates outside our constitutional norms - has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trump's. So by bypassing all American intelligence services, Obama would have had access to what he wanted with no Obama administration fingerprints.

This statement is notable both for being strategically vague and for not understanding what the NSA does. Spicer quotes a strong claim by Napolitano on Fox News that Obama "went outside the chain of command" and "used GCHQ." Napolitano is much more cautious in the print version, where he claims that unnamed intelligence sources said that GCHQ "most likely" provided transcripts. That's not a claim as to fact, made by someone who claims to have seen the transcripts or had first-hand knowledge of the relationship. It is a (in my opinion highly dubious) suggestion as to plausibility, made by someone who does not claim to have direct knowledge of what happened.

Furthermore, Napolitano doesn't seem to have any very strong understanding of the actual controversies between the defenders and critics of modern surveillance law. For example, Napolitano seems to believe that GCHQ is able to generate transcripts because it has "full access" to NSA computers, which in turn " has the digital versions of all electronic communications made in America in 2016, including Trump's." In fact, if the GCHQ were looking for data on American communications, it would be far better advised to look to its own resources than to the NSA. While critics argue that the NSA collects too much 'incidental' data and metadata on Americans, they do not claim that the NSA has "the digital versions" (whatever that means) of all American communications, or anything like it. Napolitano is not a sound source for explosive political claims.

This statement will hurt intelligence cooperation

President Trump is already engaged in an unprecedented battle with large segments of his own intelligence community. Spicer's statement internationalizes the dispute. U.S. intelligence partners - in the Five Eyes and elsewhere - are already nervous about sharing sensitive intelligence with the Trump administration, since they do not know how it will be used or who it will be shared with. This accusation will greatly exacerbate these fears, suggesting that the Trump administration does not prioritize continued close collaboration with its intelligence partners. Both critics and defenders of cross-national intelligence collaboration agree that there has been an extraordinarily high level of trust among a few select intelligence agencies since World War II. The "Five Eyes" was a club that other states clamored to get into (during the Snowden controversy, Germany tried to use revelations about U.S. spying as a lever to open the door to German participation in the Five Eyes). Now club members have much less reason to trust each other and membership looks substantially less attractive."

*Henry Farrell is associate professor of political science and international affairs at George Washington University. He works on a variety of topics, including trust, the politics of the Internet and international and comparative political economy.

libezkova -> im1dc... , March 16, 2017 at 09:23 PM
"Sean Spicer just suggested that Obama used British intelligence to spy on Trump. Not so much"

Looks like British and Dutch. And not necessary Obama himself.

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-soft-coup-or-preserving-our-democracy/?mc_cid=2f82659492&mc_eid=32cf78e7e5

== quote ==
The campaign to link Trump to Russia also increased in intensity, including statements by multiple former and current intelligence agency heads regarding the reality of the Russian threat and the danger of electing a president who would ignore that reality. It culminated in ex-CIA Acting Director Michael Morell's claim that Trump was "an unwitting agent of the Russian Federation."

British and Dutch intelligence were apparently discreetly queried regarding possible derogatory intelligence on the Trump campaign's links to Russia and they responded by providing information detailing meetings in Europe.

Hundreds of self-described GOP foreign policy "experts" signed letters stating that they opposed Trump's candidacy and the mainstream media was unrelentingly hostile.

Leading Republicans refused to endorse Trump and some, like Senators John McCain, Marco Rubio and Lindsey Graham, cited his connections to Russia.

[Sep 12, 2016] Syria decision the latest blow to Obamas Middle East legacy

Notable quotes:
"... Yemen is another war the US is involved in thanks to the "peace" Pres. Obama. He has tried to keep this war hidden from the public. His few mentions of this war have been limited to shallow statements about his concern of the civilian casualty. ..."
"... Moreover, by selling the Saudis cluster bombs and other arms being used on civilians, Obama has enabled the Saudis in the last 8 moths to kill and destruct in Yemen more than WW2, as evidence shows. According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the US is complicit in international war crimes in Yemen. ..."
"... After Obama's election, he went to Cairo to make a peace speech to the Arab world aiming to diffuse the deep hatred towards the US created during the Bush era. Yet since then, Obama's foolish alliances with despotic Arab rulers infesting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the region, his drone warfare, and warped war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have only expanded and strengthened ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and increased Arab citizens anger and hatred towards the US. This is Obama's legacy! ..."
"... I always think there are similarities in Clinton and Obama s upbringing that created the anormic sociopathic shape shifting personalities they demonstrate. ..."
"... amiable even charismatic enough to sell it to a stupid audience. ..."
"... Why do we maintain the myth that the Obama brand is in anyway his personal contribution. Anymore than Bush or Clinton. The only difference is the republicans are ideologues where's as the puppets offered by the democrats are just psychotic shape shifters. In either way on a clear day you can see the strings hanging from their wrists like ribbons. ..."
"... The US is Allied with Saudi Arabia and Israel, that makes Saudi Arabia's and Israel's enemies US enemies. ..."
"... The notion that Obama makes his own decisions is laughable except it aint funny.. ..."
"... There is no 'Obama legacy' in the ME. It is a US legacy of blown attempts to control unwilling countries and populations by coercion, and by military and economic warfare. ..."
"... With all due respects to M. Obama, this is another clear indication that the US President is just a figure head. He is a front for the corporations that run the US behind the scene - the so-called US military-industrial complex. ..."
"... Perhaps you intentionally miss out the fact that it is the west that has Israel and the Saudis as their best allies, considering their actions ( one with the largest/longest time concentration camp in history, the other the exporter of the horror show of ISIL , both an abomination of their respective religions . The west attempt to seek the moral high ground is more than a farce ... all the world can see and know the game being played, but the mass media wishes to assume everyone has half a brain... they are allergic to the truth , like the vampires to the light. ..."
"... The stick I'm talking about is the total capacity of the US, military and economic, to have things its way or make the opposition very unhappy. ..."
"... What has it gotten us? Nothing good. What has it gotten the top 1 percent? All the money we don't have. ..."
"... Obama is being an absolute idiot in sending special forces to fight with rebels who are fighting the legitimate government of Syria. This is stupidity of the highest order. What will he do when any of these special forces operatives are captured by IS or killed by Russian or Syrian airstrikes? ..."
"... That is a valid point: Syria is a sovereign nation recognized by the U.N., and any foreign troops within without permission would be considered invaders. Of course, the U.S. ignores international law all the time. ..."
"... Anyway, foreign troops in Syria who are there without an invitation by Syrian government or authorisation by UNSC are there illegally and can be tried for war crimes if captured. Why is Obama putting his soldiers in this situation? ..."
"... The U.S. strategy in Syria is in tatters as Obama lamely tries to patch it up. The U.S. was determined to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria in service of the Saudis, Turkey, and Israel, while pretending to go after ISIS, who the Saudis and Turks were covertly funding. The U.S. were arming jihadists to oust Assad. That game is up, thanks to the Russians. Putin decided he wasn't going to stand by while the U.S. and its proxies created another Libya jihadist disaster in Syria. The forceful Russian intervention in going after ISIS showed the U.S. to be a faker, and caused a sea-change in U.S. policy. Now the U.S. can't pretend to go after ISIS while really trying to oust Assad. The Emporer has no clothes. ..."
"... Israel is an ally of KSA who is funding IS, Al Nusra, Al-Qaida and Al-Shabab. They are also partners with KSA in trying to prevent Iran's reintegration into global society following the nuclear deal, and the lifting of sanctions. ..."
"... I suspect that Israel wants to annex the Syrian Golan Heights permanently, and to extend their illegal settlements into the area. That can only happen if Assad is defeated. ..."
"... Wow, you make a lot of sense. I always thought the US military heavy foreign policy became insane because of Reagan. Maybe it was the loss of the USSR? ..."
"... Everyone here grew up being taught that the US is the champion of all that is good (sounds corny today). When the USSR dissolved, everyone imagined huge military cuts with the savings being invested in social benefits. If someone had predicted that, instead, we would grow our military, throw our civil rights away, embrace empire, assasinate US citizens without a trial, create total surveillance, create secret one sided star-chamber FISA courts that control a third of our economy, and choose a Dept. name heard previously only in Nazi movies (Homeland Security) --- we'd have laughed and dismissed the warning as delusion. ..."
"... You are correct. Obama is breaking UN international law, the US has no right to invade Syria. Russia, though, has been asked by the Syrian government for help, a government fully recognized by the UN. Russia has full UN sanctioned rights to help Syria. US news media will never explain this to the public, sadly. ..."
"... Obama's presidency lost its credibility a long time ago. He made so many rash promises and statements which one by one he has broken, that no free thinking person believes anything he says anymore. ..."
"... There's a world of difference between Russia taking steps to protect its immediate geographic and political interests (which were largely the wishes of the resident populations - something critics tend to overlook) and the USA invading Iraq (2003) in a blatant act of war, based on bullshit and then aiding and abetting mercenary terrorists in Syria in defiance of any declaration of war, UN resolution or invitation from the Syrian government to intervene. ..."
"... You might have also noticed that Syria is a long, long way from the USA. Rhetorically, WTF is the US doing in the Middle East? Propping up Saudi or Israel? Or both? ..."
"... ISIS == Mercenaries sponsored by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Does a strategy against our own mercenaries make sense??? ..."
"... Think about, when's the last time Saudi Arabia did anything progressive or humane in its foreign policy? Now remember this very same country is on the same side as the Americans. This is the country that invaded Bahrain and Yemen and labelled the civil rights movements in those countries as 'Iranian interference.' The Saudis who have been seeking to turn civil rights movements with rather nationalistic demands into religious and sectarian conflicts by playing different groups against each other are allied with the U.S. and sitting at the table in Vienna talking about peace in Syria. Nonsense upon stilts! ..."
"... ISIS poses no threat to the Americans and vice versa. The Americans therefore do not have an interest in making sure that ISIS is wiped out. On the contrary they want regional foes to suffer. ..."
"... The American attempt at negotiating peace in Syria without Syrian representation is nothing short of ridiculous and best illustrates the convoluted state of American foreign policy. America lost any claim to 'leadership' by now. ..."
"... Unfortunately American policy and that eu have at time added fuel to the fire. ..."
"... Russian Iranian and hezbollah boots are invited boots by the legitimate government according to the UN Charter they are all acting legally and according to the Geneva Conventions etc. ..."
"... The US led coalition in bombing Syria were not, and the admitted introduction of troops into Syria is a an ACT OF WAR by the USA, and it is the AGRESSOR here, not doubt about it. It's a War Crime by every standard ..."
"... See the NATO creep into Eastern Europe against all agreements made with USSR. ..."
"... But their real agenda is to carve up Syria. In the deep recesses of their, the Corporate corrupt White House's, mind ISIS is not their immediate problem. ISIS is a means to an end - carve up Syria a sovereign country. ..."
"... Remember, only months ago, Kerry and Tory William Hague, was handing out cash to Syrian rebels who later turned out to be ISIS rebels. We must never forget, Syria, right or wrong, is a sovereign country. ..."
"... Look at the mess they made in, Ukraine, with their friends a bunch of, Kiev, murdering neo-Nazi's. ..."
"... Just out of curiosity...how will the US keep the DoD and CIA from duking it out at the opposite fronts on the Syrian soil? ..."
"... Washington has clearly chosen to break International Law. ..."
"... Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country's domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law ..."
"... As the administration in Washington is firmly in the grasp of special interest groups such as Big Pharma, The Banksters, Big Agrobusiness, Big oil, the MIC and Israel there is no chance of getting good policy decisions out of there until there is a regime change. ..."
"... You might think that having criticized Assad for shooting demonstrators who demonstrated against the corruption and inefficiency of his regime, and having said that as a result his regime had lost its legitimacy, they would apply the same yardstick to President Poroshenko when he shot up two provinces of his country for asking for federation, killing thousands in the process, but on the contrary they sent "advisers" to train his military and his Fascist helpers to use their weapons better, to shoot them up more effectively. ..."
"... However, one cannot really expect people who are exceptional to behave like ordinary (unexceptional) human beings. ..."
"... What is the official US line on the legality of these deployments in terms of international law? ..."
Oct 30, 2015 | The Guardian

willpodmore 1 Nov 2015 10:30

NATO and its allies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Yemen, Syria .... they make a desert and call it peace.

ID7582903 1 Nov 2015 06:19

"Credibility"? Beware and be aware folks. This isn't a monopoly game being played here; it's for real.

2015 Valdai conference is Societies Between War and Peace: Overcoming the Logic of Conflict in Tomorrow's World. In the period between October 19 and 22, experts from 30 countries have been considering various aspects of the perception of war and peace both in the public consciousness and in international relations, religion and economic interaction between states. Videos w live translations and english transcripts (a keeper imho)
http://en.kremlin.ru/events/president/news/50548

30 Oct, 2015 - The day US announces Ground troops into Syria, and the day before the downing/crash of the Russian Airbus 321 in the Sinai, this happened: Russia has conducted a major test of its strategic missile forces, firing numerous ballistic and cruise missiles from various training areas across the country, videos uploaded by the Ministry of Defense have shown.

A routine exercise, possibly the largest of its kind this year, was intended to test the command system of transmitting orders among departments and involved launches from military ranges on the ground, at sea and in the air, the ministry said Friday.

https://www.rt.com/news/320194-russia-missiles-launch-training/

30.10.2015 Since the beginning of its operation in Syria on September 30, Russian Aerospace Forces have carried out 1,391 sorties in Syria, destroying a total of 1,623 terrorist targets, the Russian General Staff said Friday.

In particular, Russian warplanes destroyed 249 Islamic State command posts, 51 training camps, and 131 depots, Andrey Kartapolov, head of the Russian General Staff Main Operations Directorate said.

"In Hanshih, a suburb of Damascus, 17 militants of the Al-Ghuraba group were executed in public after they tried to leave the combat area and flee to Jordan," he specified. "The whole scene was filmed in order to disseminate the footage among the other groups operating in the vicinity of Damascus and other areas", the General Staff spokesman said. In the central regions of the country, the Syrian Army managed to liberate 12 cities in the Hama province, Kartapolov said. "The Syrian armed forces continue their advance to the north," the general added.

http://sputniknews.com/middleeast/20151030/1028992570/russian-airstrikes-syria-friday.html

fairviewplz 1 Nov 2015 04:47

Yemen is another war the US is involved in thanks to the "peace" Pres. Obama. He has tried to keep this war hidden from the public. His few mentions of this war have been limited to shallow statements about his concern of the civilian casualty. What an insult to our intelligence! We are well aware that the US provides the logistical and technical support, and refuelling of warplanes to the Saudi coalition illegal war in Yemen. Moreover, by selling the Saudis cluster bombs and other arms being used on civilians, Obama has enabled the Saudis in the last 8 moths to kill and destruct in Yemen more than WW2, as evidence shows. According to Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, the US is complicit in international war crimes in Yemen.

After Obama's election, he went to Cairo to make a peace speech to the Arab world aiming to diffuse the deep hatred towards the US created during the Bush era. Yet since then, Obama's foolish alliances with despotic Arab rulers infesting ISIS and Al-Qaeda in the region, his drone warfare, and warped war policies in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria and Yemen, have only expanded and strengthened ISIS and Al-Qaeda, and increased Arab citizens anger and hatred towards the US. This is Obama's legacy!

Barmaidfromhell -> WSCrips 1 Nov 2015 03:52

Well said.

I always think there are similarities in Clinton and Obama s upbringing that created the anormic sociopathic shape shifting personalities they demonstrate. Obviously carefully selected to follow any line given them and amiable even charismatic enough to sell it to a stupid audience.

Why do we maintain the myth that the Obama brand is in anyway his personal contribution. Anymore than Bush or Clinton. The only difference is the republicans are ideologues where's as the puppets offered by the democrats are just psychotic shape shifters. In either way on a clear day you can see the strings hanging from their wrists like ribbons.

Michael Imanual Christos -> Pete Piper 1 Nov 2015 00:28

Pete Piper

In brief;

The US is Allied with Saudi Arabia and Israel, that makes Saudi Arabia's and Israel's enemies US enemies.

... ... ...

midnightschild10 31 Oct 2015 21:35

When Obama denounced Russia's actions in Syria, and blamed them for massive loss of civilian lives, Russia responded by asking them to show their proof. The Administration spokesperson said they got their information from social media. No one in the Administration seems to realize how utterly stupid that sounds. Marie Harf is happily developing the Administration's foreign policy via Twitter. As the CIA and NSA read Facebook for their daily planning, Obama reads the comments section of newspapers to prepare for his speech to the American public in regard to putting boots on the ground in Syria, and adding to the boots in Iraq. If it didn't result in putting soldiers lives in jeopardy, it would be considered silly. Putin makes his move and watches as the Obama Administration makes the only move they know, after minimal success in bombing, Obama does send in the troops. Putin is the one running the game. Obama's response is so predictable. No wonder the Russians are laughing. In his quest to outdo Cheyney, Obama has added to the number of wars the US is currently involved in. His original claim to fame was to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which then resulted in starting Iraq and Afghanistan Wars 2.0. Since helping to depose the existing governments in the Middle East, leading not only to the resurgence of AlQuaeda, and giving birth to ISIS, and leaving chaos and destruction in his wake, he decided to take down the last standing ruler, hoping that if he does the same thing over and over, he will get a different result. Obama's foreign policy legacy had been considered impotent at best, now its considered ridiculous.

SomersetApples 31 Oct 2015 20:03

We bombed them, we sent armies of terrorist in to kill them, we destroyed their hospitals and power plants and cities, we put sanctions on them and we did everything in our power to cut off their trading with the outside world, and yet they are still standing.

The only thing left to do, lets send in some special military operatives.

This is so out of character, or our perceived character of Obama. It must be that deranged idiot John McCain pulling the strings.

Rafiqac01 31 Oct 2015 16:58

The notion that Obama makes his own decisions is laughable except it aint funny....having just watched CNNs Long Road to Hell in Iraq....and the idiots advising Bush and Blair you have to wonder the extent to which these are almighty balls ups or very sophisticated planning followed up by post disaster rationalisation....

whatever the conclusion it proves that the intervention or non interventions prove their is little the USA has done that has added any good value to the situation...indeed it is an unmitigated disaster strewn around the world! Trump is the next generation frothing at the mouth ready to show what a big John Wayne he is!!

DavidFCanada 31 Oct 2015 13:56

There is no 'Obama legacy' in the ME. It is a US legacy of blown attempts to control unwilling countries and populations by coercion, and by military and economic warfare. That US legacy will forever remain, burnt into skins and bodies of the living and dead, together with a virtually unanimous recognition in the ME of the laughable US pretexts of supporting democracy, the rule of law, religious freedom and, best of all, peace. Obama is merely the chief functionary of a nation of lies.

Informed17 -> WSCrips 31 Oct 2015 13:47

Are you saying that there was no illegal invasion of Iraq? No vial of laundry detergent was presented at the UN as "proof" that Iraq has WMDs? No hue and cry from "independent" media supported that deception campaign? Were you in a deep coma at the time?

Informed17 -> somethingbrite 31 Oct 2015 13:36

No. But the US trampled on the international law for quite a while now, starting with totally illegal interference in Yugoslavia in the 1990s.

WSCrips 31 Oct 2015 13:18

Hey Guardian Editors.....and all those who worshipped Obama....In America, there were folks from the older generation that warned us that this Community Organizer was not ready for the Job of President of the United States....it had nothing to do with his color, he just was not ready.....he was a young, inexperienced Senator, who never, ever had a real job, never had a street fight growing up pampered in Hawaii, was given a pass to great universities because his parents had money, and was the dream Affirmative Action poster boy for the liberal left. Obama has not disappointed anyone who tried to warn us......and now we will reap what he has sowed:

1. 8 Trillion to our debt
2. Nightmare in the Middleast (how is that Arab Spring)
3. Polarized America....Dems and Republicans hate each other....hate each other like the Irish and English...10 x over.
4. War on Cops
5. War with China
6. Invasion from Central America

I see a great depression and World War IV on the horizon....and I am being positive!

SaveRMiddle 31 Oct 2015 12:47

Nothing Obama says has any value. We've watched the man lie with a grin and a chuckle.

Forever Gone is all trust.

His continued abuse of Red Line threats spoke volumes about the lawyer who Reactively micromanages that which required and deserved an expert Proactive plan.

Let History reflect the horrific death CIA meddling Regime Change/Divide and Conquer creates.

HeadInSand2013 31 Oct 2015 12:45

Liberal activists were in little doubt that Obama has failed to live up to his commitment to avoid getting dragged directly into the war.

With all due respects to M. Obama, this is another clear indication that the US President is just a figure head. He is a front for the corporations that run the US behind the scene - the so-called US military-industrial complex.

Liberal activists are stupid enough to think that M. Obama is actually in charge of the US military or the US foreign policy. Just go back and count how many times during the last 6 years M. Obama has made a declaration and then - sometimes the next day - US military has over-ruled him.


Mediaking 31 Oct 2015 10:00

Perhaps you intentionally miss out the fact that it is the west that has Israel and the Saudis as their best allies, considering their actions ( one with the largest/longest time concentration camp in history, the other the exporter of the horror show of ISIL , both an abomination of their respective religions . The west attempt to seek the moral high ground is more than a farce ... all the world can see and know the game being played, but the mass media wishes to assume everyone has half a brain... they are allergic to the truth , like the vampires to the light.

USA forces coming to the aid of their 5 individuals... yes 1,2,3,4,5 ( stated by US command- there are only that amount of FSA fighters left - the rest have gone over to ISIL with their equipment -- ) the local population all speak of ISIL/Daesh being American/Israeli ,they say if this is a civil war how come all the opposition are foreigners -- I think perhaps it's like the Ukraine affair... a bunch of CIA paid Nazi thugs instigating a coup ... or like Venezuela agents on roof tops shooting at both sides in demonstrations to get things going. The usual business of CIA/Mossad stuff in tune with the mass media with their engineered narratives -- Followed by the trolls on cyber space... no doubt we shall see them here too.

All note that an Intervention in Syria would be "ILLEGAL" by Int. law and sooner than later will be sued in billions for it...on top of the billions spent on having a 5 person strong force of FSA...spent from the American tax payers money . Syria has a government and is considered a state at the UN . Iran and Russia are there at the request and permission of Syria .

Russia and Iran have been methodically wiping out Washington's mercenaries on the ground while recapturing large swathes of land that had been lost to the terrorists. Now that the terrorists are getting wiped out the west and the Saudis are are screaming blue murder !

I for one would have Assad stay , as he himself suggests , till his country is completely free of terrorists, then have free elections . I would add , to have the Saudis and the ones in the west/Turkey/Jordan charged for crimes against humanity for supplying and creating Daesh/ISIS . This element cannot be ignored . Also Kurdistan can form their new country in the regions they occupy as of this moment and Mosul to come. Iran,Russia,Iraq, Syria and the new Kurdistan will sign up to this deal . Millions of Syrian refugees can then come back home and rebuild their broken lives with Iranian help and cash damages from the mentioned instigators $400 billion . The cash must be paid into the Syrian central bank before any elections take place ... Solved...

My consultancy fee - 200ml pounds sterling... I know ... you wish I ruled the world (who knows !) - no scams please or else -- ( the else would be an Apocalypse upon the western equity markets via the Illuminati i.e a 49% crash )... a week to pay , no worries since better to pay for a just solution than to have million descend upon EU as refugees . It is either this or God's revenge with no mercy .

amacd2 31 Oct 2015 09:52

Obama, being more honest but also more dangerous than Flip Wilson says, "The Empire made me do it",

Bernie, having "reservations" about what Obama has done, says nothing against Empire, but continues to pretend, against all evidence, that this is a democracy.

Hillary, delighting in more war, says "We came, we bombed, they all died, but the Empire won."

Talk about 'The Issue' to debate for the candidates in 2016?

"What's your position on the Empire?"

"Oh, what Empire, you ask?"

"The friggin Empire that you are auditioning to pose as the president of --- you lying tools of both the neocon 'R' Vichy party and you smoother lying neoliberal-cons of the 'D' Vichy party!"

lightstroke -> Pete Piper 31 Oct 2015 09:41

Nukes are not on the table. Mutually Assured Destruction.

The stick I'm talking about is the total capacity of the US, military and economic, to have things its way or make the opposition very unhappy.

It's not necessary to win wars to exercise that power. All they have to do is start them and keep them going until the arms industry makes as much dough from them as possible. That's the only win they care about.

What has it gotten us? Nothing good. What has it gotten the top 1 percent? All the money we don't have.

Taku2 31 Oct 2015 09:26

Obama is being an absolute idiot in sending special forces to fight with rebels who are fighting the legitimate government of Syria. This is stupidity of the highest order. What will he do when any of these special forces operatives are captured by IS or killed by Russian or Syrian airstrikes?

How stupid can a President get?

Obama does need to pull back on this one, even though it will make his stupid and erroneous policy towards the Syrian tragedy seem completely headless. If this stupid and brainless policy is meant to be symbolic, its potential for future catastrophic consequences is immeasurable.

phillharmonic -> nishville 31 Oct 2015 08:56

That is a valid point: Syria is a sovereign nation recognized by the U.N., and any foreign troops within without permission would be considered invaders. Of course, the U.S. ignores international law all the time.

nishville 31 Oct 2015 08:35

Syrian rebels fighting the Islamic State

And who are those then? Do they exist, do we have any reliable source confirming they are really simultaneously fighting IS and Syrian Army or is it yet another US fairy tale?

Anyway, foreign troops in Syria who are there without an invitation by Syrian government or authorisation by UNSC are there illegally and can be tried for war crimes if captured. Why is Obama putting his soldiers in this situation?

phillharmonic 31 Oct 2015 08:33

The U.S. strategy in Syria is in tatters as Obama lamely tries to patch it up. The U.S. was determined to overthrow the Assad regime in Syria in service of the Saudis, Turkey, and Israel, while pretending to go after ISIS, who the Saudis and Turks were covertly funding. The U.S. were arming jihadists to oust Assad. That game is up, thanks to the Russians. Putin decided he wasn't going to stand by while the U.S. and its proxies created another Libya jihadist disaster in Syria. The forceful Russian intervention in going after ISIS showed the U.S. to be a faker, and caused a sea-change in U.S. policy. Now the U.S. can't pretend to go after ISIS while really trying to oust Assad. The Emporer has no clothes.

amacd2 -> Woody Treasure 31 Oct 2015 08:31

Woody, did you mean "Obama is a foil (for the Disguised Global Crony-Capitalist Empire--- which he certainly is), or did you mean to say "fool" (which he certainly is not, both because he is a well paid puppet/poodle for this Global Empire merely HQed in, and 'posing' as, America --- as Blair and Camron are for the same singular Global Empire --- and because Obama didn't end his role as Faux/Emperor-president like JFK), eh?

Nena Cassol -> TonyBlunt 31 Oct 2015 06:48

Assad's father seized power with a military coup and ruled the country for 30 years, before dying he appointed his son, who immediately established marshal law, prompting discontent even among his father's die-hard loyalists ...this is plain history, is this what you call a legitimate leader?

Cycles 31 Oct 2015 06:41

Forced to go in otherwise the Russians and Iranians get full control. Welcome to the divided Syria a la Germany after WW2.

TonyBlunt -> Nena Cassol 31 Oct 2015 06:36

"It does not take much research to find out that Assad is not legitimate at all"

Please share your source with us Nena. But remember Langley Publications don't count.

TonyBlunt -> oldholbornian 31 Oct 2015 06:29

The Americans do not recognise international law. They do not sign up to any of it and proclaim the right to break it with their "exceptionalism".

Katrin3 -> herrmaya 31 Oct 2015 05:27

The Russians, US, Iran etc are all meeting right now in Vienna. The Russians and the US military do communicate with each other, to avoid attacking each other by mistake.

The Russians are in the West and N.West of Syria. The US is going into the N. East, near IS headquarters in Raqqa, to support the Kurdish YPG, who are only a few kilometers from the city.

Katrin3 -> ID6693806 31 Oct 2015 05:15

Israel is an ally of KSA who is funding IS, Al Nusra, Al-Qaida and Al-Shabab. They are also partners with KSA in trying to prevent Iran's reintegration into global society following the nuclear deal, and the lifting of sanctions.

I suspect that Israel wants to annex the Syrian Golan Heights permanently, and to extend their illegal settlements into the area. That can only happen if Assad is defeated.

centerline ChristineH 31 Oct 2015 04:48

The Kurds are the fabled moderate opposition who are willing to negotiate, and who have also fought with the Syrian government against US backed ISIS and al Nusra so called moderate opposition.

Pete Piper -> Verbum 31 Oct 2015 04:47

@Verbum
Wow, you make a lot of sense. I always thought the US military heavy foreign policy became insane because of Reagan. Maybe it was the loss of the USSR?

Everyone here grew up being taught that the US is the champion of all that is good (sounds corny today). When the USSR dissolved, everyone imagined huge military cuts with the savings being invested in social benefits. If someone had predicted that, instead, we would grow our military, throw our civil rights away, embrace empire, assasinate US citizens without a trial, create total surveillance, create secret one sided star-chamber FISA courts that control a third of our economy, and choose a Dept. name heard previously only in Nazi movies (Homeland Security) --- we'd have laughed and dismissed the warning as delusion.

gabriel90 -> confettifoot 31 Oct 2015 04:46

ISiS is destroying Syria thanks to the US and Saudi Arabia; its an instrument to spread chaos in the Middle East and attack Iran and Russia...

ChristineH 31 Oct 2015 04:21

So, on the day peace talks open, the US unilaterally announces advice boots on the ground to support one of the many sides in the Syrian War, who will undoubtedly want self determination, right on Turkey's border, as they always have, and as has always been opposed by the majority of the Syrian population. What part of that isn't completely mad?

Great sympathy for the situation of the Kurds in Syria under Assad, but their nationalism issue and inability to work together with the Sunni rebels, was a major factor in the non formation of a functioning opposition in Syria, and will be a block to peace, not its cause. It's also part of a larger plan to have parts of Turkey and Iraq under Kurdish control to create a contingent kingdom. Whatever the merits of that, the US deciding to support them at this stage is completely irrational, and with Russia and Iran supporting Assad will lengthen the war, not shorten it.

MissSarajevo 31 Oct 2015 04:21

Just a couple of things here. How does the US know who the moderates are?!? Is this another occasion that the US is going to use International law as toilet paper? The US will enter (as if they weren't already there, illegally. They were not invited in by the legitimate leader of Syria.

gabriel90 31 Oct 2015 04:19

Warbama is just trying to save his saudi/qatari/turk/emirati dogs of war... they will be wiped out by Russia and the axis of resistance...

Pete Piper -> Michael Imanual Christos 31 Oct 2015 04:08

Does anyone see anything rational in US foreign policy? When I hear attempts to explain, they vary around .. "it's about oil". But no one ever shows evidence continuous wars produced more oil for anyone. So, are we deliberately creating chaos and misery? Why? To make new enemies we can use to justify more war? We've now classified the number of countries we are bombing. Why? The countries being bombed surely know.

Pete Piper -> oldholbornian 31 Oct 2015 03:50

You are correct. Obama is breaking UN international law, the US has no right to invade Syria. Russia, though, has been asked by the Syrian government for help, a government fully recognized by the UN. Russia has full UN sanctioned rights to help Syria. US news media will never explain this to the public, sadly.

Only the US routinely violates other nations' sovergnity. Since Korea, the only nation that has ever used military force against a nation not on its border is the US.

Can anyone find rationality in US foreign policy? We are supposed to be fighting ISIL, but Saudi Arabia and Israel appear to be helping ISIL to force Syrian regime change. And the US is supplying weapons to Saudi Arabia that are routed to ISIL. Supposedly because eliminating President Asad is more important than fighting ISIL? The US public is being misled into thinking we are NOW fighting ISIL. After Asad is killed, then we will genuinely fight ISIL? Russia, Iran, and more(?) will fight to keep Asad in power and then fight ISIL? THIS IS OBVIOUS BS, AND ALSO FUBAR.

By all means, get everyone together for some diplomacy.

oldholbornian -> lesmandalasdeniki 31 Oct 2015 03:36

Well lets look at Germany the centre of christian culture and the EU

http://www.infowars.com/this-is-our-future-germany-may-soon-have-8-million-muslims/

CAPLAN -> Lunora 31 Oct 2015 03:33

reminds me of emporer franz josef in europe about 100 years ago .. meant well but led to ruination ..i dont think that there has been an american president involved in more wars than obama

obama by his cairo speech kicked of the arab spring ..shows that words can kill

however.. the experience he now has gained may lead to an avoidance of a greater sunni shia war in syria if the present vienna talks can offer something tangible and preserve honour to the sunnis .. in the mid east honour and macho are key elements in negotiations

iran however is a shia caliphate based regime and unless it has learnt the lesson from yemen on the limitations of force may push for further success via army and diplomacy and control in syria and iraq

oldholbornian 31 Oct 2015 02:42

But Obama's latest broken promise to avoid an "open-ended action" in Syria could lead to a full-blown war with Russia considering that Russian military has been operating in Syria for weeks.

" For the first time ever, the American strategists have developed an illusion that they may defeat a nuclear power in a non-nuclear war," Russian deputy prime minister Dmitry Rogozin told AP. "It's nonsense, and it will never happen."

http://www.infowars.com/flashback-obama-says-no-boots-on-the-ground-in-syria-before-sending-troops/

Any US / terrorist engagement with the Syrian security forces will include engaging with its allies Russia

Once the firing starts Russia will include the US as terrorists with no rights to be in Syrian and under the UN RULES have the right to defend themselves against the US

HollyOldDog -> foolisholdman 31 Oct 2015 02:32

Hmm Foreign snipers on rooftops ( not in the control of the government) how many times is this scenario going to be played out before the 'press' twigs it than something is not making sense.

HollyOldDog -> foolisholdman 31 Oct 2015 02:29

Though in one demonstration there was snipers on rooftops shooting both deconstratirs and the police - far more police were killed than demonstrators - what does this reming you of? Was these actions seemingly out of the control of the government a preliminary to what happened in Kiev during the maidan - practices get the technics right I suppose. - outside forces were obviously at work ' stirring the pot.

Anna Eriksson 31 Oct 2015 02:24

Let's hope that the US will help out with taking in some refugees as well! In Germany, and Sweden locals are becoming so frustrated and angry that they set refugee shelters on fire. This is a trend in both Sweden and Germany, as shown in the maps in the links. There have almost been 90 arsons in Germany so far this year, almost 30 in Sweden.

Map of Sweden fire incidents: http://bit.ly/1MiaMX9

Map of Germany arson incidents: http://bit.ly/1LZzEUh

betrynol 31 Oct 2015 01:56

Nobody tells the American people and nobody else really cares, but these 40-something guys being sent to Syria are possibly there as:

The Russian and Iranian troops on the ground will soon engage and sweep anti-Assad forces in key regions in Western Syria. This will be slightly impeded if Americans are among them. But accidents do happen, hence the term "cannon fodder".

The Russians and Iranians will likely take a step back militarily though for the duration of talks, so the American plan to protect Saudi backed fighters is likely to work.

I never involved or mentioned ISIS because this is NOT about fighting ISIS. It's about counteracting the Russian/Irania sweep in the area, and ultimately keeping the Americans in the game (sorry, war).

petervietnam 31 Oct 2015 01:13

The world's policeman or the world's trouble maker?

Austin Young -> Will D 31 Oct 2015 00:34

But he's the "change we can believe in" guy! Oh right... Dem or republican, they spew anything and everything their voters want to hear but when it comes time to walk the walk the only voice in their head is Cash Money.

lesmandalasdeniki -> Bardhyl Cenolli 30 Oct 2015 23:34

It frustrates me, anyone who will be the problem-solver will be labeled as dangerous by the Western political and business leaders if the said person or group of people can not be totally controlled for their agenda.

This will be the first time I will be speaking about the Indonesian forest fires that started from June this year until now. During the period I was not on-line, I watched the local news and all channels were featuring the same problem every day during the last two-weeks.

US is also silent about it during Obama - Jokowi meeting, even praising Jokowi being on the right track. After Jokowi came back, his PR spin is in the force again, he went directly to Palembang, he held office and trying to put up an image of a President that cared for his people. He couldn't solve the Indonesian forest fires from June - October, is it probably because Jusuf Kalla has investment in it?

My point is, US and the Feds, World Bank and IMF are appointing their puppets on each country they have put up an investment on terms of sovereign debt and corporate debt/bonds.

And Obama is their puppet.

Will D 30 Oct 2015 23:30

Obama's presidency lost its credibility a long time ago. He made so many rash promises and statements which one by one he has broken, that no free thinking person believes anything he says anymore.

He has turned out to be a massive disappointment to all those who had such high hopes that he really would make the world a better place. His failure and his abysmal track record will cause him to be remembered as the Nobel Peace prize wining president who did exactly the opposite of what he promised, and failed to further the cause of peace.

Greg_Samsa -> Greenacres2002 30 Oct 2015 23:07

Consistency is at the heart of logic, all mathematics, and hard sciences.

Even the legal systems strive to be free of contradictions.

I'd rather live in world with consistency of thought and action as represented by the Russian Federation, then be mired in shit created by the US who have shed all the hobgoblins pestering the consistency of their thoughts and actions.

Never truly understood the value of this stupid quote really...

Phil Atkinson -> PaulF77 30 Oct 2015 22:28

There's a world of difference between Russia taking steps to protect its immediate geographic and political interests (which were largely the wishes of the resident populations - something critics tend to overlook) and the USA invading Iraq (2003) in a blatant act of war, based on bullshit and then aiding and abetting mercenary terrorists in Syria in defiance of any declaration of war, UN resolution or invitation from the Syrian government to intervene.

You might have also noticed that Syria is a long, long way from the USA. Rhetorically, WTF is the US doing in the Middle East? Propping up Saudi or Israel? Or both?

MainstreamMedia Propaganda 30 Oct 2015 22:03

ISIS == Mercenaries sponsored by the US, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey. Does a strategy against our own mercenaries make sense???

2012 DIA Document (R050839Z) - Defense Intelligence Agency
Public Affairs Office: 202-231-5554 or [email protected]
http://www.mintpressnews.com/media-blacks-out-pentagon-report-exposing-u-s-role-in-isis-creation/206187/
http://www.judicialwatch.org/document-archive/pgs-287-293-291-jw-v-dod-and-state-14-812-2/

DarrenPartridge 30 Oct 2015 22:03

I think blatant policy changes like this show just how ineffectual the US president actually is. The hand over between Bush and Obama has been seamless. Gitmo still going, patriot act renewed, Libya a smoldering ruin (4 years down the line), no progress on gun control, troops in Afganistan and Iraq... it goes on...

HowSicklySeemAll 30 Oct 2015 21:58

"It's really hard to see how this tiny number of troops embedded on the ground is going to turn the tide in any way."

Or the U.S. could carry out air strikes against Hezbollah which has been fighting ISIS for a while now. They could also supply weapons to ISIS (who are dubbed 'moderates') to counter Russian airstrikes and Iranian man power.

Think about, when's the last time Saudi Arabia did anything progressive or humane in its foreign policy? Now remember this very same country is on the same side as the Americans. This is the country that invaded Bahrain and Yemen and labelled the civil rights movements in those countries as 'Iranian interference.' The Saudis who have been seeking to turn civil rights movements with rather nationalistic demands into religious and sectarian conflicts by playing different groups against each other are allied with the U.S. and sitting at the table in Vienna talking about peace in Syria. Nonsense upon stilts!

Phil Atkinson -> Harry Bhai 30 Oct 2015 21:57

Fuck the al-Sauds and their oil. If the US wants their oil (and there's plenty of other oil sellers in the world) then just take it. Why not be consistent?

templeforjerusalem 30 Oct 2015 21:51

IS has shown itself to be deeply hateful of anything that conflicts with their narrow religious interpretations. Destroying Palmyra, murdering indiscriminately, without any clear international agenda other than the formation of a new Sunni Sharia State, makes them essentially enemies of everybody. Although I do agree that belligerent secular Netanyahu's Israel sets a bad example in the area, Israel does not tend to murder over the same primitive values that IS uses, although there's not much difference in reality.

IS uses extermination tactics, Israel used forced land clearance and concentration camp bombing (Gaza et al), while the US in Iraq used brutal force. None of this is good but nothing justifies the shear barbarism of IS. Is there hope in any of this? No. Is Russian and US involvement a major escalation? Yes.

Ultimately, this is about religious identities refusing to share and demand peace. Sunni vs Shia, Judeo/Catholic/Protestant West vs Russian Orthodox, secular vs orthodox Israel. No wonder people are saying Armageddon.

HowSicklySeemAll 30 Oct 2015 21:50

ISIS poses no threat to the Americans and vice versa. The Americans therefore do not have an interest in making sure that ISIS is wiped out. On the contrary they want regional foes to suffer. The only countries and groups that have been successfully fighting ISIS - Assad's forces, Iranians, Hezbollah, Russians, and Kurds are in fact enemies of either the U.S., Saudis, Israelis, or Turks. Isn't that strange? The countries and peoples that have suffered the most and that have actually fought against ISIS effectively are seen as the enemy. Do the powers that be really want to wipe out ISIS at all costs? No, especially if it involves the Iranians and Russians.

VengefulRevenant 30 Oct 2015 21:44

"You just don't in the 21st century behave in 19th-century fashion by invading another country on [a] completely trumped up pretext. It's an incredible act of aggression. It is really a stunning, wilful choice by [President Obama] to invade another country. [The US] is in violation of the sovereignty of [Syria. The US] is in violation of its international obligations."

Verbum -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 21:41

How are Russian boots on the ground - of which there have been many for some time - ok and American boots bad?

The difference is that of a poison and the antidotum. The American/NATO meddling in Iraq, Libya and Syria created a truly sick situation which needs to be fixed. That's what the Russians are doing. Obviously, they have their own objectives and motives for that and are protecting their own interests, but nevertheless this is the surest way to re-establish semblance of stability in the Middle East, rebuilt Syria and Iraq, stop the exodus of the refugees, and mend relations in the region.

The American attempt at negotiating peace in Syria without Syrian representation is nothing short of ridiculous and best illustrates the convoluted state of American foreign policy. America lost any claim to 'leadership' by now.

I feel sorry for Mr Obama, and indeed America, because he is a decent person, yet most of us are unaware what forces he has to reckon with behind the scenes. It is clear by now that interests of corporations and rich individuals, as well as a couple of seemingly insignificant foreign states, beat the national interest of America all time, anytime. It is astonishing how a powerful, hard working and talented nation can become beholden to such forces, to its own detriment.

In the end, I do not think the situation is uniquely American. Russia or China given a chance of total hegemony would behave the same. That's why we need a field of powers/superpowers to keep one another in check and negotiate rather than enforce solutions.

ID9309755 -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 21:02

Unfortunately American policy and that eu have at time added fuel to the fire. Yes, the me has its own problems, including rival versions of Islam and fundamentalism as well as truly megalomaniac leaders. But in instances (Libya for example) they did truly contribute to the country's destruction (and I am not excusing Gaddafi, but for the people there sometimes having these leaders and waiting for generational transformations may be a better solution than instant democracy pills.)


ID7582903 -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 21:00

Russian Iranian and hezbollah boots are invited boots by the legitimate government according to the UN Charter they are all acting legally and according to the Geneva Conventions etc.

The US led coalition in bombing Syria were not, and the admitted introduction of troops into Syria is a an ACT OF WAR by the USA, and it is the AGRESSOR here, not doubt about it. It's a War Crime by every standard

Obama and the "regime" that rules the United Snakes of America have all gone over the edge into insanity writ large.

ID9309755 -> pegasusrose2011 30 Oct 2015 20:55

To clarify, I meant that all these groups are funded by these Arabic sheikhdoms and it increasingly appears that th us of a is not as serious in eradicating all of them in the illusion that the so called softer ones will over through Assad and then it will be democracy, the much misused and fetishised term. Meanwhile we can carve up the country, Turkey gets a bite and our naughty bloated allies in Arabia will be happy with their influence. Only if it happened that way...

There is much more than this short and simplified scenario, and yes Russia played its hand rather well taking the west off guard. And I am not trying to portray Putin as some liberation prophet either. So perhaps you could say that yes, maybe I have looked into it deep...

BlooperMario -> RedEyedOverlord 30 Oct 2015 20:52

China and Russia are only responding to NY World Bank and IMF cheats and also standing up to an evil empire that has ruined the middle east.
Time you had a rethink old chap and stopped worshipping Blair; Bush; Rumsfeld etc as your heros.

See the NATO creep into Eastern Europe against all agreements made with USSR.

Silly Sailors provoking Chinese Lighthouse keepers.

RoyRoger 30 Oct 2015 19:30

Their Plan B is fucked !!

But their real agenda is to carve up Syria. In the deep recesses of their, the Corporate corrupt White House's, mind ISIS is not their immediate problem. ISIS is a means to an end - carve up Syria a sovereign country.

Remember, only months ago, Kerry and Tory William Hague, was handing out cash to Syrian rebels who later turned out to be ISIS rebels. We must never forget, Syria, right or wrong, is a sovereign country.

The real battle/plan for the Corporate corrupt White House is to try and get a foothold in Syria and establish a military dictator after a coup d'etat'. As we know it's what they, the West, do best.

Look at the mess they made in, Ukraine, with their friends a bunch of, Kiev, murdering neo-Nazi's.

In the interest of right is right; Good Luck Mr Putin !! I'm with you all the way.

weematt 30 Oct 2015 19:25

War (and poverty too) a consequence, concomitant, of competing for markets, raw materials and trade routes or areas of geo-political dominance, come to be seen as 'natural' outcomes of society, but are merely concomitants of a changeable social system.

... ... ...

Greg_Samsa 30 Oct 2015 19:21

Just out of curiosity...how will the US keep the DoD and CIA from duking it out at the opposite fronts on the Syrian soil?

This gives a whole new dimension to the term 'blue-on-blue'.

Kevin Donegan 30 Oct 2015 18:59

Washington has clearly chosen to break International Law.

"Westphalian sovereignty is the principle of international law that each nation state has sovereignty over its territory and domestic affairs, to the exclusion of all external powers, on the principle of non-interference in another country's domestic affairs, and that each state (no matter how large or small) is equal in international law. The doctrine is named after the Peace of Westphalia, signed in 1648, which ended the Thirty Years' War, in which the major continental European states – the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, France, Sweden and the Dutch Republic – agreed to respect one another's territorial integrity. As European influence spread across the globe, the Westphalian principles, especially the concept of sovereign states, became central to international law and to the prevailing world order.[1]"

foolisholdman 30 Oct 2015 18:41

As the administration in Washington is firmly in the grasp of special interest groups such as Big Pharma, The Banksters, Big Agrobusiness, Big oil, the MIC and Israel there is no chance of getting good policy decisions out of there until there is a regime change.

If ever there was a government hat had lost its legitimacy the present US government is it.

foolisholdman -> Johnny Kent 30 Oct 2015 18:31

Johnny Kent

The slight question of legality in placing troops in a sovereign country without permission or UN approval is obviously of no importance to the US...and yet they criticise Russia for 'annexing Crimea...

Yes, but you see: the two cases are not comparable because the USA is exceptional.

You might think that having criticized Assad for shooting demonstrators who demonstrated against the corruption and inefficiency of his regime, and having said that as a result his regime had lost its legitimacy, they would apply the same yardstick to President Poroshenko when he shot up two provinces of his country for asking for federation, killing thousands in the process, but on the contrary they sent "advisers" to train his military and his Fascist helpers to use their weapons better, to shoot them up more effectively.

However, one cannot really expect people who are exceptional to behave like ordinary (unexceptional) human beings.

WalterCronkiteBot 30 Oct 2015 17:11

What is the official US line on the legality of these deployments in terms of international law?

Noone seems to even raise it as an issue, its all about congressional approval. Just like the UK drone strikes.

[Sep 09, 2016] Best of British Values is hypocrisy

Notable quotes:
"... Even the normally supportive rightwing British media appears to be taken aback by the Conservative government's hypocritical fawning. ..."
"... Forget the British pomp and ceremony, gun salutes and royal indulgence. The bottom line is to secure billions of dollars-worth of investment that the British government is counting on the Chinese president to deliver. ..."
"... The showpiece investments being chased by Britain are those in nuclear energy and high-speed rail transport. "Investment in infrastructure tops the UK government's list of desired outcomes from this week's state visit by Xi Jinping," reports the Financial Times. ..."
"... Certainly, Beijing seems to have warmly accepted the offer of a new strategic relationship in which Britain has placed itself as "the most important Western partner". President Xi praised the British government for its wise choice of offering Beijing a strategic partnership. ..."
"... As the Financial Times quoted one former "influential" US official as saying: "What we are seeing is a case study in kowtow. It's not just [British Chancellor] Osborne, it's the whole Cameron government that is bending over incredibly backwards and this will definitely create problems for Great Britain in the future." ..."
"... Cameron has said there is "no conflict of interests" but it is unlikely that Washington will view Britain's coddling of China in such an insouciant way. ..."
"... For its part China has its own strategic calculations. By engaging with Britain, the Chinese government is no doubt happy to avail of new investment opportunities overseas at a time when its domestic economy is slowing. It also tends to mitigate American attempts at isolating Beijing. Good luck to China. ..."
"... But when it comes to China, the same British government evidently has no such concerns or scruples. Because billions of dollars of Chinese investment are being courted by Britain to shore up its crumbling infrastructure and pump up its financial centre in the City of London. ..."
Feb 20, 2016 | sputniknews.com

Britain's lavish state reception for Chinese President Xi Jinping is a dash-for-cash that shows how desperate the crumbling former empire is for foreign investment.

British Prime Minister David Cameron is laying on the finest trappings of the state to impress his Asian visitor – even as it causes misgivings within British society and tensions in Britain's "special relationship" with Washington. But Cameron has no choice. Britain is broke and badly needs capital investment.

Even the normally supportive rightwing British media appears to be taken aback by the Conservative government's hypocritical fawning.

The Daily Express reported how premier David Cameron and his Tory government are "rolling out the red carpet to beg for cash" during the Chinese leader's first state visit to Britain. Meanwhile, the Financial Times gave prominence to critics accusing Britain of "kowtowing" to China.

President Xi and his wife were this week treated to a state banquet at Buckingham Palace, where the couple stayed as special guests of Queen Elizabeth. Throughout the visit, Cameron and his Chancellor George Osborne are to accompany the Chinese guests during the four-day itinerary.

Forget the British pomp and ceremony, gun salutes and royal indulgence. The bottom line is to secure billions of dollars-worth of investment that the British government is counting on the Chinese president to deliver.

"About 150 deals are expected to be sealed this week in areas such as healthcare, aircraft manufacturing and energy… Britain hopes to advance efforts to turn London into a key trading centre for China's currency, the renminbi, and to boost trade with the world's second largest economy," according to the Guardian

The showpiece investments being chased by Britain are those in nuclear energy and high-speed rail transport.

"Investment in infrastructure tops the UK government's list of desired outcomes from this week's state visit by Xi Jinping," reports the Financial Times.

Some might say that this lavish reception is just the best of British hospitality afforded to the leader of the world's second biggest economy. There's nothing wrong, they say, with Cameron calling for a "golden era" in relations between Britain and China.

Certainly, Beijing seems to have warmly accepted the offer of a new strategic relationship in which Britain has placed itself as "the most important Western partner". President Xi praised the British government for its wise choice of offering Beijing a strategic partnership.

Nevertheless, the dramatic appeal to China by British leaders has the unerring whiff of unscrupulous money-grubbing. Human rights campaigners and readers of Britain's liberal Guardian newspaper are displeased at what they say is the Conservative government's "hypocrisy" on the issue of human rights. Critics point to an alleged crackdown by Beijing authorities on media and civic groups, as well as the repression of dissent in Hong Kong.

We don't have to agree with these critics in order to see that the British government is being far from principled, according to its own much-vaunted "British values".

Previously, Britain has made protests about human rights and over Hong Kong in particular. Now, however, all that is being hushed up during President Xi's visit – to the dismay of British rights campaigners.

Ironically, while Queen Elizabeth was entertaining President Xi, her son Prince Charles stayed away from the banquet at Buckingham Palace.

It has been speculated that he was making a veiled protest over China's relations with Tibet, where Charles is a keen supporter of the Dalai Lama.

Even more fraught is Britain's balancing act with the United States.

Just as Washington is sending a convoy of warships towards Chinese islands in the South China Sea, London is rolling out the red carpet for the Chinese leader.

As the Financial Times quoted one former "influential" US official as saying: "What we are seeing is a case study in kowtow. It's not just [British Chancellor] Osborne, it's the whole Cameron government that is bending over incredibly backwards and this will definitely create problems for Great Britain in the future."

This is the second time that Britain has defied Uncle Sam over Chinese relations. Last year, Britain signed up to the newly launched Beijing-based Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, defying Washington's efforts at isolating China.

Cameron has said there is "no conflict of interests" but it is unlikely that Washington will view Britain's coddling of China in such an insouciant way.

For its part China has its own strategic calculations. By engaging with Britain, the Chinese government is no doubt happy to avail of new investment opportunities overseas at a time when its domestic economy is slowing. It also tends to mitigate American attempts at isolating Beijing. Good luck to China.

The point is that the whole affair shows a hypocritical expedience by the British state. Cameron and his government have been foremost in criticising Russia over alleged violations in Ukraine and human rights. On that score, London has been a cheerleader for imposing Western economic sanctions against Moscow, and dragging the rest of Europe to back Washington in a counterproductive stand-off.

But when it comes to China, the same British government evidently has no such concerns or scruples. Because billions of dollars of Chinese investment are being courted by Britain to shore up its crumbling infrastructure and pump up its financial centre in the City of London.

So when David Cameron pontificates about the "best of British values", we should know that chief among those "values" is hypocrisy. Followed by duplicity and unscrupulousness.

Cameron and his government no doubt think they are being really "smart" by playing such double-games. But in doing so, Britain exposes itself as being bereft of any principles. On the world stage, it is just a broken-down imperial has-been that now gets by with an oversized begging bowl and a posh accent.

The views expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official position of Sputnik.

[Aug 25, 2016] Farage at Trump rally: I wouldnt vote for Clinton if you paid me

Those who already think Clinton is too sleazy won't be voting for her, but those who think she is too sick, or that she will be impeached, might
Notable quotes:
"... I would like to vote for Hillary because she's already harmless and looks friendly with her mild seizures, it's like nehi-nehi Indian dance. But I am so afraid of her corporate backers that they will exploit Hillary and Bill's weakness as ageing senior illuminati couple, how can you unite the Fed with CIA, FBI and US military, not too mention Wall Street. ..."
"... Are you talking about Hillary and Bill Clinton? Your are describing Hillary and her politics of corruption, bad judgment; incompetence, job outsourcing and total disregard for American people. if anyone is remotely suitable to become POTUS it is her. Only those who really hate America will be happy with its further decline and will vote for Hillary. However, Trump will become America's next President. ..."
"... After 40 years of EU lies they are more than imbued to being lied to by politicians - no wonder the people are utterly and totally disillusioned with the established parties who show such appalling contempt for the people and democracy. Nothing better explains the growing success of mavericks like Trump and Farage: frankly the people need them as a safety valve for their frustrations. ..."
"... Ok, let's forget that Farage was the only major political party leader to stand up for democracy. We also should forget that, despite all the horrific personal abuse he suffered, he carried on year after year against the almighty power of the establishment and managed to win us our sovereignty back. We definitely must forget that he is a libertarian and his party is the ONLY major political party that bans all previous members of racist parties from applying. ..."
"... Her beliefs change with her lobbyist's wishes, she lies openly on camera and in office, puts donors and enormous backhanders before the electorate that voted for her, uses her Clinton Foundation as a cream skimming perk where all cash is welcome and Gov policy a Clinton Foundation sellable asset and entertains despots, juntas and murderous thugs using State Dept as a gun-for-hire. ..."
"... Neocons seek power through creating social division so can never win more than a small majority and only for a short time. Exhibit A: Tony Useless Abbott, worst PM in Australia's history. ..."
"... Quote: "For the duration of my appointment as Secretary if I am confirmed, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which The William J. Clinton Foundation (or the Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party, unless I am first authorized to participate," -- Hillary Clinton. ..."
"... The ethics pledge Hillary violated at least 85 times, but go ahead and believe that she won't ever do it again... ..."
Aug 25, 2016 | www.theguardian.com
philipsiron 46m ago
I would like to vote for Hillary because she's already harmless and looks friendly with her mild seizures, it's like nehi-nehi Indian dance. But I am so afraid of her corporate backers that they will exploit Hillary and Bill's weakness as ageing senior illuminati couple, how can you unite the Fed with CIA, FBI and US military, not too mention Wall Street.
shockrah 54m ago
The real problem here is a political vacuum so huge you could fit trump's ego inside it. Just a guess but from what I've seen this last year about half of trump supporters are wwhat could be called die-hard racists. The one major failing of the workers movement that Sanders started in the US was an inability to pull off the 50% of trump supporters who are not fundamentally racist. T

here was no major appeal to the more rural agricultural communities by Sanders that I ever heard. They may only represent 20% of the population but they are the backbone of the US as they are unable to compete with large scale corporate farming they suffer the same ideological loss that the rest of the working class suffer from. If the progressive movement cannot or will not appeal to this group through small farming and organic farming subsidies then they will go with someone like trump even though he promises them nothing. T

hey will, in the absence of an alternative political path just choose 'f**k you' for their candidate. Probably too late this time around but in the future the progressive movement needs to include these people or they will be the 'third rail' the left dies on.

Wynberg 1h ago
Dear Dorothy,

My husband is a liar and a cheat. He has cheated on me from the beginning and when I confront him, he denies everything. What's worse, everyone knows he cheats on me. It's so humiliating.
Also, since he lost his job 14 years ago, he hasn't even looked for a new one. All he does all day is smoke cigars, play golf, cruise around and shoot ball with his buddies and has sex with hookers, while I work so hard to pay our bills.
Since our daughter went away to college and then got married; he doesn't even pretend to like me, and hints that I may be a lesbian. What should I do?
Signed:
Confused

Answer..
Dear Confused:
Grow up and dump him.
You don't need him anymore!
Good grief woman, you're running for President of the United States!

stoneshepherd 44m ago
People here seem to be posting without thinking things through. Do they really want another Clinton in the White House? Especially this warmonger?

Maybe they should try a dose of reality and read John Pilger's op ed over here https://www.rt.com/op-edge/356846-provoking-nuclear-war-media /

We shouldn't be sleepwalking into another disastrous war just to please the shareholders and CEOs of the major armament manufacturing companies.

[PS Please read Pilger's op ed before trolling this post]

SerbCanada Ulmus Glabra 1h ago
Are you talking about Hillary and Bill Clinton? Your are describing Hillary and her politics of corruption, bad judgment; incompetence, job outsourcing and total disregard for American people. if anyone is remotely suitable to become POTUS it is her. Only those who really hate America will be happy with its further decline and will vote for Hillary. However, Trump will become America's next President.

Listen to his peaches - that would be time better spent than to spend time of defending Hillary, who soon be either behind the bars or forgotten.

unlywnted kieran2698 1h ago

After 40 years of EU lies they are more than imbued to being lied to by politicians - no wonder the people are utterly and totally disillusioned with the established parties who show such appalling contempt for the people and democracy. Nothing better explains the growing success of mavericks like Trump and Farage: frankly the people need them as a safety valve for their frustrations.

thinlizzie mkevinf 1h ago
Nigel is not making any threats to USA as Obama did in UK (you'll be in back of the queue). It was not Nigel who spoke about obama's ancestry. America has a tough choice Trump/Clinton. My brother lives in Florida - he says he wouldn't vote for Clinton.

I voted UKIP and for LEAVE and think Nigel Farage will go down in history as one of the most important men in politics for a very long time. We supported him because he spoke for us and the other politicians stopped listening to us. These snidey nasty comments are typical of leftie guardian readers. After all - they're probably going to vote for Corby who hasn't a cat in hells chance of ever being PM!

Maitreya2016 MrIncredlous 1h ago
Yes, you're right. It's this sentiment that has pushed the proletariat into the arms of Trump and Farage. Funnily enough, during my time working with the EU there was a very strong push towards less democracy and more population management. Most of it is being done via education and other soft power platforms - reforming children's attitudes, self-awareness training, behavioral feedback and gender confusion. This is being done under the guise of tolerance, diversity and identity politics. It keeps the masses fighting amongst themselves while those in charge of them steal everything.
DanBlues 3h ago
Ok, let's forget that Farage was the only major political party leader to stand up for democracy. We also should forget that, despite all the horrific personal abuse he suffered, he carried on year after year against the almighty power of the establishment and managed to win us our sovereignty back. We definitely must forget that he is a libertarian and his party is the ONLY major political party that bans all previous members of racist parties from applying.

Now hand me some of that racism juice and point me to the bandwagon!

musolen 3h ago

... ... ...

Her beliefs change with her lobbyist's wishes, she lies openly on camera and in office, puts donors and enormous backhanders before the electorate that voted for her, uses her Clinton Foundation as a cream skimming perk where all cash is welcome and Gov policy a Clinton Foundation sellable asset and entertains despots, juntas and murderous thugs using State Dept as a gun-for-hire.

... ... ...

Karega 3h ago
I see the Bremain crowd still out for some revenge. And who would Hillary invite from "Brits?" Let's face it most Americans have no clue about other foreign leaders unless they are being splashed across their TV screens as some evil incarnates ready to be bombed by American bombs. Thus Guardian cheap shot at Farage as unknown is just cheap.
Indeed the whole reporting of that meeting between Farage and Trump is distasteful for a newsmedia like Guardian. Purely designed to belittle Farage and, of course, portray Trump as a non-starter in the race for White House.

Btw, i was going through list of media giants that have contributed and donated to the Clinton Foundation. Let me confirm whether Guardian or its associates/affiliates are on the list!

MelindaHaye 3h ago

Alternative media is so valuable.

The MSM is trying to make Hillary look popular at the few rallies she conducts when the reality is her crowds are tiny. You then have Trump doing multiple rallies a day where he regularly fills large sports stadiums.

It just goes to show how corrupt the MSM is and how they manipulate footage to create false impressions.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W-VzSG-2oYI

Lots of people are releasing stuff on this topic.

Wobbly 4h ago
Neocons seek power through creating social division so can never win more than a small majority and only for a short time. Exhibit A: Tony Useless Abbott, worst PM in Australia's history.
camcitizen 4h ago
Isn't it strange to see so much bile and bitterness being directed towards Mr Farage? We've had the referendum and Brexit won. Please can the many complainers here show some respect to the millions who voted and who did so of the own volition (and without the nonsense of being under some spell cast by imaginary bogeymen!). Can those complaining not accept that after 40 years of effort to make the EU work people are entitled to say - sorry, its over - but hopefully we can still be friends.
inquisitor16 4h ago

Farage was a good choice for a support speaker. He is the one person in Europe who has produced a stunning electoral upset and then quit the scene. All the pollsters got it wrong.

It's distressing that some members of the audience knew nothing about the Brexit, despite efforts by The Guardian and many others to relieve their ignorance. However, might not the same criticism be applied to most American voters, of whatever ilk?

Sailinghomeo 4h ago
Quote: "For the duration of my appointment as Secretary if I am confirmed, I will not participate personally and substantially in any particular matter involving specific parties in which The William J. Clinton Foundation (or the Clinton Global Initiative) is a party or represents a party, unless I am first authorized to participate," -- Hillary Clinton.

The ethics pledge Hillary violated at least 85 times, but go ahead and believe that she won't ever do it again...

[May 06, 2016] Ted Cruz, the master strategist, was no match for Trumps cult of personality

Looks like neoliberal Guardian presstitutes love neocons and religious nuts Cruz. Who would guess ? Interesting...
Notable quotes:
"... He also has a certain kind of roguish charm and can be quite amusing, which Hillary Clinton rarely is; he'd easily win the "who'd I prefer to have a beer with" competition. ..."
"... How can anyone say that yet? What we DO know is that the Bush-Obama administration has been an unqualified disaster on many fronts. Change, even with the possibility - NOT 'certainty' - of "bad things happening" is much more desirable... ..."
"... The more this election plays out the more I totally understand why Trump has made it this far. I've lived a long time and been politically active my entire adult life, and I've never seen voters send such a resounding and well deserved fuck you to the political elite. ..."
"... Indeed, the failure and dysfunction of the present political system in the US can be traced to one thing: the failure of the fourth estate. It is worse than failure, it is a betrayal of the nation for those thirty pieces of silver. ..."
"... What his campaign ultimately proves, is that only appealing to ideologically conservative Republicans is not enough to win the nom. The bulk of the party is traditionalist and reactionary rather than puritanical. They'll pretty reliably vote for any grumpy old white guy with a sense of humour (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Romney, McCain, now Trump). Secondly Cruz misread the issues of the year. People are frustrated because they believe that they are struggling while others are milking them. Trump gets this, so does Bernie. Hillary, not so much. This will be a big problem for her in the general. ..."
"... I'm getting just a bit tired of the feigned "I can't understand it" air of these articles about Donald Trump. The Trump gave the voters in his party the red meat of bigotry and hate that they require. The others dog-whistled a merry tune. Why talk about 'strange political jujitsu'? Why not admit that a large portion of the Republican Party is unloved by their own candidates. Why not look at the fact that Republicans accept the votes of 'poor white trash' but do nothing for them. ..."
www.theguardian.com

The Guardian

bhyujn -> Bohemina1 5 May 2016 13:54

No, I did not think that....however, I do think that there is enough awareness of this issue that it does not get dangerously into the main stream in Europe. In the US there much less awareness. Decades of the indoctrination that all bad things are either "communist" or "socialist" has left the door wide open for a return of the populist nationalist. Trump is just that.

bluet00ns 5 May 2016 13:18

"happy campaign"?...review the tapes, "happy" is nowhere in the oily, twisted, display of sly that was cruz's campaign, the numb, if not painful, looks on the faces of family as he trotted them out like props, is exhibit A.

bcarey -> sour_mash 5 May 2016 13:08

My point is that it's common for candidates to suspend their campaigns and continue to collect money.

Definitely true.

However, we must also take into account the fact that the Cruz delegates are still active and maybe able to deliver Cruz.... or Romney if necessary. It is likely that Trump will get way more delegates than needed to stop a contested/open convention, however.

The Cruz suspension is about 2 things. It accomplishes potentially 2 things. Money is just one of them. The other part is Romney, if he can.

fallentower 5 May 2016 13:02

I actually think the Republican Party made a good choice once it was down to "Cruz or Trump" by sitting on its hands and thereby letting Trump win. Of course, Trump is far more likely to do and say unorthodox (from a post-Reagan Republican Party standpoint) things, and will probably increase the tension and turmoil within the party. But he actually has a chance of winning the election; Cruz's smarmy personality and nauseating brand of religious conservatism would have gone down like a lead balloon outside the Bible belt, and he's too committed ideologically to change his policy positions.

Trump will turn on a sixpence and happily disavow things he may have said in the primary if he considers them unhelpful baggage for the general, and because he's seen as a showman rather than a professional politician he'll have much more leeway to do so than your average flip-flopper.

He also has a certain kind of roguish charm and can be quite amusing, which Hillary Clinton rarely is; he'd easily win the "who'd I prefer to have a beer with" competition. Admittedly he is going to have to cut down on the clownishness and ill-disciplined outbursts, but if he gets the right campaign team together and they manage to keep him vaguely on-message I think he'll have good chances. Better than Cruz, anyway, who had zero chance.

sour_mash bcarey 5 May 2016 12:58

I take your point regarding Secret Agent Mormon and I was aware that he had filed with the FEC. My point is that it's common for candidates to suspend their campaigns and continue to collect money.

The exploratory PAC is the new retirement vehicle but that's a different issue.

taxhaven wjousts 5 May 2016 12:58

Trump most certainly is not change for the better.

How can anyone say that yet? What we DO know is that the Bush-Obama administration has been an unqualified disaster on many fronts. Change, even with the possibility - NOT 'certainty' - of "bad things happening" is much more desirable...

Harry Dresdon 5 May 2016 12:42

Good riddance to Cruz. Boehner called him "the devil in the flesh". Cruz would have been way worse for the country than Trump will ever be. Sad but true.

DillyDit2 5 May 2016 12:34

Hey Stephanie Cutter: You think Bernie is responsible for what his supporters think, whether we'll support Hillary, and how we will decide to vote in the fall? Pappa Bernie should tell us what to do, and we should fall in line and salute?

Could Cutter and Hillary's minions be any more clueless?! And could they reveal their top down authoritarian mindset any more clearer?

The more this election plays out the more I totally understand why Trump has made it this far. I've lived a long time and been politically active my entire adult life, and I've never seen voters send such a resounding and well deserved fuck you to the political elite.

I wish I could support Trump, because I second that fuck you. For now, along with what is likely the majority of American voters, all I can do is say- pox on BOTH your houses and may 2020 be the year an Independent runs and wins.

danubemonster 5 May 2016 12:32

I think it is worth comparing Cruz with Nixon. Both men are/were not particularly likable, yet Nixon was able to be a two-term president. Nixon was a conservative, but he was not an ideologue - and he lived in an age where the Republican Party was a relatively broad church. Nixon also have political instincts which were way beyond those of Cruz. He knew how to play high politics, and he knew what was required to get to the White House.

PATROKLUS00 -> Tommy Cooper 5 May 2016 12:14

Trump will beat her to death with being the Queen of the Establishment... the Dems will be idiots to nominate her.

PATROKLUS00 -> voxusa 5 May 2016 12:12

Indeed, the failure and dysfunction of the present political system in the US can be traced to one thing: the failure of the fourth estate. It is worse than failure, it is a betrayal of the nation for those thirty pieces of silver.

PATROKLUS00 -> 8MilesHigh 5 May 2016 12:09

Yup, and the Democrat establishment is too stupid and out of touch to recognize that HRC is just the grist that Trump needs for his anti-establishment mill.

PATROKLUS00 5 May 2016 12:07

Cruz a master strategist???? BWWWWWwwwwwaaaaahhhhhhhaaaaaaaa! Ludicrous ... beyond ludicrous.

Vintage59 David Perry 5 May 2016 12:07

His religious beliefs and the political dogma that goes with them have been well documented. Have you not been paying attention? Do you insist your wife get you a beer from the fridge when you can get off your ass and get it yourself?

8MilesHigh 5 May 2016 12:06

What his campaign ultimately proves, is that only appealing to ideologically conservative Republicans is not enough to win the nom. The bulk of the party is traditionalist and reactionary rather than puritanical. They'll pretty reliably vote for any grumpy old white guy with a sense of humour (Nixon, Reagan, Bush I, Romney, McCain, now Trump). Secondly Cruz misread the issues of the year. People are frustrated because they believe that they are struggling while others are milking them. Trump gets this, so does Bernie. Hillary, not so much. This will be a big problem for her in the general.

MalleusSacerdotum 5 May 2016 12:05

I'm getting just a bit tired of the feigned "I can't understand it" air of these articles about Donald Trump. The Trump gave the voters in his party the red meat of bigotry and hate that they require. The others dog-whistled a merry tune. Why talk about 'strange political jujitsu'? Why not admit that a large portion of the Republican Party is unloved by their own candidates. Why not look at the fact that Republicans accept the votes of 'poor white trash' but do nothing for them.

The Donald has understood the dynamic better than the rest and has given the voters a coherent, albeit repugnant, analysis of their problems. An article like this that can shed no light on the phenomenon that is Trump is hardly worth publishing.

[Jun 12, 2015] Tracking the roots of Zionism and imperial russophobia by Laurent Guyénot

February 13, 2015 | Veterans News Now

The Disraeli case is illuminating because the questions raised about him are the same as those that arise today on the relationship between the United States and the Zionist network, questions which divide even the most respected observers.

benjamin_disraeli 1804  to 1881

by Laurent Guyénot

In order to understand the relationship between the Empire, Zionism and Western russophobia, we must go back to the late 19th century, and focus in particular on British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli. The questions raised by his time and foreign policy are the same that arise today on the relationship between the United States and the Zionist network, questions which divide even the most respected observers.

Which, of the Anglo-American Empire and the international Jewry, steers the other?

Octopus Russia 1900

Map published in 1900 in Great Britain, showing Russia as an octopus extending its tentacles on Turkey and Central Europe. There are many versions of this map, the first of which dates back to 1877.

In 1853 the Crimean War breaks out between Russia and the Ottoman Empire, the latter receiving the aid of France and the United Kingdom. The war ends in 1856 by the Treaty of Paris, which aims at limiting Russian expansionism for the benefit of the Ottoman Empire. Twenty years later, in 1877, Tsar Alexander II of Russia, declaring himself protector of the Christians, goes to war once more against the Ottoman Empire, which has drowned the uprising of Serbs in the bloodbath of 1875, and likewise that of Bulgarians the following year. With the Russians at the gates of Constantinople, the Ottomans were forced to grant independence to many of the people they previously dominated. By the Treaty of San Stefano, signed in 1878, the Tsar found the autonomous principalities of Bulgaria, Serbia and Romania, and amputates the Ottoman Empire of territories populated by Georgians and Armenians.The Sultan must also commit to ensuring the safety of Christian subjects who remain under his authority.

This treaty, however, displeases Britain and Austria-Hungary, both hostile to the expansion of Russian influence area. This displeases especially England since Alexander II undertook the conquest of territories in Central Asia, where the English own many colonies. In 1878, England and Austria-Hungary convene the Congress of Berlin, which will result in the Berlin Treaty, canceling that of San Stefano: the independence of the Christian states of the Balkans is replaced by a gradual and conditional emancipation. Russian conquests are cut and Armenia is returned, for the most part, to the Ottoman Empire. The independent principalities of the Balkans are fragmented into weak, rival and ethnically divided small states, and part of Bulgaria is put back under Ottoman vassalage. This redistribution raises profound national resentment which will contribute to the sparking of the First World War, as well as the Armenian genocide (one million two hundred thousand victims).

A chessboard drenched in blood -- Pepe Escobar

A chessboard drenched in blood - Pepe Escobar

The Treaty of Berlin's main objective is to save what could be saved from a weakening Ottoman Empire in order to counter panslavism and Russia's influence. England, the first maritime power, wants to prevent Russia from getting closer to the Bosphorus. She obtains the right to use Cyprus as a naval military base, protecting the colonial roads and monitoring the Suez Canal.Thus was launched the so-called policy of the "Great Game" for colonial rule in Asia, which, for the British Empire, entails containing Russian expansion, and will lead in particular to the creation of Afghanistan as a buffer state.

It is the same policy which will be promoted by Zbigniew Brzezinski 120 years later, on behalf of American hegemony.

Thus is launched as well the means to this policy, which will be called "balkanization", a perpetual source of wars.

Disraeli

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881)

There are several ways to tell this historical episode which carries the seed of all the tragedies of the 20th century, several possible viewpoints about the forces shaping history at this crucial time. But in the end, history is made by men, and it can be understood only if one identifies its main protagonists. One name stands out among the instigators of this pivotal time's British imperial policy:

Benjamin Disraeli (1804-1881), Prime Minister under Queen Victoria from 1868 to 1869, and then from 1874 to 1880. Disraeli was the man who made the takeover of the Suez Canal by England possible in 1875, through funding from his friend Lionel Rothschild, son of Nathan (operation which consolidated at the same time the Rothschilds' control over the Bank of England).

Disraeli is the true inventor of British imperialism, since it was he who, in 1876, had Queen Victoria proclaimed Empress of India by Parliament. What is more, Disraeli is the main inspiration for the Berlin Congress. Lastly, Disraeli can be considered one of the forerunners of Zionism, since, well before Theodor Herzl, he tried to have the "restoration of Israel" entered on the Berlin Congress' agenda, hoping to convince the Sultan to concede to Palestine as an autonomous province.

Zionism was for him an old dream: soon after a trip to the Middle East at the age of 26, he published his first novel, The Wondrous Tale of Alroy, and made his hero, an influential Jew of the Middle Ages, say:

"My wish is a national existence which we have not. My wish is the Land of Promise and Jerusalem and the Temple, all we forfeited, all we have yearned after, all for which we have fought, our beauteous country, our holy creed, our simple manners, and our ancient customs."

Disraeli is descended from a family of Marranos (crypto-Jews of Portuguese origin) converted back to Judaism in Venice. His grandfather moved to London in 1748. Benjamin was baptized at the age of thirteen, when his father, Isaac D'Israeli, converted to Anglican Christianity together with all his family, as much, it seems, to escape the narrowmindedness of the synagogue, as to integrate into British society.

Genius of JudaismIsaac D'Israeli, however, is the author of a book called The Genius of Judaism (in response to Chateaubriand's The Genius of Christianity), in which he glorifies the unique qualities of the Jewish people, but violently attacks Talmudic rabbis for "sealing up the national mind of their people" and "corrupting the simplicity of their antique creed".

Benjamin Disraeli embodies in his own self the contradictions and drama of assimilated Jews in the late 19th century, which aspired to assimilation to the point that they wanted to personify all the virtues and values of European nations, but whose conversion to an already devitalized Christianity could only be a source of disappointment, and who have developed from it an even stronger and tormented attachment to their Jewishness.

At about the same time as Disraeli, Heinrich Heine (1797-1856) was baptized. He saw baptism as "the entry ticket to European culture", but complained of still being considered a Jew by the German (and preferred for this reason living in France, where he was regarded as a representative of high German culture). He wrote in his last work Romanzero:

"I do not keep secret my Judaism, to which I have not been back since I have never left it." Just like the forced conversion of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the late 15th century, the opportunistic conversion of some assimilated Jews in the late 19th century strengthened in them a non-religious and racialist conception of jewishness: Benjamin Disraeli defined himself as "anglican of Jewish race."

Coningsby, or The New Generation

Coningsby, or The New Generation

For Hannah Arendt, Disraeli is a "race fanatic" who, ever since his first novel Alroy (1833), "sketched the plan of a Jewish empire, in which Jews would be the governing class, strictly separated. […] In his new novel Coningsby (1844), he describes a fantastic plot in which Jewish money makes and unmakes palaces and empires and pulls the strings of diplomacy. […] This idea became the heart of his political philosophy[1]. In a nonfictional work (Lord George Bentinck:

A Political Biography, 1852), Disraeli wrote that Jews "are the most striking living proof of the falsity of this pernicious doctrine in modern times, the natural equality of men […], a principle which, if it were possible to achieve, would deteriorate great races, and destroy all the geniuses of the world. […] The innate tendency of the Jewish race, which is justly proud of its blood, opposes the doctrine of the equality of men[2]." He writes again, shortly before his death, in Endymion (1880): "No-one should treat lightly the race principle, the racial question. It is the key to world history."

Disraeli is clearly on the same wavelength as Moses Hess, the spiritual father of Theodor Herzl who, after having believed in his friend Karl Marx's class struggle, converted to the "race war", considering, in Rome and Jerusalem (1862), that "the Jewish race is a pure race" with "indelible" characteristics, and that a Jew is jewish "by virtue of his racial origin, even though his ancestors may have become apostates".

What is Disraeli's motivation behind the foreign policy he imparted to the British Empire?

Is he inhabited by the fate of the British to conquer the world, or, remembering how Ezra and Nehemiah have exploited the Persian authority, does he see the British Empire as the instrument of the Jewish nation's destiny fulfillment, in other words Zionism's mule?

In mooring the Suez Canal (drilled between 1859 and 1869 by French Ferdinand de Lesseps) to British interests, does he simply seek to outdo the French, or is he laying the foundation for the future alliance between Israel and the Anglo-American Empire?

Disraeli (1) Lionel RothschildIndeed, Disraeli can henceforth argue that a Jewish autonomous government in Palestine would be quite capable of defending the British economic interests in the region. This will be Chaim Weizmann's pitch to the British thirty years later: the Jews established in Palestine, he assures, "would develop the country, bring back civilisation to it and form a very effective guard for the Suez Canal"[3]. Thus, Disraeli is truly the one who, with the help of Lionel Rothschild, laid the first stone of the new Jewish State. When in 1956 Israel invades the Sinai to take control of the Canal, she does it again promising Britain to return the control of the Canal, nationalized by Nasser, to her. And what of Disraeli's russophobia, to which, some say, he converted Queen Victoria?

Is it imperial geostrategy, or the old Jewish enmity against the last Christian kingdom, where 70% of world Jews (recently emancipated by Alexander II, but victims of recurrent pogroms) still live?

No-one can answer these questions with certainty; perhaps Disraeli could not himself. His contemporaries, however, were pondering. Disraeli's displayed hostility against Russia and his defense of the Turks, whose massacres perpetrated against the Serbs and Bulgarians were yet well known, gave rise for some to the fantasy of a Jewish conspiracy. William Ewart Gladstone, a longtime opponent of Disraeli and himself Prime Minister several times (1868-1874, 1880-1885, 1886 and 1892-1894), declared that the former "was holding British foreign policy hostage to his Jewish sympathies, and that he was more interested in relieving the anguish of Jews in Russia and Turkey than in any British interests." The newspaper The Truth of November 22, 1877, alluding to the intimacy of Disraeli with the Rothschilds suspected "a tacit conspiracy […] on the part of a considerable number of Anglo-Hebrews, to drag us into a war on behalf of the Turks". It was remembered, moreover, that in a speech in Commons Gallery in 1847, Disraeli had demanded the admission of Jews to eligible functions, on the grounds that "the Jewish mind exercises a vast influence on the affairs of Europe[4]".

Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli (wiki)

Queen Victoria and Benjamin Disraeli (wiki)

Some complained about the influence of Disraeli on Queen Victoria (influence he explained to a friend in these terms: "Everyone likes flattery, and when it comes to Royalty you should lay it on with a trowel[5]").

The Queen, it must be said, was already, as much of the aristocracy, under the spell of a theory in vogue assigning an Israelite origin to the Anglo-Saxons (theory which appeared under Oliver Cromwell and was renewed in 1840 by Pastor John Wilson with his Lectures on Ancient Israel and the Israelitish Origin of the Modern Nations of Europe, where he derives the word "Saxon" from "Isaac's sons"). Ready to believe that her noble lineage descended from King David, the Queen had her sons circumcised, a custom that has continued to this day. Needless to say, this court judeophilia was not to everyone's liking.

The Disraeli case is illuminating because the questions raised above about him are the same as those that arise today on the relationship between the United States and the Zionist network, questions which divide even the most respected observers. Which, of the Anglo-American Empire and the international Jewry, steers the other?

Answering this question for the half-century preceding the First World War helps answer that of the contemporary times, because the symbiotic relationship between Israel and the Empire built up in that period. The answer depends on the viewpoint taken on. The Zionists naturally have an interest in promoting the view that Israel serves the Anglo-American interests, and not the reverse. The idea sold by Disraeli to his government was to involve the Jews in British colonialism. But the Jewish Zionists really see things from the other end of the telescope, and one would hardly believe that Disraeli did not secretly share this view. When the hero of his Tancred (1847), a Jew who has been promoted Lord Beaconsfield, glorifies the British Empire in these words:

"We wish to conquer the world, led by angels, in order to bring man to happiness, under divine sovereignty,"

who lies behind this ambiguous "we"? Is it the same two-way "we" that the neoconservatives, draped in American patriotism, used in public, when issuing a "Project for a New American Century" (PNAC) whose sole beneficiary is Israel?

Chaim Herzl

Léon Pinsker, Zionist from Odessa and author in 1882 (one year after the death of Disraeli) of the first Zionist manifesto of global influence, Auto-Emancipation. Letter from a Russian Jew to his Brothers, makes no secret that, to "restore the Jewish nation", there is no other way than to "manifest irresistible pressure on international politics of the moment."[6]. This is the program that will implement, after Disraeli, the tireless diplomats Theodor Herlz and Chaim Weizmann, supported by an increasingly broad network of financial sympathisers, including Max Warburg and Jacob Schiff. Like British Disraeli, the Austro-Hungarian Herzl pins high hopes on Turkey. He reports in these terms his proposal to Sultan Abdülhamid II (1876-1909) during a hearing obtained in May 1901:

"Let the Sultan give us this piece of land and, in exchange, we will put his finances in order and we will influence public opinion in his favor in the whole world." He added: "I may influence European press (in London, in Paris, in Bonn and in Vienna) so that the Armenian issue be addressed in a sense more favorable to the Turks[7]."

In other words, he promised to devote to the service of Ottoman Turkey the two Jewish weapons par excellence: the bank and the press. Like his predecessor at the Congress of Berlin, the Sultan categorically rejected that idea, and even opposed any massive Jewish immigration to Palestine: "I prefer to be penetrated by iron than losing Palestine."

Co-founders of the (World) Zionist Organisation, Theodore Herzl (left). and Max Nordau

Co-founders of the (World) Zionist Organisation, Theodore Herzl (left). and Max Nordau

A quarter century after Disraeli saved the Ottoman Empire, the Sultan's estoppel sealed all hope of getting back Palestine; it was necessary thus that the Ottoman Empire disappear and the cards be redistributed. Herzl understands that "the division of Turkey means a world war"[8], and his partner Max Nordau, speaker with incomparable prophetic talent, predicts before the Zionist Congress of 1903, "the future world war, the peace conference where, with the help of England, a free and Jewish Palestine will be created."[9].

Writing in 1938, Jewish historian Benzion Netanyahu (father of the current Prime Minister) summarizes the feverish anticipation of this great cataclysm in the Zionist community, with, as is always the case in Jewish historiography, the eyes fixed on the fate of the chosen people and a complete indifference to the collateral victims:

"The great moment came, as he prophesied, bound together with the storm of a world war, and bearing in its wings an exterminating attack on world Jewry, which began with the massacre of the Jews of Ukraine (during the Russian Civil War) and continues to spread to the present day[10]."

Rabbi Joachim Prinz in The Secret Jews (1973)Shortly before the outbreak of the World War, in 1908, the sultanate itself would be destroyed from within by the secular revolution of the Young Turks, a movement described by T. E. Lawrence as "50% crypto-Jewish and 95% freemasonic", and led by the Dönmeh, that is to say, converted Jews of Marrano ancestry, as demonstrated by Rabbi Joachim Prinz in The Secret Jews (1973).

As for Russia, we know what cost her the First World War. The Ottoman Empire suddenly becoming the enemy of the British, Russia is now allied with them, by a complex set of alliances. On April 16, 1917, to get her out of the war, the Germans sent back home thirty-two exiled Bolsheviks including Lenin, soon joined by two hundred Mensheviks, and financed their propaganda organ, Pravda, in exchange for their promise to withdraw from the war. A year later, they signed with Leon Trotsky (his real name being Bronstein) the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, which ended the Eastern Front. Angelo Rappoport, himself a Jewish socialist and author of Pioneers of the Russian Revolution (New York, 1919) estimates that 80% of the Russian revolutionaries were Jews[11]. Many American Jews were seeing Bolshevik Russia favorably.

In September 1920, The American Hebrew declares:

"The Bolshevik Revolution eliminated the most brutal dictatorship in history. This great achievement, destined to figure in history as one of the overshadowing results of the World War, was largely the product of Jewish thinking, Jewish discontent, Jewish effort to reconstruct[12]."

It must be added: "Jewish financing" because U.S. State Department documents prove the "financial support to Bolshevism and the Bolshevik revolution of known American Jews: Jacob Schiff, Felix Warburg, Otto Kahn, Mendel Schiff, Jerome Hanauer, Max Breitung and one of the Guggenheims[13]."

If times were not yet ripe at the time of Disraeli, it is also because Russian Jews were no more attracted to Palestine than European Jews; they just barely knew where it was. Emancipated since 1855 by Tsar Alexander II, who had given them free access to the university, Russian Jews aspired only to migrate to Europe and the United States. Pogroms, including the one in Odessa which lasted three days in 1871, do not convince them of the necessity to establish their own state. It is only after the assassination of Alexander II in 1881 that the increased violence against them make some sensitive to the call of Léon Pinsker published in 1882: "We must reconcile ourselves once and for all to the idea that the other nations, by reason of their inherent natural antagonism, will forever reject us[14]." It was also in 1881, year of Disraeli's death, that Baron Edmond de Rothschild, from the parisan branch, would start to buy land in Palestine and fund the installation of Jewish settlers, especially in Tel Aviv, under the aegis of his Palestine Jewish Colonization Association (PICA).

Furthermore, to influence world affairs, proto-Zionist Disraeli did not yet have at his disposal a sufficiently tighly-knit international network that would act in concert. The international Jewish organizations such as B'nai B'rith (Hebrew for "the sons of the Alliance") founded in New York in 1843, or the Universal Israelite Alliance, founded in France in 1860 by Isaac Moses Aaron (also know as Adolphe) Crémieux, felt that Israel was doing very well as a scattered nation and had yet no designs on Palestine. This would change during the First World War; it was then that a highly efficient network connecting both sides of the Atlantic set up. Nahum Sokolow, a stakeholder in this deep history, testifies to this in his History of Zionism:

"Between London, New York, and Washington there was constant communication, either by telegraph, or by personal visit, and as a result there was perfect unity among the Zionists of both hemispheres[15]."

Thus was negotiated, behind the scenes of the carnage, the famous Balfour Declaration (a letter sent in November 1917 to the President of the "English Zionist Federation" Lord Lionel Walter Rothschild, declaring the British government favorable to the "establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people").

Obtained in exchange for the mobilization of American Jews to lead America into the war (by Balfour's own admission, as well as Rabbi Emanuel Neumann's, of the Zionist Organization of America, and confirmed by Churchill[16]), this declaration would be incorporated into the Treaty of Versailles at the end of the war to justify the British Mandate of Palestine. And so, while the Germans contrived to pull Russia out of the war by supporting the Bolshevik Revolution, the English were to make America enter it by supporting another Jewish movement, Zionism. If, on the militant field, international revolution and Jewish nationalism were presented as two competing movements, sometimes dividing Eastern European Jewish families, from the perspective of a certain cognitive elite, they are the two jaws of the same pliers; one can find at the levers the same financiers, including Jacob Schiff, sponsor of Herzl and Lenin simultaneously.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis was a lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.

Louis Dembitz Brandeis was a lawyer and associate justice on the Supreme Court of the United States from 1916 to 1939.

Among the architects of the secret diplomacy leading to the Balfour Declaration, Nahum Sokolow praises very specifically "the beneficent personal influence of the Honourable Louis D. Brandeis, Judge of the Supreme Court"[17]. Appointed to the highest level of the judiciary in 1916 by President Wilson, Louis Brandeis (1856-1941) was one of the most powerful Zionist schemers, exercising an unparalleled influence on the White House, along with Colonel Mandell House (Wilson called House "my second personality", and House said of Brandeis: "his mind and mine are in agreement on most issues")[18]. Brandeis established a formidable tandem with his protégé Felix Frankfurter, who would be his successor in exerting influence on Roosevelt. "Acting together over a period of 25 years, they put in place a network of disciples at influential positions, and worked tirelessly for the accomplishment of their programs," writes Bruce Allen Murphy in The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection[19]. Brandeis and Frankfurter belonged to a secret society dedicated to the Zionist cause and named the Parushim (Hebrew word for "Pharisees" or "Separated"). Sarah Schmidt, professor of Jewish history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, described the society as "a secret underground guerilla force determined to influence the course of events in a quiet, anonymous way."

At the initiation ceremony, each new member received for instruction:

"until our purpose shall be accomplished, you will be fellow of a brotherhood whose bond you will regard as greater than any other in your life-dearer than that of family, of school, of nation. By entering this brotherhood, you become a self-dedicated soldier in the army of Zion." The insider responded by vowing: "before this council, in the name of all that I hold dear and holy, I hereby vow myself, my life, my fortune, and my honor to the restoration of the Jewish nation. […] I pledge myself utterly to guard and to obey and to keep secret the laws and the labor of the fellowship, its existence and its aims. Amen[20]."

"Translated by Albert"

END NOTES

[1] Hannah Arendt, Les Origines du totalitarisme, Gallimard, 2002, p. 309-310.

[2] Cité dans André Pichot, Aux origines des théories raciales, de la Bible à Darwin, Flammarion, 2008, p. 397

[3] Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, Harper & Brothers, 1949, cité dans Alan Hart, Zionism, The Real Ennemies of the Jews, vol. 1, The False Messiah, Clarity Press, 2009, p. 98.

[4] Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, Hamish Hamilton, 1993, p. 579.

[5] Stanley Weintraub, Disraeli: A Biography, Hamish Hamilton, 1993, p. 547.

[6] Cité par Douglas Reed, La Controverse de Sion (1957), Kontre Kulture, p. 248.

[7] Journal de Theodor Herzl, 8 juin 1896 et 21 juin 1896, Tome I, p. 363 et 387 de l'édition anglaise, cité dans Roger Garaudy, Le Procès du sionisme, 1998, p. 51.

[8] Theodor Herzl, Zionism, State edition, 1937, p. 65, cité dans Benzion Netanyahu, The Founding Fathers of Zionism (1938), Balfour Books, 2012, kindle empl. 1456-9.

[9] Chaim Weizmann, Trial and Error, Harper & Brothers, 1949, cité par Douglas Reed, La Controverse de Sion (1957), Kontre Kulture, p. 263.

[10] Benzion Netanyahu, The Founding Fathers of Zionism, Balfour Books, 2012, empl. 1614-20.

[11] Angelo Rappoport, Pioneers of the Russian Revolution, 1919, p. 252, cité par Léon de Poncins, Les Juifs, maîtres du monde, Éditions Bossard, 1932, p. 27.

[12] Michael Jones, The Jewish Revolutionary Spirit and Its Impact on World History, Fidelity Press, 2008, p. 747.

[13] Antony Sutton, Wall Street et la Révolution bolchevique (éd. anglaise 1976), Scribedit, 2012, p. 311.

[14] Benzion Netanyahu, The Founding Fathers of Zionism, Balfour Books, 2012, empl. 761-775.

[15] Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism (1600-1918), vol. 2, 1919, p. 79-80, cité dans Alison Weir, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, 2014, kindle empl. 387-475. Weir se réfère également à Peter Grose, "Louis Brandeis, Arthur Balfour, and a Declaration That Made History," Moment 8 (novembre 1983), p. 17-39.

[16] Hart, Zionism, The Real Ennemies of the Jews, vol. 1, Clarity Press, 2009, p. 90.

[17] Nahum Sokolow, History of Zionism (1600-1918), vol. 2, 1919, p. 79-80.

[18] Arthur Howden Smith, The Real Colonel House (1918), Bibliographical Center for Research, 2010, cité dans Aline de Diéguez, Aux Sources du chaos mondial actuel, en ligne sur http://aline.dedieguez.pagesperso-orange.fr/mariali/sommaire_chaos.html ; Douglas Reed, La Controverse de Sion (1957), Kontre Kulture, p. 305.

[19] Bruce Allen Murphy, The Brandeis/Frankfurter Connection: The Secret Political Activities of Two Supreme Court Justices, Oxford University Press, 1982, p. 10, cité dans Alison Weir, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, 2014, kindle e. 260-351.

[20] Sarah Schmidt, "The Parushim: A Secret Episode in American Zionist History," American Jewish Historical Quarterly n°65, décembre 1975, p. 121-139 (en ligne sur http://ifamericansknew.org/history/parushim.html), et Sarah Schmidt, Horace M. Kallen: Prophet of American Zionism, Carlson, 1995, cités dans Alison Weir, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, 2014, kindle e. 279-351 et 2578-96.

Laurent Guyénot Engineer (National School of Advanced Technology, 1982) and medievalist (PhD in Medieval Studies at Paris IV-Sorbonne, 2009). He has authored numerous books on the subject.His latest book is JFK-9/11: 50 Years of Deep State

He has dedicated the past three years to studying the behind-the-scenes history of the United States, where he lived for five years.

[Feb 11, 2015] The Bout Opening – Stick to Checkers, America. Not Up In Here

See also comments to Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighters by Shaun Walker
Notable quotes:
"... Take a look at this exposure of Grauniad bias: ..."
"... "We have to twist arms when countries don't do what we need them to" ..."
"... Ukraine President Poroshenko Threatens Martial Law: http://t.co/YiPgu0yPEY His main target: rising dissent in western Ukraine. ..."
Feb 11, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

Moscow Exile , February 11, 2015 at 8:38 am

Take a look at this exposure of Grauniad bias:

Luhansk Women Curse Ukrainian Rocket Attack – Guardian Blames "Pro-Russian Rebels"

patient observer, February 11, 2015 at 9:02 am

Per:

http://rt.com/news/231279-obama-foreign-policy-power/

Our Nobel peace prize wiener says

"We have to twist arms when countries don't do what we need them to"

and if arm twisting does not work we will murder your families, embargo food and medicine, destroy your economy, lay waste to a generation of your children, and blacken your name for all history.

He is truly a stinky turd in the cesspool that is Washington DC. But fear not, Hillary Clinton will be a worthy successor and will out-stink, out-murder and out-destroy Obama.

Who in America can stop this madness? (rhetorical/trick question, no one can).

Warren, February 11, 2015 at 6:53 am

Ukraine President Poroshenko Threatens Martial Law: http://t.co/YiPgu0yPEY His main target: rising dissent in western Ukraine.

- Justin Raimondo (@JustinRaimondo) February 11, 2015

Moscow Exile , February 11, 2015 at 1:10 am
Another Walker special:

Ukraine: draft dodgers face jail as Kiev struggles to find new fighters

The government has avoided officially declaring a state of war, instead referring to the operations in the east as an anti-terrorism operation, despite clear evidence of Russian military incursion. Part of the reason for this is the fact that Kiev would have trouble securing a much-needed support package from the International Monetary Fund if it was officially at war.

A series of gruesome videos, sometimes shown on Russian television, has increased the psychological pressure on Ukrainians. One, released last month, showed a rebel commander waving a sword in the faces of bloodied Ukrainian soldiers, slicing off their insignias and forcing the men to eat them.

Shit! I must have missed that one!

"A friend of mine told me his friend was down there in the east and they ran into Chechens, who sliced off all their testicles. There were about 100 of them, and the Chechens castrated the lot of them. If I get called up, I think I'll go into hiding. I want a family and kids."

'Kin' hell!!!!!!!

karl1haushofer , February 10, 2015 at 11:21 pm

"It may have escaped your notice, but Putin and Moscow have been calling for a ceasefire all along"

I have grown to hate the whole word of "ceasefire" during this war. A real ceasefire would be great. But it is not going to happen until Kiev military is fully defeated!

Another bogus "ceasefire" in Minsk means the following:

1. Kiev gets to withdraw its men AND WEAPONS out of the Debaltsevo cauldron and the rebels will not be allowed to stop it..
2. The rebels will not be able to give a big blow to the Kiev military by either annihilating or at least capturing the most competent part of their military in Debaltsevo and their weapons.
3. The thousands of Kiev troops in Debaltsevo cauldron AND THEIR WEAPONS will be used in the future against Novorossiya.
4. The shelling of civilians will continue as it was before. The "ceasefire" will not be applied to Kiev side, only to rebels.
5. NATO will start the training and arming of Kiev troops. Next offensive will start next spring.
6. The morale of the rebels will take a bit hit. They will realize that their military efforts and success is meaningless as they are not allowed win this war.

Moscow must not allow Kiev to withdraw its troops and weapons out of that cauldron in any circumstances. That would be a treason against the troops that fought to create that cauldron. And that would be a treason against the whole Novorossiya.

This war will not end until one side is fully defeated. It will be either Kiev or Novorossiya. Annihilating or capturing the Kiev troops and weapons in Debaltsevo cauldron would be a big military defeat for Kiev.

marknesop, February 11, 2015 at 8:00 am

"This war will not end until one side is fully defeated. It will be either Kiev or Novorossiya. Annihilating or capturing the Kiev troops and weapons in Debaltsevo cauldron would be a big military defeat for Kiev."

On the contrary, the war could continue for many years yet without either side firing a shot, in much the same way the Georgian government never accepted the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and even designated a ministerial position for winning them back into the fold. Disagreement over the borders within Ukraine will keep them out of NATO for the foreseeable future, while their ruined economy will keep them out of the EU. A future government may mend its ties with Russia, but if it does not, Ukraine is doomed to decades of poverty and a steady drain of its population for better prospects. It can thank the west for that, and its own population's extremist element.

Once again, there is no reason for Putin to become "the most hated man in Novorossiya" if it shakes out as you describe. The rebels must accept the deal on their own behalf, and it is not for Putin to agree to anything; Russia is simply acting as a sort of guarantor, by being part of the agreement but kind of like an honest broker, to ensure the western countries keep their word.

I agree the Ukrainian forces should not be permitted to withdraw from Debalseve with their weapons, after getting cauldroned for the second time due to their own stupidity, lack of tactical knowledge and poor leadership. but i doubt that will happen, unless the rebels are idiot negotiators, because Semenchenko's battalion had to leave their weapons behind when they were allowed out of the southern cauldron, and it plainly did not teach the Ukies anything. Why would they be allowed to keep their weapons this time? But even if they do not, weapons are not going to be a problem to replace, and you know it.

[Feb 10, 2015] Merkel to meet Obama amid growing US scepticism over Ukraine peace talks

Notable quotes:
"... They pushed and pushed without any regard for people they tramped underfoot expecting Russia to fold any day and beg for mercy. ..."
"... Chechnya - Islamist insurgency like what Iraq is facing. S. Ossetia. - Georgian shelling and invasion of this province designed to get NATO to help out. Instead the Russians deal to the invaders. Sorry mate - your argument is as flaky as the hoary old one of Iran wanting to annihilate Israel based on a mistranslated Ahmedinejad speech (which some historically challenged folks still try and drag up) ..."
"... When "destabilisation" looks like a western sponsored coup, quacks like a western sponsored coup..... ..."
"... Putin will be crucified in Russia if he is seen pushing the rebels to accept an agreement against their interests. The bottom line is unless the West gives strong indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith, the commodity it so far lacked, nothing will happen. If the West waits much longer, the only subject for negotiations will be an unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian army in Donbass. ..."
"... One of the latest statements of Angela Merkel was: "We want to establish security in Europe with Russia, not against Russia" (0:20 in this video). Sorry, but to me it does not sound like preparation "for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia". ..."
Feb 10, 2015 | The Guardian

sodtheproles ID1439675 10 Feb 2015 16:51

Wrong. The EU and Americans started this when refusing Yanukovich more time to consider the trade deal, and when encouraging the billionaires to send their thugs onto Maidan. Tsarev and many others were aware that a coup was on the menu back in October 2013, when he spoke in the Rada. The EU deal had the support of the billionaires, not least because it offered them the chance to apply on a wider stage the skills they had acquired defrauding the Ukrainian state in the 90s, whereas if Ukraine turned towards the Eurasian Union, they'd have to deal with Putin, who if nothing else a reined in the billionaires.

caliento 10 Feb 2015 15:52

Wonder why Putin is welcomed by Turkey, Egypt, Hungary, Greece? It is called respect for a leader who stands behind his position showing no fear. Obama, Merkel, Hollande, Cameron E.U., NATO have no respect. And why should they? Obama's "yellow line" is constantly on display along with the rest of the misfits in Europe. More talks, more "signed" "peace" agreements? More Russian lies? Is this group of misfits just "stuck on stupid"? Putin has uttered another threat....that should be enough for the misfits to surrender & deny reality on the ground & leave Ukraine abandoned once again. I taught Bush was bad but Obama is one for the history books on how not to be a "world leader".

Yuriy11 -> TeeJayzed Addy 10 Feb 2015 13:12

And the ally of what Ukraine wish to be the USA? If America considers itself as the guarantor of freedom, democracy and protection of human rights it should support the population of Donbass and Lugansk. The population of these regions of Ukraine wished to have only the rights which are written down in the country Constitution.

Instead of guaranteeing it these rights, the new management of Ukraine began to bomb and fire at peace cities of Donetsk and Lugansk areas. Instead of solving all problems by negotiations. Also Poroshenko, Yatsenyuk and other steels openly to glorify Banderu - the fascist, the military criminal. The youth has started to use nazi symbolics and nazi slogans.

Can be the USA wishes to become the ally of new fascists? Judging by statements, Obama about desire to deliver to Ukraine the weapon, very similar, that it is going to support fascist government Poroshenko.

EugeneGur 10 Feb 2015 10:46

Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin

Why no concessions? Is that how negotiations are conducted, without any concessions on one side, with all the concessions on the other? I understand this is the American style. But it should be obvious by now to everybody with half a brain that Putin is not the type to be easily intimidated. He can be negotiated with but not blackmailed. They should've also known before they started this mess that Russia isn't Iraq, Libya, Yugoslavia or even Vietnam but a much bigger, nastier and better armed country. Germany, of all countries, should've known that you don't want to piss Russia off, you really don't.

What I see in all these jerking movements is a bunch of very scared "world leaders" who have no idea what to do next. They pushed and pushed without any regard for people they tramped underfoot expecting Russia to fold any day and beg for mercy. When it didn't happen and looks unlikely to happen, there is no plan B. And, of course, honest in good faith negotiations with Russia are entirely out of the question. They just don't know what it means.

Angela Merkel and Barack Obama are under pressure to shore up western unity over the Ukraine crisis

Who cares about your "unity"? We have a pretty good idea what kind of "unity" that is. People are dying over there, and these bunch of cheating clowns are concerned with saving whatever is left of their faces. Disgusting.

Albert_Jacka_VC 10 Feb 2015 08:53

As usual, the Russophobes don't get it. But they will!

This morning NAF scouts spotted NATO tanks inside the encirclement (cauldron) at Debaltseve. According to their information the possibility is strong that up to 25% of the trapped army may be NATO. !

Shell remnants marked clearly with US identifying numbers from 155mm shells, shot by the Paladin artillery system have been recovered from areas the Ukrainian army have attacked civilian targets.

If the NATO troops are there - (who else would be running the complicated military equipment?) - Zackharchenko's people may display them to the world.

Everyone will see that the junta that brought us a non-existent Russian invasion has illegitimate and illegal support from NATO's warmongers!

This explains both the US and EU fudging a new peace initiative. If NATO troops are taken captive, what then?

Then they are, by Poro's own admission, war criminals. And their urgers (Kerry, Nuland, Stoltenberg, Rasmussen, and the whole foul rabble, are war criminals too.

Елена Петрова 9 Feb 2015 21:29

Powerful Documentary on the People of Donbass and why NATO will be in a Tough Fight Should it Invade the Region

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2015/02/07/powerful-documentary-on-the-people-of-donbass-and-why-nato-will-be-in-a-tough-fight-should-it-invade-the-region/

And yet another says, "Who started it? Everyone knows who started this. How to put it better? Everything started by America's hallooing. The same sh#t happened with Georgia, and now here in Ukraine."

Albert_Jacka_VC -> jezzam 9 Feb 2015 21:10

All your info is wrong. Putin himself advocated Ukraine enter a trading arrangement with BOTH Russia and the EU. The EU would have none of it.

Or rather, Nuland banned it. The EU had no say. We know what Nuland said.
The coup was a violent, murderous act, and Yanukovych fled after death threats, because his disarmed Berkut could not protect him.

As to Putin's actions in Ukraine, you buy the spin in the Western press. that's why you're deluded. Donetzkers fight to stay alive, against Kolomoisky's killers.
Ukraine is illegal, Nazi, and now defeated. Its currency crashed 15% yesterday. How much today?

That is why the warmongers are flapping about. No other reason than that their war on Russia via 'Ukraine' is a flop.

Albert_Jacka_VC -> david wright 9 Feb 2015 20:43

Ukraine is not a sovereign state. Ukraine is an illegal junta of Nazis who took power by murder, and threatrs of murder. that is why even their Ukrainian citizens will not fight for the junta.

Listen to the babushka [turn captions on] --

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

preventallwarsdotorg 9 Feb 2015 19:40

From the Obama-Merkel Washington press conference; on Ukraine, Angela Merkel seemed optimistic on the chances of 'diplomacy'. But President Obama seemed so determined in 'seeing-off' President Putin by any means; repeatedly, labelling him 'the aggressor'.

Does President Obama have a personal problem with President Putin?
Unfortunately, terrible historic armed conflicts arise for populations from intractable inter-personal disagreements between their antagonistic national political leaders. But while their personal safeties are secured, their populations are destroyed.

National leaders still can't see that nowadays wars generally have 'un-winnable' and frustrating outcomes for even the best equipped militaries. Yet, with seeming careless abandon, their inclinations to increase arms in wars remain unbridled.

But why did none of the correspondents at the Press conference press the leaders on their likely expectations for Ukraine, Europe and the world if more arms are sent to Ukraine against Russia!
If national political leaders would be victims of their sponsored wars, would they be as insistent with such risky, futile and potentially increased destructive recipes?

Yet, the world still seems as impervious to politicians' handling of war crises!
Why can't it be more innovative to accept or devise better alternatives to the persistently failed and disastrous politicians' bent for even more wars?!

Andrew Nichols -> Milton 9 Feb 2015 19:02

And as for those who say they believe that Crimea and Eastern Ukraine are all that Putin is after, I suggest you look at Russia's interventions in Chechnya and Georgia/S.Ossetia,

Chechnya - Islamist insurgency like what Iraq is facing. S. Ossetia. - Georgian shelling and invasion of this province designed to get NATO to help out. Instead the Russians deal to the invaders. Sorry mate - your argument is as flaky as the hoary old one of Iran wanting to annihilate Israel based on a mistranslated Ahmedinejad speech (which some historically challenged folks still try and drag up)

Andrew Nichols Milton 9 Feb 2015 18:57

"But the west did not send troops or tanks into Ukraine. It didn't attempt political destabilisation." When "destabilisation" looks like a western sponsored coup, quacks like a western sponsored coup.....

EugeneGur 9 Feb 2015 18:45

amid growing US scepticism that European peace talks with Russia will succeed in deterring its continued military support for separatists.

I am pretty sure that Russia supports the rebels militarily to a certain extent although I am not sure how far that support goes. Most of Russia is convinced that it doesn't go far enough. Considering that nobody has been able to prove anything (where are these marvelous American satellites when you need them?), probably, Russian public is right, the support is modest, so it's easy to hide. The West wants Russia to stop supporting the rebels. My question is why would Russia do that? What's in it for Russia?

You will say the magic word "sanctions". First, Russia is not all that eager about the sanctions to be lifted, because we know they are hurting Europe as much, if not more. Second, Russia doesn't believe the West, and for a good reason. Putin organized the Minsk agreements single-handedly and made the rebels accept it. It was a gift that Putin gave both to the West and to Ukraine, because he convinced the rebel army to stop in the middle of a very successful offensive. By doing so, he risked a lot of his political capital, since everybody in Russia as well as in Donbass hated it and believed it was a mistake, which it turned out to be. What did he get in return? Less than nothing - he got additional sanctions, additional demands, which, I hope proved to him finally that the West is double-dealing and entirely untrustworthy.

Putin will be crucified in Russia if he is seen pushing the rebels to accept an agreement against their interests. The bottom line is unless the West gives strong indications that it is prepared to negotiate in good faith, the commodity it so far lacked, nothing will happen. If the West waits much longer, the only subject for negotiations will be an unconditional surrender of the Ukrainian army in Donbass.

Paul Easton 9 Feb 2015 18:30

Ok now we know what Obama wants. He says he doesn't want to arm Ukraine but as usual he is lying because his new choice for War Secy is in favor. The remaining question is whether European countries will go along with this insanity. European people had better take to the streets en masse if they value their lives.

Come gather 'round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You'll be drenched to the bone
If your time to you
Is worth savin'
Then you better start swimmin'
Or you'll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin'.

alsojusticeseeker 9 Feb 2015 17:57

US secretary of state John Kerry said in an interview aired on Sunday. "Hopefully he will come to a point where he realises the damage he is doing is not just to the global order, but he is doing enormous damage to Russia itself."

So, finally Kerry unveils that they are after ordinary people in Russia, not exclusively after "Putin's close circle" and all that crap.

PeraIlic jezzam 9 Feb 2015 17:22

Perhaps if Russia really wants E. Ukraine it should be allowed to take it, with all the consequences this entails, including the economic burden of rebuilding the areas... It seems that these guys from Kiev have similar ideas as you.

Huge explosion at Donetsk chemical plant, Kiev blames 'dropped cigarette butt' (VIDEO)

The spokesman for Kiev's Anti-Terrorist Operation said that rebels were at fault for the accident.

"This was caused by a dropped cigarette butt," Andrey Lysenko told the media on Monday.

"Accidents often happen in factories where no one is responsible for fire safety. Well, it's chaos, and they are barbarians."

Not all pro-Kiev officials agreed.

The Ukrainian military deployed a Smerch (the BM-30 Tornado) multiple rocket system to shell the area in the city, Boris Filatov, former deputy head of the industrial Dnepropetrovsk Region and a member of the Ukrainian parliament (Verkhovna Rada), said on his Facebook page.

According to Filatov, the men who fired the missiles "do not know what they hit because they were shooting based on coordinates."

Earlier, Ukrainian far-right politician and paramilitary commander Dmitry Yarosh, who is involved in the Kiev military action in southeastern Ukraine, confirmed on his Facebook page that the explosion was caused by Ukrainian artillery.

PeraIlic 9 Feb 2015 17:13

Merkel is the stiffest opponent of supplying weapons, while holding firm against any other concessions to Putin and calculating that the west may need to prepare for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia and seeking to build up Ukraine.

One of the latest statements of Angela Merkel was: "We want to establish security in Europe with Russia, not against Russia" (0:20 in this video). Sorry, but to me it does not sound like preparation "for a generational, long-haul effort peacefully containing and isolating Russia".

[Feb 09, 2015] The west must talk to Vladimir Putin about Ukraine

Looks like guardian staff got new different instructions from their MI5 handlers...
Notable quotes:
"... Hove, East Sussex ..."
Feb 09, 2015 | The Guardian

David Stainwright, Hove, East Sussex

I have no love for modern capitalist Russia, or for Vladimir Putin, but there are always two sides to a conflict. Regrettably, the Guardian gives credence mainly to the anti-Putin version. In that narrative, the Russian leader is alleged to have violated Ukraine's sovereignty, though no hard evidence is offered. For those who support western Ukraine's criticism of Putin it is salutary to remember that the present government came to power via a coup. Moreover, many of its supporters are self-confessed followers of Nazi ideology.

For the Guardian, one of Putin's main transgressions has been the annexation of Crimea. But this is dangerous ground for western critics of Putin, as a moment's reflection should remind one that Israel routinely annexes Palestinian land but has never been censured for its action. Turkey, which annexed northern Cyprus, has never been subjected to sanctions. Two wrongs do not make a right, but it is morally shaky ground for western leaders to condemn one country for annexation while condoning it by another power.

As David Owen has pointed out (26 August 2014), Russian leaders are understandably worried by the eastward march of Nato, threatening its security. If we wish to avoid catastrophe in Europe the west must come to a diplomatic agreement with Russia, however difficult that may be (Report, 8 February). The alternative is unthinkable.

Tim Dyce, London

The solution to Ukraine has been floated – and ignored – before. Treat Russia as part of continental and cultural Europe. Field a joint EU peacekeeping force with Russia and Ukraine. Fly all three flags. Enforce and police the Minsk agreement. Leave Crimea for another day. Use an EU Marshall plan to rehabilitate eastern Ukraine. Recognise significant regional autonomy within a unified Ukraine. This is something the UK should lead with France and Germany, rather than waiting for Washington to let us do it.

Stephen Mennell, Dublin

David Cameron could play no part in the Moscow talks (Report, theguardian.com, 7 January). Britain is a US puppet state, which for decades has not had a foreign policy separate from that of the US. Since America precipitated the Ukraine crisis by orchestrating the coup in Kiev, it would not be appropriate for Britain to play any part in mediation.

[Feb 08, 2015] Ukraine conflict: four-nation peace talks in Minsk aim to end crisis

Notable quotes:
"... Oh yes. There is also an issue of mercenaries. It is said that the Ukrainian army encircled in the Debaltsevo cauldron has Western mercenary units that Merkel and Hollande are desperate to evacuate before the extent of the Western involvement in fully revealed. ..."
"... Lithuania has already admitted it's sending Kiev weapons. Poland likely as well given their stance. And if anyone thinks the US is quietly sitting on the sidelines given stuff such as Contragate in the past, they're almost certainly deluded. ..."
"... The German intelligence service puts the number of dead in Ukraine at closer to 50 thousand rather than 5 thousand. ..."
The Guardian

ID5868758 -> centerline 8 Feb 2015 23:44

CIA and Americans caught in the cauldron, or whatever they're calling it? That's what some on a German comment thread were saying today.

EugeneGur -> centerline 8 Feb 2015 23:44

Oh yes. There is also an issue of mercenaries. It is said that the Ukrainian army encircled in the Debaltsevo cauldron has Western mercenary units that Merkel and Hollande are desperate to evacuate before the extent of the Western involvement in fully revealed.

TuleCarbonari -> EugeneGur 8 Feb 2015 23:31

What is special about the East? It is richer in natural resources than the West. Joe Biden's son and other businessmen won't be able to operate in a politically volatile area. It must be pacified somehow.

Bullybyte -> WiseOldManNo476 8 Feb 2015 23:43

There will be no war.

Earth to WiseOldManNo476. You obviously haven't noticed. There already IS a war; it is about to escalate; and the UK will be involved in it right up to its neck.

The problem being a bully (the US) is that it becomes arrogant and expects its own way all of the time, when someone pushes back, they fold. This isn't Iraq you know.

And who is pushing back? You?

Looks like the EU will be choosing the lesser of two evils.

Yes. Listen to the tough talk by Cameron. Look how the EU ratcheted up their sanctions on Russia only a few days ago. The EU have already chosen the lesser of two reasons.

BTW, enjoy your collapsing petro dollar and associated hyper inflation coming your way very soon.

And this will be happening when? After your kids have been killed?

KrasnoArmejac Roodan 8 Feb 2015 23:20

no roodan, we should not go to war. it is ukraines fight, not ours. but we should not treat putin like he is a normal politician (or person for that matter). we should not have our newspapers asking questions that have been answered a million times before, just so we could be proud of our political corectness. you know those questions, right? questions like: are those really russians that are fighting the ukranians? it's like answering the question: is the sky blue? over and over and over again. we should not keep satellite images proving russian tanks crossing the border classified, just so mister putin could have a face-saving exit once this is all over with. because my dear roodan, contrary to what your mother (and all mothers for that matter) told you: ignoring the bully will not make him stop punching you. it will just make you a loser-for-life. if you don't trust me ask mister neville chamberlain and his piece of paper

EugeneGur 8 Feb 2015 23:13

the latest Franco-German peace initiative . . . was driven by the urgent desire to avoid a new bloodbath in the besieged Ukrainian-held town of Debaltseve

Really? What is so special about Debaltsevo that makes the European leaders so concerned about its fate? What sets it apart so decisively from Donetsk, Gorlovka, Krasnoarmeisk, Shakhtursk, and a dozen of other Donbass towns that have been pounded by artillery fire for months. Hundreds of civilians died, and the only response from our European friends was deafening silence about the killings and loud accusations against Russia of everything and anything.

I'll tell you what's special about Debaltsevo. A large number of Ukrainian troops are trapped there, and unless something is done, there are likely end up dead. This means another devastating defeat for the Ukrs, from which they are unlikely to recover. So, Merkel and Hollande rushed (or were dispatched?) to the rescue of their little nazi Ukrainian protegees. One cannot help but feel contempt for such European "leaders" and generally for what Europe turned into under American patronage.

sbmfc 8 Feb 2015 10:22

Given the still unfolding disasters in Syria and Libya surely the policy of the west attempting to pick a winner in a local conflict is completely discredited.

It may be the case that war in Europe suits the American agenda but the EU should only be focused on a peaceful solution. Borders in Europe have always been fluid and it is impossible to see the rebel areas now ever peacefully existing within Ukraine.

snowdogchampion -> Strummered 8 Feb 2015 10:17

there ARE English speaking troops that sound AMERICAN Foreign fighters filmed on ground with Kiev army not to mention the CIA agents ;-)

Kal El -> Eric Hoffmann 8 Feb 2015 10:13

And where is Kiev getting all its weapons etc from ? Their stuff was 20 year old USSR stuff. Mothballed and rusting.

Lithuania has already admitted it's sending Kiev weapons. Poland likely as well given their stance. And if anyone thinks the US is quietly sitting on the sidelines given stuff such as Contragate in the past, they're almost certainly deluded.

NoBodiesFool 8 Feb 2015 10:12

If peace breaks out what will the poor weapons dealers and their bankster backers do? Someone please think of the poor children of the weapons dealers and the banksters. Also, think of the poor children of the fossil fuel cartels that all of this is really about. They really don't have enough money and they so would like another Bugatti for New Year's. Please, give war a chance - for the children.

Rialbynot 8 Feb 2015 10:12

When the German-speaking population in South Tyrol rebelled against Italian rule in the late 1960s, the Italian government initially attempted to put down the rebellion using force.

However, a campaign of sabotage and bombings by German-speaking separatists led by the SouthTyrolean Liberation Committee continued.

Finally, the issue was resolved in 1971, when a new treaty was signed and ratified by the Austrian and Italian governments. It stipulated that disputes in South Tyrol would be submitted for settlement to the International Court of Justice in The Hague and that the province would receive greater autonomy within Italy. The new agreement proved broadly satisfactory to the parties involved and the separatist tensions soon eased.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trentino-Alto_Adige/S%C3%BCdtirol

Europe has a blueprint for resolving the (far more deadly) East Ukraine crisis.

Asimpleguest -> CaptainBlunder 8 Feb 2015 10:09

strange - I read otherwise

''MOSCOW, December 10. /TASS/. Russian military led by Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the Ground Forces Alexander Lentsov are providing assistance to the Ukrainian south-east conflict sides in reaching compromise for deescalation of tension and troops' pullout, Chief of the Russian General Staff General Valery Gerasimov said on Wednesday.

The mission was sent at the request of the Chief of the Ukrainian General Staff, Viktor Muzhenko, said Gerasimov.''

snowdogchampion 8 Feb 2015 10:09

thanks god! mind that the US warmongers will not be part of the PEACE talks cause they want WAR at our doorstep.. McCain & Co. must be p!ssed off.. hope Merkel's security has been increased, you never know, there might be a CIA agent around

SHappens 8 Feb 2015 10:08

Merkel is due to meet Barack Obama, the US president, in Washington on Monday, in a bid to synchronise US and western European positions on Ukraine ahead of the Minsk summit. Or how to make a peaceful initiative go jeopardized. All Putin has to do is sit and wait. And let them EU and US paddle.

Merkel feels they owe the East Ukrainians to stop the war they promoted and encouraged for months but McCain says that these poor Ukrainians have the right to defend themselves. I suppose he is referring to the East Ukrainians, as they did not attack anybody in Kiev and are indeed defending themselves from undiscriminated shelling from Kiev. Let's hope the Nobel prize will honor it.

Koninklijk 8 Feb 2015 10:08

Even if there is no further escalation, these repercussions are going to be felt in Europe for a long time. We'll just have to hope nobody really wants a war in Europe, in the short or long term.

Kal El 8 Feb 2015 10:05

The German intelligence service puts the number of dead in Ukraine at closer to 50 thousand rather than 5 thousand.

Which when you think about is more of a truer number given that Ukraine is currently on its 4TH, yes 4TH mobilisation/conscription wave.

If the number of dead/injured is what Kiev claims, quite clearly they would NOT need all of these mobilisations in the last year. The current mobilisation even includes women.

[Feb 07, 2015] Fear of Vladimir Putin grows in EU capitals amid spectre of total war

theguardian.com

FranklyMrShandy -> demdike 7 Feb 2015 11:57

Oh, that sounds like a great solution!

You may as well bomb Moscow if you do that, because (as the article makes clear) to Putin the two would be equivalent.

Why the F*** were Obama and Nato so keen to have more pieces on their pie... this really bugs me. Ok, so Ukraine was not "neutral in the right way" and was under heavy Russian influence. And so? It's on Russia's doorstep for f***'s sake! What do you expect!

If China masterminded a coup in Mexico with the aim of bringing the country into a defense treaty with Beijing ... do you think that Washington would not do everything possible to stop it?

jeeeeez

Amazon10 7 Feb 2015 11:43

What people seem to have forgotten is that Russia is NOT the Soviet Union but a free market state that like all others and wants to protect it's own interests. It is confronted by agressive NATO states that have encroached on territories that they agreed they would not.

In addition thay have a circle of nuclear based with missiles pointing at them. Ukraine, which was a past soviet state but then became neutral after the fall of the Soviet Union. However the US had other ideas as voiced by their representative to the EU Newland who inadvertently had her plans for the Ukraine exposed. Their intended coup took place despite a democratically elected being in place and a government was installed committed to Western imperialism and expansion of NATO.

The population of the eastern region rejected this coup and it's nazi composition and found that the only way they could resist the military forced brought upon them by Kiev and it's western supporters was by fighting back. This is where we are at today. I am sure that Russia have aided the east with military weapons and have accept over 1million refugees. There has not been a single piece of evidence to show that Russian forces have involved on Ukraine soil. The aggressive rhetoric from the West towards Russia make the likelihood of war real and could have grave consequences for us all if we allow the real truth to be distorted in order to bring this about. The leaders of Europe must be made aware that we will not let this happen and that our constant aggression towards whoever we disagree with is not an excuse for war

dylan kerling -> Spockdem 7 Feb 2015 11:42

his post clearly implied it and if you've seen any of his other posts in other articles you would realize he clearly does seem to look at this situation as a dichotomy of good vs evil, west vs Russia.

When someone lists some atrocities while only referring to one side and completely ignoring the fact that the other has done all of it only more frequently and with less of a reason I would say he's excusing the west from it.

Lastly I'm not condoning Russia, I'm pointing out US hypocrisy and the fact that we still hear all this talk of how Russia is doing all these terrible things from our political leaders while completely white washing that we've done the very same time and time again.

If anyone is a shill is all of you that seem to think it's OK when the west does it but if those evil Russians do anything oh boy are they in trouble.

LarsNil -> Ram2009 7 Feb 2015 11:41

"Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko is identified in State Department documents as an informant for the U.S. since 2006. The documents describe him as "[o]ur Ukraine (OU) insider Petro Poroshenko." The State Department documents also report that Poroshenko is "tainted by credible corruption allegations."

The most recent top official to join the Ukrainian government is Natalia A. Jaresko, a long-time State Department official, who went to Ukraine after the U.S.-sponsored Orange Revolution. Jaresko was made a Ukrainian citizen by the president on the same day he appointed her finance minister. William Boardman reports further on Jaresko:

Natalie Jaresko, is an American citizen who managed a Ukrainian-based, U.S.-created hedge fund that was charged with illegal insider trading. She also managed a CIA fund that supported 'pro-democracy' movements and laundered much of the $5 billion the U.S. spent supporting the Maidan protests that led to the Kiev coup in February 2014. Jaresko is a big fan of austerity for people in troubled economies."

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/chomsky_and_kissinger_agree_avoid_historic_tragedy_in_ukraine_20150206

Vatslav Rente 7 Feb 2015 11:35

Fakes of the Ukrainian government. The Best.

September 9, 2014 The head of the National Bank of Ukraine Valeriya Gontareva during a round table in Kiev, said: "200 FSB agents work on loosening the Ukrainian banking system and the hryvnia" :)

February 5, 2015 "The reasons for the fall of the hryvnia - no," - said the Minister of Economic Development and Trade of Ukraine Abramavičius.

February 4, 2015: $ 1/17 hryvnia, February 7, 2015 $ 1/26 hryvnia.

February 6, 2015 Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili on Ukrainian TV channel 24: "spirit of the Ukrainian soldiers the best in the world. If you give them the necessary knowledge, skills and weapons, they will be able to capture the whole of Russia "

Damn sclerosis. Apparently he forgot how as Russia routed the Georgian army for 4 days.

Let me remind you, this man was considered for the post of head of the Anti-Corruption Committee of Ukraine. In Georgia, he declared a national search in. The Prosecutor's Office indicted in absentia Saakashvili of abuse of power, embezzlement of budget funds, the attempt to seize other people's property. The investigation is conducted from 25 October 2013, and during this period were collected 80 volumes of evidence, questioned nearly 100 witnesses.

2013 Yatsenyuk in an interview with Ukrainian TV: "In the Ukrainian authorities are amateurs!" Prime Ministers of Ukraine Azarov, Foreign exchange reserves of more than 22 billion dollars, the rate of $ 1 / 8.5 hryvnia.
Now Prime Minister Yatsenyuk, gold and currency reserves of $ 6 billion, the rate of $ 1/26 hryvnia.

Davos January 21, 2015 President of Ukraine Poroshenko: "In my country there are more than 9000 troops from the Russian Federation, 500 tanks, heavy artillery and armored vehicles."
Wow, it's strange that the separatists have not yet reached the border with Poland :)

February 7, 2015 security conference in Munich. Showing the passport of Russian citizens and military tickets Poroshenko said: "What you still need more facts, evidence of the presence of Russian troops in Ukraine?"
Ok, but the soldiers of the Russian Army during the service do not have passports, only military ID. But of course when traveling to Ukraine they are given a complete set, in case of capture. Ha ha ha :)

The Mayor Of Kiev, Vitali Klitschko. At a meeting with Ukrainian soldiers: "they Say that there is no body armor, but it is physical protection. The main armor for each of you, is have a mother, wife, children... Social standards - this is the armor. When everyone knows that if something happens, his family will receive good compensation and will not have to beg" :) Uh... good consolation for the soldiers...

You do not cast doubt on the adequacy of the new government of Ukraine? I think that these clowns, already tired most of the Ukrainians.

cherryredguitar Yubin Underok 7 Feb 2015 11:16

Here is why: Russia has an army of online shills.

Of course, those nice trustworthy people at GCHQ and Langley wouldn't do stuff like that, would they?

[Feb 07, 2015] Putin and Ukraine leader to hold phone talks after inconclusive end to summit

Notable quotes:
"... Moscow is not satisfied with the attempts to restrain the development of Russia and to preserve the unipolar world. ..."
"... there are really an attempt to keep our development by a variety of means, ..."
"... To stay in the belief that he can do all, while others can be something that only permuted by him and only in his best interest, "- said the head of state. ..."
"... If someone likes it, wants to live in the condition of half occupation -- but we will not do this. ..."
Feb 06, 2015 | The Guardian

1waldo1 7 Feb 2015 10:05

To stop the spreading of this increasingly dangerous conflict, there is a solution, that is in the interest of all affected:

The USA should butt out. It's that simple. This is a European 'problem' (instigated by and foisted upon by the Americans) and will be solved by Europe and Europe alone.

"The German chancellor said she wanted to secure peace in Europe with Russia and not against it." Wise words.

Paul Feeney Spiffey 7 Feb 2015 10:00

NATO is a One trick pony..and it's only one trick is War. NATO should have been dismantled when the old Soviet Union broke up. Instead, it's been taken over by the USA to aid its geopolitical S&P 500 agenda. If anyone should be in front of a War crime tribunal, it's not Lavrov but Obama for 3000 Pakistani people DRONED or Bush & Blair for one million Iraq's in the name of WMD's, if the 'Report' into it ever sees the light of day. International Diplomacy is the answer to Ukraine not more WAR....

Regnom 7 Feb 2015 09:29

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, speaking on Saturday at the Munich Security Conference, said that the actions of Washington and its allies have undermined the structure of European security. "The construction of European security, which is based on the UN Charter and the Helsinki principles, has long been undermined the actions of the US and its allies," - he said. Russian Foreign Minister also stressed that in any difficult situation, Washington is trying to accuse Moscow. "In every difficult situation our American colleagues are trying to" throw a switch" to Russia", - he said. As an example of his words Lavrov led to "revive the recent talks on a treaty on intermediate- and shorter-range missiles."

According to him, now there is a "culmination" of course conducted by the West to retain its dominance in the world: "We believe that there is a culmination held during the last quarter of a century the course of our Western colleagues to maintain any means of its dominance in world affairs, to capture geopolitical space in Europe."

Regnom 7 Feb 2015 09:21

Putin today:

"Moscow is not satisfied with the attempts to restrain the development of Russia and to preserve the unipolar world.

"War, thank God, is not happens. But there are really an attempt to keep our development by a variety of means, there are an attempt to "freeze" the world order led by one undisputed leader, who wants to stay as such. To stay in the belief that he can do all, while others can be something that only permuted by him and only in his best interest, "- said the head of state.

"Such a world order will never satisfied Russia," - he added. "If someone likes it, wants to live in the condition of half occupation -- but we will not do this. At the same time, we are not going to war with anyone and we are going to work with everyone"- said Putin.

snowdogchampion -> snowdogchampion 7 Feb 2015 09:08

here Merkel's speech (1hr) https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/video/single/statement-and-discussion-with-dr-angela-merkel/

and Lavrov (45min) https://www.securityconference.de/en/media-library/video/single/statement-and-discussion-with-sergey-lavrov-1/

and more

[Feb 07, 2015] Merkel downbeat as world awaits Putin's response to latest Ukraine peace plan by Julian Borger in Munich

Feb 07, 2015 | The Guardian


Nickel07 Tepluken 7 Feb 2015 23:15

of course it is a mafia state no different than the US...but you guys are the ones screaming your titties off about wonderful Yats is , you put the pusillanimous bastard in power...

centerline Tepluken 7 Feb 2015 23:14

international isolation

Explain international. I know the US believes it is the centre of the universe but the majority of people on earth do not agree. (I guess I should explain to a dumb as dogshit yank) A majority is over 50%.

centerline hdc hadeze 7 Feb 2015 23:10

Schwarzenegger and Stallone are pretty tough blokes too. I see those flowers were fund raising for the hard done by Israel so the could blast a few more UN schools.

John Smith 7 Feb 2015 23:07

The Russians should connect via land to Crimea, push 100km past THAT, and THEN have a buffer zone. That would allow a end to this. Anything less and the CIA will just ramp up Ukrainian arms for a year or two until they have the means to attack again.

Ukraine and it's quasi-fascist nationalists cannot be trusted, emboldened by American money, they REALLY cannot be trusted. I say that as a patriotic American.

Friend4you 7 Feb 2015 23:04

I agree with you John Smith , this war criminal John McCain is like Dracula , he lives on blood , this sick man used to travel to Egypt and meet the Muslim Brotherhood , supply them with money to destabilize Egypt . Wherever there are troubles you will find this blood thirsty man.

MaxBoson Laurence Johnson 7 Feb 2015 23:01

Motivated by your post, I checked the Web and found a Wiki piece on the Minsk Agreement. According a map there, the airport is smack dab on the red line designated as the "insurgent line of control". Since the Ukrainian forces were supposed to remain outside a 15km buffer zone, the question is why their attacks on the airport went unreported in Western media. This is a really bizarre situation; comments are now a better source of information the article being commented on.

John Smith 7 Feb 2015 22:56

I've had endless support pounding the New York Times every time it runs another lying anti-Putin, anti-Russia op-ed. We have the usual large block of idiot American Neocons who simply rise to any bait to throw hate at the supposed badguy Russian leader. But we also have endless numbers of smart people who watched this mess go down, and know better than to join the Neocon dopes in a let's-arm-Ukraine hatefest.

If one guy is the King of Neocon Idiots it's Sen John McCain. The old war criminal is a one man disaster on foreign policy. Thank the mythical Christ the asshole was defeated by the idiot Obama.

centerline Outfit17 7 Feb 2015 22:56

Democracy is good if it votes for the US. IF the majority vote against the US then that is dictatorship. (democracy is defined as pro US voting)

[Feb 06, 2015] Merkel and Hollande to present Ukraine peace plan to Putin

Those who are responsible for soaking Donbass in blood will not stop. They need to be stopped by force. Ukrainian citizens have become either consumable or brainwashed. And for Western Ukrainians, the core supported of Yatsenyuk & Poroshenko clan (forme junta that now is integrated into Porosheko government) the war is far from their territory. People are dying there in Debaltsevo and Uglegorsk, Donetsk and Luhansk, while the military and mercenaries are trying to prove their side of the story through shelling of infrastructure and killing citizens. Donbass meetings and referendums were a result EuroMaidan, and emergence of separatst are direct result of absurd actions of the new Ukrainian government, which turn their county into a death factory for the sake of enforcing on the country Western Ukranian brand of nationalism. Those who are living in peace and whose relatives are protected from conscption are demanding the continuation of the war the most loudly. They nurture and inspire her, feeding infernal demons. They created a diabolical request to victims. and they got them: woman, children, eldery, like in any civil war. But they now infected with their bloodthirsty bacillus and can't stop. So people like Yatsenyuk and Turchinov need to be stopped first, removed from this current position and sent to the Hague court before we can talk about peace. And let's don;t forget that the blood of victims of Odessa massacre in also on them. We are talking about repetion of civil war in Spain here with their 200 thousand victims. Looks like Europeans learned nothing from two world war and as soon the the generation the fought the war is in graved a new war is immediately started.
Notable quotes:
"... Seems the US is not happy at loosing year on year its percentage of global GDP and is aggressively trying to protect its satrapies or even enlarge them. ..."
theguardian.com

Laurence Johnson -> Agatha_appears 6 Feb 2015 15:51

There are two proxies in the West. Poroshenko is clearly the EU"s man in Ukraine, and Yatsenyuk is very clearly the US's man in Ukraine.

Whatever Merkel and Hollande come up with for a peace plan, you can guarantee that Yatsenyuk will derail it as soon as possible.

For Yats, only the supply of weapons, and many more billions of handouts and debt forgiveness will do. In the world for Yats, the war must go on.

hodgeey nino45 6 Feb 2015 15:27

I think most people who write here are compassionate; there are few people who have not been touched by tragedy and they learn to be both sympathetic and empathetic, but hesitate to show it.

Having worked with Russians in Russia I can tell you we are not very different.

nino45 ID1439675 6 Feb 2015 15:19

Thank you for your concern, maybe I said it in a wrong way.. my English is not that good. I wanted to express the feeling our elders here have when watching the news. Many people have friends and relatives there, so it is very hard on them. I just wanted to say that ordinary Russian people show compassion in many ways, well not writing comments here in English, but calling their relatives and sending them packages...


JCDavis -> ID1439675 6 Feb 2015 14:45

If the US has advisors and a CIA office in Kiev they are there by invitation

It's the other way around. The CIA invited the present government -- traitors all -- to join in their coup.

JCDavis -> Agatha_appears 6 Feb 2015 13:58

You are badly misreading the situation. Ukraine is pawn in a geopolitical struggle for world empire. It will be sacrificed in an instant if it suits the purposes of any of these people. Except Yats, the CIA's pick for the coup, a traitor who will be sacrificed in any case. Who could trust such a person?

Agatha_appears 6 Feb 2015 13:48

Let them negogiate peace. Merkel wants peace, Hollande needs peace, Putin desperately is seeking peace. Poroshenko is reasonable and negogiable. But imbecile Yatzenuk is non-negogiable. Let us pray that tkhe talks end with peaceful project.

JCDavis -> harryphilby 6 Feb 2015 13:23

The Yanks don't do peace.

This is true. Obama is Cheney's blackmailed puppet, and Cheney was the only neocon in Bush's criminal administration who actually wanted to fight Russia. He is quite mad, and he is the most powerful man in the world. Bad combination.

Euphobia1 6 Feb 2015 13:21

One problem is the history of the Ukraine which except for very short periods has always been part of Russia. Only an accident of fate made Ukraine a country and many of its citizens feel Russian and still want to be part of Russia.

Russia never invaded the Ukraine because it didn't have to as it was Russia. It would be like say East Anglia becoming a separate state in UK just because a politician who lived there thought it might be nice and then finding itself a sovereign state. Khrushchev did this for the Ukraine when he was the boss. Khrushchev never thought the Soviet Union would break up and Ukraine become a separate country for only the second time in it's history.

When the Soviet Union collapsed the USA treated it so badly. Instead of embracing it when it asked to join the EU Russia was rejected and the West has been encroaching on to it's borders ever since. No wonder Russia is fearful. The USA likes to fight wars in other people's countries. Good for business.

Russia is big powerful and proud country. Ukraine used to be the major part of it and many living there may still want to be part of it too. The West should wake up and start seeking solutions fast. War is not an answer.


Justthefactsman 6 Feb 2015 13:20

Anybody seen pictures that confirm that Russian Federation troops are in the Eastern Ukraine ?

With todays satellite technology it is almost possible to recognise a packet of cigarettes, how come we haven't seen any satellite images of these massive troop movements ?

What has happened about the inquiry that is supposed to be investigating the shooting down of the Malayan airliner? Why is the progress not being reported.?

Shit, it those crafty nasty Russians who are holding up the investigation. How? By asking to see the whole truth about the situation, and we wouldn't want to embarrass the coup inheritors in Kiev by revealing the truth, would we ?

TrueCopy -> Eric Hoffmann 6 Feb 2015 13:17

Dude there is no military solution to the mess. The most effective forces on the ground on the Ukraine regime side are Ukrainian "volunteer" paramilitary forces, who are coming from the western part of Ukraine, no one is talking giving them weapons, although Poland has been supporting them for a while. The Ukrainian army isn't going to fight any better no matter what they get. The best thing US can provide them is satellite intelligence, that is already doing. Russia isn't directly involved, but even if the invade Ukraine, there is not much we can do, it is better to just cut a deal and move on.

JCDavis 6 Feb 2015 13:14

So Hollande and Merkel and threatening Putin with early membership of Ukraine in NATO, completing Obama's new iron curtain earlier rather than later. Thus this stupid ploy will fail and Congress will throw gas on the fire (boneheads that they are) and Russia will move in with real troops and take all of southern Ukraine. This seems inevitable. Ukraine's goose was cooked when Ukrainian traitors conspired with the CIA Only the carving up is not complete.


zchabj6 6 Feb 2015 13:13

It is in the US strategic interest to have a war on Russia's border indefinitely as they already had a part in in Chechnya and Georgia. Georgia is now part of NATO so it worked quite well for the US despite the unnecessary loss of life, not that any nation cares anymore it seems.

It is not in the interest of Russia, Eurozone, EU or any European state .

Hence the Russian organized Minsk peace process and some belated EU help to make it happen while the US considers prolonging the war through weapons transfers as they have done and continue in Syria, another Iran/Russia ally.

Seems the US is not happy at loosing year on year its percentage of global GDP and is aggressively trying to protect its satrapies or even enlarge them.

[Feb 05, 2015] Merkel and Hollande to fly to Moscow in new effort to resolve Ukraine crisis by Shaun Walker in Kiev, Ian Traynor in Brussels, Dan Roberts in Washington and Alec Luhn in Moscow

Notable quotes:
"... is the most wasteful abuser of the world's scarce resources, ..."
"... I have been to Croatia and Serbia I was in Vukovar a few years ago. It was truly horrendous. Yugoslavia was destabilized by the US government and that no one can deny. The UN had no chance against heavily armed Serbs and Croats to stop the chaos. US are doing the same in Ukraine. Well it is not the USA people its the 0.00001% of the USA, ..."
"... The EU also has a similar problem, they need another country to leech off every few years to keep the EURO going. The moment countries start to drop out or the EU fails to find more victims to feed off, the EURO along with the EU will collapse. ..."
"... General - the BBC is state-funded. Do you refuse to believe a word it says? But why is funding from a state less likely to produce balanced journalism than funding from the five or six billionaires who own almost all the world's media? Especially when those billionaires effectively control the state apparatus anyway. ..."
"... I'm not condoning Russia's recent actions, but the American people and politicians seem incapable of "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". The USA has attempted to encircle Russia with armed NATO members - what do you think our reaction would be if Mexico and the Caribbean contained hostile troops and missiles aimed at us? I think we know the answer to that from the Cuban missile crisis. ..."
"... The fundamental question Is, what brought Ukraine into this mess? It is the expansion of NATO to the backyards of Russia. It happened at a time when Russia was weak and was still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet system upon which their life and economy was built. And what was the goal of the US to expand NATO to the doorsteps of Russia? The US policy of domination of the world. It is this policy that poses the greatest danger to the security of the world since the fall of the bipolar world in the early 90s. The world, especially the Europe is facing a critical choice at this point of time in history. Europe has to set itself free of the US bondage or stay a mute spectator to the aggressive and intolerant policies of the conservative hard liners in the US, that would multiply the conflicts across the globe. Today, these hard liners in the US pose the greatest threat to the stability and overall growth of the people of this planet. ..."
"... Ethnic cleansing, though always popular with ultra-nationalists, is not the only way forward. Let the people decide. Not Kerry, not Merkel, not Putin, not Hollande, not Poroshenko not Yatzenyuk. Public votes. ..."
"... Absolutely. And when are we going to here the truth about that damn plane crash?? ..."
"... CNN is a joke, it should be called "CORRUPTED NEWS NETWORK". The sort of trash they report is what feeds all the Obama Drones, after all, they need their fuel from some where. ..."
"... The thing Rand missed was the "government" is run by the same 1% that she praises as the "job creators". ..."
"... They are playing the same "game" that sociopathic kings have played since the beginning of time. Why the "rest of us" allow ourselves to be governed by sociopaths remains a mystery. ..."
"... That would be heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction. What if Russia had taken a similar stand over the 'territorial integrity of Serbia' during the Kosovo affair? Aren't the situations analogous? ..."
"... I'm more and more disappointed with Merkel. ..."
"... It does however look as if the Hawks want to re-arm Ukraine so that they don't have to pay! This is on a par with shooting the debt collector when he comes to your house. ..."
"... I am sorry to say that the antics of western politicians are starting to resemble a virility contest and I would like this to cease forthwith as there are other far more serious problems to deal with. ..."
"... Georgia had announced their withdrawal from the 'Coalition of the Billing' in Afghanistan and the Bushies conveniently airlifted their entire combat contingent back home almost overnight. ..."
"... The US worked to stir up trouble for the democratically elected Ukrainian Government, under Yushchenko, despite the wishes of its EU Partners. At the time, US State Department Neo-Con Victoria Nuland was notoriously quoted as saying "F*ck the EU!" ..."
"... Educate yourself please. This information is readily available. ..."
Feb 05, 2015 | The Guardian


Soul_Side -> Dick Harrison 5 Feb 2015 20:16

Dick Harrison

Better than being a russian proxy state, look how advanced America is

Advanced? A nation that can't, or won't, provide adequate healthcare for its own citizens, has more than 40million living souls dependent on food stamps, that has the greatest income-disparity on the planet, is the most wasteful abuser of the world's scarce resources, trades the most weapons in the world, spends the most on war in the world, and imprisons the highest proportion of its citizens of all the countries in the world.

You could be forgiven for not wanting to buy into all that.

thomas142 -> ID9187603 5 Feb 2015 20:15

I have been to Croatia and Serbia I was in Vukovar a few years ago. It was truly horrendous. Yugoslavia was destabilized by the US government and that no one can deny. The UN had no chance against heavily armed Serbs and Croats to stop the chaos. US are doing the same in Ukraine. Well it is not the USA people its the 0.00001% of the USA,

AlienLifeForce Dugan222 5 Feb 2015 20:13

The problem is the US depends on war to keep the USD going just like they need the petrodollar, without them the USD will be like a drop of water in the desert.

The EU also has a similar problem, they need another country to leech off every few years to keep the EURO going. The moment countries start to drop out or the EU fails to find more victims to feed off, the EURO along with the EU will collapse.

Remember Germany relies very much on export, which is why the EU increasing pressure to expand. Merkel has not been looking her self recently, what with everything in Greece going wrong and now Ukraine has gone to plan, things don't look too good for the USD and the EURO.

Caroline Louise Generalken 5 Feb 2015 20:11

General - the BBC is state-funded. Do you refuse to believe a word it says? But why is funding from a state less likely to produce balanced journalism than funding from the five or six billionaires who own almost all the world's media? Especially when those billionaires effectively control the state apparatus anyway.

NigelRG 5 Feb 2015 20:09

I'm not condoning Russia's recent actions, but the American people and politicians seem incapable of "walking a mile in the other man's shoes". The USA has attempted to encircle Russia with armed NATO members - what do you think our reaction would be if Mexico and the Caribbean contained hostile troops and missiles aimed at us? I think we know the answer to that from the Cuban missile crisis.

nadodi 5 Feb 2015 20:07

The fundamental question Is, what brought Ukraine into this mess? It is the expansion of NATO to the backyards of Russia. It happened at a time when Russia was weak and was still struggling to recover from the collapse of the Soviet system upon which their life and economy was built. And what was the goal of the US to expand NATO to the doorsteps of Russia? The US policy of domination of the world. It is this policy that poses the greatest danger to the security of the world since the fall of the bipolar world in the early 90s. The world, especially the Europe is facing a critical choice at this point of time in history. Europe has to set itself free of the US bondage or stay a mute spectator to the aggressive and intolerant policies of the conservative hard liners in the US, that would multiply the conflicts across the globe. Today, these hard liners in the US pose the greatest threat to the stability and overall growth of the people of this planet.

desconocido Dick Harrison 5 Feb 2015 20:04

I think it's a question of first or second language and also of cultural identity. And also of course noticing that you are being shafted by west ukrainian nazis.

Davo3333 laSaya 5 Feb 2015 20:03

Because the land they are living on has been Russian land for centuries. So Crimea is Russian and should never have been part of Ukraine at all after the Soviet Union split up and Eastern and Southern Ukraine are also Russian but the first step for those regions would be to form new independent countries which could then decide whether they wished to rejoin Russia or remain independent. The Ukrainians live in West Ukraine and it is them who should move into their own areas and leave Eastern and Southern Ukraine alone. And another thing the population of Russia has been increasing in the last few years , not decreasing as you have stated.

Soul_Side laSaya 5 Feb 2015 20:01

laSaya said:

Why don't those Russian speaker just hop in a bus and journey to Russia. The Russian landmass is big enough to take those Russia lovers in.

Let me understand this point of view exactly, you think they should leave their homes, livelihoods, their aged, disabled and infirm relatives too weak to travel, their land, their places of birth, their local culture and local identity and just move somewhere else because their neighbour seeks to dominate them? Would you?

Ethnic cleansing, though always popular with ultra-nationalists, is not the only way forward. Let the people decide. Not Kerry, not Merkel, not Putin, not Hollande, not Poroshenko not Yatzenyuk. Public votes.

angdavies 5 Feb 2015 19:56

Ahhh.. I love the smell of proxy war in the morning!

Just let Putin save some face. Any Ukrainian who loves her country should back any peace talks up to the hilt, otherwise there'll be no Ukraine worth living in if the US starts to pump in the weapons. That will kick-off full scale Russian nationalist jihadism - a war that cannot be won.

AlienLifeForce -> Seriatim 5 Feb 2015 19:56

Absolutely. And when are we going to here the truth about that damn plane crash??

Strange you should ask, when I last looked, the US had decided that the findings of the investigation should remain classified. If there was any evidence to point the finger at Russia, don't you think they would have used it?

glit00 -> senya 5 Feb 2015 19:50

courtesy of google translate:

Commander (Chief) under the extraordinary period, including a state of martial law or a battle, in order to arrest a soldier who commits an act that falls within the elements of a crime related to disobedience, resistance or threats boss, violence, unauthorized leaving the fighting positions and designated areas of deployment units (units) in the areas of combat missions, shall have the right to apply measures of physical restraint without causing damage to the health of military and special funds sufficient to stop illegal actions.

In a battle commander (chief) can use weapons or give orders to subordinates of their application, unless otherwise impossible to stop the unauthorized retreat or other similar actions, while not causing the death of soldier.

If circumstances permit, the commander (chief) before use of physical effects, special tools or weapons should give voice warning, shot up or by other means notify the person against whom he may apply such measures

suzi 5 Feb 2015 19:38

suspicions that Putin is seeking to split Europe and America

He need hardly bother when the US itself is doing such a good job in that direction!

cycokan -> thomas142 5 Feb 2015 19:36

While I agree, that US foreign policy is often very, let's say, adventurous, I do not see them as idiots.

Trying to force Germany or France and most, if not all other European countries into an open war with Russia would be the end of NATO and the end of any American sphere of influence in Europe, because, I can assure you, at least the German populace would simply never join such an adventure.

AlienLifeForce Haynonnynonny 5 Feb 2015 19:40

CNN is a joke, it should be called "CORRUPTED NEWS NETWORK". The sort of trash they report is what feeds all the Obama Drones, after all, they need their fuel from some where.

AlienLifeForce -> MentalToo 5 Feb 2015 19:35

Putin thinks that by making Merkel and Hollande come to him, he is the greater man.

Putin did not make them come to him, Merkel and Hollande are going because if they have any sense, they will try and repair relations between Europe and Russia as well when an agreement can be made.

He has basically created this war because the people of Ukraine dared to reject him.

The US created the problems in Ukraine and if the people of Ukraine rejected Putin, why are large numbers of them heading towards the Russian boarder?

he has disregarded everything from international law, human rights, human lives, basic humanity including been the source to numerous war crimes and crimes towards humanity.

If anything this fits the description of the US more then Russia, especially when we look at the last 20 - 30 years. Russia has done everything that was agreed when the cold war ended and has since established good working relations world wide with out wars and conflicts.

He claims it was because Russia was threatened and needed protection. But Russia wasn't.

Again, Russia kept to the agreements made after the cold war ended, the US never did and has continued to move NATO ever closer to the Russian boarders. How does this represent good business relations from the west and why should Russia accept this to begin with.

All this was simply because his ego was hurt.


It is just as well Putin is not the sort of person you describe, because we would all be ash by now.

If anything is "poor", its you with your lack of understanding and ignorance.

KauaiJohnnie sasha19 5 Feb 2015 13:57

Of course if Putin did nothing there wouldn't be a conflict. But NATO was pushing on Russia's borders in violation of the agreements made with Gorbachev 30 years ago. What possible benefit is that to you and me?

Likewise, the deployment of Star Wars, which hasn't been shown to work but has cost billions (and billions) in Europe is hardly for protection against Iranian missiles.

This is just to demonstrate the strength of the USA military. And for what purpose? In "Atlas Shrugged" why did the government want to build a bigger bomb? To threaten anyone and everyone who wouldn't bow to the government wishes. The thing Rand missed was the "government" is run by the same 1% that she praises as the "job creators".

They are playing the same "game" that sociopathic kings have played since the beginning of time. Why the "rest of us" allow ourselves to be governed by sociopaths remains a mystery.

roundthings 5 Feb 2015 13:55

"We will make a new proposal to solve the conflict which will be based on Ukraine's territorial integrity."

That would be heading 180 degrees in the wrong direction. What if Russia had taken a similar stand over the 'territorial integrity of Serbia' during the Kosovo affair? Aren't the situations analogous?

Sure, Putin has been out of order. He deserves a smack. But the price of doing so is too high. These politician boneheads are dragging us into a war - a stupid war, an unnecessary war.

I'm more and more disappointed with Merkel. Her first strike was the panicked flight out of nuclear. No 2 was not recognizing that, yes the Greeks need to be made to lift their game, maybe take on a few of Schaeuble's tax collectors; but mindless squeezing of the bloke on the Athenian street is in no-one's interest. Could her failure to see sense on Ukraine be strike no 3?

Joe Bloggs 5 Feb 2015 13:55

Phew! I just like to say Not In My Name as it looks to me as if Hawks are milking the situation for all it is worth so that they can have a go at Russia. As far as I know the land in dispute is populated by Russian speakers who make up 95% of the population. There was also a referendum which had a landslide result showing that almost everyone wanted to be allied with Russia.

Of course the Hawks claimed that the result was invalid! IMHO it is really a problem caused by boundary disputes that came about when the USSR ceased to exist.

I propose the same solution that was used by the British Raj in India in 1947, what could be simpler? As to Russia compensating the Ukraine, allegedly Ukraine owes Russia an astronomical amount in unpaid gas bills. It does however look as if the Hawks want to re-arm Ukraine so that they don't have to pay! This is on a par with shooting the debt collector when he comes to your house.

I am sorry to say that the antics of western politicians are starting to resemble a virility contest and I would like this to cease forthwith as there are other far more serious problems to deal with.

Spaceguy1 -> One sasha19 5 Feb 2015 13:54

Naah, Zerohedge is predominantly a financial blog. Plenty of their articles are actually spot on. I use Zerohedge just as another source of information filtering out some of their conspiracies. Besides the article in Zerohedge just copied what the Russian news agency reported here; http://tass.ru/en/russia/775419

Canajin -> ID8787761 5 Feb 2015 13:53

They should also return Puerto Rico, Virgin Islands, Samoa, and Hawaii to their people. Not to mention Guam, Marianas, etc.

BradBenson -> Gene428 5 Feb 2015 13:52

Where do you get your information? We are the ones who have been constantly kicking the Russian Bear in the ass. Here are the facts.

In regard to Georgia

The Georgian Invasion of the neutral provinces of Ossetia and Abkhazia was completely orchestrated by the Bushies, while Putin was attending the previous Olympic Games in China.

Georgia had announced their withdrawal from the 'Coalition of the Billing' in Afghanistan and the Bushies conveniently airlifted their entire combat contingent back home almost overnight. They were then immediately deployed to attack the neutral provinces. The whole thing was an attempt to seize key Russian controlled oil pipelines from the Caucasus to the Black Sea.

Then, as now, Putin was forced to react to aggression on his borders. He flew home, issued an ultimatum and then sent in the Russian Army to clean out the Georgian Invaders, chasing them all the way back to Tbilisi until their CIA installed President begged the world for help. Not surprisingly, none came, but John McCain was able to proudly proclaim, "We are all Georgians today".

During the after battle clean-up, it was reported that there were a number of black soldiers among the dead Georgians. Those Georgians were most likely from Atlanta, Resaca and Augusta.

In regard to the Crimea

The presence of Russian ground forces and the only warm water ports for the Russian Navy made the Crimea a de facto Russian Territory. When the illegal coup d'état was pulled off in the Maidan, Putin and the Russian Military secured their bases on the Black Sea and in the Crimea.

Why should the neo-Nazis in Kiev, or their CIA backed puppet-masters have thought that the Russians would allow this territory to be illegally seized as was the rest of the Ukraine? When coup d'état's occur, borders can change unexpectedly. The people of the Crimea overwhelmingly support the presence of the Russians.

In regard to the coup d'état in Kiev

The US worked to stir up trouble for the democratically elected Ukrainian Government, under Yushchenko, despite the wishes of its EU Partners. At the time, US State Department Neo-Con Victoria Nuland was notoriously quoted as saying "F*ck the EU!"

However, during the rest of that famous 4 minute telephone call, Ms. Nuland was recorded as she outlined who the US wanted in the new Ukrainian Government--the one that would replace the existing government after it was overthrown. This happened despite the fact that Ukrainian Elections for a new President were already scheduled roughly two months hence. Then, against the wishes of its reluctant EU Partners, the US stage-managed the illegal coup d'état in Kiev using neo-Nazis as their vanguard in the streets.

Educate yourself please. This information is readily available.

ID5868758 -> ID8787761 5 Feb 2015 13:45

"Russia invaded Georgia." A perfect example of a western lie, that has been repeated over and over again, so many times that the lie has become the "truth".

[Feb 04, 2015] Donetsk hit by shells as violence intensifies in Ukraine – video

Note the headline " Donetsk hit by shells as violence intensifies in Ukraine". No one is responsible for shelling. It was just hit. Compare this with headlines about supposed "separatists" shellings.
theguardian.com

At least three people were killed in a series of shellings in the eastern Ukrainian city of Donetsk on Wednesday that pro-Russian separatists said were Uragan missiles fired by Ukrainian forces. Earlier, the Ukrainian military said two of its soldiers had been killed and 18 wounded in fighting against pro-Russian separatists in the previous 24 hours

[Feb 04, 2015] Q A: Should US send lethal military assistance to Ukraine?

Feb 03, 2015 | The Guardian

AlienLifeForce -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 22:29

Ukrainian Government: "No Russian Troops Are Fighting Against Us"
Posted on January 30, 2015 by Eric Zuesse.

Ukraine's top general is contradicting allegations by the Obama Administration and by his own Ukrainian Government, by saying that no Russian troops are fighting against the Ukrainian Government's forces in the formerly Ukrainian, but now separatist, area, where the Ukrainian civil war is being waged.

The Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, is saying, in that news-report, which is dated on Thursday January 29th, that the only Russian citizens who are fighting in the contested region, are residents in that region, or of Ukraine, and also some Russian citizens (and this does not deny that perhaps some of other countries' citizens are fighting there, inasmuch as American mercenaries have already been noted to have been participating on the Ukrainian Government's side), who "are members of illegal armed groups," meaning fighters who are not paid by any government, but instead are just "individual citizens" (as opposed to foreign-government-paid ones). General Muzhenko also says, emphatically, that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

In other words: He is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU's sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against "the regular units of the Russian army" - i.e., against the Russian-Government-controlled-and-trained fighting forces.

The allegation to the effect that Ukraine is instead fighting against "regular units of the Russian army" is the allegation that Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is the entire basis for the economic sanctions that are in force against Russia.

Those sanctions should therefore be immediately removed, with apology, and with compensation being paid to all individuals who have been suffering them; and it is therefore incumbent upon the Russian Government to pursue, through all legally available channels, restitution, plus damages, against the perpetrators of that dangerous fraud - and the news reports have already made clear precisely whom those persons are, who have asserted, as public officials, what can only be considered to be major libel.

Otherwise, Ukraine's top general should be fired, for asserting what he has just asserted.

If what General Muzhenko says is true, then he is a hero for having risked his entire career by having gone public with this courageous statement. And, if what he says is false, then he has no place heading Ukraine's military.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us.html

USCricketer 3 Feb 2015 22:06

While there is no doubt about covert US military aid already going to Ukraine it'll be another foolhardy step for Mr. Obama, or for the Republicans now in control, to overtly jump into the Ukrainian mess. One 'unintended consequence' of raising such stakes would be Russia coming out openly in support of Syria, Hamas and Hezbollah, which will be extremely bad news for Israel and the US Jewish American lobby.

Did somebody say that Obama and the Republicans are regretting the 'unintended consequences' in Iraq, in Afghanistan, in Libya, in Syria, in Yemen ??

And they now want to open another front in Ukraine?

Where will the money for this yet another foolhardy endeavor come from ?

Ah, No..I forgot the news that Mr. Obama is setting up a brand new dollar printing press to pay for his Ukraine adventure to-be..


greatwhitehunter -> EugeneGur 3 Feb 2015 21:14

the beating kiev took proir to the ceasefire was requested by poroshenko. The separatists targeted the azov battalion . poroshenko new he couldnt have a ceasefire until the asov battalion was taken down a peg or two. kiev is not a united force.

poroshenko is more likely to side with the east than the far right in the long term. The real civil war has yet to start.

PeraIlic -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 20:13

i want russia to take their soldiers and weapons back from ukraine and stop invading a spovreign country quite simple. then war will be over meanwhile you advocate further bloodshed all the time with no regard for ukrainians

I think it's better Poroshenko to return his army to the west, where they came from, and miners from Donbas that he left alone to dig coal as before.


EugeneGur -> Robert Looren de Jong 3 Feb 2015 19:12

I hope Russia did equip them enough to kick the Ukrs out of Donbass for good. It is intolerable to watch day after day as unarmed people are deliberately targeted and killed and do nothing. Finally, the Russian government came to its senses realizing that without a decisive military victory by the Donbass fighters there won't be any peace in Ukraine.

[Feb 02, 2015] Ukraine crisis: Kiev hopes talks will go ahead despite renewed violence

So after killing several hundred thousand Iraqis the USA want to kill several hundred thousand Ukrainians to further imperial ambitions of neocon elite... Now we have the situation that that reminds me Spanish civil war.
Notable quotes:
"... it would take far more than these two and a few russians to instigate a civil war in Ukraine. ..."
Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

The recent upsurge in violence has alarmed Ukraine's western allies, with US secretary of state John Kerry announcing plans to express his support for the nation during talks in Kiev on Thursday with Poroshenko and prime minister Arseniy Yatsenyuk.


fedupwiththeliesalso -> maninBATHTUB 2 Feb 2015 05:48

The situation is far more complex than that.

it would take far more than these two and a few russians to instigate a civil war in Ukraine. The Ukrainian government were never attacked by anyone in the east or russia. But it attacked Easterners. To say this is a Russians instigated situation is untrue.

IvanMills 1 Feb 2015 22:48

Kiev launched a civil war against its citizens in the east. Kiev's military is bombing cities killing civilians and destroying property.

What do the US and the EU have to do with another country's internal conflict.


AlienLifeForce Oskar Jaeger 1 Feb 2015 19:58

Yes, its rediculous that thousands of civilians have been killed while the EU & US turn their backs and blame Russia for an invasion they cant even prove. Must be hard for the US to explain with all those drones they have?


AlienLifeForce Oskar Jaeger 1 Feb 2015 19:29

There is no doubt that the events that have taken place in Ukraine have been very interesting, and like I have pointed out before, I have always been curious as to why there has not been any real news coverage on the ground from the western media since the government was overthrown. Because of this you end up looking for further information through the web, like most sensible people do. I can honestly say I have followed this story from the start and like I said, when you have interest in something, you want to know everything about it. What has surprised me the most, is that I have not been able to find any evidence to support the Russian invasion. Instaed I have found out about Tech Camp, Black Water and all the other reasons you can think of that support the interest of the EU & US, very interesting.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2576490/Are-Blackwater-active-Ukraine-Videos-spark-talk-U-S-mercenary-outfit-deployed-Donetsk.html

AlienLifeForce

The Chief of Staff of Ukraine's Armed Forces, General Viktor Muzhenko, is saying, in that news-report, which is dated on Thursday January 29th, that the only Russian citizens who are fighting in the contested region, are residents in that region, or of Ukraine, and also some Russian citizens (and this does not deny that perhaps some of other countries' citizens are fighting there, inasmuch as American mercenaries have already been noted to have been participating on the Ukrainian Government's side), who "are members of illegal armed groups," meaning fighters who are not paid by any government, but instead are just "individual citizens" (as opposed to foreign-government-paid ones). General Muzhenko also says, emphatically, that the "Ukrainian army is not fighting with the regular units of the Russian army."

In other words: He is explicitly and clearly denying the very basis for the EU's sanctions against Russia, and for the U.S.'s sanctions against Russia: all of the sanctions against Russia are based on the falsehood that Ukraine is fighting against "the regular units of the Russian army" - i.e., against the Russian-Government-controlled-and-trained fighting forces.

The allegation to the effect that Ukraine is instead fighting against "regular units of the Russian army" is the allegation that Vladimir Putin's Russia has invaded Ukraine, and it is the entire basis for the economic sanctions that are in force against Russia.

Those sanctions should therefore be immediately removed, with apology, and with compensation being paid to all individuals who have been suffering them; and it is therefore incumbent upon the Russian Government to pursue, through all legally available channels, restitution, plus damages, against the perpetrators of that dangerous fraud - and the news reports have already made clear precisely whom those persons are, who have asserted, as public officials, what can only be considered to be major libel.

AlienLifeForce

Ukranian general admitted junta targeted purposely civilians and perfirmed genocide just to get Russia involved in conflict but failed.

http://www.washingtonsblog.com/2015/01/ukrainian-government-russian-troops-fighting-us.html


fedupwiththeliesalso -> jezzam 1 Feb 2015 17:52

"democracy, justice, freedom of speech, increased happiness, health, prosperity"

What does America know of any of those things? They only apply if you can afford it.

Joao Silva 1 Feb 2015 17:19

The result that came out the ballots in Greece are a signal to the other opposition leaders in Europe. A unanimous decision to sanction Russia over Ukraine turned out to change the regime in Greece. Unanimous is stupidity. Spain is going to be the next. I have no bets on the third, forth ones.

So it seems that to confront EU's hardness on Russia can change the mind of voters across Europe. after all, it is only a USA/UK/France/Germany/Poland, Ukraine(Big 6) war. The others countries will get nothing but losses on their fragile economies. But they had been, until Greece's voters changed it, being like sheep heading to the slaughterhouse following the command of the Big 6.

LinkMeyer maninBATHTUB 1 Feb 2015 15:57

"
The best weapon against a psychopath is to let them destroy themselves."
How long will it take you?

GardenShedFever Metronome151 1 Feb 2015 15:46

I have read this unsupported accusation against Russia many times, yet when the facts on the ground are ascertained, it is Kiev that sent its tanks against its own people in Donetsk and Luhansk. Those East Ukrainians, as Crimeans before them, rejected Kiev's violence, violence fomented in Lviv, Kiev, and further afield, Brussels and Washington. They have looked to Russia for help once the shells began to rain down on them. Russia's response has been less than requested, but has halted at least some of Kiev's murderous rampage. At the least, it has restricted Kiev's air support for its mercenerary brigades. For that, the people of East Ukraine will be forever thankful.

[Feb 01, 2015] US considers providing arms to Ukraine as rebels step up attacks, says report

It does not make much sense to read or quote that article: a typical propaganda peace... From comments:
"The Guardian, not alone among the western MSM, that has been incredibly biased in reporting on what is happening in Ukraine. It would be reasonable to expect less blatantly biased reporting from The Guardian, and it amazes me that day after day it faithfully repeats the propaganda from the US etal as though it is fact-based news ... in many cases, especially, for example, when reporting on the shelling of towns (e.g. Mariupol) it reports shelling by the Kiev 'government' as being shelling by the Novorussians - why do this?
and
"Typical propaganda comment. In your opinion peace will not be reach until Russia bends over to Uncle Sam and say yes sir no sir three bags full sir? I don't think it's in their nature. Whole world knows current PM of Ukraine is appointed by US foreign office. Do a bit of research it helps with facts"
Notable quotes:
"... Doesn't he realize that the only time when Poroshenko talks about cease fire is when he is under pressure from the rebels. ..."
"... Couldn't Obama mind his own business for once? ..."
"... Ukraine is a failed state. It has ceased to exist as anything but the frontline for US geopolitical machinations. ..."
"... I am sure they don't want to be enslaved to the CIA either. ..."
Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

TG Asch, everybody's closet neoliberal and neocon, blah-piece today is simply warmongering dressed-up as journalism - equating Putin to Milosevic simply illustrates his lack of current or historical knowledge and understanding. Asch was and is in fact a propagandist, not a journalist.

There is a wealth of much more accurate and nuanced information on what has and is happening in the Ukraine available in the public domain. It seems that the people working for The Guardian (and the BBC) are choosing to ignore this and stick to the White House's and Downing Street's disinformation handouts" ...

For The Guardian to be posting pieces advocating more war - as Asch does - is simply irresponsible in the current circumstances, especially when it is impossible to find any alternate views being given any space at all - not equal space, any space - by The Guardian. Balance, Fairness, Judgment, Independence - these all seem to have gone out the window when it comes to the Ukraine and The Guardian has placed itself on the side of the warmongers.

Why is the Guardian doing this?

Selected Skeptical Comments

vr13vr 1 Feb 2015 22:29

Looks like Obama's goal is to maintain the conflict there indefinitely. Doesn't he realize that the only time when Poroshenko talks about cease fire is when he is under pressure from the rebels. If you give him more weapons, and if you embolden him, he will not be talking about truce.

This conflict will just go on, and that's what Obama seems to prefer.

edwardrice peacefulmilitant 1 Feb 2015 22:29

Putin has ''pushed'' Obama? Couldn't Obama mind his own business for once?

What has a deeply corrupt bankrupt dysfunctional country 1000s of miles from the US got to do with the Obama? Why should the US tax payer fund another foreign war?

What right does the US have to trample over the heads of 500 million Europeans and escalate a civil war in Europe!

scruffythejanitor 1 Feb 2015 22:28

I really don't see much American enthusiasm to be involved in Ukraine- it seems more like they can't extricate themselves from it. Nations seem to behave like nations. The US is committed to supporting Europe and condemning russian aggression in annexing Ukraine, as any large country would when one country violates another's sovereignty. You don't get to violate another country's borders, officially.

Russia persistently cries foul whenever the US publicly interferes with another nation's affairs, such as in Iraq, the presumption being that each country does not clandestinely interfere in it's own way. The crocodile tears over US violations of sovereignty looked a lot more convincing ten years ago than they do today.

ID1011951 1 Feb 2015 22:28

The Guardian, not alone among the western MSM, that has been incredibly biased in reporting on what is happening in Ukraine. It would be reasonable to expect less blatantly biased reporting from The Guardian, and it amazes me that day after day it faithfully repeats the propaganda from the US etal as though it is fact-based news ... in many cases, especially, for example, when reporting on the shelling of towns (e.g. Mariupol) it reports shelling by the Kiev 'government' as being shelling by the Novorussians - why do this?

TG Asch, everybody's closet neoliberal and neocon, blah-piece today is simply warmongering dressed-up as journalism - equating Putin to Milosevic simply illustrates his lack of current or historical knowledge and understanding. Asch was and is in fact a propagandist, not a journalist.

There is a wealth of much more accurate and nuanced information on what has and is happening in the Ukraine available in the public domain. It seems that the people working for The Guardian (and the BBC) are choosing to ignore this and stick to the White House's and Downing Street's disinformation handouts ...

For The Guardian to be posting pieces advocating more war - as Asch does - is simply irresponsible in the current circumstances, especially when it is impossible to find any alternate views being given any space at all - not equal space, any space - by The Guardian. Balance, Fairness, Judgment, Independence - these all seem to have gone out the window when it comes to the Ukraine and The Guardian has placed itself on the side of the warmongers.

Why is the Guardian doing this?

Dugan222 1 Feb 2015 22:07

Great....my disgust is beyond words. In all the peace talks, there were not a single American representative present. When comes to arming Ukraine, America is already taking the lead and making unilateral decisions even without the EU consent. Yeah, leading from behind when comes to peace. Taking a leadership role when comes to starting a war. America is greatest. I guess Russia will do the same openly and officially. Ukrainian crisis will become a proxy war for the West to bring back the Cold War.

Both the Russian backed separatists and American backed Ukrainians will murder and kill each others...until a demarcation line is drawn somewhere in Kiev. Wondering who would build the Kiev Wall first. The East, the Russian side, or the West, American side?? Ha...the Kiev Wall.... Is not America's problem since the conflict is thousands of miles away.

BTW, Ukraine has been received arms through various Nato members already. And there are reports of US mercenaries on the ground as well. Obviously, the Obama administration wants to make it official. For Putin, he does not really need to make it official though.

GardenShedFever -> David Dalton Lytle Jr. 1 Feb 2015 22:06

I'm English, but I think you are American.

And film of weapons caches captured from the cyborgs that include brand new, advanced weapons not issued to the Ukraine military (but, of course, the cyborgs are Kolomoisky's merceneries, supported by McCain et al) demonstrates the US finger in the Kiev pie.

GardenShedFever HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 22:02

Poroshenko was "elected" on the lowest turnout in Ukraine's history, with vast swathes of Ukraine boycotting the election, opposition parties banned, opposition politicians abused, assaulted, and disappeared.

There is no democracy in Ukraine. Its sovereignty disappeared with the US sponsored coup that toppled Yanukovych.

HollyOldDog HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 22:00

Since when? The West Ukraine army never put into practice the last MINSK Agreement. The shelling on East Ukraine never stopped.

GardenShedFever HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 21:57

Good enough to know that, with a boycott of elections in the south and east of Ukraine, there is not even a semblance of democracy there, as the people are neither represented in Kiev, nor do they want to.

Ukraine is a failed state. It has ceased to exist as anything but the frontline for US geopolitical machinations.

When the EU made a last ditch agreement with Yanukovych, to introduce early elections, what was the US response?

"Fuck the EU" said Victoria Nuland. That tells you all you need to know.


MediaWatchDog ID6674371 1 Feb 2015 21:56

Typical propaganda comment. In your opinion peace will not be reach until Russia bends over to Uncle Sam and say yes sir no sir three bags full sir? I don't think it's in their nature. Whole world knows current PM of Ukraine is appointed by US forigen office. Do a bit of research it helps with facts

Parangaricurimicuaro 1 Feb 2015 21:54

This new development only shows how badly Kiev is losing.

MediaWatchDog 1 Feb 2015 21:51

German Chancellor Angela Markels mobile phone is/was tapped by US president and her plan for peaceful and democratic settlement of Ukraine was fu**ed by US forigen deputy secretary Victoria Nuland.

Now CIA is in full command arming extremists, again!

MediaWatchDog -> Kavi Mazumdar 1 Feb 2015 21:45

Scotland style referendum? Scaremongering and ganging up on voters by big businesses and Westminster politicians? F that it will hard to keep Victoria Nuland types out, CIA is way too powerful than Westminster. Why not have a proper referendum, not like Crimea or Scotland!

MediaWatchDog -> randomguyfromoz 1 Feb 2015 21:42

Ethic Russians don't want to be part of Russia in your opinion? You are probably right, I am sure they don't want to be enslaved to the CIA either.

Zwoman48 1 Feb 2015 21:41

The U.S. instigated and supported the coup in Ukraine and is thinking of arming the fascists. All you need to know, everyone.

MediaWatchDog 1 Feb 2015 21:40

Fact 1. Victoria Nuland topple old regime and appointed Yats as nations PM, fuc**d EU plan of democratic transional government.

Fact 2. Since then head of CIA and other top level US officials have actively involved on Ukraine.

Fact 3. Now they are considering providing weapons.

Thanks to the US Empire for successfully opening up new cold war at European borders.

Hoon -> Ai Ooi 1 Feb 2015 21:34

Someone has to pay for this. The UK had just finish paying USA for their debts from the 1st World War! What about the 2nd? And now Ukrain! & Middle East. This will bankrupt the EU for sure!

Zwoman48 HHeLiBe 1 Feb 2015 21:44

Bollocks! That's the absolute lie the western media wants you to swallow. Oh. I see you HAVE.

HHeLiBe -> Kavi Mazumdar 1 Feb 2015 21:32

How about Pakistan invades Kashmir with special forces, causes so much disturbance all the Indians flee for their lives, and then forces a referendum on those who remain?

TommyGuardianReader , Feb 1, 2015 21:31

Given that comments have prematurely been closed on yesterday's Guardian "Comment is Free" article, in which a salesman masquerading as a journalist spins the line that "sometimes only guns can stop guns",

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/feb/01/putin-stopped-ukraine-military-support-russian-propaganda

It's worth reflecting that guns can stop gunners and civilians (see Martin Place), but they cannot stop guns. Whether it's Tokyo or Dallas, Texas, guns, munitions and drones are big money.

During the First World War the British government continued to pay Krupp's of Essen royalties for some of their gun patents. It was probably insider traders linked to Krupp's of Essen who dobbed in Sir Roger Casement's naive attempts to get German arms to Irish independence fighters in order to try to avert the long-planned Imperial utility World War.

He was a bit like the David Kelly of his day, in that he got in the way of the machine.

By the way, on an unrelated matter, isn't all this noise about Russia and Putin distracting us from the Chilcott Inquiry, and the roles of Bush, Cheney and Putin in the Coalition Of The Willing?

As Don Henderson wrote in his song "Was War For Those Who Want It":

"The men who build the planes and make the tanks
Are neutral and get payment in Swiss francs
While the rich on both sides prosper the poor will kill the poor
Was war for those who want it, they would want an end to war."


Maria Meri 1 Feb 2015 21:30

Can anybody name one year after the 2nd WW whn the US hadn't been policing somewhr - war indeed seems to form it's economic base (commies said this ages ago)

GardenShedFever 1 Feb 2015 21:21

Considering the weapons caches captured by the rebels after dislodging Ukraine's "cyborgs" from Donetsk airport, the US has been arming Kiev's forces for some time. Advanced US weapons are not routine equipment for the Ukraine military, are they?
It is no surprise the USA is clamouring to escalate this civil war. They began it, and they expected a near bloodless coup, like the Orange Revolution. Their problem this time, however, was they backed and funded far-right Ukrainian Nationalists who are despised in the South and East, and although the Maidan protests had sympathy, the commandeering of those protests by Right Sektor and Svoboda has alienated vast swathes of the Ukrainian populace. The rejection of the Kiev coup was overt, and the coup leaders' response to that rejection horrifying. No matter how much western media have tried to brush it under the carpet, the mass murder in Odessa last May polarised opinion. Those with Russian sympathies realised they were targets, and so the kick-back happened. In Donetsk and Luhansk, this mayterialised as mass support for declarations of independence, in Kharkhiv more subtle, partisan resistance, but the fact is irrefutable. Kiev only rules via terror.

And now that terror is to be overtly supported by Washington. Honesty, at least and at last. The warmongers have their war.

Zogz 1 Feb 2015 21:21

Only a matte of time till the US arms Kiev. They have been itching to do it since they organized the coup. The "military advisors" are already on the ground some suggest they are working with the Kiev troops. Whist such war mongery is not unusal for the US, I cannot help bu be suprised with EU reactions. Allowing the US to escalate tensions on the border of Europe is foolhardy in the extreme. All it wll do is make Europe more dependent on the US, more insecure, and more at risk. A win win for the US, but for Europe?

AstheticTheory 1 Feb 2015 21:08

So America has revealed its open secret: it intervened to secure the government in Ukraine it wanted and now it is prepared to escalate its defence of its new possession

[Feb 01, 2015] Putin must be stopped. And sometimes only guns can stop guns

If west make Yats, Turchinov, Poroshenko, Kolomysky, Avakov and Co Persona non grata - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia in EU and USA and the USA annul green-card/citizenship for crimes committed the war would stop in one day. They don't want to do that, so that means that they want the continuation of the war. From comments: 'From the increasingly hysterical pronouncements form Garton Ash, Bildt and other luminaries of Post-Democratic Europe it seems they are getting nervous about their gravy train hitting the buffers."
Notable quotes:
"... The same country (Germany) caused Yugoslavia to be destroyed ..."
Feb 01, 2015 | The Guardian

CityCalledNain 1 Feb 2015 16:54

From the increasingly hysterical pronouncements form Garton Ash, Bildt and other luminaries of Post-Democratic Europe it seems they are getting nervous about their gravy train hitting the buffers.

Grexit, Brexit, Spexit .....

This all spells trouble for people who live high on the hog off the largesse of EU NGO funds.


Kyrin Bekuloff -> Lesia Menchynska 1 Feb 2015 16:54

Yeah, I actually understand both Russian and Ukrainian, and I can tell you with complete confidence that the Ukrainian side is full of nutheads. The latest thing they claimed is that they destroyed a Russian Armata tank. (yet they haven't even been built yet)

Miriam Bergholz 1 Feb 2015 16:53

"We need to counter this propaganda not with lies of our own but with reliable information and a scrupulously presented array of different views. No one is better placed to do this than the BBC."

I couldn't stop laughing!

Even better: "The US may have the best drones in the world, and Germany the best machine tools, but Britain has the best international broadcaster." As in: the US kills better, Germany makes the best machines (do you refer to guns or spades?), and the UK broadcast the best news on what? Invasion of Iraq, Lybia, etc.etc. torture, Chilcot inquire? What? Oh yes, the need to confront Russia at all cost.

Though I recorded the fact that the BBC actually at some point reported on the neo-nazi batallion in East Ukraine, issue that Russian and other media did report from the very beginning. I suppose that now that apparently the batallion have been dispersed, (though they said that they will continue fighting) it will start (again) the demonization of Putin. What is the move now? Convince us on the necessity to send NATO troops to replace them?

The corporate media have been competing in informing with half lies and half truth, very easy to catch, so, how can you convince somebody? There is a lot of very good alternative media in the US, Europe, and Asia. If established papers like the Guardian wants to keep their readers should start doing what they are supposed to do: tell the truth but nothing but the truth, and please not more crap about Putin, it is very boring, though I recognize it was kind of funny the Independent telling that Putin is a psychopath. You should read the comments, very enlightening. I asked whether they had the pressure from the government to start again this crude demonization. The Guardian as well? It is a very good sync because there are at the least four European news telling more or less the same with some different dramatics!

Anyway, why the stress? Is it because the results of the Greece election and some of their statements regarding Russia? or it is that NATO really wants a war with Russia and you are trying to convince us that it is a very good idea? Or is it that the alternative media is gaining the field? All three?


halduell 1 Feb 2015 16:52

And again, who "has deployed heavy military equipment, energy-supply blackmail, cyber-attack, propaganda by sophisticated, well-funded broadcasters, covert operations and agents of influence in EU capitals"?

Through the looking glass here with a monstrous piece of yellow journalism in which up is down, back is front and the phenomenon of projection is apparent in every sentence.
Rubbish, Mr Ash. Pure rubbish.


micktravis1968 1 Feb 2015 16:52

Btw I wonder if James Harding, the head of BBC News, is any relation to Luke Harding, the Graun correspondent whose Kiev-Junta -friendly dispatches from East Ukraine are reminiscent of the sort of reports the Volkischer Beobachter correspondents used to send from places like Guernica.


whitja01 1 Feb 2015 16:48

Apparently, Obama just admitted on CNN to the US being involved in 'brokering power-transition' in Ukraine, i.e. regime change. So now we have not only Nuland's word, but that of the US president himself.

So who is the war-monger, TGA? Who is the greater danger to world peace, Russia or the US?


RoyRoger 1 Feb 2015 16:46

Putin must be stopped.

Mr. Timothy Garton Ash !!!.

Why did we not hear you shout: Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton ''must be stopped!!?

'' Must be stopped '' entering a sovereign democratic country that was less then 12 months from their general election.

Why did we not hear you shout ''must be stopped'' from giving sustenance to a bunch of, Kiev, Molotov cocktail throwing police murdering (39 dead and 139 injured) coup d' etat' neo Nazis; thugs.

Mr. Timothy Garton Ash, blame, Putin, and the Russian people for all manner of things across the world if you wish and the suggestion that, Putin, eats four babies for breakfasts every monning.

But one thing I know; the blame for the troubles in, Ukraine, rests with the Corporate corrupt White House and NATO. The Ukraine is their self-made crisis and it will, very soon, bite the bastards on the arse.

These incompetent fuckers, Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton, will go down in history as the creators of the biggest political and economical blunder in history.

Come on !!, Mr. Timothy Garton Ash, fess-up, you know in your heart that Putin and the Russian people did not create the coup d' etat' in, Kiev.

If these five political imbeciles, Rasmussen, Nuland, Kerry, McCain, Hague and Ashton, had not gone swanning around the, Maidan Square in, Kiev, we would't be in the mess we are now. This is NATO's and the Corporate corrupt White House fucking political disaster.

And the bill is going to be dropped in the laps of the Europeans.

We must never forget: Ukraine is not part of the European Union nor is it a member of NATO. So what the fuck are we doing sticking our fucking noses in a sovereign democratic country without a mandate from our Parliament?


herditbefore 1 Feb 2015 16:44

The situation in the Ukraine is the same as was the case in Cyprus. There was a government that wanted to take Cyprus into a union with Greece, the north mostly Turkish speakers opposed this and Turkey stood by their kith and kin.

In the Ukraine there is a government which wants to go into a union with the EU and the eastern ethnic Russians oppose this.

There as been a cease fire in Cyprus for about 40 years, not ideal but it does not stop the mainly Greek Cypriots from joining the EU or getting on with life, the same thing could happen with the eastern Ukraine if they think they will be happier outside of the EU let them.

The grass is not always better on the other side and living is not just about Mercedes and BMWs.


Klashii 1 Feb 2015 16:44

As a direct result of the kind of garbage TGA is advocating here, millions have already died in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Egypt, Libya and elsewhere this century. And how could we forget Vietnam in the last century when the US tried to bring 'democracy' to those that weren't in the slightest bit interested in having it.

When will the West wake up and realize that not everyone wants 'democracy'shoved down their throats - especially American 'democracy'.


rodmclaughlin 1 Feb 2015 16:43

"Ukraine urgently needs military support". Go to hell. For NATO to give military support to Kiev would be a dangerous escalation. A cornered bear is a dangerous animal. The author is effectively asking people in the NATO countries to risk their lives for Kiev. Interfering in the nations located on the tank practice ground between Moscow and Berlin always ends in tears.

NikLot 1 Feb 2015 16:41

"German chancellor Angela Merkel and foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier have been right to keep trying diplomacy, but even they concluded in mid-January that it wasn't worth going to meet Putin in Kazakhstan."

Why should anyone care what Herr and Frau think on the subject!? They essentially torpedoed any jaw-jaw, giving preference to the alternative - it is Ukrainian and Russian blood after all.

The same country (Germany) caused Yugoslavia to be destroyed, the moment they got reunited, with Britain and France staying shamefully quiet. The Helsinki final document was torn to shreds with that.

[Jan 30, 2015] Ukraine Through the Fog of the Presstitutes by Paul Craig Roberts

Mar 06, 2014 | CounterPunch

Gerald Celente calls the Western media "presstitutes," an ingenuous term that I often use. Presstitutes sell themselves to Washington for access and government sources and to keep their jobs. Ever since the corrupt Clinton regime permitted the concentration of the US media, there has been no journalistic independence in the United States except for some Internet sites.

Glenn Greenwald points out the independence that RT, a Russian media organization, permits Abby Martin who denounced Russia's alleged invasion of Ukraine, compared to the fates of Phil Donahue (MSNBC) and Peter Arnett (NBC), both of whom were fired for expressing opposition to the Bush regime's illegal attack on Iraq. The fact that Donahue had NBC's highest rated program did not give him journalistic independence. Anyone who speaks the truth in the American print or TV media or on NPR is immediately fired.

Russia's RT seems actually to believe and observe the values that Americans profess but do not honor.

I agree with Greenwald. You can read his article here. Greenwald is entirely admirable. He has intelligence, integrity, and courage. He is one of the brave to whom my just published book, How America Was Lost, is dedicated. As for RT's Abby Martin, I admire her and have been a guest on her program a number of times.

My criticism of Greenwald and Martin has nothing to do with their integrity or their character. I doubt the claims that Abby Martin grandstanded on "Russia's invasion of Ukraine" in order to boost her chances of moving into the more lucrative "mainstream media." My point is quite different. Even Abby Martin and Greenwald, both of whom bring us much light, cannot fully escape Western propaganda.

For example, Martin's denunciation of Russia for "invading" Ukraine is based on Western propaganda that Russia sent 16,000 troops to occupy Crimea. The fact of the matter is that those 16,000 Russian troops have been in Crimea since the 1990s. Under the Russian-Ukrainian agreement, Russia has the right to base 25,000 troops in Crimea.

Apparently, neither Abby Martin nor Glenn Greenwald, two intelligent and aware people, knew this fact. Washington's propaganda is so pervasive that two of our best reporters were victimized by it.

As I have written several times in my columns, Washington organized the coup in Ukraine in order to promote its world hegemony by capturing Ukraine for NATO and putting US missile bases on Russia's border in order to degrade Russia's nuclear deterrent and force Russia to accept Washington's hegemony.

Russia has done nothing but respond in a very low-key way to a major strategic threat orchestrated by Washington.

It is not only Martin and Greenwald who have fallen under Washington's propaganda.

They are joined by Patrick J. Buchanan. Pat's column calling on readers to "resist the war party on Crimea" opens with Washington's propagandistic claim: "With Vladimir Putin's dispatch of Russian Troops into Crimea."

No such dispatch has occurred. Putin has been granted authority by the Russian Duma to send troops to Ukraine, but Putin has stated publicly that sending troops would be a last resort to protect Crimean Russians from invasions by the ultra-nationalist neo-nazis who stole Washington's coup and established themselves as the power in Kiev and western Ukraine.

So, here we have three of the smartest and most independent journalists of our time, and all three are under the impression created by Western propaganda that Russia has invaded Ukraine.

It appears that the power of Washington's propaganda is so great that not even the best and most independent journalists can escape its influence.

What chance does truth have when Abby Martin gets kudos from Glenn Greenwald for denouncing Russia for an alleged "invasion" that has not taken place, and when independent Pat Buchanan opens his column dissenting from the blame-Russia-crowd by accepting that an invasion has taken place?

The entire story that the presstitutes have told about the Ukraine is a propaganda production. The presstitutes told us that the deposed president, Viktor Yanukovych, ordered snipers to shoot protesters. On the basis of these false reports, Washington's stooges, who comprise the existing non-government in Kiev, have issued arrest orders for Yanukovych and intend for him to be tried in an international court. In an intercepted telephone call between EU foreign affairs minister Catherine Ashton and Etonian foreign affairs minister Urmas Paet who had just returned from Kiev, Paet reports: "There is now stronger and stronger understanding that behind the snipers, it was not Yanukovych, but it was somebody from the new coalition." Paet goes on to report that "all the evidence shows that the people who were killed by snipers from both sides, among policemen and then people from the streets, that they were the same snipers killing people from both sides . . . and it's really disturbing that now the new coalition, that they don't want to investigate what exactly happened." Ashton, absorbed with EU plans to guide reforms in Ukraine and to prepare the way for the IMF to gain control over economic policy, was not particularly pleased to hear Paet's report that the killings were an orchestrated provocation. You can listen to the conversation between Paet and Ashton here: http://rt.com/news/ashton-maidan-snipers-estonia-946/

What has happened in Ukraine is that Washington plotted against and overthrew an elected legitimate government and then lost control to neo-nazis who are threatening the large Russian population in southern and eastern Ukraine, provinces that formerly were part of Russia. These threatened Russians have appealed for Russia's help, and just like the Russians in South Ossetia, they will receive Russia's help.

The Obama regime and its presstitutes will continue to lie about everything.

Paul Craig Roberts is a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and Associate Editor of the Wall Street Journal. His latest book The Failure of Laissez-Faire Capitalism. Roberts' How the Economy Was Lost is now available from CounterPunch in electronic format.

[Jan 28, 2015] Ukraine at war: 'People feel abandoned'

Those brazen propagandists from Guardian now resort to postmodernism: "The fighting has intensified dramatically since last week". In reality this is indiscriminate shelling of Donetsk, one million city by Kiev army. Ukrainian army is shelling one million city in the center of Europe and nobody in Western capitals gives a f*ck.
Notable quotes:
"... Until recently, I also thought as you. But recently it became known fact that it was the Maidan smokescreen. Matter was not addressed in the Maidan. The question was decided in quiet rooms. Maidan does not put pressure on decision-making. (This issue was resolved in Washington) ..."
"... To me, the conflict is all about the the Galicians wanting to eradicate Russian civic identity. The Galicians have been like that from the start. In that respect, they are kind of like fanatics. ..."
"... It seems Russain Orthodox commanders did not take well the Scientologist from Lviv (Yats) and the Baptist with strong connections with the PL govt. (Turch.). ..."
"... The Ukrainian army is attacking its own people in the south east using indiscriminate shelling. The rebels have been defending for almost a year ..."
"... The reality is that most Ukrainians are not motivated to fight for Kiev. The Ukrainian people want peace. Only the Galician ideologically driven hard cores are willing to do combat, and their morale is falling fast because of their endless defeats. ..."
"... Ukrainian military casualties are roughly 3,500 killed in action, and another 9,000 wounded. That is shocking. Kiev is trying to hide the magnitude of the disaster from its own people, but Ukrainian citizens are becoming aware of the horrible battle losses. Entire villages in Ukraine are reportedly ignoring Kiev's draft notices. ..."
Jan 28, 2015 | The Guardian

The fighting has intensified dramatically since last week and the situation here is deteriorating rapidly. In the past five days, there has been heavy fighting. We hear the constant boom of shelling and crackle of shooting.

More than 70 houses are reported to have been damaged or destroyed in the last week, and several hospitals have been damaged since the fighting began in the summer. In recent days, a building of a psychiatric institution that we're supporting was destroyed by shelling.

It's getting more complicated to get into the areas caught in the conflict. Last week the checkpoints to cross into the rebel-controlled areas were closed and no one has been allowed to pass.

Medical supply lines have been cut and little medicine is getting through, as has been the case for months. When Médecins sans Frontières (MSF) started working here in May, we focused on supplying hospitals on the frontline with kits to treat war injuries. Obviously, when you're in a conflict zone, the frontline is where the people are being seriously injured and killed.

After months of stress on the health system, it is clear that the conflict is having an impact on the whole population of the area. Basic healthcare, maternity care, treatment of chronic diseases; everything is affected.

... ... ...


Mij Swerdna shakesomeaction 28 Jan 2015 18:56

More like Kiev won't let Donbas decide it's own destiny. It is not they who have gone to the west to kill. More like the other way around.


Mij Swerdna alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 18:04

Everyone here is responsible for their own actions. The side you are against is not responsible for what both sides do. People like you are devoid of compassion until hardships that you regard with indifference are visited on you and yours.

And then it's people like you who cry and whine the loudest.

Mij Swerdna -> alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 17:57

What are talking about? They did those things at Maidan- but that was okay because you sympathize with neo-Nazis. Hypocrite.

Mij Swerdna -> vr13vr 28 Jan 2015 16:07

And the Holodomor did not take place anywhere near the ones who go on about it the most. It happened in eastern Ukraine and southern Russia.

Mij Swerdna -> Pomario 28 Jan 2015 15:33

Your imagination seems to go to any lengths to make Russia a villain. You are motivated by hatred (bigotry, the stupid kind).

Mij Swerdna -> firstgeordie 28 Jan 2015 15:26

Very bigoted of you. Actually, they are more apt to sacrifice. I wouldn't confuse that virtue with a lack of respect for life because that very lack is more than rampant in the west except that there is a growing tendency on the part of the west to arrange for "lesser" peoples to serve as cannon fodder.

Mij Swerdna -> Pomario 28 Jan 2015 15:14

Not quite. What he was worried about was the massive propaganda blitz that would have resulted if Russia had opted to honor the Donbas referendum and annexed it. As it turns out, he needn't have. They were going to do what they were going to do to Russia regardless. They should have saved Donbas because those incompetent cowards in the west would not have challenged them militarily if they were part of Russia. There would be wailing and gnashing of teeth to be sure- but no destroyed infrastructure and no thousands of dead civilians and refugees.

The real aggressors in this conflict are the people who want to exterminate the people of Donbas. I am judging by actions mind you, not the lawyer like gibberish used to justify those actions. If it walks like a duck...

buttonbasher81 Robobenito 28 Jan 2015 14:51

Again you haven't actually stated what is meant by support, all you use are conjecture and conspiracy by reffering back to bad things the US has done in the past. All the thousands of people marching on the streets were all CIA operatives were they? Sounds about as believeable as putins Russian soldiers being in the East of Ukraine on holiday to me. And don't trot out that 5bn line, its been stated again and again that was spent over a number of years in the Ukraine and moreover some of which would have gone to Yanukovychs Government. You going to argue the US paid him to overthrow himself?


Mij Swerdna Jeremn 28 Jan 2015 08:43


They are inhuman. Kiev is ideologically driven by Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivsk and Volyn (with US blessing).These oblasts had the highest voter turnout and were solidly in Yat's corner. The fact that the actual far right parties did not do well in elections means nothing. They are hiding behind Yats.


Kolo07 -> EddieGrey1967USA 28 Jan 2015 04:25

Until recently, I also thought as you.

But recently it became known fact that it was the Maidan smokescreen.

Matter was not addressed in the Maidan. The question was decided in quiet rooms.

Maidan does not put pressure on decision-making. (This issue was resolved in Washington)


EddieGrey1967USA BMWAlbert 27 Jan 2015 21:58

You are probably correct about the numbers of troops involved in Crimea. Thanks for the more accurate info. Still, your figures aren't too far out of line with mine.

I agree with your final comment about Donbas and a national unity government. It is quite interesting to consider what might have followed if the Euromaidan crew had been smart enough to reach out immediately to Donbass last February. Indeed, if they had included Donbass powerbrokers from the early days, they might have held the country together.

However, to include Donbass powerbrokers in Euromaidan, the new government would have needed to distance itself from the Galician ultranationalists. Do you think that could have happened in theory? My guess is that it couldn't have happened, now that I think about it. I say that because the Galicians were -- and continue to be -- a powerhouse behind the entire Euromaidan revolt, in addition to shaping the government that followed.

To me, the conflict is all about the the Galicians wanting to eradicate Russian civic identity. The Galicians have been like that from the start. In that respect, they are kind of like fanatics.

EddieGrey1967USA -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 21:52

There's a big difference between Serbia and Ukraine, though. That's because the USA is backing the nationalists in Kiev, essentially encouraging them to pursue the dream of an enlarged Ukraine, or a Greater Ukraine (fighting war to keep colonies in Donbass, etc.). By contrast, the USA was opposing Milosevic's efforts to create a Greater Serbia.

So, even after Yatsenyuk, Poroshenko, Lysenko, Parubiy, etc. are defeated and overthrown, they will never face war crimes tribunals. That's because they will have American protection.

The only exception to this situation is if the Russians actually capture Yats, Poroshenko, Parubiy etc. and charge them with war crimes. However I don't think this will happen. Most likely Yats & Co will escape west before that ever happens.

You make a very interesting point about Ukraine being divided on the issue of joining the EU and Russia. In that sense, post war Ukraine could resemble post-Milosevic Serbia. I agree.


BMWAlbert -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 19:51

Eddue, the Krim figures I have read state that there were 18,000 (maybe 2500 is paper strength, NOT the real strength).

Of these 18K I believe about one third (circa 6000) stayed with UA army and were allowed to leave.

Of the 12000 UA Army troops remaining, only half actually joined the RU Army. 6000 thus chose a 'middle way'. That 12000 total may be aligned with the 13000 figure you cite (?).

It might be noted that the whole of the semi-autonomous province might not have been lost at all had commanders of the UA Army reserve forces actually acted in March 2014 (as ordered) to secure the isthmus. They did not move. It seems Russain Orthodox commanders did not take well the Scientologist from Lviv (Yats) and the Baptist with strong connections with the PL govt. (Turch.).

Different people have different views on which North American and EU countries might have had influence over these important initial choices for PM and President at a time when UA needed a national unity govt. NOT a single cabinet post was chosen from Donbas. Not smart.


EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 18:12

What will become of Ukraine, when this is all over?

When a nation is defeated in war, all of its people undergo psychological shock. The country questions its self-worth, and it experiments with changes in politics, culture, and social issues. Defeated nations do this as they come to terms with the realization that they have failed the ultimate test.

These periods of anguished, inward self-reflection on a national scale are especially true for countries that are defeated and conquered. We saw this in France after 1817, during the so-called La Belle Epoque. Something similar happened in Prussia after 1806, and in Germany after 1918 and 1945.

Ukraine will not only suffer defeat, but it may also lose its independence. How will this generation of young Ukrainians -- the so called Euromaidan Generation -- react to this national trauma? Everything that they have been raised to believe about themselves and their country will have been proven to be false...mythological. Just one big lie.

Young Ukrainians, after this war, will totally lose respect for the leaders movements like Euromaidan. These young people will question their own values and beliefs. Like the Germans after 1945, Ukrainians, I think, will then work hard to create a new and honest society for themselves. They will renounce ultranationalism, and they will advocate the virtues of peace and political stability.

That is when Ukraine's true moment of glory will occur. Defeated, conquered...true....but repentant, wise, and progressive. Ukrainians will then be celebrated worldwide for their maturity and commitment to peace, just like the West Germans after 1945.

EddieGrey1967USA -> Oskar Jaeger 27 Jan 2015 18:02

You are wrong. The rebel army is large and strong, particularly since so many Donbass men are now enlisting. Read yesterday's article in DB written by Kyiv Post writer/hack/propagandist James Miller and his colleague, Michael Weiss. They confirm this.

ID8787761 -> alpamysh 27 Jan 2015 15:12

Not true. US or UK solider caught on camera in Mariopul:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-01-25/out-my-face-please-why-are-us-soldiers-mariupol

The general is far from alone.

Actually you're not getting it old boy. The Ukrainian army is attacking its own people in the south east using indiscriminate shelling. The rebels have been defending for almost a year. And you plucked that 9000 number from thin air. Without tangible evidence your statement of 9000 people is meaningless.

EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 15:11

What surprises me especially is that Western news suppresses information about the severity of Ukrainian military defeats. The Western media has been doing this from the very beginning.

For example, in Crimea last March, 13,000 Ukrainian troops defected to the Russians immediately. That is out of a total of 25,000 Ukrainian soldiers stationed in Crimea at the time. Only a few Western media sources reported the shocking truth about these Ukrainian defections.

The reality is that most Ukrainians are not motivated to fight for Kiev. The Ukrainian people want peace. Only the Galician ideologically driven hard cores are willing to do combat, and their morale is falling fast because of their endless defeats.

At this point in time, I would imagine that the Galician troops must feel overawed and frightened at the prospect of doing combat with the pro-Russian rebels. Does the Ukrainian military even have medical psychiatric support to treat the combat trauma suffered by these troops?

What will happen after the war, when these defeated and traumatized soldiers -- many suffering from combat induced psychosis -- return home to Galicia? It's upsetting to realize the things that might happen.

But Kiev started this war....the Donbass people didn't start it.

EddieGrey1967USA 27 Jan 2015 15:05

Ukraine is facing total disaster now, kind of like a sinking ship. It's economy is destroyed, and it is losing a war so badly that all of Ukraine may eventually be conquered by the rebels.

Ukrainian military casualties are roughly 3,500 killed in action, and another 9,000 wounded. That is shocking. Kiev is trying to hide the magnitude of the disaster from its own people, but Ukrainian citizens are becoming aware of the horrible battle losses. Entire villages in Ukraine are reportedly ignoring Kiev's draft notices.

For historicians, social scientists, and economists, Ukraine is a classic case of a nation in defeat. The experts are observing Ukraine closely as it disintegrates.

All of this would have been avoided if only the Euromaidan government consisted of reasonable people.

[Jan 28, 2015] Doubt everything – Ukrainian students warning to Russian counterparts

Guardian reprints RFE aka Radio F*ck Europe. Well done Guardian. Saves money. From comments: "Rubbish. The most dangerous squirrel-brains are perched at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the State Dept. building not far away. It was they who inflamed the Kiev putsch and now may be wondering if the Pandora's box they opened is tough to control."
Notable quotes:
"... as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space ..."
Jan 28, 2015 | The Guardian

axiomparadigm -> MrBepec 28 Jan 2015 19:59

A pity I had to ask a Russian speaking friend to tell me the ist of it and he said there are cries for Bandeira... So it is a right wing nazi supporting rally.

Walter Potocki 28 Jan 2015 19:47

Take a cooky from Nuland and march to eastern front, empire will give you a postmortem medal.

Sehome -> alpamysh 28 Jan 2015 19:42

Rubbish. The most dangerous squirrel-brains are perchjed at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue and at the State Dept. building not far away. It was they who inflamed the Kiev putsch and now may be wondering if the Pandora's box they opened is tough to control.

yataki -> yataki 28 Jan 2015 19:30

...and they are saying that Yanukovich was a 'dictator'. Oh, excuse me, no matter how corrupted he was, he was a democratically elected president legally recognized by the international community. Even Vic Nuland admitted that. You people could have voted him out of the office, but you preferred an armed coup. You can disagree with me, but to me and many people around the world, it was clearly a violent coup led by the far-right. There was nothing heroic about it.

yataki 28 Jan 2015 19:17

"Check what you hear, doubt what you see."
I suggest these bright young people should first check what they hear from their own government, and seriously doubt what they see. One should never stop checking and doubting his/her own government. There is nothing wrong about that.
Would be interested to see Russian students' answer to that sort of cheap propaganda.

BunglyPete 28 Jan 2015 18:26

If and when the truth behind this gets out the fallout could be massive.

US, EU and many top western officials on board, an entirely complicit media, and we are talking about actual nazis actually killing civilians on the doorstep of actual Europe, and looking at war with Russia.

If if it gets enough attention this could cause a big impact across the globe. Interesting times.

centerline 28 Jan 2015 18:23

The video goes on to counter claims from Russian-state media that the Euromaidan protests in Kiev were a US funded coup.

Full Spectrum Dominance. Part of the US military doctrine.

Full spectrum dominance includes the physical battlespace; air, surface and sub-surface as well as the electromagnetic spectrum and information space. Control implies that freedom of opposition force assets to exploit the battlespace is wholly constrained.

https://www.princeton.edu/~achaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Full-spectrum_dominance.html

unended 28 Jan 2015 18:18

From the article:

It also accuses pro-Russian separatists of forcing many in Crimea "at gunpoint" to vote in favour of joining Russia.

From the Pew Research Center:

Crimean residents are almost universally positive toward Russia. At least nine-in-ten have confidence in Putin (93%) and say Russia is playing a positive role in Crimea (92%). Confidence in Obama is almost negligible at 4%, and just 2% think the U.S. is having a good influence on the way things are going on the Crimean peninsula. . . .

For their part, Crimeans seem content with their annexation by Russia. Overwhelming majorities say the March 16th referendum was free and fair (91%) and that the government in Kyiv ought to recognize the results of the vote (88%).p> http://www.pewglobal.org/2014/05/08/despite-concerns-about-governance-ukrainians-want-to-remain-one-country/

I wonder what would make these western Ukrainian students think that about Crimea? Could it have something to do with having been subjected to "rampant propaganda"?

Manolo Torres 28 Jan 2015 17:57

And from where did this students get this idea? Perhaps From their own ministry of truth?

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/dec/19/-sp-ukraine-new-ministry-truth-undermines-battle-for-democracy

Was it a US initiative?

Ukraine freedom support act.
Expanded Broadcasting in Former Soviet Republics:
Mandates the Chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors to submit a plan and cost estimate to increase Russian-language broadcasting into countries of the former Soviet Union funded by the United States in order to counter Russian propaganda

Is it perhaps just another youtube video operation, produced by neoconservatives in the NED and the US State department?, in the style of the "I am an Ukrainian?" Perhaps it was made by the same RFE/RL, whose origins we all know?

I wonder if this students would be as "receptive" as this citizens in Kiev, when a woman from Luhansk was trying to tell them about her experience with airstrikes on June the 2nd.

Judge by yourselves, it seems to me that the Ukrainian students should be addressing themselves.

jonsid 28 Jan 2015 17:46

And the smearing starts. First shot by Radio Fuck Europe.

New Greek Government Has Deep, Long-Standing Ties With Russian Eurasianist Dugin

A five year old could write the script....

http://www.rferl.org/content/greek-syriza-deep-ties-russian-eurasianist-dugin/26818523.html

1waldo1 28 Jan 2015 17:30

And these very attractive and innocent-looking students did this all on their own. Not a word of encouragement from the new Ministry of Propaganda or whatever it's called in Kiev.
And how did the video reach the Guardian so quickly?

[Jan 24, 2015] A typical pattern of behaviour of western MSM in Ukraine civil war coverage

Looks like cold War Ii started and propaganda is in full swing. Propaganda is generally an appeal to emotion, not intellect. There are four conditions for a message to be considered propaganda. Propaganda involves the intention to persuade and deceive. Propaganda is sent on behalf of a state, organization, or cause. It is distributed to a significant group of people. Finally, propaganda is a struggle for mind of people (as the term brainwashing implies).
Notable quotes:
"... The MSM finds the shelling of civilians newsworthy only when it can be blamed on the rebels. ..."
Jan 24, 2015 | marknesop.wordpress.com

karl1haushofer , January 24, 2015 at 7:34 am

Western MSM is having a field day over the Mariupol GRAD attack that killed civilians and was supposedly done by the rebels. The MSM finds the shelling of civilians newsworthy only when it can be blamed on the rebels.

Finnish MSM is in a full propaganda swing. They are ignoring the shelling in Gorlovka that has killed many civilians but are reporting the Mariupol shelling with big headlines. And they are once again censoring the user comments with a heavy hand that try to point of the media hypocrisy.

[Jan 22, 2015] Donetsk trolleybus explosion blows Ukraine peace negotiations apart by Shaun Walker

Notable quotes:
"... Shaun, maybe you can explain why a few days ago the Graun/Observer printed nonsensical stories about the Ukrainian army's victory at the S.S. Prokofiev airport? ..."
"... You never wondered why there are 300 articles on US/UK mainstream articles, *explicitly* targeted to and titled after Putin, did you? ..."
The Guardian

CityCalledNain 22 Jan 2015 17:33

Shaun, maybe you can explain why a few days ago the Graun/Observer printed nonsensical stories about the Ukrainian army's victory at the S.S. Prokofiev airport?

After the fiasco of the Graun/BBC trumpeting Ukrainian's supposed victory just before they were crushed at Ilovaisk you should have learned your lesson.

But, once again you have made yourselves look like idiots, and once again Russian and Novorossiyan news sources have been proved to be accurate


Vermithrax -> ShermanPotter 23 Jan 2015 07:38

In my youth the USSR stood at the West German border with a 13-1 tank superiority. Then they were a threat. Now they are hundreds of miles further east with a fraction of the forces at their disposal. They are being used as a convenient bogeyman for policies that do not benefit Europe one jot. They have all the oil and gas Europe needs without the fundamentalist religion. In many ways now they are a natural ally, especially as the alternative is that China will benefit from it.

I suppose there will always be some Grima Wormtongue's who think being America's fawning client state is a good idea.

unclesmurf ijustwant2say 22 Jan 2015 17:32

Putin, is being attacked by the same mechanism that has been attacking governments around the globe for the last seventy years. The one described here:

http://williamblum.org/books/americas-deadliest-export

And of course the do not care *at all* about Putin. What they care about, is that how they may get their hands on the huge natural resources of the vast slab of the planet called Russia. You see, Putin, the bad guy, is keeping everything PUBLIC, with the earnings of everything, oil, gas, weapons, going to the Russian state and nor to the bank accounts of very few, insanely rich individuals.

But I assume you are ok with the UK privatizing British Aerospace, and having now to pay a huge surcharge to the shareholders of QinetiQ. Simply to buy the *same* weapons, designed by the *same* engineers and built by the *same* technicians. But No: "We HAVE to privatize it".

I also assume you are ok with the trains here in the UK being a complete ripoff, because they are of course private, even if it is the government who pays for the track and even if it they private rail companies are subsidized (as if the huge ticket prices were not sufficient) by the Government, to the tune of BILLIONS annually.

But No: "We have to privatize it".

You never wondered why there are 300 articles on US/UK mainstream articles, *explicitly* targeted to and titled after Putin, did you?

thingreen -> edwardrice 22 Jan 2015 17:28

Interesting, though that working 'class' people make up bulk of soldiers is not exactly a startling revelation in any war - if you looked at the casualty lists for our anti-terrorist operations against the freedom fighters of PIRA you'd see a similar make up of people who I suspect many here would consider as dupes and economic conscripts.

Simon311 Damocles59 23 Jan 2015 07:31

How are they "so-called" rebels?

It is clear these areas are beyond Kiev' s control and it is time to acknowledge this.

And If Abkhazia and Ossetia are "basket cases" why are they not asking to join the wonderful nation of Georgia?

Simon311 Robert Looren de Jong 23 Jan 2015 07:29

Whatever it is clear that the people in these regions are not going to be reconciled to the Kiev Government.

Time to recognise this and end the fighting.

wombat123 -> Custodis 23 Jan 2015 07:26

The people labeled "rebels" started off by refusing to recognize the leaders of the coup as a lawful government, which in fact, they were not under the Ukrainian constitution. These people included most of the police officers in eastern Ukraine. The killing started when the supporters of the coup came east and attacked those refusing to accept the coup so the fighting did not start with a rebellion as the term is normally understood.

It is perverse to label those who oppose the violent overthrow of lawful authority as "rebels". It was clear that most people in the east thought the coup was a criminal act and its leaders were not the lawful government. It is quite clear that it was the supporters of the coup who are the aggressors and they came east and attacked people who did not accept the coup as lawful.

Some of the first combat started when supporters of the coup started attacking police in the east. Were the police officers "rebels" for opposing the armed overthrow of their country's constitutional order and elected government? "Rebel" does not seem like an honest term for someone in that situation.

DCarter -> Gaz0007 23 Jan 2015 07:06

The USSR collapsed largely because it's people, particularly in the non-Russian republics, desired the same rights and freedoms as people in Western Europe and North America...all of whom managed to maintain those freedoms throughout the Cold War by forming a military alliance called NATO.

In retrospect though those freedoms were illusory, or at best transient, and all we did was to trade domination by a party apparatus for domination by a corporate oligarchy. And it is in those corporate interests that NATO now acts, not in the interests of the people if Eastern Europe or Western Europe or even North America.

Solongmariane -> Spiffey 23 Jan 2015 07:01

DNR is getting experienced with the ceasefires from KIEV. It's just asking a time-out to recuoerate losses, to send re-inforcements, and to get new weapons. It was so at 6 sept, and 19 dec. Not again, such time out.

SHappens 23 Jan 2015 06:42

The main pro-Russian rebel leader in eastern Ukraine says his troops are on the offensive and he does not want truce talks with Kiev anymore.

At lest this has he merit to be clear. No more hypocrisy as Kiev never intended to respect any ceasefire but used this time to regroup.

On the other hands, when you read this below, the dice are loaded and the US goals is war against Russia whatever on the ground. This is a dialogue of the deaf.

---

"This tactic of avoiding questions about what the Ukrainian government is doing by pointing to Russia is becoming increasingly obvious," the journalist said.

Here is an excerpt from the briefing:

Gayane Chichakyan: Do the actions of the Ukrainian government comply with the Minsk agreement?

Jen Psaki: In general Russia has illegally – and Russian-backed separatists have illegally – come into Ukraine, including Donetsk. Ukraine has a responsibility and an absolute right to defend itself. We certainly expect both sides to abide by the Minsk agreements. We have not seen that happen, we've seen a lot of talk, not a lot of backup from the Russian side.

GC: I am specifically asking about the actions of the Ukrainian government. Can you give a more definitive answer, whether or not they comply with the Minsk agreements?

JP: You are not talking about a specific incident, I think I'll leave it at what I said.

GC: With the Minsk agreement, do they comply? You pass a judgment that Russia is not complying with the agreement, can you assess whether Ukraine is complying?

JP: I listed a range of specific ways Russia is not complying.

GC: Under the agreement sides must avoid deploying and using heavy artillery. Isn't it what the Ukrainian government is doing right now?

JP: First of all, let's start again with the fact that Russia has illegally intervened in Ukraine and come into a country that was a sovereign country. So I am not sure that you are proposing that a sovereign country doesn't have the right to defend themselves.

GC:I am asking specifically about the actions of the Ukrainian government, you are veering off.

JP: I think we are going to leave it at that.

[Jan 20, 2015] The Guardian View of war in Ukraine maintain the pressure on Russia

Notable quotes:
"... DNR reports can't be taken at face value, though. They're biased. To me, DNR reports are only good if they are backed up by AP or Reuters info, or if they're associated by twitter announcements from people near the battle zone who are known not to be trolls (i.e., people who are reasonably objective). ..."
"... "The artillery and aviation overwhelm the city with their shells, and then we're going to clean-up operation, it is normal procedure in this war." ..."
Jan 20, 2015 | The Guardian

EdwardGreen1968 -> IngAzazello 20 Jan 2015 19:04

Putin wants Donbass to remain in Ukraine as a self-governing part of the country. Obviously he's hoping to maximize Russian influence in Ukraine by operating through the Donbass's future leaders. For Putin, such an arrangement will work like a Trojan Horse strategy.

For the obvious reasons, Kiev isn't happy with Putin's aims. That's understandable. What's reprehensible about Kiev, however, is that it won't simply cut Donbass loose and end the war. After all, we're talking about millions of people in east Ukraine who don't want to be part of Ukraine anymore. Kiev has no good reason for fighting over this.

Kiev could solve two problems at once by allowing Ukraine to divided. Think about it.

EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015 18:57

That could very well happen, but Poroshenko will be replaced by Yatsenyuk and the pro-war party. Those ultranationalists and far rightists are the ones pressuring Poroshenko to somehow "win" the war. Poroshenko's position becomes more and more insecure every time the Ukrainian army's inferiority in combat is demonstrated.

The only light at the end of the tunnel here, I think, is that the pro-war party is drawing most of its support from the far western provinces of Ukraine. That's the only region that's really hyped up for war. I don't think the rest of Ukraine is really willing to tolerate the agony of ongoing combat. So, when the far western provinces burn out on war, politicians will emerge in Kiev who are ready for peace. But how long will it take to get to that point?

EdwardGreen1968 wombat123 20 Jan 2015 18:45

Wombat: I agree with you completely. My greatest fear is that, because of domestic political weakness, Poroshenko won't bite the bullet and make peace.

From there, Western foreign policy hawks will keep enabling Kiev to go back into battle -- to get destroyed again -- for no good reason.

EugeneGur -> sasha19 20 Jan 2015 18:38

Cargo 200 reports are all false?

They likely are. Some have been proven to be false. Most are repetitions of the same statements from the same sources. Some of these reports claim that there are as many as 15,000 Russian soldiers fighting in Donbass. Have you ever asked yourself a question how come that not a single one has ever been killed or captured to be shown to the world to be positively identified as an active member of the Russian army? All we have is some unlabeled graves that could belong to anybody, some unknown people making claims that cannot be verified. Everything I've seen coming from Donbass shows that there are no Russian soldiers there only volunteers, but that nobody denies.

Colin Robinson 20 Jan 2015 18:34

Use of SS insignia by the Azov Battalion is blatant enough to have been noticed by the BBC. They are nazis, self-proclaimed... but after all (some say) they're just one little section of a broader nationalist movement... If the majority of Kiev's enforcers do not wear such blatant fascist gear, why worry?

Thing is, fascists have historically used a range of symbols, not all of German origin. The National Front in Britain is a militant, ultra-nationalist movement with a history of marching behind the Union Jack... While SS logos are a serious provocation in themselves, what people wear is in the end less important that what they do.

The nationalistic movement currently dominant in Kiev has a record of lethal violence - the riot police set alight by petrol bombs in Maidan, the mass lynching in Odessa on May 2, the shooting of civilians from armoured vehicles in Mariupol on May 9... Maybe behaviour like this should have been enough to set alarm bells ringing around the world, with or without SS insignia?

wombat123 20 Jan 2015 18:13

Putin already chose peace. It is the leaders of the coup and their NATO backers who chose violence and civil war instead of elections. As a consequence, there is no government that is legitimate under Ukraine's constitution or in the eyes of all regions of the country.

Just as it was the NATO-backed leaders of the coup that overthrew the elected government through violence and civil war, it is they who are massively violating the ceasefire agreement with large scale shelling of civilians in eastern cities. They would not have done this without a green light and support from NATO. NATO is not just supporting a renewal of the civil war but serious war crimes as well.

MaxBoson -> moncur 20 Jan 2015 17:42

At the time the exodus took place, TV was full of pictures of highways filled with Serbs in endless ten-wide columns fleeing Croatia. Some say they left out of fear, some that they were driven out; regardless of the details, it boils down to an expulsion. In any event, it is beyond dispute that the Serbs left and that there were around 300,000 of them. This event has been called the largest ethnic-cleansing of the entire Balkan tragedy.

EugeneGur -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015 17:28

We all wish for that but I am not sure it's realistic. At least, to stop the destruction of the cities would be great. Gorlovka is devastated and Donetsk is in a bad shape.

The info is from

http://rusvesna.su/

They've proven to be reasonably reliable before.


Manolo Torres -> sasha19 20 Jan 2015 17:19

Can you quote those articles, because other more compelling evidence like Russian prisoners of war or Russian death soldiers (remember when we were told that the Ukranians obliterated all those tanks?) in Ukraine simply doesn´t exist, and it is indeed very difficult to believe that there has been none when there are supposed to be thousands of official Russian forces deployed.

At the same time the Russian army is apparently a very though place to be, in 2000 more than 1000 Russian soldiers died as "non combatants" , in 2007 around 450. I have my doubts that, for example, the people that run the comittee of mothers of Russian soldiers, and associations of that sort, that received huge amounts of money from US agencies, are not doing some dirty work convincing the families that their sons were indeed killed in Ukraine.

A link to Khodorkovsky´s foundation, compiling a list from a dubious facebook group, will not do.

Wu Bravo -> MarcelFromage 20 Jan 2015 17:12

I read from different sources, because I think herewith I might have a more objective view, description from different perspectives and angles. And even by doing this I never state, I have obtained the only and the very truth. Of course not. Education is the answer, my dear friend. If you do a research, it is obligatory to look at different sources, even though you might disagree with them. So do I, my dear, friend. I do not bother myself, I educate myself and I am trying to be objective, thus relying on FACTS and not on bullshit and not fact-based comments. I disagree with this article but I did not told that my opinion is the only possible truth. However, in comparison to you, my remarks were fact based and to the point, in your case your remarks may be treated as personnel but not fact-based and not to the point. like baby: "may be you are right, but your haircut is awful :). Sorry my friend, if I have offended you by this, it was never my intention, and I will be ready to discuss this issues with you if you provide some facts, I have not noticed

unended 20 Jan 2015 17:11

Indeed, it takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Russian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that Russia's armed forces have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk, and making sure Ukraine's sovereignty over its internationally recognised territory is not restored.

Am I reading the Wall Street Journal opinion page?

Here's one to try on

It takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Guardian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that the US and EU have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel fascists of Lviv, and making sure Ukraine's democracy is not restored.

Manolo Torres -> MarcelFromage, 20 Jan 2015
Of course, I always do. Here you have it, but next time try doing your own research.

Kiev MOHYLA school of journalism, partners:

Rinat Akhmetov Foundation for Development of Ukraine and the National University of Kyiv-Mohyla Academy are pleased to announce the launch of the 2nd year of the Digital Media for Universities Project.

If you go all the way down to that webpage you find:

© 2007 Kyiv-Mohyla School of Journalism
Design: Yuri Panin. Programming: Bogdan Tokovenko. Powered by ExpressionEngine.
The web site is created with an assistance from the U.S. Department of State through the Educational Partnership Program.

BBC: Ukrainian tycoon Rinat Akhmetov confronts rebellion

Separatist leaders have threatened to "nationalise" Mr Akhmetov's assets.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rinat_Akhmetov

As of April 2014, he was listed as the 101st richest man in the world with an estimated net worth of US 11.6 billion.[5] T here have been claims Akhmetov has been involved in organized crime.

EdwardGreen1968 -> EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015
There is a real possibility of encircling the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian army unless they withdraw.

Wow! That is dramatic. Where are you getting this info? Let's hope it's true.

The idea is to push the Ukrainian army as far away from the main cities as possible, so they wouldn't be able to fire at them even from far range artillery.

To be honest, it would be much better for everyone if the rebels execute a complete encirclement of the Ukrainian army. If that's accomplished, Kiev will not be able to play games any longer with fake peace talks, lobbing shells at Donetsk civilians, etc.

Something decisive like Stalingrad or Dien Bin Phu. That's the kind of victory that will finally end this war.

EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015 16:48

The latest - the rebels are gaining pretty well along the entire front. In LPR, the took blockpost 31 and attacking blockpost 29. There is a real possibility of encircling the 24th brigade of the Ukrainian army unless they withdraw. In DPR, rebels took Peski near airpost. Peski, together with Avdeevka, were the towns from which the Ukrainian army fired at Donetsk during the entire period of so called "cease-fire". The idea is to push the Ukrainian army as far away from the main cities as possible, so they wouldn't be able to fire at them even from far range artillery.

Elena Hodgson -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015

Edward, people are dying! The sooner this war ends, the less civilians are killed and maimed! Yats with his war speeches is a Rabid Rabbit!

EdwardGreen1968 -> ID6741142 20 Jan 2015

A final aside/ note: If, though it will not, the Kievan forces did 'win' the war on the ground what do you think will happen to the people who are caught up in this? Do you think that having been labelled 'terrorists' they will be allowed to sleep easy when the guns stop? What will happen to the women as the invaders arrive? Wake up or this does not have a happy ending!

That's the reality that Western media reporters and editors are not allowed to talk about. They'll lose their jobs if they do.

Either way, that horrifying outcome you describe will only happen if Moscow caves in under economic pressure. Kiev can't get to that position militarily. Based on battlefield news, Kiev is destined to lose every single battle, and very badly at that.

EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015 16:28

What I meant is that the Ukrainian army is being forced back in combat, but that it's probably succeeding in making an organized retreat. That means that the Ukrainians take casualties, lose ground, but reestablish defensive lines slightly to the west. That is an indecisive victory for the pro-Russian rebels.

On the other hand, if there were reports that the Ukrainian lines were broken, and that their units were getting encircled (put in kettles) -- just like at Ilovaisk -- then it would be a decisive victory for the rebels.

It's hard to tell what's really happening based on the reports. The good thing about a decisive outcome -- if it ever happens -- is that it may lead directly to peace (which is what I really want to see).

EdwardGreen1968 -> Kolobok07 20 Jan 2015

DNR reports can't be taken at face value, though. They're biased. To me, DNR reports are only good if they are backed up by AP or Reuters info, or if they're associated by twitter announcements from people near the battle zone who are known not to be trolls (i.e., people who are reasonably objective).

Either way, the proliferation of data during these past few hours suggests the Ukrainians are being backed down at multiple points on the front.

ID6741142 20 Jan 2015 16:19

What saddens me in reading so many threads is the real victims of this conflict, the innocent citizens of East Ukraine are, with the odd exception, being ignored. Too many of you seem to want to score political points, trading 'fact's' that none of you will even give time for consideration since they are obviously propaganda, whichever 'side' you support. It is pointless.

Yet people are dying and a lot more will unless the focus changes, not just on here but in the political world towards actually caring about the people.

A couple of you deserve commendation as you have recognised this. Also you recognised that BOTH sides have played games.

Russia does have a regime that has extreme views on many issues. It is willing to exert it power to stop the growth of western influence on its doorstep. And it does have a strong, biased propaganda machine - I know I have Russian friends living in Russia.

However the West did play a hand in the change of Gov't. It knew that there were strong far-right groups involved in that overthrow & it knows they are exerting a higher level of influence than they should in the current conflict. The West does not have a good track record of backing the 'right' groups.

Meanwhile, people who did not want a war, die in their homes.

There is hypocrisy on BOTH sides.

When it is over there will almost certainly be war crimes that will come to light on both sides.
Is that why the media is not as high a presence as might be expected?

You rant about the shelling as if that is the only weapon used against the citizens of the Eastern Ukraine. What about the stopping of aid lorries from the west by the pro-Kiev units - under the control of RW-nationalist leaders?

Hearts & Minds - that is what wins all civil conflicts, and more importantly underpins any chance to repair the serious damage done to 'trust'. The people in the East will believe Russia more because it is not shooting at them AND more importantly it's aid is getting through. (Yes I know it convoys also have weapons etc hidden but we play those 'games too when it suits.) The West is slow to learn this lesson. It has failed time and again in its middle eastern, conflicts to get this right, it thinks guns not grain, missile not milk & water, even though these cost far less to provide.

The ONLY solution, whatever anyone may say, is, as already stated, for Ukraine to become, for the foreseeable future, a totally neutral state in which the rights of all citizens/cultures are protected (not just Russian & other ethnic minorities but also cultural sub groups (i.e. LGBT)).

This may not be what the ordinary Ukrainians want.Not the oligarchs who drove the Kiev changes because they would make more money in the EU!, who rule in this corrupt country (yes corrupt that has been part of he EU's demands to sort it out), What the people really want is not as clear as some might think , and do they actually have the facts to work it out? If we can't be sure about the value of being in the EU in GB, with our so called 'open/ democratic' media what chance do the ordinary Ukrainians have?

But if getting the country working and people cared for is the true aim of all 'outside influential states' then that 'sacrifice' is worth it to bring peace, and the chance to build a balanced state and economy. It will NEED both Russian and EU/USA support otherwise it will be almost impossible to achieve especially with the war damage to be sorted!

But while the politicians behave like too many of you on here, with partisan fervour, nationalistic pride etc and blinkered bar room vision, then the people who live in this potentially beautiful and culturally rich nation will continue to die.

Come on Guardian stop focusing on the politics - we have heard it all before & it is not changing anybody's opinion. Be brave. Lead the field and get the world to know just what price is being paid by the old and young, and agitate for the peace that must happen now, before a humanitarian disaster overtakes it all, and not when nationalistic pride allows it to.

A final aside/ note: If, though it will not, the Kievan forces did 'win' the war on the ground what do you think will happen to the people who are caught up in this? Do you think that having been labelled 'terrorists' they will be allowed to sleep easy when the guns stop? What will happen to the women as the invaders arrive? Wake up or this does not have a happy ending!

JezNorth noshtgchq 20 Jan 2015 16:18

Could be dangerous , these loonies could start another masive false flag - Maidan snipers , MH-17 , buss etc .

Do you really think this helps your cause or just makes you come off as an crass insta-mod.

PeraIlic -> Expats10 20 Jan 2015 16:17

To fight from civilian areas when you have a choice is cowardice.

What kind of choice are you talking about when the Ukrainian army was practically came to the suburbs of Lugansk and Donetsk. Almost until yesterday, they were bombing the cities from their airports, is not it?

Ukrainian commander of the attack on Ilovaisk testified before the cameras, "The artillery and aviation overwhelm the city with their shells, and then we're going to clean-up operation, it is normal procedure in this war."

If you do not believe me, I can very easily find the URL address of the video, just for you.


Kolobok07 -> EdwardGreen1968 20 Jan 2015 16:17

No, the Ukrainian army has resisted ...

But there are reports of the capture of 39 and 41 checkpoints and attack extended to other positions.
Pesky and Avdeyevka not completely stripped from the Ukrainian military.


EugeneGur 20 Jan 2015 16:15

Indeed, it takes a twisted conspiratorial mindset, or brainwashing by Russian propaganda, to even attempt to deny that Russia's armed forces have been deeply engaged in backing the rebel separatists of Donetsk and Luhansk

I confess I have that twisted conspiratorial mindset - I do not for a second believe that Russian army is involved in the Donbass fighting. Not only not a shed of evidence has ever been produced, not a single soldiers captured (apart from those unfortunate 10 soldiers that wandered into Ukraine and did not fire a single shot) or a body shown, nothing.
I do not doubt that Russia supports Donbass, and it should. These are our people that refuse to recognized an illegal "government" imposed on them by foreign powers as a result of a coup, and they appealed to Russia for help. Why shouldn't Russia help? Because the West says so? Furthermore, these people came under attack by the Kiev junta and are fighting for their freedom and their lives. The only fault I can find with the Russian government's behavior is that it doesn't do enough. Nevertheless, they are winning. Junta miscalculated yet again, and the only thing it is capable of is killing civilians.

graduated reduction in sanctions in return for Russian concessions and cooperation in Ukraine and elsewhere has been set aside

Why should Russia give concessions in Ukraine and cooperate in killing our people in Donbass? Why should Russia cooperate in supporting what it considers to be a government based on nazi ideology in Ukraine? Give me one good reason.

For that matter, why should Europe do that? Feeling nostalgic about nazism?

[Jan 19, 2015] They were never there: Russia's silence for families of troops killed in Ukraine by Alec Luhn

From comments: "With all the respect for the dead and their families, if this is the number of Russian soldiers dead, damn good they are, I take my hat, what an army, almost invisible and extremely professional. "
The Guardian

freedomcry iangio 19 Jan 2015 19:42

I still don't see what Putin is getting out of his Novrossya rampage.

Bingo. He's getting nothing, and that's why he's so dovish and reluctant to commit. It's just one of those instances where he can't ignore the fact that he's got a people to answer to. We all want a free Novorossia and a Crimea that's reunited with the rest of us and forever safe from Ukrainian petty imperialism.

We don't need Putin or the television to tell us that. On the contrary, it's because of the Russian people that Putin, however hard he might try to be his usual neither-here-nor-there self, can't afford to not have a bottom line in this.

Tom20000 Eye Spy 19 Jan 2015 19:45

I don't think you understand what free speech is. The guardian is a private organisation with no obligation to show all comments.

Georgethedog 19 Jan 2015 19:52

"During a meeting with the president, Krivenko even handed Putin a list of about 100 soldiers killed in eastern Ukraine"

With all the respect for the dead and their families, if this is the number of Russian soldiers dead, damn good they are, I take my hat, what an army, almost invisible and extremely professional.

Good Luck Kiev Junta!

Vignola1964 -> Tom20000 19 Jan 2015 19:31

There is much I do not know about this and other conflicts taking place around the world at the moment, but we can all feel the sinister hands behind the scenes, driving ordinary people into hostilities. There are no innocents anywhere.

In my opinion, the 1% profit from the other 1% constantly at conflict at any one time. The more the merrier as far as they are concerned. For me this is evil.

kowalli -> Tom20000 19 Jan 2015 19:16

It must be embarrassing for the general public.

??? general public just think why west can't give any real proof, but give us bunch of lies. You really think that this 7 guys can do anything?
You didn't even tell us results of mh17 Boeing or why ukrainians are shelling civilians like USA in Iraq.
West just copypasting what USA tell them and think that they are exceptional people.

RicardoFloresMagon -> vr13vr 19 Jan 2015 19:14

Whether the claims have any merit or not, just the existence of all those groups who file petitions and challenge authorities suggests there is much more democracy in Russia than it is in the US. I can't even imagine similar organizations in the US criticizing and pressuring Obama's administration or questioning military commanders whether the death of their sons in Iraq was justified.

InternationalANSWER
United for Peace and Justice
Iraq Veterans Against the War
Code Pink
Not in Our Name
GI Rights Network
and a few more...
... not to mention millions protested the war before it even started in every major city.

JanZamoyski -> iangio 19 Jan 2015 19:11

A nice leverage to control an escaped satellite state. Either by constant war which will bleed Ukraine and damage it chances of joining EU / NATO or by planting an autonomous, hostile region which MPs are going to paralyse the Ukrainian parliament. Like they need more fist fights...

Christine Cannon -> Alexander Sokolov 19 Jan 2015 19:11

So why are these young boys killing their neighbors. what is in it for them. Death

psygone -> Vignola1964 19 Jan 2015 19:10

"UK observers" is a little bit different than "deployments of HM Special Forces"

Popeyes 19 Jan 2015 19:04

This is nothing more than a proxy war between the West and Russia, and as Russia supports and arms Donbass, Washington has been supplying Kiev with weapons including stingers, anti-tank missiles, anti-armor weapons and other heavy weapons, as are many NATO countries.

Poroschenko has just signed a decree that mobilizes up to 50,000 "healthy men and women" aged 25 to 60 to the frontlines in Eastern Ukraine... just how does that sit with the E.U? The U.S wanted a full scale war when this all started last year and it seems nothing has changed.

JanZamoyski -> cheburawka 19 Jan 2015 19:03

The same silly argument yet again. Kremlin isn't interested in occupying Ukraine. Putin is too smart for that.

This isn't Chechnya with its 1 million population, but a much bigger country with 45 million population. Despite some sympathetic population, many Ukrainians would react with hostilities to such occupation. This would mean long bloody and expensive conflict Putin doesn't want to pay for.

Chechnya despite it size was hell for Russia and Putin who was PM during second Chechnyy war realises Ukrainian occupation would be the end of him.

In the end in Chechnya Putin found some locals to fight his war for him and that's what happened to some extent in Crimea and Donbass.
The overblown issue of ethnic Russian population being oppressed was a joke, but with some external military help it doesn't matter now.
Thanks to 5000+ dead in this conflict is fuelling itself and all Putin has to do is feed the flame with equipment, ammo and some "volunteers" if necessary.

FFS this "war" has been on for seven months now. Where do you think the rebels are getting their money, ammo and vehicles from ? From babushkas donations and not existing pensions ?

This region needs regular humanitarian food conveys but somehow has never ending supply of military vehicles and ammo. Stop trolling or open your eyes.

Anette Mor 19 Jan 2015 19:03

260 russian nationals secretly killed in east ukraine? Out of 5000? Totally looks like an invasion to me. There are at least half a million with Russian passports permanently living or visiting close family. Time to stop writing this useless none stories and start contributing to finishing that war.

cherryredguitar -> False_Face 19 Jan 2015 19:42

You haven't got a bit of evidence that there is some sort of American conspiracy here.

I've got a documented American admission that they funded these Russian Soldiers Mothers groups.
Now you may think that it's entirely a coincidence that the Russian Soldiers Mothers groups are saying exactly what the Americans who fund them would want them to say, but some of us are a tad more cynical, made that way by the lies of the warmongers.

tanyushka -> iangio 19 Jan 2015 19:39

Actually, Kiev was the first capital of Russia & the first royal dinasty, the Ruriks, lived there & then moved to Moscow... once in Moscow came the time of Romanovs, but much later...

do you suggest Russia should also claim Kiev since it was its first capital?

Putin has only said he's going to seek re-election, which is perfectly legal... why shouldn't he if he is a popular president? do you suggest Russia should change its Constitution to please its enemies?

about economic ruin... well, that was Boris the drunkard, the favourite of the West, & oligarchs like Khodorkovsky, Brezovsky, etc. Never Heard of the Wild, Wild East?

Putin brought order and control & the economy has been doing great so far... check your info instead of repeating lies...

onu labu -> MacCosham 19 Jan 2015 19:39

Note that hundred of military personnel die every year in Russia from various causes.

noted.

Vignola1964 -> psygone 19 Jan 2015 19:38

It might not occur to you but special forces operatives tend to know potential adversaries quite well. They know how they are trained, might even have worked alongside them. They are professional. Hague was not. He should never alluded to any official or unofficial UK presence in Maidan. The fact that he did was worse than poor form..it endangered those same observer's lives. Were Hague to utter the words that would deny you your rejoinder to my point, even you would question his sanity.

Eye Spy -> Robert Looren de Jong 19 Jan 2015 19:34

are you for real.

So the people of Crimea were all forced to go and vote at gunpoint and all these Russian guns at the heads of the voters were airbrushed out of the images that were beamed into our homes...well I never

that means that there were thousands of Crimeans who were shot and buried because they decided to take the bullet....oh my gosh

that means when the Americans roll in to liberate the captive Crimean' they are going to be met with flowers being thrown at their feet and they will discover mass graves....sounds like Iraq.

You are fanciful but I can be just as inventive.

Scipio1 19 Jan 2015 19:34

I see the Guardian has published a photograph of the latest friend of freedom and democracy - Yatsenuik - who was part of the corrupt Orange regime of Yuschenko and Tymoshenko, 2004-2010, and who also recently accused the USSR of invading Ukraine and Germany after 1941. Does this mean something I wonder?

As for Russian troops being in eastern Ukraine, well this seems probable. However, this is quite different from an invasion. An invasion would involve tens of thousands with air support and taking of towns and large areas of land.

Clearly this has not and will not happen. Principally because no-one wants to take on a basket case like Ukraine. Russian troops are probably present but this is to ensure that their kith and kin in the Don Bas are not ethnically cleansed and murdered by Russophobic neo-Nazi outfits like the Azov Battalion, the Aidar Battalion, Pravy Sector (whoops, I mean the National Guard of course) whose multiple atrocities in the East have been blacked out by the western media, even the trendy faux media like ....

It is difficult to work out exactly what the Kiev regime is trying to do in its anti-terror operation. Obviously not trying to win hearts and minds in the east by systematic bombardment and wiping out the infrastructure (very much in the style of the IDF - the hasbara doctrine). One would have thought that the massive despoliation of the most productive region of the Ukraine was against their national interests. It would have been a bit like the British during their long war against the IRA shelling Cross Maglen or West Belfast.

But of course there is no genuine government in Ukraine, this insofar as Yatsenuik, Poroshenko and Kolomoisky are simply carrying out the orders the US Ambassador in Kiev. The US simply wants to keep the pot boiling and making maximum chaos of Russia's western borders. Yes, the US will fight to every last Ukrainian.

Oh, and by the way there are plenty of foreign troops in West Ukraine, including Poles, US advisers, international fascist and neo-Nazi groups like the above mentioned Azov Battalion. And arms are also pouring in from NATO.

Did the EUSA-NATO juggernaut, in their relentless push eastwards, think they could prompt yet another colour revolution in a country that had democratically voted in Yanukovich who wanted to maintain a non-aligned status. Russian reaction was very predictable to what they considered to be a massive provocation, and yet regime change was pursued a l'outrance by the US and its vassal states in Europe. And of course the regime change in Ukraine was to be followed by regime change in Russia.

So who exactly are the aggressors here? Who is the genuine threat to world peace? Well of course it depends who you ask. But outside the Anglosphere the answer of the majority of the world's population is resounding. The great rogue state is .....

kowalli 19 Jan 2015 19:33

Western guys are funny - they keep talking about anything, but when they are asked about facts - they can give you anything except of more lies...

[Jan 15, 2015] The New Ukraine Is Run by Rogues, Sexpots, Warlords, Lunatics and Oligarchs by By Mikhail Klikushin

OK. First WashPost. Now Observer. So much for State Department propaganda efforts...
Jan 14, 2015 | observer.com

Prominent Ukrainian MP denounces Obama's weakness, calls him a 'shot-down pilot'

By Mikhail Klikushin | 01/14/15 8:05am

There were times in Ukraine's recent history when even the country's military brass were kneeling before the U.S. Literally. In June 2013, then-U.S. Ambassador to Ukraine John Tefft received the saber of the Ukrainian Cossack in the city of Kherson from a kneeling Ukrainian high-rank military official. Mr. Tefft nowadays is serving the country as an Ambassador to Russia where no such honors are even imaginable.

But that was then - a previous regime.

On the surface, today's Ukraine is much more favorably disposed toward everything Western and everything American because of the exciting wind of transformations that swept through the Ukrainian political landscape last year. Its political culture looks modern, attractive, refined and European. For example, at the end of last year a new law was passed that allowed former citizens of other countries to participate in Ukrainian politics and even the government, in case they denounce their former citizenships. The reason given was the fight with notorious Ukrainian corruption. Apparently, in a country of more than 40 million people, Prime Minister Arseny Yatsenyuk (called "Rabbit" by his citizens) couldn't find a dozen or so native-born yet not corrupt professionals for his government.

Now three former foreigners-ex-American Natalia Yaresko (Minister for Finance), ex-Lithuanian Aivaras Abromavičius (Minister For Economy and Trade) and ex-Georgian Alexander Kvitashvili (Minister for Public Health)-are firmly established in their new cabinets. They are just the beginning. They gave up their U.S. and European passports with only two benefits in return: a $200-a-month salary and the chance to build a prosperous new Ukraine.

In a strange twist of fate, the Ukrainian ministers during their meetings now have to speak hated Russian - former foreigners do not speak Ukrainian well enough and locals do not speak English at the level necessary for complicated discussions on how to save a Ukraine economy that is disappearing before their eyes.

The problems they are facing are overwhelming. The new minister for economy, Mr. Abromavičius, knows that the country is in fact bankrupt. "To expect that we are going to produce real as opposed to declarative incentive programs is unrealistic," he declared. In other words, the new Ukrainian budget is nothing but a piece of paper. But without this piece of paper there will be no new money from the European Bank and the IMF.

The first steps he has taken so far are controversial.

On January 5, the new minister for economy appointed former Estonian Jaanika Merilo - a young dark-haired beauty-as his advisor on foreign investments, improvement of business climate in Ukraine, coordination of international programs and so on. Directly after her appointment, the young lady put online not her resume or a program for Ukrainian financial stabilization but a series of candid shots that display her long legs, plump lips and prominent cleavage. In some shots, she places a knife to her lips a la Angelina Jolie and sits on the chair a la Sharon Stone.

Ms. Merilo, too, forfeited her European passport in the hope of a better future for her new Motherland.

By law, double citizenship is not permitted for a Ukrainian governmental official, but, as often happens in Ukraine, for some there is always another way around. The governor of Zaporozhe region, oligarch Igor Kolomoisky, for example, has three citizenships.

As exhilarating winds of change swept through the Ukrainian government, Western newspapers giddily reported the fact that after the last elections for the first time in decades there would be no Communists in the Ukrainian Parliament. But that means all possible organized opposition to the current president and prime minister is gone.

Instead, the new Rada has a big group of parliamentarians of very uncertain political loyalties and even dubious mental state-former warlords and street activists who distinguished themselves during street fights and tire burnings.

These government rookies are sometimes turning to strange ways of self-promotion, now within the walls of the Parliament.

One new face in the Rada-leader of the Right Sector ultra-nationalist party and former warlord Dmytro Yarosh-admitted in a January interview with Ukrainian TV that he caresses a real hand grenade in his pocket while inside the Rada. Because he is MP, the security personnel has no right to check his pockets. They just ask if he has anything dangerous on his person and he says no. The reason to have a hand grenade on his body is that there are too many enemies of Ukraine within the MP crowding him during the voting process. He is not afraid, of course. But when the time comes, he will use this grenade and with a bit of luck he will take a lot of them with him if he dies.

Ukrainian MPs Yuri Beryoza and Andrei Levus, also former warlords and members of radical parties, became notorious last December after publicly applauding the terrorist attack in the Russian city of Grozny-an attack in which 14 policemen were killed. "On our eastern borders our brothers are coming out from under Russia's power. It's normal. These are the allies of Ukraine," said Mr. Beryoza. This is the same fellow who had earlier promised that the Ukrainian army would soon take Moscow. Andrei Levus proposed Russia withdraw all of her "punishers" from the "People's Republic of Ichkeria" (i.e. Chechnya) immediately.

Another former warlord, former member of social-national party and today's Ukrainian MP Igor Mosiychuk said to the journalists that Ukraine, "being in the state of war, must stimulate the opening of the second front in the Caucuses, in Middle Asia" against Russia. In the scandalous video, which has been viewed 2.5 million times, he unloaded an assault rifle into the portrait of the Chechen leader Ramzan Kadyrov ranting, "Ramzan, you have sent your dogs, traitors into our land. We have been killing them here and we will come after you. We will come after you to Grozny. We will help our brothers to free Ichkeria from such dogs like you. Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the free Ichkeria!"

Despite this bravado, the personal security for all three MPs had to be increased-at high cost to the cash-starved country-after the Chechen leader promised to bring them to justice in Russia for incitement of terrorism.

[Jan 11, 2015] Ukraine's forgotten city destroyed by war by Oleg Orlov for Echo Moskvy

Notable quotes:
"... The East Ukrainians won't get any sympathy from Cameron or Merkel as none of their citizens are dying - only pieces on a chess board to them. ..."
Jan 07, 2014 | The Guardian

Mr. Russian, Jan 8, 2015 20:50

I see the Guardian rhetoric has changed, as well as rhetoric of our usual guests from NSA.
Does that mean that Ukrainian government would finally get a push to end the war?

PeraIlic -> psygone, 8 Jan 2015 15:35

That's right - Putin's 12 point cease fire plan makes the Russians 100 percent responsible for its success or failure.

What kind of twisted logic? One who has proposed a draft of the agreement, he is 100% responsible for its fulfillment, and not those who have signed it???

For the fulfillment of any agreement are obliged all its signatories, it is old rule, which is still in force, and always will be so. As a reminder, the protocol was signed in Minsk by:

Swiss diplomat and OSCE representative Heidi Tagliavini
Former president of Ukraine and Ukrainian representative Leonid Kuchma
Russian Ambassador to Ukraine and Russian representative Mikhail Zurabov
DPR and LPR leaders

Ralphinengland 9 Jan 2015 18:36

£2.13 million was given by the UK to ECHO (EU) & CERF (UN) - and who knows where THAT ended up. Considering eastern Ukraine had a population of approx 8 million, less people who fled, then £3.53 million for say 7 million people IF - I repeat IF - that money ever got anywhere near the Donbas, is FIFTY pence per person!!!

HollyOldDog -> Dunscore 9 Jan 2015 16:26

The East Ukrainians won't get any sympathy from Cameron or Merkel as none of their citizens are dying - only pieces on a chess board to them. They are a bloodless pair.

Anette Mor -> psygone 8 Jan 2015 11:59

You are joking. "Russian refusal or inability"? Donbas is still being bombed daily. All infrastructure destroyed several times over. Yet they got better electricity and gas supply than main Ukraine.

The war has to stop first for proper recovery to start. The war is on full blow. Help people to survive is the only reasonable expectation for now.

[Feb 09, 2014] Tensions between US and Russia hang over Sochi despite strong opening by Owen Gibson

Nice media poodle... Diligently barking at the object the owner pointed to...
8 February 2014 | The Guardian

Picking your way through Sochi's Olympic Park at night is like weaving through a giant car park in which a series of jaw-dropping spaceships have landed at random.

The brightly lit ice palaces themselves are stunning, inside and out, and the sporting facilities have been rightly praised by almost all the athletes. But, beyond them, there is little but concrete expanses, hastily planted grass verges and an incongruous funfair.

To bring the Winter Games to his favourite holiday resort at a cost of $51bn, Vladimir Putin has had to build not only a series of world-class sporting venues but an entire city. The scale of the construction is at once impressive and dizzily disconcerting.

Endless utilitarian apartment blocks and gigantic hotels sprawl seemingly at random in the so-called "coastal cluster". In the mountains, ersatz approximations of a Swiss ski resort have sprouted. Even if you accept the argument that the Games can be used as a catalyst for development, it is impossible not to wonder how they will be filled afterwards.

Lessons have been learned from previous Games, not least London 2012, in how to best frame the sporting action for maximum impact – not only for those watching on television but those attending in person.

At Saturday's snowboarding, staged in a stunning setting under brilliant sunshine to a booming dance music soundtrack and cheering crowds, it was even possible to feel the tingle of excitement in the cool mountain air.

Buried somewhere beneath the barrage of criticism of the huge cost of building the infrastructure to host these Games, the protests about Putin's anti-gay laws and security concerns, is a sporting event struggling to get out. It might even be fun.

Not all of the criticism has been fair and there is a lingering undercurrent of bitterness from the Russian organisers, who believe they are being unfairly targeted.

The Cold War may have been studiously avoided in an intelligent opening ceremony, but the simmering tension between the US and Russia is at the heart of a tug of war over how these Games are presented to the world. American networks in particular have dwelled on tales of unfinished media hotels and ramped-up security concerns.

By the same token, the Russian organisers have been needlessly defensive and slow to acknowledge genuine, and often comical, problems with accommodation and, more seriously, prickly when it comes to criticism of their human rights record and anti-gay laws. Putin's hopes for a flawless Games that would showcase his vision of Russian might to the world is already fraying at the edges.

Rightly or wrongly, it is also the Americans who have been most vocal in their criticism of some of the sparkling new sporting facilities.

Shaun White pulled out of theslopestyle snowboarding over concerns about the safetyof the course and US downhill skier Bode Miller on Saturday warned that the Rosa Khuta piste "could kill you" after watching team-mate Marco Sullivan narrowly escape a serious crash.

Shoddy hotel rooms and malfunctioning giant snowflakes aside, everything else appears to be working as it should. Inside the so-called "ring of steel", security is surprisingly unobtrusive. Policemen are dressed down in purple tracksuits and volunteers are friendly and helpful.

What is not yet clear is where the soul of these Games will lie. Russian organisers insist ticket sales have been strong and venues have appeared fairly full so far. The extent to which ordinary Russians get behind an Olympics that, to date, have sometimes appeared the obsession of just one man will be a key factor in determining how they are remembered.

[Dec 27, 2013] Internet privacy as important as human rights, says UN's Navi Pillay by Haroon Siddique

'National Security, the last refuge of the scoundrel'.

December 26, 2013 | Guardian

hmorgansr

The united states is no longer the world leader in freedom. It has become the world privacy snooper no different than a peeping tom. Where has the morality of the leadership of the united stated gone? Where is the leadership?

We need people outside of the united states to see that what is going on in the states is wrong? We the united states can't even govern our own actions correctly. What shame!

Thank You Edward Snowden.

floreat_d hmorgansr

Why do you not mention the U.K., their partner in mass surveillance?

But yes, the hypocrisy is greater on the side of my own country, the Land of the Free etc etc etc.

Nomadscot floreat_d

Arguably, the hypocrisy is greater this side of the pond.

At least your guys are manning (no pun intended) up and having a public discussion of sorts, albeit reluctantly and probably dishonestly.

Here, the hypocritical, two faced idiots that run the UK are still hiding behind their 'We don't discuss National Security' soundbyte, to hide their nefarious, immoral actions from public scrutiny.

As another commenter wisely stated here today - 'National Security, the last refuge of the scoundrel'.

A Lose-Lose Outcome - The American Interest

Former Uk ambassador to Russia prefers financial sector based corruption flourishing in Britain to old style corruption flourishing in Russia. Your mileage may very. This guy is thinking in convenient stereotypes of Dr. Goebbels.

That is true for Russia too, of course, the difference being that in Russia's case its variable life support is its natural resource sector. It is a commonplace that the future prosperity of Russia as well as Ukraine depends on moving on from a system based on understandings and personalized favors to one where clearly understood and independently adjudicated laws allow free enterprise to work its magic.

Forcing Ukraine into the Russian embrace might serve the interests of those close to Yanukovich's heart but it would hardly do anything to help combat corruption in either country-on the contrary. It would likely provoke a struggle for property in Ukraine as well.

'EU double standards in Ukraine absolutely outrageous'

RT Op-Edge

Neil Clark is a journalist, writer and broadcaster. His award winning blog can be found at www.neilclark66.blogspot.com. Follow him on Twitter

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Supporters of Ukraine's integration with the EU use a tractor to brake through police cordons to Ukraine's presidential administration in Kiev. (RIA Novosti / Alexei Furman)

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By supporting protesters in Ukraine while previously ignoring huge last year protests in Turkey and Spain, EU officials have revealed that for them some protesters are more equal than others, journalist Neil Clark told RT.

RT: We've seen several EU officials coming to Kiev over the last couple of weeks to support what they call the "democratic aspirations" of the people. They were not so vocal when we saw anti-government protests in Greece and Spain. Why they are more vocal now?

Neil Clark: I was actually in Spain in 2012 when there were huge demonstrations against the Spanish government, against austerity, back in September 2012.

I was there but I didn't see any eurocrats coming there to show their solidarity with the Spanish people who demanded that their government change course. I didn't see anyone coming out from Poland or Germany saying to the Spanish government to change its policies, did you?

RT: Even looking outside the EU, to Turkey, all the trouble there got much lower EU concern. We have seen that Catherine Ashton is coming to Kiev again in a couple of days.

NC: There were hundreds of thousands of people protesting there, and not just in the capital, but throughout Turkey. And it was a much more national protest, (whereas) this protest in Kiev is very much a protest of western Ukraine. And we didn't get that, we didn't Catherine Ashton going out to Istanbul or Ankara to show solidarity – or anybody from the EU for that matter.

The protesters in Turkey were peaceful,they were dealt with by great brutality from the police, there were no calls for them, the people who did the brutality, to be arrested or sacked, as it was in Ukraine.

So double standards are absolutely glaring: to riot on the streets and demonstrate in Kiev is absolutely fine by the European Union, they encourage you, they incite you, but if you would do it in Turkey or Spain – no, they don't.

The double standards here are absolutely outrageous here, really.

RT: Why don't the people from the EU go to the east of Ukraine. That's where they actually should be trying to convince people. They're going to the wrong place.

NC: Sure. We see from this that some protesters are more equal than others. The protesters in Ukraine's Kiev are good protesters, the west supports them because they want to bring down the Ukrainian government – they want to push Ukraine away from Russia.

RT: What is the real deal here?

NC: The real deal here is if we look at the polls, we learn that no more than 45 percent of the people actually support the protesters in Ukraine. And yet we have Polish MPs going to Ukraine saying that the government has got to change its course, and there have to be fresh elections.

This is not a democracy, this is the absolute perversion of democracy. The Ukrainian people voted in the election for their president and there will be other elections due. This is a question of observing the democratic process and respecting it, but I'm afraid these eurocrats are not respecting democracy, they're trying to incite regime change in Ukraine or at least bully the government to change its policies or call early elections.

It is completely wrong and as I said, if this were happening in Spain or Greece – as it has been happening – we wouldn't get the Polish and German MPs going out there and showing their solidarity with the protesters.

RT: Our guest, Professor Mark Almond [just told us]: "If you go along that rocky road, it might end up the same way in the EU in the future, for instance within Italy or Spain."

NC: But it seems if you protest in Spain – you don't really count either. I mean it is sort of a "contempt for democracy" that the EU has toward the Spanish people, who are up in arms against their government. And so it was with the Greek government, but they were ignored. They are not getting the elite's support from western capitals, quite the opposite.

I think that the European Union has a massive democratic deficit because they are following austerity policies they don't have public support for, they don't have the supporting of the majority.

And yet they've got the audacity to say to the Ukrainian government, "Look, you're going to change course because of these people on the streets in Kiev."

It is absolutely outrageous. It is so undemocratic it is unbelievable really, it is so orwellian.

RT: The EU failed to convince President Viktor Yanukovych that the EU trade deal was good for Ukraine. Now the EU officials say they support the democratic aspirations of the Ukrainian people, but what we're seeing is vandalism and squatting in administrative buildings. Are they hoping to undermine his government by backing the protesters?

NC: I think the EU is speaking with a forked tongue here. They say they support democracy in Ukraine but they clearly don't. They've got that democratically elected president in Ukraine, he made this decision on that issue [the trade deal with the EU]. And yet they're trying to subvert that, they're trying to incite people to go to the streets – not just peacefully – to protest.

The things we've actually seen in Ukraine are storming the government buildings, violence, tractors being used trying to smash into those buildings.

If this were happening in Britain, France or Germany – these people would of course have been denounced as rioters or yobs, and would be given very tough prison sentences.

In Britain when we had a riot, we had one man who wrote on Facebook, encouraging people to go to riot in a local town. He got sentenced to four years in prison.

And scenes we've seen in Ukraine, those protesters using bulldozers trying to smash into the government buildings? In western Europe, those people would be denounced as rioters. But as it's happening in Ukraine, we've got absolutely the opposite treatment. The European so-called democrats are cheering them on.

This is really the opposite of democracy, democracy is not happening in Ukraine with these protests, because it is an attempt to bully the democratic government to change it or have early elections, to actually bring the government down, so it is very undemocratic what is going on in Ukraine.

Hypocritical Britain hates student protests in its backyard

RT Op-Edge

Tags

Conflict, Police, Protest, UK

Western elites love student protesters. That is, when they're protesting in countries whose governments the West would like to see toppled. But they're not so fond of it in their own countries. We saw a classic example of this in Britain this week.

On Wednesday, thousands of students from across the country took part in the 'Cops off Campus' demonstration in London, to protest against heavy police presence on campuses, and the brutal way in which police broke up a peaceful protest at the University of London last week.

"Today's eviction was one of the nastiest, most brutal I've seen on a campus for a long time," tweeted ULU President Michael Chessum, about the police action on December 4, which led to 41 arrests. "I've seen people having their teeth punched out. The police were not turning up with horses and batons they were just swinging punches," he added.

Thousands of UK students march in 'Cops off Campus' protest on December 12, 2013 (Photo by Sara Firth, RT)

Thousands of UK students march in 'Cops off Campus' protest on December 12, 2013 (Photo by Sara Firth, RT)

And it seems the police acted with impunity: earlier this week we learnt that a policeman who was filmed punching a student will not be disciplined.

The crackdown on student protesters and the victimization of those who organize demonstrations is well under way. Michael Chessum himself had been arrested in November, a day after another demonstration he had organized took place. The University of London meanwhile has obtained a court order to ban 'occupational protests' for the next six months.

We have also learnt recently that police tried to launch a secret operation to spy on the political activities of students at Cambridge University.

What on earth is Britain coming to?

Just imagine if these events had happened in Venezuela, Belarus or Ukraine, or in any other country where the West's political and financial elites desire 'regime change'. We'd have had widespread media coverage and comment pieces from 'liberal interventionists' and neocon columnists, pledging their solidarity with the students, denouncing police actions and calling for sanctions to be imposed on the country, (or strengthened if they had already been applied). But when student protests are aggressively suppressed in Britain, when basic democratic rights are infringed before our very eyes, it's a different story altogether.

The sad fact is that protesting about anything in Britain today puts you in danger of arrest. Liberties which we've enjoyed for hundreds of years are gradually being eroded. It would be an exaggeration to say that Britain is already a police state, but we certainly appear to be heading in that direction.

I myself was threatened with arrest outside a railway station a few months ago for the 'crime' of peacefully handing out anti-privatization leaflets from the Campaign For Public Ownership. Police patrolling the station went in to inform the private rail company which runs services there to inform them of my activity. I was told that unless I left the station area, I would be arrested, even though I was handing out the leaflets on land which was publicly owned and not owned by the railway company.

In August, the Green MP, Caroline Lucas and her son, were among those arrested at an anti-fracking protest in West Sussex. "This is an outrageously aggressive response to a day of principled civil disobedience," protester Ewa Jasiewicz told the BBC.

Police officers guard a gate on the edge of a site run by Cuadrilla Resources, near Balcombe in southern England August 16, 2013 (Reuters / Stefan Wermuth)

Police officers guard a gate on the edge of a site run by Cuadrilla Resources, near Balcombe in southern England August 16, 2013 (Reuters / Stefan Wermuth)

The coverage of the protests in Britain was highly unsympathetic, but if they'd been protesting in Venezuela against government policy and been similarly treated, I'm sure they would have been accorded hero status.

The background to the current student protests is the privatization of state education in Britain.

The neoliberal coalition government is on a mission: to destroy state provision but Britain's students are fighting back against the commodification of education.

Students at the University of London, showing admirable solidarity, have been campaigning for the rights of the university's lowly paid outsourced staff. These staff would have been employed directly by the university in the past, but since their jobs were outsourced, they have seen their employment conditions worsen.

At the University of Sussex, students have been campaigning against privatization for over a year. In April, a peaceful occupation was ended when police turned up on campus with riot vans and dogs. Michael Segalov, part of the 'Sussex Against Privatization Campaign', revealed this week that he was one of five students who were being suspended by the university authorities. "We have not been charged with any crime or told of the specific reasons for our suspension. I believe we have been targeted for suspension, to intimidate the growing campus movement against privatization," he wrote in The Guardian. Other anti-privatization protests have taken place at universities across Britain.

It's no surprise why Britain's students are more restive today that at any time since the late 1960s.

Britain's neoliberal elite has been treating them as it treats most people - with total contempt. Before the last election, Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, pledged not to increase tuition fees, but once in government he backed the lifting of the cap on tuition fees to £9,000, condemning students to even greater levels of debt. Last month the privatization-obsessed government sold part of the Student Loans book with a face value of £890m to a private investment consortium for just £160m. This was another example, hot on the heels of the Royal Mail sale, of the way the government short-changes the taxpayer to benefit private capital.

If the government gets their way, then the entire British state - with the exception of the Armed forces and the judiciary - will be privatized. And they're determined to use draconian measures to get their unpopular policies through. The authorities have made it clear what their response is going to be to students who have the temerity to stand up for their rights and the rights of others working in the education sector: aggressive police action, student suspensions and court orders banning protests.

And they'll be relying on elite commentators in the media to 'do their job' and either ignore the clampdowns or attack the students as an 'unruly mob', before writing their pieces extolling student protesters in other countries.

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.

[Dec 26, 2013] Surveillance: complacency, secrecy –Britain's great vices

December 21, 2013 | The Guardian

...GCHQ, asked to comment, says no comment. The men in expensive suits who head MI5, MI6 and Cheltenham field patsy questions from a parliamentary committee and talk the plangent generalities of harm done. The editor of the Guardian finds himself under sustained attack, computer discs destroyed, Scotland Yard squads duly deployed, MPs summoning him to defend this or that. We can, and should, find such a simple narrative distressing. American democracy awakes and reacts. British democracy sleeps, and shoots messengers.

The New York Times clears the front page. The London Times fits in something at the bottom of page 10. The Daily Mail exercises its sacred right to ignore.

But, of course, no narrative involving so much encryption can be that simple. This is a saga of many connected strands. One, last week, brought us Sir Peter Gibson's part-completed report on rendition and proof positive – in words the Mail did print – of "the bleak truth that Britain … was complicit in torture". Our spies sat idly by and watched suspects treated "with extreme hardship". And our top spies formally assured ministers and the monxitors of the intelligence and security committee that British hands were clean. It was a lie; one lie among many. Yet the same ISC is now lined up to finish off Gibson's inquiry (when, that is, it has stopped fawning over M and the rest of the security alphabet as well as performing the review role Obama gave to a hand-picked, superbly resourced team).

But where does dissembling stop? And where does true reform begin? Often it is the reforms themselves that bring bigger trouble. America failed to prevent the horrors of 9/11 because it had so many agencies tripping over each other and not communicating. Reform meant that Snowden, a humble contractor, along with hundreds of thousands more, had top-level access to everything we now see swilling forth. Secrecy guarded by sharing everything? Good intentions undermined by bureaucratic blindness? Intelligence commissioned from Cheltenham poured into an American bucket with a hole in the bottom.

There are no simple truths here, merely a tangle of complexities. The saintly scions of the "intelligence community" who "keep us safe from harm" were putting their names to dodgy Iraq dossiers a decade ago. Espionage is a fallible business, human at the point of analysis and decision-making. Of course, politicians put on kid gloves when they reach for the files. Who wants to disregard an awful warning that could come back to haunt them? Better go quietly along with the herd, better not scare the horses.

But here the two worlds of DC and Cheltenham intersect at last. There is no absolute security, just as there are no definitive reforms. There is always desperate peril to secrecy. Horrible things happen when nobody knows. Exaggeration – about everything from terrorist threats to budget cuts – is endemic behind closed doors. Perhaps America, in the decade after 9/11, has feared and promised too much. But certainly Britain, drifting in a haze of conspiratorial chappishness, has changed far too little. The answer to both ailments is out there for us all to register. It is what we expect, what we understand and demand, that matters most. This secret world is our world, too. Democracy's real responses begin on the streets where we live, where we wake up, calculate the risks, and insist on having our say.

T

[Oct 28, 2013] stan van houcke The End of Hypocrisy

A HYPOCRITICAL HEGEMON

Hypocrisy is central to Washington's soft power -- its ability to get other countries to accept the legitimacy of its actions -- yet few Americans appreciate its role. Liberals tend to believe that other countries cooperate with the United States because American ideals are attractive and the U.S.-led international system is fair. Realists may be more cynical, yet if they think about Washington's hypocrisy at all, they consider it irrelevant. For them, it is Washington's cold, hard power, not its ideals, that encourages other countries to partner with the United States.

Of course, the United States is far from the only hypocrite in international politics. But the United States' hypocrisy matters more than that of other countries. That's because most of the world today lives within an order that the United States built, one that is both underwritten by U.S. power and legitimated by liberal ideas. American commitments to the rule of law, democracy, and free trade are embedded in the multilateral institutions that the country helped establish after World War II, including the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the United Nations, and later the World Trade Organization. Despite recent challenges to U.S. preeminence, from the Iraq war to the financial crisis, the international order remains an American one.

This system needs the lubricating oil of hypocrisy to keep its gears turning. To ensure that the world order continues to be seen as legitimate, U.S. officials must regularly promote and claim fealty to its core liberal principles; the United States cannot impose its hegemony through force alone. But as the recent leaks have shown, Washington is also unable to consistently abide by the values that it trumpets. This disconnect creates the risk that other states might decide that the U.S.-led order is fundamentally illegitimate.

Of course, the United States has gotten away with hypocrisy for some time now. It has long preached the virtues of nuclear nonproliferation, for example, and has coerced some states into abandoning their atomic ambitions. At the same time, it tacitly accepted Israel's nuclearization and, in 2004, signed a formal deal affirming India's right to civilian nuclear energy despite its having flouted the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty by acquiring nuclear weapons. In a similar vein, Washington talks a good game on democracy, yet it stood by as the Egyptian military overthrew an elected government in July, refusing to call a coup a coup. Then there's the "war on terror": Washington pushes foreign governments hard on human rights but claims sweeping exceptions for its own behavior when it feels its safety is threatened.

The reason the United States has until now suffered few consequences for such hypocrisy is that other states have a strong interest in turning a blind eye. Given how much they benefit from the global public goods Washington provides, they have little interest in calling the hegemon on its bad behavior. Public criticism risks pushing the U.S. government toward self-interested positions that would undermine the larger world order. Moreover, the United States can punish those who point out the inconsistency in its actions by downgrading trade relations or through other forms of direct retaliation. Allies thus usually air their concerns in private. Adversaries may point fingers, but few can convincingly occupy the moral high ground. Complaints by China and Russia hardly inspire admiration for their purer policies.

The ease with which the United States has been able to act inconsistently has bred complacency among its leaders. Since few countries ever point out the nakedness of U.S. hypocrisy, and since those that do can usually be ignored, American politicians have become desensitized to their country's double standards. But thanks to Manning and Snowden, such double standards are getting harder and harder to ignore.

[Jun 17, 2013] GCHQ intercepted foreign politicians' communications at G20 summits

They were not politicians, they were diplomats. And that's big no-no in international relations...
17 June 2013

According to the material seen by the Guardian, GCHQ generated this product by attacking both the computers and the telephones of delegates.

One document refers to a tactic which was "used a lot in recent UK conference, eg G20". The tactic, which is identified by an internal codeword which the Guardian is not revealing, is defined in an internal glossary as "active collection against an email account that acquires mail messages without removing them from the remote server". A PowerPoint slide explains that this means "reading people's email before/as they do".

The same document also refers to GCHQ, MI6 and others setting up internet cafes which "were able to extract key logging info, providing creds for delegates, meaning we have sustained intelligence options against them even after conference has finished". This appears to be a reference to acquiring delegates' online login details.

Another document summarises a sustained campaign to penetrate South African computers, recording that they gained access to the network of their foreign ministry, "investigated phone lines used by High Commission in London" and "retrieved documents including briefings for South African delegates to G20 and G8 meetings". (South Africa is a member of the G20 group and has observer status at G8 meetings.)

A detailed report records the efforts of the NSA's intercept specialists at Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire to target and decode encrypted phone calls from London to Moscow which were made by the Russian president, Dmitry Medvedev, and other Russian delegates.

Other documents record apparently successful efforts to penetrate the security of BlackBerry smartphones: "New converged events capabilities against BlackBerry provided advance copies of G20 briefings to ministers … Diplomatic targets from all nations have an MO of using smartphones. Exploited this use at the G20 meetings last year."

reptile0000

3:14am

Recommend

56

It's not just about embarrassing politcal elite but also about exposing criminality. For decades we have been lecturing rest of the world about freedom and democracy. We have killed millions in the name of human rights.

Our mainstream media has spent millions of hours to advocate lies war propaganda and demonize nations who don't fully submit to our ideology and it turns out we are worse than evil socialist KGB?

Somebody said who's better than west...I'd say nobody really no ones better at intruding and spying on others as West

StivBator

UK govt leading the way as a role model for responsible and trustworthy international relations.

Not.

To be honest the UK and the West deserves to have all its soft power revealed as for vacuous pile of crap it is.

We kill children in the name of human rights. We arm fanatics to promote democracy and we attack democracies to protect fanatics.

anothercontrarian

@StivBator 16 June 2013 9:07pm. Get cifFix for Chrome.

The myth that we are the keepers of decent society in the world needs to be exposed as the total bullshit it really is. Anything bad you can think of we do. Except until things like this, the rest of us are comfortable in the fact of our willful ignorance about it.

Wake the fuck up.

joseph1832

@UnIikelylad - I believe Atilla the Hun respected the sanctity of ambassadors. Diplomatically, it is beyond awful. Some things you just don't do, and to do it for an economic the summit stage managed to make Brown look good...

ExuroPythonissam

@richkid 16 June 2013 9:06pm. Get cifFix for Chrome.

Hang on people. Let's be patriotic and stop bringing out secret things into the open.

""Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel." Samuel Johnson, April 7, 1775.

Woodenarrow123

@richkid - Blind trust in elites in general and ignorance of war in particular and a particularly unhealthy form of patriotism led to WW 1 - Resulting in over 20 million dead.

It also set in train events that arguably led to WW2 and further carnage and suffering.

The Guardian is taking a principled and courageous stand.

Lets not resort to the last refuge of the scoundrel at this early stage.

Northener

@Hedropsforglory - "Every nation that can, does this."

How do you know that? Or are you just using your imagination?

If every nation were in fact doing this, then no country's representatives would ever send any sensitive information - i.e. anything worth knowing - by these means. So it wouldn't be worth going to all this trouble to bug them.

JBowers

@onomatopoiia -

This article crosses the line and is close to treasonous, and I'm not using the term as an ad hominem insult. This has the potential to do very serious harm to the UK.

The patriot loves their country, but is willing to expose, discuss and address its failings. The nationalist, however, believes their country can do little or no wrong, and will jump to condemn those who criticise it and expose its failings.

Marklab

@onomatopoiia - In days gone by the enemy was invited to dinner and then poisoned. Such is the advance of civilisation that we now only pry into their emails and phone calls.

jayant

@Strummered - Or, more like striptease. All the pretentious garbs of moral and ethical leadership are being dropped to a fast tempo. The real condition is becoming obvious. May be Mahatma Gandhi understood it well in 1930 at Southampton, when he responded to a question from a reporter: "What do you think of Western Civilisation?' His reply: "That would be a good idea."

edelamsee

@onomatopoiia - Treason? International meetings should be based on trust, as otherwise nothing could be achieved at all. All this article reviels is the fact, that the UK is betraying everybody al all times an in so doing, assures, that no such meeting will ever be taking place in Britain unless it is just a publicity stunt. Britain was and always will be number one in the leage of trachery.

NikMitev

@onomatopoiia - "This article crosses the line and is close to treasonous,..."

This article and the way The Guardian is providing platform to Edward Snowden comes to show we still have press worth reading. I well and truly hope that if their right to deliver truthful information is challenged we will be there to help defend them. Democracy and freedom of speech favours the people, secrecy and concentration of power favours those who buy and sell governments. Whose side are you on?

tr1ck5t3r

@JamesHalfpenny - Can you honestly say we have a free press when things like this go on? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1522875/Revealed-how-the-BBC-used-MI5-to-vet-thousands-of-staff.html

We dont know what vetting the Guardian has employed, obviously a left wing bias will get you some of the way, but is it coincidental that most public sector jobs are almost exclusively advertised in the Guardian at great taxpayers expense for a start, or that the Guardian is the preferred paper for exclusives from the Labour party, Telegraph being the Tories, & the Independent has been known to publish things for the Security Services, not to mention the political parties carrying out clandestine meetings with Murdoch to get his papers leading public opinion to help win elections?

The methods of these "democratic" political parties are arguably just as bad as the hypocritical hacking methods employed by the spooks!

NikMitev

@doog1972 - "The idea that hacking some emails means that the 'West' is crap is equally absurd."

The US and the UK as its lapdog are claiming to be leading the world, and they certainly are having a major influence. If the biggest military power in the world is setting up a fascist rule and acts as aggressively as it does, both in terms of military and intelligence operations, it requires other countries to respond in a similar fashion. If you are leading the world and it turns out it is a shit place to be, whose fault is it?

"The idea that the UK or in fact any country would not use as much of its power to gain leverage over economic or political rivals is laughably naive." Hitler had a huge military advantage before the second world war, and he used it to defeat his rivals - should I take it you find that natural and acceptable? To put this in a more current context, do you accept bankers and corporations screwing over the millions just so they can get more money and power and screw us even more. It would be naive to think we can build a better world for us and our kids?

"No doubt, more liberal left west bashing although am very curious as to what countries you think are paragons of virtue?" Iceland is an exemplary democracy at the moment.

kent98

@StivBator -

The West cannot legitimately claim any moral high-ground after this dirty trick by the British Government. Who can trust the West?

CanYouFlyBobby

@qy paddy -

The system that we strive for...basic human privacy and true freedom the we though we already had.

You thought you had that? How charmingly and touchingly naive.

If you had anything close to that it is partly because clever men who you never knew were doing sneaky and sometimes dodgy things without your knowledge and in your interests.

kent98

@CanYouFlyBobby -

Western hegemony is morally bankrupt.

siff

@CanYouFlyBobby -

The system that we strive for...basic human privacy and true freedom the we though we already had.

You thought you had that? How charmingly and touchingly naive.

If you had anything close to that it is partly because clever men who you never knew were doing sneaky and sometimes dodgy things without your knowledge and in your interests.

In your interest ? How touchingly and charmingly naive.

To regard the interests of our ruling elite as being the same as the interest of rest of us is surely naive.

justiceforgaza

@onomatopoiia - Harm to the uk government but what about harm to the British people?

As someone said below while they were spying on our allies they mandated the police to use lethal violence on the British public

I say mandated because most police were hiding their identities that day and the one police officer that killed someone was let off and all that were accused of violence were let off

Mikes005

@TheFrogPeopleBelieve -

You lefty morons don't understand that the world is still a hostile place and that intelligence gathering is essential to protect your county and it's interests.

I like how people who don't share your opinions are 'morons' but you somehow have reached enlightenment and all-knowledge,

Please oh beneficent one! Share with us your font of kno- oh, wait, you're just being narrow minded. My bad, sorry.

Roman78

This is going to get really interesting.

I still doubt it will lead to any new legislation though.

PrivateTrancer

@Roman78 - MI6 spying on foreign governments is 'really interesting'...

xiyangyang

@Roman78 - Well at least GCHQ's powerpoint skills are better than the NSA's, if I'm going to be spied on I'd rather it was done a bit more stylishly.

mspacek

@RadicalLivre

True, but stuff like this is likely to make the elites distrust each other more.

In fact, I think the main benefit of leaks like these is making coordination between elite interests less likely. The more they fight between themselves, the best for us.

A very interesting insight. Julian Assange wrote an essay or two on exactly this topic in 2006:

http://cryptome.org/0002/ja-conspiracies.pdf

aymoony

@mspacek

Thanks for the link... I was struck by this quotation at the beginning:

Behind the ostensible government sits enthroned an invisible government owing no allegiance and acknowledging no responsibility to the people. To destroy this invisible government, to befoul this unholy alliance between corrupt business and corrupt politics is the first task of statesmanship.

President Theodore Roosevelt

Damon Offord

@giveusaclue - The 'elite' has nothng to do with visible government, beyond using them as a puppet show to give the illusion of choice to keep pedants squabbling. The monkeys fighting over a banana on top of the organ means nothing in real terms.

Spaull

@RadicalLivre -

In fact, I think the main benefit of leaks like these is making coordination between elite interests less likely. The more they fight between themselves, the best for us.

Until they start a war between themselves and we're the ones who die.

scipio16

@noamericano - I could understand the leak about the interception of private emails and phone messages. While hardly a surprise it was good to have it confirmed.

I fail to see the public interest here however. Governments spying on each other is not news. Just like the Assange story, the Guardian sails right past the important story in it's usual shrill, hysterical manner and in the process tarnishes what good there was in the leak.

markstallard

@scipio16 - Hard to see what good can come of this, do all countries spy on each other? Yes. Will publishing the fact that they do it stop this? No, never. Will publishing the methodology of how the UK did it in the past make it harder for the UK in future and put it at a disadvantage? Yes.

I suppose we'll have to get used to this diplomatic tittle tattle coming out like rabbit poo now when it clearly has no use or is not in the public interest other than this newspaper has got a man on the inside so they have to milk it for all it's worth, for no other reason than 'because they can'.

NatO

@scipio16 - Agreed. There is a huge difference between spying and tracking citizens going about their daily business, and this. This is espionage between governments and is entirely par for the course. All publishing this does is distract from the original and much more serious issue (I doubt it will affect relationships at these meetings; it's not as though each host doesn't do it to some degree when it is their turn).

An overexcited Greenwald has shot himself in the foot here.

CitizenTM

@NatO -

Nonsense.

This reveals the KABUKI theatre of our geo-political world quite well. And maybe it will help awaken some parts of the population to what is done (not) in our name.

Spoutwell

@P-Ride - Standard intelligence work? Come for a heads of state meeting and get your private emails spied on? Should do wonders for the art of 'british diplomacy'.

siff

@ConkerGatsby - Reminds of the old Vietnam era slogan of the American right--'My country right or wrong' thereby absolving themselves of any need to question what is going on. This is my country. I would like to know what is going on and approve of it, as far as possible. Fake interrnet cafes for the purpose of spying on our allies and trading partners stinks, and I don't find it acceptable

whyohwhy1

@P-Ride - Apparently the UK intelligence services are spying for their real master, Washington. How do you think a NSA consultant got this info?

Forthestate

@P-Ride -

Cheers Guardian, thanks for intervening to undermine the work of the UK intelligence services. This isn't domestic citizens being spied on; this is standard intelligence work.

The significance of these leaks is that they establish beyond any doubt - not that any but the most naive ever doubted it - that surveillance is driven primarily by advantage. This undermines successive governments' insistence that increased surveillence is driven by security:

The disclosure raises new questions about the boundaries of surveillance by GCHQ and its American sister organisation, the National Security Agency, whose access to phone records and internet data has been defended as necessary in the fight against terrorism and serious crime. The G20 spying appears to have been organised for the more mundane purpose of securing an advantage in meetings. Named targets include long-standing allies such as South Africa and Turkey.

If that is the case - that surveillance is driven by advantage - then the dragnetting of our metadata, which is sufficient to complete a profile of each and every one of us - is certainly of more interest to the state for the advantage it offers in controlling and exploiting us than it is for the security it provides. The notion that surveillance exists simply for our protection has been dealt a deathblow by these revelations. All you then need to do is think of the Prism programme, and put two and two together.

Johanes

@Roman78 - flouting international treaties in your name? How many years has Europe been flouting international treaties and letting northern European countries seize power and impoverish southern Europe with no appeal, in YOUR name?

But the UK didn't bother because it is not affected. Now it is affected, by this spy scandal, there is outrage. Austerity and spying, both imposed by the elite illegally in YOUR name and for their own convenience or gain. That's the (new?) world order.

judyblue

@Forthestate - Wish I could "recommend" your comment a hundred times. The claims about protection from terrorists and criminals are hogwash. The information dragnet has a different purpose and everyday citizens are the target.

MARK MANNERS

@PrivateTrancer - The interesting point is the objectives of the spying (economics, negotiating advantages) and the fact that the notion of 'ally' seems to be entirely contextual. This is all very much worth reporting and a reminder to those in power that it is fleeting and only by consent.

siff

@ConkerGatsby - Whether you agree or not, do you really need to know any further details? Is it in this countries interests to reveal further details. Because you know, a spying agency in the public eye is pretty bloody useless.

Exactly how do you define 'in this countries interest' ? We are spying on a conference we are hosting. One of the duties of a host is surely security ? Not to spy on them but to prevent them being spied on ?This is not a war situation, its largely about trade and finance, where we are spying on those who we publicly regard as our allies, for the financial advantage not of the general population, but, as usual, for the advantage of the financial and political elites.

''The GCHQ intent is to ensure that intelligence relevant to HMG's desired outcomes for its presidency of the G20 reaches customers ''

It's bent. It's not defensible in open daylight, and its pointless a few of you trying to convince the rest of us that its all perfectly OK. If you have no 'moral compass' then it you just carry on but our government has been exposed as no better and possibly worse than any other set of lying, spying crooks.

neilwb23

@Carl Sixsmith - Dunno if you noticed, but they already are, and it's not just our trans-Atlantic calls.

This is pretty much the response of the typical statist little sheep most people have become and the mainstream media. For the entirety of the last decade you were branded a lunatic conspiracy nut for even suggesting Western governments were conducting surveillance anywhere near what they're actually doing, but as soon as it's brought to everyone's attention and confirms what most people apparently feared, the response is a resounding "meh, we knew this all along. Old news". And ironically, despite the fact such news is apparently so unimportant we can just ignore it, the people who release or publish such news are terrorists, and traitors, and treasonous dogs, and we should have them hung, drawn and quatered before parliament.

What are we gonna do when they start using tear gas and water cannons, or even live rounds, on protestors in the UK? Are we gonna say, "meh, it was bound to happen anyway"? It looks that way at this point, and frankly I have little hope for this country ever climbing out of its fascistic quagmire at this point.

Lockean

@camera, @frostedw

Well all public diplomacy and negotiation is something of a game with accepted rules. Often a government needs to state a certain position in public in order to satisfy its domestic supporters, but in practice (and behind closed doors) they are willing to compromise on certain matters (but not others) to reach agreements that benefit the country.

In fact, it is part of the game of all negotiation that the party states one extreme position (e.g. I want to sell this car for £10,000) when in reality they secretly hold another position (I would sell it for £8,000). All countries do this in public to get the most advantageous terms from a negotiation.

So one purpose of the espionage is to find out which issues are ones on which governments are willing to compromise on, and which are non-negotiable (given that the government will publicly give the impression that all of their interests are non-negotiable)

Remember this is an economic summit, the purpose is nothing sinister, it is to negotiate an agreement between 20 different nations on matters of mutual interest.

Now, that is a bloody difficult thing to achieve in a short timeframe - there are 20 different nations with divergent interests and many different issues to get agreement on. It really helps purely on an efficiency basis to know what the actual limits are to each government's negotiating position. By knowing this, you can then better frame an agreement that has a chance of being accepted by everyone.

It is arguable that without espionage, or some form of 'behind the scenes' knowledge by all parties, that these types of summits would find it impossible to reach any real or meaningful agreements.

Also I said that nations are aware it goes on, in fact many governments and diplomats probably welcome spying, even on themselves, because it allows them to 'unofficially' get across their position in ways that it would be unacceptable for them to say in public

frostedw
@Lockean -

Remember this is an economic summit, the purpose is nothing sinister, it is to negotiate an agreement between 20 different nations on matters of mutual interest.

Exactly! So why are we spying on them then?

Now, that is a bloody difficult thing to achieve in a short timeframe - there are 20 different nations with divergent interests and many different issues to get agreement on. It really helps purely on an efficiency basis to know what the actual limits are to each government's negotiating position. By knowing this, you can then better frame an agreement that has a chance of being accepted by everyone.

You really just come across as a spokesman for GCHQ here. It's all about being practical and sensible, nevermind that you're invading their right to talk confidentially.

It is arguable that without espionage, or some form of 'behind the scenes' knowledge by all parties, that these types of summits would find it impossible to reach any real or meaningful agreements.

Well I would say that other people and countries have a certain right to be able to keep their final position to themselves, just like a car salesman wants to keep his final position to himself. It is not your place to say that they should just accept being spied on.

LeDingue

@neilwb23

fascistic quagmire

As corporations and top-level money launderers have more or less subverted Western democracies this is where we are.

Privatised services prioritise profits above the services they're supposed to provide. Wars are started by the influence of lobbyists. Intelligence agencies are the backbone of civilian government: there to neutralise expressions of discontent. A parallel society exists for the super-rich 1% - their own schools, hospials, private jets, secure living & leisure compounds, priority response from police. Widespread cheap adulterated drugs & crime gangs. Shite services and rapid persecution for minor crimes for the 99%

Carl Sixsmith

@neilwb23 -

This is pretty much the response of the typical statist little sheep most people have become and the mainstream media

No, I've known this was going on since I was old enough to realize what government actually is. A coercive, evil entity intent on maintaining power for the elite,

This is not an attribute of government though, it is an attribute of power. There is absolutely nothing you can do about it, it occurs anywhere there is a power imbalance,

Trying to sound super intelligent by referring to others as statist-sheep doesn't become you,

Exodus20

@frostedw - Britain will never be trusted as honest broker nor a welcoming host again.

frostedw

@ConkerGatsby -

You're another one who doesn't seem to understand the difference between spying on foreign governments regarding foreign policy issues, and spying on delegates at an economic conference which is trying to sort out economic issues.

ConkerGatsby

@frostedw - Why not? If it leads to economic advantage everyone in the UK could benefit.

frostedw

@ConkerGatsby -

Is there anything that is unethical in your world?

RadicalLivre

@ConkerGatsby

Why not? If it leads to economic advantage everyone in the UK could benefit.

"Economic advantage" to whom? To the pensioners, who have their benefits cut? To the students, who have to pay more for their education? To everybody else, who has to work more for less pay? Look around you and ask yourself whether you are among those benefiting from this economic espionage.

ConkerGatsby

@RadicalLivre - You mentioned vague "economic benefits", but there's no evidence of economic benefits.

The Guardian seems to think so, given in their other article on this topic they state:

The aim – which appears to have been largely successful – was to improve the UK's negotiating positions on the economic matters under discussion.

We won't be seeing any more benefits after their expose.

RadicalLivre

@ConkerGatsby

The aim – which appears to have been largely successful – was to improve the UK's negotiating positions on the economic matters under discussion.

If you think that UK's negotiating positions have anything to do with economic benefits for people like you or me, then you are either hopelessly ignorant, or a paid astroturfer.

DESI121

@ConkerGatsby - well the M stands for Military, but they are collecting economic/business information. It does demonstrate bad faith - like playing poker with marked cards.

Not exactly cricket is it?

I wonder if any individuals took personal advantage of these spying operations...

giveusaclue

@DESI121 -

of course they do

ZeroZero2

Oh yes! What everyone knows to be true, but revealed for once. I, for one, can't wait for the politicians to squirm around this one. And they wonder why people have little respect for them. Report Share this comment on Twitter Share this comment on Facebook

dhome0

@ZeroZero2 - I suspect a certain R.Murdoch feels the same. After all he and his superlative news organisation were only using similar techniques for similar aims and look what the polies did to the poor man.

Leela Prasad

Key-logger software? so amateur.

jcg13

@Leela Prasad - May well have been key-logger hardware - that way you get credentials and content even if the subject boots the computer into a secure OS.

One way to mitigate against this kind of attack would be for the secure OS to only use a virtual onscreen keyboard to login, with the positions of the keys changing randomly with each instance. This would be enough to work around key-logger credential capture, but wouldn't work against eg video hardware recording the display or sending it in real time to analysts.

Bottom line is, don't trust hardware that you don't control and don't trust networks that you don't control.

Circumbendibus

@Conundrum64 - From the editorial:

Documents leaked by Snowden show that foreign politicians and officials taking part in the G20 summit in London in 2009 had their computers monitored and their phone calls intercepted by GCHQ, with some involvement from the NSA. The aim – which appears to have been largely successful – was to improve the UK's negotiating positions on the economic matters under discussion.

The techniques included setting up internet cafes where unsuspecting delegates' passwords were collected, enabling "sustained intelligence options against them even after the conference has finished". The G20 summit took place at a time of financial crisis. The participants were overwhelmingly Britain's friends. The bugging and snooping appears to have been carried out with high political authority under a 1994 legislative clause that sanctioned espionage on the grounds of "the economic wellbeing of the UK".

That's why it's eye-opening. On the eve of the G8, too.

Conundrum64

@frostedw - That's because some of us have been around long enough to see this before...

Far more interesting for those of us remember, was the actions of right wing elements of both MI5 and the Tory party to 'remove' Harold Wilson..

Now a coup d'état, (even if in this case it was botched, and fell flat), is far more interesting than who, is reading whose e-mails...

So yes it is all a bit passé...

Especially as Peter Wright in 'Spycatcher' admitted bugging and burgling all over London years ago, including the talks on the move to majority rule in Rhodesia...

As for why I read the Guardian, it's wonderful to see bright young things like you and Circumbendibus , discovering what has been going on for years, and thinking it's all so new and exciting...

NotarySojac

@Conundrum64 - As another nearly-annuated leftover, I also find it amusing to see you fellows tut-tutting the young 'uns for finding anything shocking.

The real and actual "Coup," long in progress, is the wealthy finding ever-more efficient ways to Have It All and leave us (and you!) with doodly-squat.

The world has only and ever changed for the better because people finally got tired of your brand of craven "wisdom." We are not perfect, but we can certainly do better.

Isn't that worth a smidgen of your effort? You and I won't be around long enough to have to live in the mess we're leaving to the future. Have a little respect for those who will.

frostedw

@Conundrum64 -

As for why I read the Guardian, it's wonderful to see bright young things like you and Circumbendibus , discovering what has been going on for years, and thinking it's all so new and exciting...

Oh really, that's why you bother to read the Guardian? It's not just to make snide and cynical comments then?

Anyway, I would say three things:

Firstly, there is a massive difference in suspecting something than in actually having the evidence of it.

Secondly, there is a huge difference in the capabilities of the spy agencies these days compared to previous decades.

Thirdly, they were spying on an economic summit; what has that got to do with terrorism or other nations' foreign policy?

jcg13

@KatieL - And that's end-to-end encryption with proper scrutiny of the certificates to avoid MITM attacks. This sort of stuff is available to enterprises - governments should be routinely using it (hardware, software and training).

I'd be very embarrassed if I was a delegate at an event like this whose email login had been sniffed by GCHQ.

Eccentrix

It's interesting how this sort of thing is normally associated with Russia or China or Iran but never with countries like the United Kingdom.

It seems all you need to do to set up a strong state apparatus is throw the population the sop of some elections every 4-5 years and you can then create the illusion that you conform to a different set of morals from so-called rogue states.

Delightfully diabolical, devious and deceitful.

The west's hypocrisy over Pussy Riot is breathtaking Simon Jenkins Comment is free by Simon Jenkins

See also Pussi Riot Provocation
The Guardian

Our courts now jail at the drop of a headline – for stealing water or abuse sent on Twitter. So who are we to condemn Russia?

Jump to comments (879)

Belle Mellor 2208

Illustration by Belle Mellor

Anyone in England and Wales with a dog out of control can now be jailed for six months. If the dog causes injury, the maximum term is to be two years. I have no sympathy for such people. Keeping these beasts is weird, and those who do it probably need treatment. But the Defra minister, Lord Taylor of Holbeach, complained in May that fewer than 20 people were in jail for dangerous dog offences. The sentencing council has duly told courts to raise the threshold to two years, "to send a message".

The same sentiment a year ago motivated magistrates to play to the gallery by jailing 1,292 people for stealing bottles of water or trainers or sending idiot incitements during the dispersed rampage dubbed "urban riots". Hysterical ministers raced home from holiday to tell judges to send messages. Judges duly ruined the lives of hundreds of young people, at great public expense and to no advantage to their victims. I have no sympathy for these people either, but again the politicised response to crime was disproportionate.

A month before, a London court jailed a stoned Charlie Gilmour after he swung on a union flag from the Cenotaph and tossed a bin at a police car, thus causing widespread outrage in the offices of the Daily Telegraph and Daily Mail. The judge sent him down for 18 months to send a message carefully designed to wreck his university career. Yet again we need have no sympathy for Gilmour. But there is no such thing as a rap over the knuckles in jail. Judges know that any term in prison is a sentence for life.

How can British politicians, whose statements clearly seek to influence pliable judges, criticise other sovereign states for doing likewise? Last week the Foreign Office professed itself "deeply concerned" at the fate of Russia's Pussy Riot three, jailed for two years for "hooliganism" in Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. They had staged what, by all accounts, was an obscene publicity stunt, videoing an anti-Putin song defamatory of the Virgin Mary in front of pious worshippers.

Good for free speech, we might all say. That the act outraged public decency is an understatement. In a Levada poll of Russian public opinion, just 5% thought the girls should go unpunished and 65% wanted them in prison, 29% with hard labour. Artists round the globe may plead free speech, but to treat the Pussy Riot gesture as a glorious stand for artistic liberty is like praising Johnny Rotten, who did similar things, as the Voltaire of our day. There can be disproportionate apologias as well as disproportionate sentences.

Artists can look after their own. For the British and US governments to get on high horses about Russian sentencing is hypocrisy. America and Britain damned the "disproportionate" Pussy Riot terms. In America's case this was from a nation that jails drug offenders for 20, 30 or 40 years, holds terrorism "suspects" incommunicado indefinitely and imprisons for life even trivial "three strikes" offenders. Last week alone a US military court declared that reporting the Guantánamo Bay trial of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed would be censored. Any mention of his torture in prison was banned as "reasonably expected to damage national security". This has no apparent connection to proportionate punishment or freedom of speech.

The British security establishment during the Tony Blair-Gordon Brown regime tried to censor history books for possible "terrorist" incitement. It introduced control orders, restricted courts and long-period detention without trial. It made unlicensed demonstrating an offence and has since sought prosecution of Twitter and Facebook abuse. British ministers and courts are craven to what passes for public opinion. The idea that, whenever a crime or antisocial action hits the headlines, "the courts must send a message" is politicised justice. At times, especially in tragic cases involving children, it gets near to a lynch mob. Again the only message sent is to the media. If Britain's draconian sentencing were effective, British jails would not be bursting at the seams.

There is of course a difference between the liberties enjoyed in most western democracies and the cruder jurisprudence of modern Russia, China and much of the Muslim world. It would be silly to pretend otherwise. But the difference is not so great as to merit the barrage of megaphone comment from west to east. Pussy Riot may have attacked no one physically, but no society, certainly not Britain, legislates on the basis that "words can never hurt". If a rock group invaded Westminster Abbey and gravely insulted a religious or ethnic minority before the high altar, we all know that ministers would howl for "exemplary punishment" and judges would oblige.

Commenting on the social mores of other countries may offer an offshore outlet for the righteous indignation of politicians and editorialists. It has no noticeable effect. Western comments on the treatment of women in Muslim states, dissidents in China or drug offenders in south-east Asia are dismissed as imperial interference. But then how would we feel if Moscow or Singapore or Tehran condemned the treatment of Cenotaph protesters?

British courts jail at the drop of a headline. One of the few cabinet ministers in recent years to show a sincere desire to relate punishment to crime and imprisonment to consequence is the justice secretary, Kenneth Clarke. He is now being bad-mouthed out of his job by Downing Street's dark arts, frightened not of Clarke but of the rightwing press. Clarke is, with Iain Duncan Smith, a rare minister intellectually engaged with his job and eager courageously to see it through. Why are the Lib Dems not defending him? For David Cameron to sack Clarke would indeed send a message. Of the worst sort.

Selected Comments

PaulfromYorkshire

Mr Jenkins I completely agree with you. Cracking article.

You are right to make the distinction between what we think as individuals about Pussy Riot and what our hypocritical government says.

conanthebarbarian
8:40PM

Pointing fingers at other countries keeps the chatterers below the line here and elsewhere usefully engaged pointing out other people's supposed faults. Didn't someone once reportedly say something about looking at the beam in one's own eye first?

Not many do.

Recommend (595) Responses (2)

Simon Dosovitz

What am I supposed to say to this article? Yes, we really are the worst, and if the Russian people think feminists should do two years for a trite protest, so be it. Totally ridiculous. End bad practices here in the west AND free Pussy Riot.

Recommend (587) Responses (2)

Epanastis25Martiou

The west's hypocrisy over Pussy Riot is breathtaking

You can swap "pussy riot" with any other incident and the phrase will still hold true.

Go on try it!!!

Recommend (460) Responses (2)

whimsicaleye

For the British and US governments to get on high horses about Russian sentencing is hypocrisy.

The UK and US governments care not for freedom of expression, they are just pissed off that Russia is no longer led by a drunken fool a la Yeltsin ready and willing to hand over the country to the IMF asset strippers.

A Saudi journalist gets illegally extradited from Malaysia and imprisoned in Saudi Arabia without trial or due process for tweeting honest thoughts about the prophet - silence from the West.

Thai citizens legitimately criticizing their monarchy end up in prison - silence from the West.

The hypocrisy is sickening and highlights how the UK and US care not for 'human rights' or 'freedom of expression' but use these memes as a tool to further their geopolitical interests and ferment unrest whilst remaining silent on the human rights abuses carried out in states that tow the line.

Recommend (1423) Responses (4)

kingcreosote

Response to conanthebarbarian,

It seems the only way we can live with our own shortcomings is to be in complete denial.

Recommend (183) Responses (1)

hoverboards

Last week the Foreign Office professed itself "deeply concerned" at the fate of Russia's Pussy Riot

What a lovely sentence.

Recommend (236) Responses (1)

tomper2

by jailing 1,292 people for stealing bottles of water or trainers ...

Oh for heaven's sake, people died during that "dispersed rampage".

Recommend (538) Responses (4)

shaun

Exemplary punishment ; if a rioter is jailed for two years for stealing £10's worth of water. then a Banker should get two years added to his sentence for each ten pounds stolen or frauded from the public. So; £10 = 2 years, £100 = twenty years, £1'000 = two hundred years ......1 billion£ (1'000'000'000) is one hundred thousand years in prison. That at least is proportionally correct.

Recommend (963) Responses (2)

brijl92

You are you saying that we are hypocritical to condemn Russia when we are harsher over here? That's just not true. You can trivialise the riots as "stealing bottles of water" but it was total contempt for society and the rioters were (generally) lucky not to kill. As for why the prisons are full, hasn't that got a lot to do with the fact that they are perceived as a soft touch-did you hear the Salford yob who murdered Anuj Bidve mocking his sentence?

In the case of Pussy Riot, seems to me that the Russian people are fairly clear that gross disrespect is something that they will not tolerate and it's got little to do with Putin. The comparison to the West is indeed chastening - they are prepared to stand up against publicity-seeking punks who disrespect everything around them. We would give them a community order and wait for the next escalation.

Your point about full prisons has more to do with a lack of deterrence than a harshness in sentencing. As for the excellent Mr Clarke, can any Justice Secretary explain why drugs and fags are still tolerated in our jails - to outlaw them tomorrow would be the biggest single deterrent possible -it should be fixed by any competent minister, day 1. As for considering IDS a minister "intellectually engaged with his job" that's about as accurate as the portrayal of Pussy Riot as political martyrs. Free Stephanie Flanders!

Recommend (194) Responses (1)

Adommc

Good article. Though..

If the dog causes injury, the maximum term is to be two years. I have no sympathy for such people. Keeping these beasts is weird, and those who do it probably need treatment.

'Keeping these beasts' is compassionate and humane and if you've been to the Caribbean or Africa, you'd have seen how lucky domesticated dogs in the UK are. But overall, i'm grateful for this article, it at least made me grateful knowing that i'm not a sociopath for not finding treatment of the girls as hysterical as most of the world media portrayed.

Recommend (113) Responses (3)

bootboys

Response to hermionegingold,

Not sure about that. the pussy riot girls have made a laughing stock of the thug putin. i don't think that's such a bad thing. what they did was distasteful to me but how they have been treated is far more distressing.

What a tender soul! What do you find so distressing? That these girls - two of them mothers, let's not forget - can't continue their practices of museum orgies or masturbating with frozen chickens in the supermarket? They're obviously not as delicate as you.

Recommend (311) Responses (8)

Silverwhistle

Our courts now jail at the drop of a headline – for stealing water or abuse sent on Twitter. So who are we to condemn Russia?

Well, quite a lot of "us" don't support gross overreactions by British courts either, and didn't vote for the current government, so yes, I feel perfectly free to condemn Putin's government, too.

Recommend (346) Responses (0)

teaandchocolate

Iain Duncan Smith, a rare minister intellectually engaged with his job and eager courageously to see it through.

I agree with most of the article, except for this one. IDS, along with Fox, Osborne and Gove, is ruining everythng that is good about Britian.

Recommend (543) Responses (1)

Neville Walker

Good article Simon, though you might have added that the CPS recently tried to frame an innocent (but troublesome) man for possessing photographs of legal sexual practices that were neither especially extreme nor particularly uncommon.

Recommend (177) Responses (0)

hermionegingold

Response to bootboys,

9:11PM get off your perch dear.

i intrinsically find anyone entering a house of worship to derail those of genuine faith a no no. just bad manners

that's all i meant. nothing more .

Recommend (129) Responses (2)

Silverwhistle

Response to bootboys,

9:11PM What a tender soul! What do you find so distressing? That these girls - two of them mothers, let's not forget - can't continue their practices of museum orgies or masturbating with frozen chickens in the supermarket?

They're not harming anyone. And what relevance is it that 2 of them have children, other than it highlights the cruelty of the criminal justice system's overreaction in sending them to prison?

lundiel
9:17PM

Well said Simon. I couldn't believe it when Pussy Riot was the main news story on the day the South African miners were shot dead.

kingcreosote

Response to lundiel,

9:17PM Then they threatened to sack the rest, a British company acting like ancient colonialists who regarded the lives of black people inferior.

How far have we actually moved on when there is so little outcry over atrocities done in our name?

hermionegingold

Response to kingcreosote,

9:17PM kidnap is a criminal offence, quite rightly, offending religious beliefs shouldn't be.

not sure what your point is?

Recommend (102) Responses (2)

rkshvch

That's ridiculous. I've never thought an article like this may appear on The Guardian. Thanks Simon Jenkins!

Recommend (144) Responses (0)

Neville Walker

Response to hermionegingold,

think you miss his point, which is that disproportionate and unjust as the treatment of Pussy Riot has been, the legal systems in the UK and US are often guilty of very similar misdemeanours. Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, 42 days (kicked out, thankfully), trial by tabloid, and so on. Not to mention the US' continued addiction to the death penalty or its vindictive (and probably illegal) treatment of Bradley Manning.
gwp3

"the courts must send a message" is politicised justice

Absolutely. The duty of the court is to impose just sentences on the guilty, not to send messages to the population at large.

rkshvch

Response to whimsicaleye,

The UK and US governments care not for freedom of expression, they are just pissed off that Russia is no longer led by a drunken fool a la Yeltsin ready and willing to hand over the country to the IMF asset strippers.

Absolutely true. Same about every other concerns about "democracy" and "freedom" in other countries usually spoken by Hillary etc.

Arapas

Our courts now jail at the drop of a headline – for stealing water or abuse sent on Twitter. So who are we to condemn Russia?

That just about sums it all up -- No need to read the rest of the article! I was brought up to believe what a terrible place the USSR was. In fact it was the only place on the planet I never wanted to visit, having been everywhere else. Times do change though. The collapse of the Soviet Union, brought about a change of mind. I decided to travel East, life is too short, and I did not want to miss out!

What I felt during my two visits there, was that I was deceived by others but also my self. Life in Russia is unique. You could not wish for a friendlier people. The streets were ABSOLUTELY spotless, and every female young and old dressed immaculately. On the Moscow Metro youngsters were literally flying off their seats to offer them to the elders! That is how it used to be on London's underground when I was a student, many decades ago, but not any more. The Russians are proud and peaceful people. They love their churches. Old ladies turn up in the middle of the day to light their candles. It was outside one of these churches that I met for the first time "Nicholas the Tsar, Lenin and Pushkin" having a conversation -- I did not part with my 200 Roubles though!

Now bring into play Pussy Riot into this kind of environment, and you create an explosive cocktail. For that what it was. And the church with the legal system will not stand for it. Then blame it all on Putin, and everybody is happy. Petty windedness. That is what it is. And it does not make us any better one iota.

mikedow

The finger pointing our govts. do is solely for domestic use. The other countries don't raise an eyebrow over what is said anymore.

Banner

Comparing sentences between e.g. Britain and Russia is a pointless exercise. The point is rather that Pussy Riot are held by many to be victims of arbitrary law-making by a supine and corrupt judiciary. What does Simon jenkins say, for example, about the case of the Czech rockers Plastic People of the Universe in the 1970s with which this case has been very plausibly compared. Would he have stood up for the authorities then, merely on the basis that "western justice" is not perfect?

hermionegingold

Response to Neville Walker,

actually i think your assessment has more clarity than the article.

that justice is yet another failed venture we have embarked upon my view is that russia on this one is about 20 years out of date. the next generation over there are making a political stand. i think we should support them even if we don't always agree with their methods (and by that i mean sensibilities never violence)

fishenchips

But then how would we feel if Moscow or Singapore or Tehran condemned the treatment of Cenotaph protesters?

I wouldn't feel anything, beyond acknowledging they'd be fuckin' morons if they did.

Anyone who defaces the cenotaph is a tool. Anyone who offends the misogynistic, homophobic and racist bigots that wield power in the Russian Orthodox Church - to say nothing of mocking the thug Putin - is making a stand.

Why are you incapable of making this obvious distinction, Jenkins?

gwp3

Response to Neville Walker,

I think you miss his point, which is that disproportionate and unjust as the treatment of Pussy Riot has been, the legal systems in the UK and US are often guilty of very similar misdemeanours. Guantanamo, extraordinary rendition, 42 days (kicked out, thankfully), trial by tabloid, and so on. Not to mention the US' continued addiction to the death penalty or its vindictive (and probably illegal) treatment of Bradley Manning.

I agree. It seems that many readers have missed the essence of the article.

SoaringSkys

Response to bootboys,

"can't continue their practices of museum orgies or masturbating with frozen chickens in the supermarket?"

You didn't mention what they were convicted of so I guess the church thing wasn't so serious after all.

And now the likelihood of seeing frozen chickens thawed out in the market place has increased exponentially as pussy riot avengers will hit the streets with protest.

LinearBandKeramik

Response to brijl92,

You are you saying that we are hypocritical to condemn Russia when we are harsher over here? That's just not true. You can trivialise the riots as "stealing bottles of water" but it was total contempt for society and the rioters were (generally) lucky not to kill.

Contempt for society is not a crime. If it were, there'd hardly be a Thatcherite outside of prison.

As for the rioters being lucky not to kill, that's not how justice works. If you commit a crime, and there is evidence you committed it, you get charged. Then there is a trial, and if the evidence is deemed strong enough by a jury, you get punished.

You don't randomly hand out draconian sentences to some rioters for trivial offences, because the rioters "in general" could, maybe, possibly have killed someone if things had turned out differently. That's contrary to any notion of justice.

You can only be legitimately punished for actions you personally carried out and which actually happened. How you (or anyone) can disagree with this notion is beyond me.

clarkbgwent

Look up Jamie Bevan. Welsh Language activist imprisoned initially for action against the unelected Tory government's Cardiff offices, in protest against their cavalier attitude to S4C. Further punishment was meted out to him for- get this- insisting on filling in forms in Welsh. Welsh being a language that, in law, carries equal standing with English in the Merthyr area where he is detained. While a man is in prison for wanting to interact with the legal system of his own country in his own language, we have a Pussy Riot of our own.

kingcreosote

Response to hermionegingold,

Exactly the point of the article the west is just as guilty as Russia in its hypocrisy and so are many of its leaders.
Foster6the6imposter6

This article is about as true as it can get....

The West has its blasphemy, the Russians theirs.....just change the name of who you call the powerful, and the name of who is going to do time. When you do that, the hypocrisy becomes obvious.

SD1000

@blueballoo2000, it's not that we don't have a right to criticise Russia, it's that we should be criticising our own political and media establishment equally loudly.

Putin's government is abhorrent and dictatorial, and worse than ours. Nevertheless, our government is pretty bloody awful too, willing to trample on human rights to satisfy the right wing press.

It's easy to attack Russia. Attacking Britain would be cleverer and braver.

robbo100

Response to osekar,

excellent article anyway the pussy girls ill be out in two month.

If that happens do you think it will have nothing to do with the amount of international attention and condemnation these women's treatment has received?

Some people seem to think we have to choose between condemning things which happen here and condemning the treatment of Pussy Riot. I don't see that at all.

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[May 05, 2020] UK government experince with the White Helmets and the Skripal affair definitly halps in anti-china propaganda. Published on May 05, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Mar 22, 2020] Mask piracy among neoliberal nations: Wonderful show of world-wide solidarity Published on Mar 21, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Jan 14, 2020] Impeachment Of President Trump An Imperial War Game by By Barbara Boyd Published on Nov 22, 2019 | futurefastforward.com

[Jan 09, 2020] It looks like UK and the USA intelligences agencies run the contest to see who can come up with the most surreal anti-Russian propaganda psy-ops Published on Nov 24, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Dec 17, 2019] History Doesn t Repeat, But It Often Rhymes: Wilson in UK was subjected to the similar attack by rogue elements in MI5 as Trump in the USA Published on Dec 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Sep 15, 2019] How the UK Security Services neutralised the country s leading liberal newspaper by Matt Kennard and Mark Curtis Published on Jan 01, 2019 | dailymaverick.co.za

[Aug 14, 2019] Charge of anti-Semitism as a sign of a bitter factional struggle in UK Labor Party between neoliberal and alternatives to neoliberalism wings Published on Aug 14, 2019 | averypublicsociologist.blogspot.com

[May 19, 2019] Intel agencies of the UK and US are guilty of fabricating evidence, breaking the laws (certainly of the targeted countries, but also of the UK and US), providing fake analysis and operating as evil actors on the dark side of humanity Published on May 19, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

[May 11, 2019] Whitney Judgment Day Looms For John Brennan Published on May 11, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

[May 11, 2019] Christopher Steele, FBI s Confidential Human Source by Publius Tacitus Published on Aug 08, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Apr 28, 2019] The British Role in Russiagate Is About to Be Fully Exposed Published on Apr 22, 2019 | consortiumnews.com

[Apr 22, 2019] FBI top brass have been colluding with top brass of CIA and MI6 to pursue ambitious anti-Russian agenda Published on Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Apr 22, 2019] Current Neo-McCarthyism hysteria as a smoke screen of the UK and the USA intent to dominate European geopolitics and weaken Russia and Germany Published on Jul 24, 2018 | angrybearblog.com

[Apr 21, 2019] George Papodopoulus was entrapped by individuals linked to British MI-6 and the CIA with offers to provide meetings with Russians and Putin. The Mueller account is a lie Published on Apr 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Apr 21, 2019] Special Counsel Mueller -- Disingenuous and Dishonest by Larry C Johnson Published on Apr 20, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Apr 16, 2019] CIA Director Used Fake Skripal Incident Photos To Manipulate Trump Published on Apr 16, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Apr 10, 2019] Habakkuk on cockroaches and the New York Times Published on Apr 08, 2019 | www.wsws.org

[Apr 06, 2019] The Magnitsky Act-Behind the Scenes ASEEES Published on Apr 06, 2019 | www.aseees.org

[Mar 31, 2019] What is the purpose of Russiagate hysteria? Published on Mar 31, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Mar 24, 2019] One could wish that DOJ IG Horowitz could investigate and sanction British Intelligence for its use of official and non-official officials in starting this debacle. Published on Mar 24, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Mar 18, 2019] Journalists who are spies Published on Mar 03, 2006 | www.nytimes.com

[Mar 18, 2019] The Why are the media playing lapdog and not watchdog – again – on war in Iraq? Published on Oct 10, 2014 | The Guardian

[Mar 14, 2019] Manafort's Ukrainians were actually pro-West? - Habakkuk Published on Mar 14, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Feb 16, 2019] Death Of Russiagate: Mueller Team Tied To Mifsud s Network Published on Jan 22, 2019 | www.zerohedge.com

[Feb 08, 2019] To understand Steele and the five eyes involvement in the Russia hoax you need to go to the library Published on Feb 08, 2019 | www.unz.com

[Jan 29, 2019] These 2020 hopefuls are courting Wall Street. Don t be fooled by their progressive veneer by Bhaskar Sunkara Published on Jan 15, 2019 | www.theguardian.com

[Jan 29, 2019] Guardian became Deep State Guardian Published on Dec 22, 2018 | off-guardian.org

[Jan 20, 2019] Doctor, nurse, Chief Nursing Officer of the Army, whatever. Published on Jan 20, 2019 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Jan 11, 2019] New Documents Reveal a Covert British Military-Intelligence Smear Machine Meddling In American Politics by Mark Ames Published on Jan 11, 2019 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

[Jan 08, 2019] Shock Files- What Role Did Integrity Initiative Play in Sergei Skripal Affair- - Sputnik International Published on Jan 08, 2019 | sputniknews.com

[Jan 08, 2019] Skripal spin doctors- Documents link UK govt-funded Integrity Initiative to anti-Russia narrative Published on Jan 05, 2019 | www.defenddemocracy.press

[Jan 08, 2019] No, wealth isn t created at the top. It is merely devoured there by Rutger Bregman Published on Mar 30, 2017 | www.theguardian.com

[Jan 06, 2019] British elite fantasy of again ruling the world (with American and Zionist aid) has led to a series of catastrophic blunders and overreaches in both foreign and domestic policies. Published on Jan 06, 2019 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Dec 24, 2018] Income inequality happens by design. We cant fix it by tweaking capitalism Published on Dec 05, 2015 | The Guardian

[Dec 22, 2018] British Security Service Infiltration, the Integrity Initiative and the Institute for Statecraft by Craig Murray Published on Dec 13, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

[Dec 22, 2018] If Truth Cannot Prevail Over Material Agendas We Are Doomed by Paul Craig Roberts Published on www.theamericanconservative.com

[Dec 16, 2018] The 'Integrity Initiative' - A Military Intelligence Operation, Disguised As Charity, To Create The Russian Threat Published on Dec 15, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Dec 16, 2018] Neoliberalism has had its day. So what happens next (The death of neoliberalism and the crisis in western politics) by Martin Jacques Published on Aug 21, 2016 | www.theguardian.com

[Dec 14, 2018] MI6, along with elements of the CIA, was behind the Steele Dossier. Representatives of John Brennan met in London to discus before the go ahead was given Published on Dec 08, 2018 | www.unz.com

[Dec 14, 2018] Neoliberalism has spawned a financial elite who hold governments to ransom by Deborah Orr Published on Jun 08, 2013 | www.theguardian.com

[Dec 09, 2018] Neoliberalism is more like modern feudalism - an authoritarian system where the lords (bankers, energy companies and their large and inefficient attendant bureaucracies), keep us peasants in thrall through life long debt-slavery simply to buy a house or exploit us as a captured market in the case of the energy sector. Published on Dec 09, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

[Dec 05, 2018] Beleaguered British Prime Minister Theresa May is wailing loudly against a Trump threat to reveal classified documents relating to Russiagate by Philip Giraldi Published on Dec 05, 2018 | www.unz.com

[Dec 03, 2018] Neoliberalism is a modern curse. Everything about it is bad and until we're free of it, it will only ever keep trying to turn us into indentured labourers. It's acolytes are required to blind themselves to logic and reason to such a degree they resemble Scientologists or Jehovah's Witnesses more than people with any sort of coherent political ideology, because that's what neoliberalism actually is... a cult of the rich, for the rich, by the rich... and it's followers in the general population are nothing but moron familiars hoping one day to be made a fully fledged bastard. Published on Dec 03, 2018 | www.theguardian.com

[Nov 27, 2018] 'Highly likely' that Magnitsky was poisoned by toxic chemicals on Bill Browder's orders Published on Nov 19, 2018 | www.rt.com

[Nov 27, 2018] terms that carry with them implicit moral connotations. Investment implies an action, even a sacrifice, undertaken for a better future. It evokes a future positive outcome. Another words that reinforces neoliberal rationality is "growth", Modernization and Published on Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

[Nov 27, 2018] The Argentinian military coup, like those in Guatemala, Honduras, Brazil, Paraguay, Bolivia and Nicaragua, was sponsored by the US to protect and further its interests during the Cold War. By the 1970s neoliberalism was very much part of the menu; paramilitary governments were actively encouraged to practice neoliberal politics; neoliberalism was at this stage, what communism was to the Soviet Union Published on Nov 27, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

[Nov 24, 2018] MI6 Scrambling To Stop Trump From Releasing Classified Docs In Russia Probe Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Nov 24, 2018] Anonymous Exposes UK-Led Psyop To Battle Russian Propaganda Published on Nov 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Nov 24, 2018] British Government Runs Secret Anti-Russian Smear Campaigns Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Nov 24, 2018] When you are paid a lot of money to come up with plots psyops, you tend to come up with plots for psyops . The word entrapment comes to mind. Probably self-serving also. Published on Nov 24, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Oct 20, 2018] Cloak and Dagger by Israel Shamir Published on Oct 20, 2018 | www.unz.com

[Oct 08, 2018] British intelligence now officially is a by-word for organized crime by John Wight Published on Oct 08, 2018 | www.rt.com

[Sep 24, 2018] 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. Published on Sep 22, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Sep 23, 2018] UK Begged Trump Not To Declassify Russia Docs; Cited Grave Concerns Over Steele Involvement Published on Sep 23, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Sep 16, 2018] Looks like the key players in Steele dossier were CIA assets Published on Aug 23, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Sep 15, 2018] BBC is skanky state propaganda Published on Aug 30, 2018 | craigmurray.org.uk

[Sep 14, 2018] English Translation of Udo Ulfkotte s Bought Journalists Suppressed Published on Sep 14, 2018 | off-guardian.org

[Sep 09, 2018] DNC Papadopoulos s UK contact may be dead Published on Sep 09, 2018 | thehill.com

[Aug 18, 2018] Pentagon Whistleblower Demoted After Exposing Millions Paid To FBI Spy Halper, Clinton Crony Published on Aug 16, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Aug 08, 2018] Sergei Skripal was linked to a consultant with former UK spy Christopher Steele's Orbis Business Intelligence Published on Aug 06, 2018 | www.zerohedge.com

[Jul 20, 2018] So many (ex-) MI6 operators (Steele, Tait, etc) involved in the story. It is interesting that the media don t question the intense involvement of the British in all this. And of course, the British haven t been laggards in adding fuel to the fire by the whole novichok hoax Published on Jul 20, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Jun 09, 2018] Spooks Spooking Themselves by Daniel Lazare Published on May 31, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

[Jun 09, 2018] Still Waiting for Evidence of a Russian Hack by Ray McGovern Published on Jun 09, 2018 | consortiumnews.com

[May 04, 2018] Media Use Disinformation To Accuse Russia Of Spreading Such by b Published on May 04, 2018 | www.moonofalabama.org

[Apr 21, 2018] It s a tough old world and we are certainly capable of a Salisbury set-up and god knows what else in Syria. Published on Apr 21, 2018 | discussion.theguardian.com

[Apr 16, 2018] British Propaganda and Disinformation An Imperial and Colonial Tradition by Wayne MADSEN Published on Apr 16, 2018 | www.strategic-culture.org

[Mar 27, 2018] Perfidious Albion The Fatally Wounded British Beast Lashes Out by Barbara Boyd Published on Mar 18, 2018 | LaRouchePAC

[Mar 24, 2018] Assange Suggests British Government Was Involved In Plot To Bring Down Trump by Steve Watson Published on Mar 23, 2018 | www.infowars.com

[Mar 23, 2018] Skripal Poisoning a Desperate British Attempt To Resurrect Their American Coup by Barbara Boyd Published on Mar 18, 2018 | www.larouchepub.com

[Mar 15, 2018] The UK will promptly expel 23 Russian diplomats without waiting for the end of the investigation Published on Mar 14, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Mar 10, 2018] Meier might have discovered that his subject had been, as it were, 'top supporting actor' in the first fumbling attempt by Christopher Steele et al to produce a plausible-sounding scenario as to the background to Litvinenko s death. Published on Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Mar 10, 2018] There is reason to suspect that some former and very likely current employees of the FBI have been colluding with elements in other American and British intelligence agencies, in particular the CIA and MI6, in support of an extremely ambitious foreign policy agenda for a very long time. It also seems clear that influential journalists, such as Glenn Simpson was before founding Fusion GPS, along with his wife Mary Jacoby, have been strongly involved in this Published on Mar 10, 2018 | turcopolier.typepad.com

[Feb 12, 2018] I am wondering why it is that much of a stretch to believe that the CIA might have engineered the whole thing Published on Feb 12, 2018 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

[Jan 01, 2018] British Intervention into 2016 U.S. Election Published on Jan 01, 2018 | www.larouchepub.com

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