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Feb 24, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
The Russia Interference Hoax--Deja Vu All Over Again by Larry C Johnson
Admiral Bill McRaven is proving himself to be an ignorant buffoon. Yes, I'm calling a so-called military hero a clown. He is out today with a despicable op-ed attacking President Trump for removing ACTING DNI Joe Maguire. Here is a sampling of McRaven's stupidity:
Edmund Burke, the Irish statesman and philosopher, once said : "The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing." Over the course of the past three years, I have watched good men and women, friends of mine, come and go in the Trump administration -- all trying to do something -- all trying to do their best. Jim Mattis, John Kelly, H.R. McMaster, Sue Gordon, Dan Coats and, now, Joe Maguire, who until this week was the acting director of national intelligence. . . .
But, of course, in this administration, good men and women don't last long. Joe was dismissed for doing his job: overseeing the dissemination of intelligence to elected officials who needed that information to do their jobs. As Americans, we should be frightened -- deeply afraid for the future of the nation. When good men and women can't speak the truth, when facts are inconvenient, when integrity and character no longer matter, when presidential ego and self-preservation are more important than national security -- then there is nothing left to stop the triumph of evil.Bill, you are wrong as you can be. Are you too damn lazy to do some simple reading and research?
Maguire's role as DNI was a temporary appointment. It was not permanent and was not submitted to the Senate as part of a confirmation process. He was a mere place holder. Yet McRaven and others in the anti-Trump crowd display their profound ignorance and insist, wrongly, that Trump fired Maguire.Here is the dishonest NY Times spin:
On Wednesday, the president announced that he was replacing Mr. Maguire with Richard Grenell, the ambassador to Germany and an aggressively vocal Trump supporter. And though some current and former officials speculated that the briefing might have played a role in that move, two administration officials said the timing was coincidental. Mr. Grenell had been in discussions with the administration about taking on new roles, they said, and Mr. Trump had never felt a kinship with Mr. Maguire.
Donald Trump did not fire Maguire. He followed the law. The specious claim that Trump fired Maguire exposes McRaven and his ilk as either liars or ignoramuses. The statute governing temporary appointments (i.e., the Federal Vacancies Reform Act of 1998) is quite clear:
Once a vacancy occurs, the position is eligible to be filled by an acting officer for 210 days from the date of the vacancy, as well as any time when a nomination is pending before the Senate.
Guess what? Maguire's resignation coincides with the 210 day limit.
Facts do not matter to the anti-Trumpers. Remember all of the hysteria surround Attorney General Barr's legitimate and proper submission of a RECOMMENDATION for reduced sentencing in the case of Roger Stone. The media and punditry reacted as if Barr was calling for the mass extermination of physically handicapped children. Hardly any took time to note that Barr's "RECOMMENDATION" was just that--a recommendation. Nothing Barr said or wrote could compel or coerce Judge Berman to act according to Barr's wishes. And guess what? Judge Berman decided that Barr was right. The key point being that, SHE DECIDED. Not Barr.
Donald Trump is now on the offensive against a corrupt, dishonest intelligence and law enforcement community as well as their enablers in the festering establishment--the whole crowd is panicked.
The faux outrage over Trump replacing Maguire is just one indicator of this fear. Another is the fact that we are once again being bombarded with the recycled propaganda that Russia meddled in our 2016 election and is poised to do the same in 2020. What next? Resurrect Jussie Smollet and hire a group of pretend rednecks to stage another faux attack on him during the night on the wintry streets of Chicago?
The most recent installment in Putin on the prowl comes courtesy of The NY Times, doing its damndest to masquerade as Pravda.
Intelligence officials warned House lawmakers last week that Russia was interfering in the 2020 campaign to try to get President Trump re-elected, five people familiar with the matter said, a disclosure to Congress that angered Mr. Trump, who complained that Democrats would use it against him.
The day after the Feb. 13 briefing to lawmakers, the president berated Joseph Maguire, the outgoing acting director of national intelligence, for allowing it to take place, people familiar with the exchange said. Mr. Trump was particularly irritated that Representative Adam B. Schiff, Democrat of California and the leader of the impeachment proceedings, was at the briefing.
During the briefing to the House Intelligence Committee, Mr. Trump's allies challenged the conclusions, arguing that he had been tough on Russia and that he had strengthened European security.
Just another scurrilous lie. Pure propaganda being spun for the sole purpose of smearing Trump and tainting his election. The real truth is that Russia, under Vladimir Putin, is doing less "meddling" in our elections than did his predecessors. We meddled in their elections and domestic politics going back to the end of World War II. Meddling is a natural consequence of having professional intelligence services like the CIA, the FSB, the GRU, the DIA, etc. Another uncomfortable fact is that social media makes it more difficult for the traditional intelligence actors to interfere in politics. Michael Bloomberg's spending in the 2020 Democrat primary dwarfs all efforts to control the social media message. Yet, there are limits to the effectiveness of such "meddling."
If there really was intelligence that Russia had embarked on a new, more expansive round of meddling then that intelligence should have been briefed to the President as part of Presidential Daily Briefing. But that has not taken place. Trump's National Security Advisor, Robert O'Brien says pointedly that he has seen no intelligence to substantiate The NY Times report. NONE :
"I haven't seen any intelligence that Russia is doing anything to attempt to get President Trump reelected," Robert O'Brien, who was appointed by Trump to the post in September, said in an ABC News interview to be broadcast on Sunday.
"I have not seen that, and I get pretty good access," he said, according to excerpts released on Saturday.Another meme in the latest propaganda push by deranged Democrats and discredited media is to portray Maguire's temporary replacement, Ambassador Richard Grenell, as some sort of ignorant, unqualified political hack.
Senator Mark Warner of Virginia offers up an excellent example of this kind of malicious stupidity :
"The President has selected an individual without any intelligence experience to serve as the leader of the nation's intelligence community in an acting capacity. This is the second acting director the President has named to the role since the resignation of Dan Coats, apparently in an effort to sidestep the Senate's constitutional authority to advise and consent on such critical national security positions, and flouting the clear intent of Congress when it established the Office of the Director of National Intelligence in 2004.
"The intelligence community deserves stability and an experienced individual to lead them in a time of massive national and global security challenges. And at a time when the integrity and independence of the Department of Justice has been called into grave question, now more than ever our country needs a Senate-confirmed intelligence director who will provide the best intelligence and analysis, regardless of whether or not it's expedient for the President who has appointed him.
Warner conveniently forgets that Trump named Dan Coats as DNI and the Senate, along with Warner's vote, approved him. Coats had trouble spelling CIA and DNI. He was completely unqualified for the position, yet the Senate rolled over for him with barely a whimper. How about the first DNI? Ambassador John Negroponte was not an intelligence professional. He was career Foreign Service.
Ambassador Grenell has experience comparable to Negroponte's. Grenell has dealt with all elements of the intelligence community during his tenure working within the realm of the U.S. foreign service. The good news is that Grenell is now on the job as DNI and is starting to clean house. This should have been done four years ago. The DNI, like many other parts of the bureaucracy, is infested with anti-Trump haters doing their best to sabotage his Presidency.
Robert O'Brien has cleaned out the NSC. There are a lot of empty desks there now. And persons through out the National Security bureacracy, including DOD and CIA, are being emptied. This is a prelude. When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments expect the screaming to intensify.
blue peacock , 23 February 2020 at 02:59 PM
Larry Johnson , 23 February 2020 at 03:10 PM"When prosecutor John Durham starts dropping indictments....."Larry, it looks like you have a lot of confidence in Durham. What gives you this confidence? The actions of the DOJ to date should make people skeptical that they'll prosecute their own leadership.
If Barr and Durham were going to play ball with the Deep Staters and the anti-Trumpers they would not be attacked as is happening. The hysterical over wrought accusations leveled at Barr last week are merely a symptom of the fear seizing these seditionists.D , 23 February 2020 at 03:52 PMAmericans still retain their keen sense of fair play. Nothing wrong with wanting to be surrounded by those loyal to the elected President.English Outsider , 23 February 2020 at 04:25 PMIt is the President's duty to the office itself to demand those appointed also be competent and act with integrity. The President pays the price if they do not.
Upstate NY'er , 23 February 2020 at 07:53 PM
Larry Johnson,When it comes to telling us where he's coming from Barr has certainly set out his stall.
I have been very interested in AG Barr recently. I quoted this fine lecture -
https://americanrhetoric.com/speeches/williambarrfederalistsociety.htm
- on an English blog in order to underline some parallels between the parliamentary crisis in England last year and the very similar constitutional crisis in the US. But there's a lot more to the lecture than that -
"Immediately after President Trump won election, opponents inaugurated what they called "The Resistance," and they rallied around an explicit strategy of using every tool and maneuver to sabotage the functioning of the Executive Branch and his Administration. Now, "resistance" is the language used to describe insurgency against rule imposed by an occupying military power. It obviously connotes -- It obviously connotes that the government is not legitimate. This is a very dangerous -- and indeed incendiary -- notion to import into the politics of a democratic republic. What it means is that, instead of viewing themselves as the "loyal opposition," as opposing parties have done in this country for over 200 years, they essentially see themselves as engaged in a war to cripple, by any means necessary, a duly elected government."
That, together with some penetrating remarks about the difference between Progressive and Conservative - and making it amply clear how destructive Progressivism was - was perhaps more than William Barr merely setting out his stall. It was a declaration of intent and if it's held to then we may expect some dramatic results.
So I'm not surprised the Democrats are attacking him. The wonder is that they're not tearing him limb from limb.
Chris Murphy - the dolt from CT - on TV whining about Grenell being unqualified and a Trump loyalist. This is the same stooge who just met with the Iranian Foreign Minister (and a head of hair looking for a brain John Kerrey) in Munich.Flavius , 23 February 2020 at 08:43 PMAdmiral McRaven and his gumba Pentagon bureaucrats should be doing a little belly button gazing to determine how after 2 decades they've managed with considerable sturm und drang to win nothing but have succeeded magnificently in piloting the country into Cold War II with a real adversary.Upstate NY'er , 23 February 2020 at 09:41 PMWell done, Admiral!
Now don't go troubling yourself, Admiral, over finding a reason why people outside your beltway circle don't give a rat's ass about you and your pals getting disrespected. It's been a long time coming, a very long time, but ya'll have earned in spades the right to be ignored. Get used to it. Fool us for a year, for two years, three... but for eighteen years??? Sorry Admiral. Stop whining.
Flavius:JerseyJeffersonian , 23 February 2020 at 10:33 PMYou mean all those VERY important people - dressed like doormen -who haven't won a war since WWII?
BTW, Gulf Storm doesn't count - you'd probably get more fight back from the NY State Troopers.
These politicians in uniform know all about "diversity", pissing away LOTS of money, transgenders, sucking up and especially landing Beltway bandit contracts. Fighting, not so much.
Note, I'm referring to the General Officer ranks, not actual troops.
I assess with 100% certainty that this fake scandal was contrived to coincide with the end of this Maguire's "service". Indeed, all of this time he has been acting as an agent of the Borg, only chucking this stinkbomb as his last, spiteful act. Contemptible.prawnik , 24 February 2020 at 10:46 AMCaity Johnstone has written a parody piece in which the intelligence community labels every candidate other than Buttigieg to be a Secret Russian Agent.PRC90 , 24 February 2020 at 07:17 PMUnless someone in the DNC or numerous affiliates can come up with an actual Russian, this kind of hoax will begin to be be seen as dated.Fred , 24 February 2020 at 08:12 PMHowever, with the Weinstein conviction, the MeToo movement will get new life and a wave of similar high profile pursuits will begin.
Undoubtedly this will include one DJT, featuring accusers going back to the 1960's in a orchestrated 24/7 chorus of unproven horror that they hope will succeed where Mueller and Schiff et al have failed.
Who knows, perhaps one accuser (two for corroboration) will even allege some vague Russian presence.
PRC90,Jack , 24 February 2020 at 10:43 PMSo a democratic megadoner is convicted of multiple accounts of sexual assault and surprise! Others in the moral cesspool that is Hollywood won't be brought to "justice", social or otherwise but we'll see Stormy Daniels 2.0. Except her lawyer's already in jail. The left better come up with something better than that.
Fred,How about Epstein and his pals? That would be a good start. However nothing will happen on that since too many powerful people would likely be ensnared like Billy Clinton and a British prince.
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Feb 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
The US intelligence community's top election security official who appears to have overstated Russian interference in the 2020 election has a history of hyperbole - described by the Wall Street Journal as "a reputation for being injudicious with her words."
The official, Shelby Pierson, "appears to have overstated the intelligence community's formal assessment of Russian interference in the 2020 election, omitting important nuance during a briefing with lawmakers earlier this month," according to CNN .
The official, Shelby Pierson, told lawmakers on the House Intelligence Committee that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election with the goal of helping President Donald Trump get reelected .
The US intelligence community has assessed that Russia is interfering in the 2020 election and has separately assessed that Russia views Trump as a leader they can work with. But the US does not have evidence that Russia's interference this cycle is aimed at reelecting Trump , the officials said.
" The intelligence doesn't say that ," one senior national security official told CNN. "A more reasonable interpretation of the intelligence is not that they have a preference, it's a step short of that. It's more that they understand the President is someone they can work with, he's a dealmaker." - CNN
Pierson was reportedly peppered with questions from the House Intelligence Committee, which 'caused her to overstep and assert that Russia has a preference for Trump to be reelected,' according to the report. CNN notes that one intelligence official said that her characterization was "misleading," while a national security official said she failed to provide the "nuance" required to put the US intelligence conclusions in proper context.
To recap - Pierson told the House Intelligence Committee a lie , which was promptly leaked to the press - ostensibly by Democrats on the committee, and it's just now getting walked back with far less attention than the original 'bombshell' headline received.
Sound familiar?
No biggie... the media just ran with hysteria for 3 years as gospel accusing people of treason
Well guess what? It turns out the media and the DNC were the ones working for Russia, executing their long standing goal to create chaos better than Russia could have ever dreamed of. https://t.co/PhrJiES9ui
-- Donald Trump Jr. (@DonaldJTrumpJr) February 24, 2020
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Feb 22, 2020 | www.amazon.com
Boston Bill , March 23, 2019
Programs, programs, get your program here.Erving L. Briggs , April 2, 2019I received my copy just a few days before the Mueller investigation closed shop. There is an old saying "You can't tell the players without a program." As the aftermath of the Mueller investigation begins, you need this book. Some pundits and observers of the political scene have observed that the Mueller investigation didn't come about because of any real concern about "Trump Russia collusion," it was manufactured to protect the deep state from a non-political interloper. That's the case Diana West makes and does it with her exceptional knowledge of the Cold War and the current jihad wars. Not to mention her deadly aim with her rhetorical darts.
History RepeatsThe Red Thread by Diana West
Diana states, "the anti-Trump conspiracy is not about Democrats and Republicans. It is not about the ebb and flow of political power, lawfully and peacefully transferred. It is about globalists and nationalists, just as the president says. They are locked in the old and continuous Communist/anti-Communist struggle, and fighting to the end, whether We, the anti-Communists, recognize it or not."Diana traces the Red Thread running through the swamp, she names names and relates the history of the Red players. She asks the questions, Why? Why so many Soviet-style acts of deception perpetrated from inside the federal government against the American electoral process? Why so many uncorroborated dossiers of Russian provenance influencing our politics? Why such a tangle of communist and socialist roots in the anti-Trump conspiracy?
In this book, these questions will be answered.If you have read her book "American Betrayal," I'm sure you will have a good idea about what is going on. I did. I just didn't know the major players and the red history behind each of them.
The book is very interesting and short, only 104 pages, but it is not finished yet. Easy to read but very disturbing to know the length and width of the swamp, the depth, we may not know for a long time. I do feel better knowing that there are people like Diana uncovering and shining a light into the darkness. Get the book, we all need to know why this is happening and who the enemies are behind it. Our freedom depends on it.
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Feb 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Norwegian , Feb 22 2020 19:12 utc | 66
Posted by: Bemildred | Feb 22 2020 13:41 utc | 20The "social" is "social media" is in contrast to "professional" or "business" or "commercial" media, i.e. the MSM and other commercial media.
I understand "social media" literally in the Orwellian sense, it is "social" media just like war is peace. The true meaning is "asocial media" which prevents real interaction, and under complete control by big brother, you can become a non-person at any moment.
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Feb 16, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Sara Carter via SaraACarter.com,
U.S. Attorney John Durham – charged with the criminal probe into the FBI's Russia investigation of the Trump campaign – has been questioning CIA officials closely involved with John Brennan's 2017 intelligence community assessment regarding direct Russian interference in the 2016 election, according to U.S. officials.
In May 2017, Brennan denied during a hearing before the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that its agency relied on the now debunked Christopher Steele dossier for the Intelligence Community Assessment report. He told then Congressman Trey Gowdy "we didn't" use the Steele dossier.
"It wasn't part of the corpus of intelligence information that we had," Brennan stated.
"It was not in any way used as a basis for the Intelligence Community assessment that was done. It was -- it was not."
However, DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed in his report that the dossier was used in the Obama administration's 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA). As stated in the IG report, there were discussions by top intelligence officials as to whether the Steele dossier should be included in the ICA report.
But upon careful inspection of Horowitz's report, on page 179, investigators ask former FBI Director James Comey if he discussed the dossier with Brennan and whether or not it should be given to President Obama. According to the report, Comey told investigators that Brennan said it was "important" enough to include in the ICA -- clearly part of the "corpus of intelligence information" they had.
According to a recent report by The New York Times, Durham's probe is specifically looking at that January 2017 intelligence community assessment, which concluded with "high confidence" that Russian President Vladimir Putin "ordered an influence campaign in 2016."
"Mr. Durham appears to be pursuing a theory that the C.I.A., under its former director John O. Brennan, had a preconceived notion about Russia or was trying to get to a particular result -- and was nefariously trying to keep other agencies from seeing the full picture lest they interfere with that goal, the people said."
Sources with knowledge have said CIA officials questioned by Durham's investigative team "are extremely concerned with the investigation and the direction it's heading."
Brennan's assessment stated that Putin wanted to "undermine public faith in the U.S. democratic process, denigrate former Secretary of State [Hillary] Clinton, and harm her electability and potential presidency." It also stated that Putin "developed a clear preference for President-elect Trump."
But not everyone agreed with Brennan. The NSA then under retired Adm. Mike Rogers stated it only had "moderate confidence" that Putin tried to help Trump's election. As stated in the New York times Durham is investigating whether Brennan was keeping other intelligence agencies out of the loop to keep his narrative that Putin was helping Trump's campaign public.
"I wouldn't call it a discrepancy, I'd call it an honest difference of opinion between three different organizations, and, in the end, I made that call," Rogers told the Senate in May 2017.
"It didn't have the same level of sourcing and the same level of multiple sources."
According to The Times Durham is reviewing emails from the CIA, FBI, and National Security Agency analysts who worked on the January, 2017 Intelligence Community Assessment on Russia's interference in the election.
Durham's office could not be reached for comment. DOJ spokesperson Kerri Kupec also could not be reached for comment.
However, Brennan told MSNBC's "Hardball" last week, that Durham's questioning is dangerous.
Durham And FBI Spy Stefan Halper"It's kind of silly," he said.
"Is there a criminal investigation now on analytic judgments and the activities of C.I.A. in terms of trying to protect our national security? I'm certainly willing to talk to Mr. Durham or anybody else who has any questions about what we did during this period of 2016 ."
Durham's investigation appear to have many tentacles. For example, he has expanded his probe to the Pentagon's Office of Net Assessment. According to sources who spoke to SaraACarter.com he is carefully scrutinizing money paid through the office to former FBI confidential informant Cambridge academic Stefan Halper. Halper, who worked in previous U.S. administrations and is an academic, is connected to three of President Donald Trump's campaign officials that were wrapped up into the FBI's probe, most notably Carter Page.
Halper, along with others such as former MI6 Chief Sir Richard Dearlove, founded the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar, in England at Cambridge University. According to several sources, Durham has questioned officials at the Office of Net Assessment about Halper's contracts, how the money was utilized and what agency actually awarded the contract.
Further, Sen. Chuck Grassley, chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, is also investigating the over $1 million in contracts Halper received from the ONA, as first reported at SaraACarter.com. It is, of course, a separate investigation from Durham's but on the same issues.
The Office Of Net Assessment, according to sources with knowledge, is sometimes used as a front to pay contractors, like Halper, who are conducting work for U.S. intelligence agencies. It is for this reason, that Durham is investigating the flow of money that Halper received and whether or not agencies other than the FBI were involved in the investigation into Trump's campaign and whether or not, the contracts were accurately accounted for in the reports received by Grassley.
Durham's criminal investigation into the FBI , CIA, as well as private entities is ongoing. Known by its acronym ONA, the secretive office is run by Director James Baker, who has been in the role since being appointed by the Obama Administration in 2015. In a January letter to Baker, Grassley asks a litany of questions as to Halper's role within ONA, his contracts, his foreign contacts and whether the FBI, or CIA, used the ONA office to pay Halper for spying on Trump campaign personnel.
"Can ONA state for certain that Halper did not use taxpayer money provided by DoD to recruit, or attempt to recruit, sources for the FBI investigation into the now-debunked theory of collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia," Grassley asks Baker.
But it is Halper's role overseas and concern that the CIA may have been involved that is leading to more questions than answers. In 2016, in what appeared to be an unexpected move, Halper left the Cambridge Intelligence Seminar. He told papers in London – at the time – that it was due to "unacceptable Russian influence."
Ironically, documents obtained by SaraACarter.com suggest that during Halper's tenure with the seminar, he had also invited senior Russian intelligence officials to co-teach his course on several occasions. Further, according to news reports, he also accepted money to finance the course from a top Russian oligarch with ties to Putin.
Several course syllabi from 2012 and 2015 obtained by this outlet reveal Hapler had invited and co-taught his course on intelligence with the former Director of Russian Intelligence Gen. I. Vyacheslav Trubnikov.
Moreover, the New York Times recent report suggests that Durham's probe into Brennan is also looking closely at an alleged secret source said to have direct ties to the Kremlin. It is not certain if the same secret Kremlin source discussed by Brennan is the same source used by Halper in his reports.
However, there is evidence that Halper had similar sources to former MI6 spy Christopher Steele, who compiled the dossier. Based on hand written notes from an interview the State Department's Kathleen Kavalec states two of Steele's dossier sources; "Trubnikov" and "Surkov."
Interesting, isn't it.
Surkov is Vladislav Surkov, an aide of Vladimir Putin who is on the U.S.'s list of sanctioned individuals, and Trubnikov is none other than Vyacheslav Trubnikov. Trubnikov was the First Deputy of Foreign Minister of Russia and he formally served as the Director of Foreign Intelligence Service. He is also a source of Halper.
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Feb 15, 2020 | turcopolier.typepad.com
"Williams was born in Colón, Panama, to parents Akin Jules Williams and Sharon Williams, who were both Panamanian. He graduated in 1972 from Oakwood Friends School in Poughkeepsie, New York where he became clerk of the student body, editor of the student paper and was captain of the baseball, cross-country and championship basketball team. He attended Haverford College , from which he graduated with a baccalaureate in philosophy in 1976." wiki
---------------
I am curious as to how JW (Foxnews' most prominent token Lefty) got from Colon in the Republic of Panama where he was a son of the generally oppressed and typically impoverished class of West Indian people settled in the Republic of Panama to the Oakwood Friends School and then graduated from Haverford College. Both of these are private Quaker schools and not cheap. I do not know the answer to my question.
I was stationed in the Canal Zone 1965 and 1966 as a member of the "8th Special Forces Group" at Ft. Gulick. I was in the intelligence staff section of the Group Headquarters. Because of that I spent a lot of time with the operatives of Army Intelligence and the CIA, both of whom were engaged among other things in Force Protection activities designed to make safe the Canal Zone and US forces stationed therein.
The Partido del Pueblo was the Cuban and Soviet aligned Communist Party. The national government of Panama treated it as a deadly enemy and a conduit for Cuban subversion. The Panamanian government encouraged the US to keep the Partido del Pueblo as weak as possible. This party led street riots, bank robberies and looting of stores in Colon in 1964 and 1965. Half a dozen US solders were killed by snipers in these fandangos, shot in the Canal Zone from across the border.
To get a grip on this situation the CIA and Army Intelligence and probably the FBI clandestinely recruited as assets most of the senior members of the party and the politburo of the Partido del Pueblo. We had so many that if USI told the politburo to not attend a meeting and stay home, they lacked a quorum. To achieve these recruitments, the standard lures were; US money, assistance for relatives to move to the States and scholarships (full ride) for their children at good US private schools and colleges whose benevolent leaders could be persuaded to help (fully funded) 3rd world kids.
Is there a connection? I have no idea. pl
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/People%27s_Party_of_Panama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Juan_Williams
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oakwood_Friends_School
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haverford_College
Pollychrome , 15 February 2020 at 08:02 AM
Thanks for asking again, Colonel, for since you revealed these "lures," I've often wondered if they help explain Williams's career of fake-"Liberal" hackery.S , 15 February 2020 at 09:00 AM
Dear Colonel,GEORGE CHAMBERLAIN , 15 February 2020 at 09:16 AM
No need to post my earlier reply: just wanted you to know I'm still grateful for this question + all your wisdom. And part of what I admire is how concise your work is. THANKS.Yes it apparently happens all the time.turcopolier , 15 February 2020 at 09:58 AMFrank Marshall Davis, Obama's biological father, is from Arkansas City, Kansas and attended Friends University in Wichita Kansas where I was raised.
"Quakers, also called Friends, are a historically Christian group whose formal name is the Religious Society of Friends or Friends Church."
Davis received lots of timely "breaks" in his lifetime just as his son did.
So, yes there does seem to be a pattern.
polychromeI am just plain interested in how he gor where he is. IMO his strident leftist stance is largely an act designed to fulfill Foxnews' expectations of his role.
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Feb 15, 2020 | www.wsws.org
The National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) released a new National Counterintelligence Strategy document on Monday which outlines a "new approach" to US counterintelligence that places emphasis on "foreign" and "other adversarial threats" from "non-state actors."
The document, entitled National Counterintelligence Strategy of the United States of America, 2020-2022, is dated January 7, 2020 and signed by President Donald Trump. It states that the US is facing an "expanding array of foreign intelligence threats by adversaries who are using increasingly sophisticated methods to harm the United States."
As compared to the previous NCSC strategy released during the Obama administration at the end of 2015, the new orientation is to the threats posed to the interests of US imperialism around the world by digital technologies, online information and social media. In releasing the strategy document, NCSC Director William Evanina said that it represents a "paradigm shift in addressing foreign intelligence threats as a nation."
The swearing in of William Evanina as Director of the National Counterintelligence and Security Center (NCSC) on May 15, 2018 [Photo credit: dni.gov]Pointing to the ongoing partnership between US intelligence and the technology industry on a range of operations, Evanina said, "With the private sector and democratic institutions increasingly under attack, this is no longer a problem the U.S. Government can address alone. It requires a whole-of-society response involving the private sector, an informed American public, as well as our allies."
The NCSC Director goes on, "Sound counterintelligence and security procedures must become part of everyday American business practices. Implementing the strategy will require partnerships, information sharing, and innovation across public and private sectors." Evanina, of course, does not mention the fact that no greater threat exists to "democratic institutions" and "an informed American public" than the US national intelligence apparatus.
The intelligence strategy document is very brief, uses generalizations and is short on the details of any specific threats. It also provides only broad outlines of its plan of action and does not go into the specifics of what counterintelligence measures will be taken to combat the threats it does enumerate. This is the modus operandi of the American intelligence agencies: say as little as possible, repeat the age-old lies about promoting "democracy" around the world and then get on with the secret and criminal business of US-sponsored mayhem and murder.
The NCSC strategy document lists the top foreign intelligence threats to US interests as Russia -- repeating the well-worn but never proven assertion that the country is seeking to "instigate and exacerbate tensions and instability in the United States, including interfering with the security of our elections" -- and China.
The document also mentions the US "adversaries" Cuba, Iran and North Korea as well as the organizations Hezbollah, ISIS and al-Qaeda only once before moving on to its primary concern: the "significant threats" posed by "the ideologically motivated entities such as hacktivists, leaktivists and public disclosure organizations."
The inclusion of individuals and organizations involved in exposing government and corporate criminality -- such as WikiLeaks and its publisher Julian Assange as well as other journalists and news sites both within and outside the country that are prepared to tell the public the truth -- makes clear that left-wing, socialist and other alternative political websites will be the target of sustained US counterintelligence activities in the coming period.
Of significant concern for US intelligence is the impact of alternative and socialist political ideas and perspectives being disseminated among the US population under conditions of growing class conflict, political hostility to the government and both parties of the capitalist ruling elite and distrust of the corporate-controlled media.
The NCSC document emphasizes "influence campaigns in the United States to undermine confidence in our democratic institutions and processes and sow division in our society, exert leverage over the United States and weaken our alliances." This is the exact same language used by US intelligence during the concocted campaign over "Russian meddling" in the 2016 presidential elections. While no evidence was ever presented proving that the Russian state was engage in an "influence campaign" in 2016, the US corporate media incessantly reported and continues to report it as well-established fact.
The document then states that the influence campaigns "are designed, for example, to sway public opinion against US Government policies or in favor of foreign agendas, influence and deceive key decision makers, alter public perceptions, and amplify conspiracy theories. Our adversaries regard deception or manipulation of the views of U.S. citizens and policymakers to be an effective, inexpensive, and low-risk method for achieving their strategic objectives."
It then states that US adversaries are using "a range of communications media to enable their covert influence campaigns. Using false U.S. personas, foreign intelligence entities develop and operate social media sites and other forums to draw the attention of U.S. audiences, spread misinformation, and deliver divisive messages."
The NCSC is a department within the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, a member of the US presidential Cabinet. Joseph Maguire, a retired US Navy Vice Admiral after 36 years of military service, is currently the Acting Director of National Intelligence.
Officially, the purpose of US counterintelligence is to block the intelligence activities of foreign powers and to identity "entities who are at risk of intelligence collection or attack by foreign adversaries." However, US counterintelligence operations have always involved secret, murky and criminal activities carried out in the interests of US imperialism throughout the world.
The targeting of "hacktivists, leaktivists and public disclosure organizations" in the new strategy of US counterintelligence makes it clear that a major assault on First Amendment rights of free speech and freedom of the press is being prepared. Due to the global nature of the internet, online publishing and social media, it is impossible for US state agencies to make a clear distinction between what it considers "foreign" and "domestic" threats.
Proof that the blurring of national boundary lines of counterintelligence is already underway was evident in the statement made by NCSC Director Evanina at a gathering of cybersecurity officials on February 4. As an example of the actions to come, Evanina presented the Justice Department's recent charges against the head of Harvard's chemistry and biology department, Charles Lieber, for making false statements about his participation in a Chinese research program.
Furthermore, the use of the Espionage Act against individuals -- including former NSA contractor Edward Snowden, who revealed the massive and illegal surveillance of the public by the state -- for leaking information related to national security is part of the escalation of state repression against whistleblowers.
The Trump administration brought multiple charges against Assange on May 23, 2019 as part of the campaign to have the WikiLeaks founder and editor extradited to the US from Britain.
Assange faces a 175-year prison sentence, or possibly the death penalty, in the US for courageously exposing the crimes of US imperialism against the people of the world. Meanwhile, whistleblower Chelsea Manning has been imprisoned for nearly a year for refusing to testify against him.
The defense of basic democratic rights such as free speech and freedom of the press -- and the immediate release of Assange and Manning -- requires a mass political struggle by the working class internationally against the drive by the capitalist system toward dictatorship and war and for the abolition of the NSA, CIA, NCSC and all other such organizations.
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Feb 14, 2020 | off-guardian.org
Hollywood film legend Kirk Douglas' passing on February 5th at the age of 103 has resulted in a sickening level of hypocrisy from the leftist mainstream media outlets.
These outlets have written countless homages and memorials honoring the life of the man who "used his star power and influence in the late 1950s to help break the Hollywood blacklist" as CNN reported on February 6 . Similar eulogies have followed this line from MSNBC, the NY Times, Washington Post, as well as many Hollywood celebrities.
What makes this so sickening is not that these memorials are untrue, but rather that it is these same MSM/Hollywood forces that are the heirs to the fascist McCarthyite machine which Kirk Douglass and his close network of collaborators fought so courageously against during their lives.
Hollywood and the CIA TodayIn recent decades, barring a few exceptions, Hollywood (just like much of the mainstream media) has become a branch of the CIA and broader military industrial complex. While fake news agencies as CNN spin false facts to the intellects of mushy-minded Americans, Hollywood prepares the fertile soil for those false seeds to grow by shaping the hearts and imagination in their victims through the important hypnotic power of storytelling.
Tom Clancy's Jack Ryan , Spielberg's Bridge of Spies , Red Sparrow and Bitter Harvest are just a few of the most popular propaganda films which portray Russians as the nefarious villains of the earth and heroically elevate the CIA to patriotic heights.
Hacked emails from Sony pictures published on WikiLeaks provided a smoking gun when it was revealed that the Obama administration had courted Hollywood execs to the task of promoting films to "counter Russian narratives" and all of this in the midst of a renewed Cold War terror which has led to attacks on Chinese scholars in America and an attempted coup against a sitting U.S. President.
YET, just as Hollywood can serve as a force of great evil, Kirk Douglas and his small network of collaborators demonstrated that it could equally serve as a force of great good. This is because films exhibiting a spirit of honesty and courage can bypass the gatekeepers of intellect and strike at the inner being of the audience rendering a people, under certain circumstances better patriots of their nation and citizens of the world.
This brings us to the important question of "what truly made Kirk Douglas and his small but influential network of collaborators so important during such a dark period of World history during the peak of the Cold War?"
Ending the Blacklist: Douglas and TrumboThe above quote from a CNN memorial cited Douglas's efforts to end the Hollywood Blacklist. For those who are not aware, the blacklist was the name given to the "untouchables" of Hollywood.
Those writers, directors and producers who courageously refused to cooperate with the fascist hearings of the House on Un-American Activities run under the dictatorial leadership of Senator Joseph McCarthy and FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover.
By the end of the hearings, hundreds of careers were destroyed and examples were made of ten leading writers led by the great Dalton Trumbo- who were not only given prison sentences for defending the US Constitution, but who became un-hirable for years after their release. Not only this, but anyone caught employing them were threatened with similar penalties.
In spite of that grim reality many of them continued to work under pseudonyms with Trumbo even winning two uncredited academy awards during the 1950s ( Roman Holiday and The Brave One ).
During this dark period, a network of brave film makers formed who worked very closely together for 20 years which centered around Trumbo, Kirk Douglas, David Miller, John Frankenheimer, Stanley Kramer, Burt Lancaster and producer Edward Lewis.
Many of the films produced by these men not only carried stories which shook the foundations of the newly reorganized deep state, but also strove to awaken the moral sensibilities of Americans whose complacency had permitted the creation of a new Pax Americana abroad, and racist police state within.
Kirk Douglas responded to this early on by forming his own studio called Bryna Productions which created the anti-war classic Paths of Glory (1957) and Spartacus (1960).
Paths of Glory told the true story of the unjust execution of several French soldiers who refused to obey a suicide mission during WW1 and provided a strong statement against irrational wars but also arbitrary political power run amok.
Set in 72 BC, Spartacus told the true story of a Thracian slave who led a two year freedom struggle against Rome and spoke directly to the civil rights movement in America and fight against imperialism more broadly.
What gave Spartacus its strategic potency to end the Blacklist was due to the fact that it was written by the leading untouchable "commie-lover" of America Dalton Trumbo. Kirk Douglas' last minute decision to use Trumbo's real name was more of a risk than most people realize, and in later years, Douglas described this period:
The choices were hard. The consequences were painful and very real. During the blacklist, I had friends who went into exile when no one would hire them; actors who committed suicide in despair I was threatened that using a Blacklisted writer for Spartacus -- my friend Dalton Trumbo -- would mark me as a 'Commie-lover' and end my career. There are times when one has to stand up for principle. I am so proud of my fellow actors who use their public influence to speak out against injustice. At 98 years old, I have learned one lesson from history: It very often repeats itself. I hope that Trumbo, a fine film, will remind all of us that the Blacklist was a terrible time in our country, but that we must learn from it so that it will never happen again.When the newly-elected president John Kennedy and his brother Robert crossed anti-Communist picket lines to first attend the film, and then endorsed it loudly, the foundations of the Blacklist were destroyed and the edifice of 15 years of terror came crashing down.
Kennedy's Murder and Trumbo's RevengeKennedy's death in 1963 sent America into a spiral of despair, drugs and insanity. Films like Frankenheimber's Manchurian Candidate (1962), and 7 Days in May (1964) attempted to shed light on the deep state takeover of America but it was too late.
During the 1960s, Douglas, Ed Lewis, Trumbo and Frankenheimber continued to work closely together on films like Lonely are the Brave , Town without Pity , The Fixer , Last Sunset , Seconds , The Train , Devil's Disciple , Johny Got His Gun , The Horsemen and more. Sadly, the cultural rot had set in too deeply and nothing came as close to the artistry of the dense 1957-1964 period of creative resistance.
One little known film stands out quite a bit however, and since so little is known of this small masterpiece, a word must be said now.
Ten years after Kennedy's murder, Trumbo, Edward Lewis, David Miller, Mark Lane and Garry Horrowitz created a film which could be called "Trumbo's last stand". This film was called Executive Action (1973) and starred Kirk Douglas' long-time collaborator Burt Lancaster as a leading coordinator of the plot to assassinate President John F. Kennedy.
Edward Lewis, who had also produced Spartacus with Douglas earlier, spearheaded this film which tells the story of a cabal of oligarchs who arrange the murder of John Kennedy using three teams of professional mercenaries (former CIA men fired after the Bay of Pigs fiasco).
This incredibly well-researched storyline infused fiction with powerful facts and was based upon the work of Mark Lane- a close friend of the Kennedys, NY State Attorney, and civil rights activist (the only legislator to be arrested as a Freedom rider fighting segregation).
During a powerful dialogue between James Farrington (Lancaster) and the leader of the cabal Robert Foster (played by Robert Ryan), the gauntlet is dropped, as the true reason is given for Kennedy's murder in chilling detail: Global Depopulation.
Here Farrington is told by Foster:
"The real problem is this James. In two decades there will be seven billion human beings on this planet. Most of them brown, yellow or black. All of them hungry. All of them determined to love. They'll swarm out of their breeding grounds into Europe and North America Hence, Vietnam. An all-out effort there will give us control of south Asia for decades to come. And with proper planning, we can reduce the population to 550 million by the end of the century. I know I've seen the data."James: "We sound rather like Gods reading the Doomsday book don't we?"
Foster: "Well, someone has to do it. Not only will the nations affected be better off. But the techniques developed there can be used to reduce our own excess population: blacks, Puerto Ricans, Mexican Americans, poverty prone whites, and so forth" .
Although the film was pulled from most American theaters, it still stands as one of the most direct and chilling refutations of the lone-gunman narrative and is also the only film this author is aware of which showcases the deeper neo-Malthusian agenda underlying the murder of Kennedy which feared the optimistic vision he had threatened to create as outlined in my previous paper Remembering JFK's Vision for the Future that Should Have Been .
The oligarchs attempting to play God in today's world, just as their predecessors who oversaw JFK's murder know that hunger, war and disease are not the natural state of humanity, but simply means of checking population growth.
... ... ...
Matthew Ehret is the founder of the Canadian Patriot Review , author of the Untold History of Canada and BRI expert on Tactical Talk. He can be reached at [email protected]
Rhisiart Gwilym ,
" leftist mainstream [USAmerican] media" !! Leftist and lamestream? Both? Does Matthew Ehret not see the glaring oxymoron? Stopped me reading any further, right there in the first paragraph. I prefer writers who use words in accordance with reality. I'm getting ever more inclined to ignore the pointless political circus in the US, as it continues with it's thoroughly reality-detached circling of the drain of empiresAnd clearly he's completely out of touch with the harsh reality of our most likely future, which has far more in common with 'The Road' than with 'Startrek'. I don't see any prospect at all of human colonies on the Moon or Mars. We humankind are up for some serious collisions with reality as we find ourselves forced to dump our 'outward into the universe by space travel' myth. Myth in the old, literate sense of the word: a foundation story of our culture, which tells us how to relate to life, the universe, and everything. Sometime this century we're going to have to ditch that particular dream, as The Limits To Growth finally catch up with us big time.
Charlotte Russe ,
The film "Executive Action" provides a shocking glimpse into the omnipotent power of the US military/security/surveillance corporate state. The film gives psychological insights into the psychopathic mentality of this cabal. It's particularly depicted in the following video clip which perfectly captures the prescient nature of the script's dialogue:
https://www.youtube.com/embed/hevxAt0sUfg?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Adorno's Nonsense ,
A very short history of Cultural Marxism :
- Marx [proletarian revolution economically inevitable]
- Gramsci [circa 1920: revolution hindered by traditional culture among proletarians: nation, family, religion.]
- Gyrgy Bernt Lwinger / Willi Munzenberg [1922 meeting: use intellectuals to make Western Civilisation stink]
- Frankfurter Schule [subvert traditional Western culture. Founded 1924, main influence since 50's/60's]
- Felix Weil / Carl Grnberg / Max Horkheimer / Theodor Adorno / Ernst Bloch / Herbert Marcuse / Walter Benjamin / Leo Lowenthal / Otto Kirchheimer / Frederick Pollock
- Saul David Alinsky ['70s onwards]
- S(oros)JW
Dungroanin ,
I perhaps object to Gramsci in that list and you have left out the real culprits the Foundations of Ford, Carnegie, Rockefellers all the way to Gates, George Lucas and no doubt Bezos the real cultural marxists who aim to control thought & history through Pharma and 'Education'.Robbobbobin ,
" the real cultural Marxists who aim to control thought & history through Pharma and 'Education'."And misapopriated 'charity'. Plus, you left out Buffet.
Hugh O'Neill ,
This was a superb article until the last paragraph in favour of" a revived space program to establish permanent human colonies on the Moon and Mars " .
Although I could think of a few I wouldn't mind volunteering to be extra-terrestrial colonists, I felt this topic somewhat distracted from the essential truth of the rest of the piece. There is much common ground between my views and Ehret's, but his sling-shot extra terrestrial tangents were a leap too far for Mankind. I also suspect that JFK himself might object to his vision for Humanity being thus hijacked. I approximate my favourite quote: "For in the final analysis, we all live on the same small planet. We breathe the same air. We cherish our children's future. And we are all mortal". Although Ehret might interpret what he will from such a quote, it speaks to me of a love for this Earth, and the respect due Mother Nature.
BigB ,
Ehret takes a counterfeit and cherrypicked selection of JFK's speeches to present a spurious virtual history version of JFK that even Camelotists do not recognise.Tackling Malthus head on, JFK said to the National Academy of Sciences on October 22, 1963:
"Malthus argued a century and a half ago that man, by using up all his available resources, would forever press on the limits of subsistence, thus condemning humanity to an indefinite future of misery and poverty. We can now begin to hope and, I believe, know that Malthus was expressing not a law of nature, but merely the limitation then of scientific and social wisdom."
Within a month of this speech Kennedy was dead and a new green paradigm of adaption to limits grew like a virus in poisonous environment of LSD, cultural irrationalism and the Vietnam War.
[Follow his links. He's not shy of linking his narrative constructions to weave a peculiar counter history. I'm sure LaRouche would be proud of his protg?]
And insinuating his imaginary agenda was the real reason why JFK was murdered: global depopulation. To which the remedy is infinite technological expansionism, nuclear fusion, and space colonisation a la the delusional rantings of Lynton LaRouche. Which is about as deluded an agenda that one can imagine. And then some.
Now, I know I lost the Camelot narrative construction debate. And facts are merely ideologically plastic in the hands of the mythologisers. But this fellow takes the piss and elevates Camelotism to a whole new stratospheric level. Everyone knows McCarthy was a close personal friend of the Kennedy's which has never been denied. And RFK was chosen by McCarthy as a lowly counsel on his committee. So, however a minor capacity, RFK was directly involved in the witchhunt. Which is the first sign of a pangloss. Then he takes the piss after that.
So, whilst I have vowed never to raise the Camelot issue ever again: this guy goes too far. Which is how narrative constructivism works like Chinese Whispers. Ehret's new stratospheric space-age Camelot becomes assimilated and reified as the assumptive base for even further embellishment. And OffG is giving him credence. Where there no other essays on Kirk Douglas? Ones that did not come with a heavy subliminal propagandic undertone?
Robbobbobin ,
I always had a problem with Mr Douglas Sr's tooth grinding persona of overwhelming "masculinity". But on the other hand, that was when he was in his heyday and most of the adult males I knew then (when I was a teenage expected-to-be-apprentice in that craft) seemed to suffer from the same sexual perversion, so maybe Mr Douglas was just fitting his persona in.Hugh O'Neill ,
BigB, hold onto your hat: I actually agree with much of this comment. (Perhaps because you have used less-contorted language?). I had never heard of either Ehren or LaRouche. A quick google on the latter is mind-boggling, even allowing for layers of smear and disinformation. Was he perhaps a construct to make the FBI and CIA looks relatively sane?I also agree with you that the planet is finite and we cannot keep abusing it under the present extreme Capitalist method. I am sure you will agree that the biggest enemy of Mother Earth is the American Empire, which beast grows stronger on the backs of Human suffering, mind control and maximum extractive exploitation of Creation including gullible Mankind.
However (and there has to be a However) are you not a tad guilty yourself of putting your own biased interpretations of JFK's (and RFK's) deeds (and mis-deeds)?
For the record, no-one in the JFK admin used the term Camelot: it was a chance turn of phrase that Jackie used in the immediate aftermath of the assassination, and an allusion to the musical that she and Jack enjoyed. Whatever it is, you spit the word with the force of a pejorative. The Holy Grail will not be within your grasp with that attitude ;-).
I think pugnacious political Catholic McCarthy was indeed a friend of Ambassador Joe Kennedy's, and the sons would have inherited some of that familial baggage. But from my vague recollection of Schlesinger, Bobby began to distance himself from McCarthy. There was too a Catholic distrust of atheist Communism which I recall from my childhood, and which would have been driven by the Vatican Office of Propaganda.
Those "Camelot mythologisers" would doubtless include James Douglass. Douglass made the case that people change: their ideas develop in the light of experience and reflection, thus JFK moved from propagandised Cold Warrior to a more Christian (Buddhist?) embrace of Humanity ("Let us make the world safe for diversity") and his unpublished book on Immigrants. RFK likewise changed and his insights into GDP as being the defining measure of Capitalist success hits the nail on the head (in a speech 3 weeks before he died).
To return to the conversation between James & Foster in the film "Executive Action", I could well imagine such within the CIA (and in some pubs). There are some nutters out there
Hugh O'Neill ,
Wondering if the Eugenics was a common thread to the US Establishment, I simply googled "John Foster Dulles Eugenics" and a few nuggets fell out. Averell Harriman was deeply into Eugenics and of course, Allen Dulles was a great friend to the Nazis: https://books.google.co.nz/books?id=dgmDCgAAQBAJ&pg=PT317&lpg=PT317&dq=john+foster+dulles+eugenics&source=bl&ots=HnRS8p62gk&sig=ACfU3U3b72BL9U0fxYXtBRLK4_JwbuL8Mg&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjpiYKAq9LnAhVLyDgGHUNEAKkQ6AEwDnoECAgQAQ#v=onepage&q=john%20foster%20dulles%20eugenics&f=falseI am not saying this lends any credence to Ehren's point or the script of "Executive Action". I am simply saying that the small minds of PTB were receptive to the philosophy of Eugenics. And those same small minds would have been opposed to JFK.
Lysias ,
Unfortunately, Kirk Douglas was a down-the-line defender of Israel, including of its war crimes.wardropper ,
In Kirk Douglas's heyday, we were ALL defenders of Israel, because we didn't know about its war crimes. And most of the world is still in denial about them. I'm only making the point that we wouldn't criticize Mozart for not being Stravinsky. Everyone is a child of their time to some extent.Robbobbobin ,
" we were ALL defenders of Israel "Telling me. I even went there to join in the fun. Fortunately I got to travel over most of its then territory with a sabra who couldn't quite accept it, butequallycouldn't wholeheartedly embrace it, so I spent a lot of time listening to tales like 'This is (Hebrew name), which used to be called (Arab name) until 1948 when all the Arabs mmm ran away.'
Even so, it took me a while after I backed off to Blighty for a break, to get some perspective on it all, before I really began to realize there was something wrong with the conventional story (about 95% of it, roughly) and fail to return.
Mike Ellwood ,
I had incorrectly thought I remembered his being in the film "Exodus". However, instead, it was probably this one:Antonym ,
It is also Hollywood's film violence and torture that gives their CIA inspiration away. Tarantino must have been one of Gina Haspel's favorites apart from the "Saw" sequels. Prepping future Anglo soldiers for the "right" mindset.Sick.
Lysias ,
After watching the first half hour of "Inglourious Basterds", I had to stop. I couldn't watch any more of the violence. Just like the Nazis showing "Jud Suess" to Wehrmacht soldiers.wardropper ,
Except that Tarantino is an entertainer, not a propaganda minister.His taste is not everyone's taste, but I have a hunch he doesn't expect anyone to take him too seriously. It's also nice that in his movies, it is largely stupid, corrupt and downright evil people who get their come-uppance, unlike the nauseating trend of recent decades which I consider to be deliberate political propaganda of portraying hopelessness, despair and wretchedness as the best outcome modern people can expect from "the authorities", as well as repeatedly portraying the scenario that nobody in government should be punished for anything.
A movie is, after all, not the same thing as a real life, and when real life becomes almost unbearable, it is worth having a fantasy counter-balance to remind us of other solutions and possibilities.
I like Tarantino's violence. It is comic-book violence, and I have not become a violent person as a result of appreciating his work as lively entertainment.
It is only natural, however, that others have had life experiences which make them too sensitive to reminders of human brutality, and of course I respect that.Dungroanin ,
Just an 'entertainer'! Just as Noel Coward was or all propagandists of that era.I don't want to get into a full on dissection of the new hollywood bratpackers of the 90's onwards and their work for the state but just consider the first Tarantino success and its title , what does it mean? What are reservoir rats? Why the glorification of such ultraviolence?
Why the associated video games?
One just needs to consider just how many PMC's have sprouted in the US and UK and A few other countries comprising the 5+1 eyed monster empire.wardropper ,
Merely expressing a personal assessment of Tarantino as an entertainer. In his fantasy world he does what he does extremely well, and I have no interest in him beyond that.The war-hero comics the kids of my generation read were in the same vein, but they have not coloured my informed opinion of modern Germans. Nor do I even live in my own "fatherland". Frankly, I feel at home wherever decent people live.
People are people, life is life, and games are games. Of course it is important to understand the difference, wherever you live, and I do share with you a concern that there are many who do not understand that difference, but is the answer to protect ourselves from ourselves, as the neoliberals would like to do for us?
I am not convinced that many of those "bratpackers" really "work" for the state, but rather that the state allows itself to use any and all whom it finds useful at any given time. That is not so easy to put an end to either, although it is just as well to be aware of the tremendous scope of what the modern state permits itself.
Lysias ,
Veit Harlan, the director of "Jud Suess", was also not a propaganda minister.wardropper ,
Nor does Tarantino have a Goebbels standing over him. He's a successful specimen, going out on his own limb because he has the money to do so.lysias ,
Over him Tarantino had Harvey Weinstein, the delighted producer of the film.Fair dinkum ,
Curiosity and skepticism have been suffocated by the bloody hands of the ruling class. The average punter is too busy making ends meet to question the strident voices of authoritarians. The ongoing climate collapse will wake a few.Wilmers31 ,
Society is allergic to the truth. The G increasingly likes p1ssyfooting around the issues; they explain how dangerous the AfD in Germany is and disliked this comment (not too tame, I admit):The AfD has just been bequeathed a large sum of money by a late engineer from Bckeburg. They cannot be destroyed by taboos. Get rid of the asylum clause and people will be with you again.
Human beings are also territorial beings. They do not appreciate people coming from all corners of the globe, take up housing, and public money. When no money is available to compensate people for the loss of their land and a German unemployed (my late brother) needs to die for lack of funds after paying into the system for 35 years, some people do not take that lying down.
The people in Germany are also aware that certain folks strengthen conflicts and wars which releases refugees. The asylum clause in the constitution has been a problem for a very long time. I warned them in 1980 when I was still there.
And it's not just war refugees who tap into the German public resources; street children from Morocco needed extra facilities. If you want to destroy Germany and Europe, go right ahead with vilifying what you call the right and take them all in, from Africa, Asia, and Latin America. The so called right will lose their reason to exist when the asylum clause will be deleted, which might be difficult to see from a Washington think tank.
The comment vanished within minutes after I tried to correct that "Washington" to Georgia (US State) where the writer was. I was trying to be helpful, helping them to understand instead of just displaying wishful thinking.
BigB ,
What a steaming pile of absolute propagandic sh1te. Not the bit about Kirk Douglas: the Kennedy codicil at the end. Kennedy was killed in a neo-Malthusean plot? This guy has so many screws loose: his head must rattle as it turns.Ehret is such an inveterate propagandist: he cannot help himself. His agenda is of an infinite open (economic) system (read his other loose stool water dribblings) that JFK was about to install. So the Malthusian eco-fascists killed him to further their own agenda of global depopulation. And now they run Hollywood. If anyone other than Ehret believes this they really need to restart taking their meds.
Admin: does no one proof read this sh1te before publishing it? Do you really believe in Casey, JFK, and LaRouche's deranged infinite futurist agenda? If so: why also publish the 'No Deal For Nature' site? The two agenda's are diametrically opposed and totally incompatible. And in comparison: this is bullshit propaganda that feeds an already overactive cultural imagination that we can infinitely expand. Which is the entire predication of late modern politics. And much of the basis of the BTL commentary.
Is this the famed 'BBC Balance'? Because there can be no 'balance' to thermodynamics. It is not an opinion, or even a belief it is a stone cold brute fact of nature. One which applied to natural systems becomes a limit on economic absolutism: we cannot grow infinitely. Not because of some bullshit plot on JFK: but because of the ironclad laws of the world we live in.
It is hard enough for those who stand with nature to get anyone to accept that there are natural limitations on a finite planet without giving breathing space to this nut job. If you are going to promote LaRouche through Ehret: we might as well say a requiem for nature and humanity now. Read his other pieces: or just his own linked piece:
He believed that the human mind could conquer all challenges that both nature, vice and ignorance can throw at us. JFK didn't see the world through a zero sum lens, nor did he believe in the Malthusian "limits to growth" paradigm which his killers promulgated after his death.
You must have noticed in talking to Cory the numbers against the cultural ideological machinery are tiny. And the chances of success infinitesimally small. That is because propaganda is diffuse and everywhere. That's without giving Ehret/LaRouchian infinitism the time of day. If we want to change the dialogue and get an unmoored technocratic culture to embed itself within its natural limitations we need to be a lot more savvy about promoting the opposite agenda. And making the infinitesimally short odds just a little shorter.
Gall ,
Hey if you want to depopulate the planet so badly why don't you start with yourself?BigB ,
If you actually believe in Ehret/LaRouche's delusions you already are ideologically aligned with global depopulation. And our our technologically accelerated rate of species extinctionism. Including our own. I, for one, would rather we didn't follow this insanity into the grave.Promoting this ideology barely concealed as a tribute does nothing to foster any sort of resistance. Even if it is token. We are way beyond the time when we have to draw a line as to whether we are for nature or against it. Where do you stand? I've made my stance clear over the years. If you condemn it: you condemn yourself. There is only one nature: and the mind is not its technological master as Ehret believes. We live within our ecological and biological limitations: or we do not live at all. Which seems to be too hard for most to understand.
Gall ,
The reason the planet is unlivable is because of "primitive accumulation" by greedy capitalist scum who have wrecked the environment by plundering it. This planet is quite capable of sustaining billions without their greed. If there is any depopulation required it is the elite who are wrecking this place. Not some poor African farmer and his family which seems to be the target of the above elitist trash.The ones on the receiving end of McCarthyism and Hoovers FBI knew first hand WHO the real enemies were.
paul ,
Like most Hollywood epics, it was grossly historically inaccurate. Spartacus was killed early on in his final battle. He wasn't captured and defended by fellow slaves, and then executed. John Wayne's Alamo epic is totally inaccurate from beginning to end. Like the ludicrous Errol Flynn films of the 40s. Any resemblance to historical reality is purely coincidental.Richard Le Sarc ,
Saw 'Executive Action' at a proper cinema last year. It's a beauty! Every local presstitute, who would swear on their mother's grave that Oswald was, indeed, the 'lone gunman', should be forced to watch it, like Alex in 'A Clockwork Orange'.Gall ,
I personally thought it was excellent movie. Even better than Stone's JFK which was too murky and surreal which is what you want if obfuscation is your objective.wardropper ,
I even bought the movie. But those presstitutes own the world today, and persuading the people of the world that green is not purple is still a superhuman task or that they should "see what you see; not what you are supposed to see".
Just as persuading the Richard Dawkinses or Christopher Hitchenses of the world that their clever brains are missing something is still a superhuman task.
But one soldiers on . . .Ramdan ,
I clicked on the "Executive Action" link and got a "This video is not available" ..Is this just me? maybe is not available on the country I'm in???!!
no soup for you ,
It works in certain countries. (Or for certain people?) If it works you get a trailer with the option to "Buy or rent".Ramdan ,
Thanks is the country I'm in a socialist one .so we are de facto russian assets or no money as to be attractive (consumers) . 😁😁😊.Gall ,
I think you can find it here.Gall ,
Hollywood the place where narcissism and hypocrisy meet. I noticed that Jane Fonda wore "sustainable" diamonds and gold jewelry to the Academy Awards. Whatever that is? Hooray for Hollywood!Dungroanin ,
Thankyou Matthew, it had got to me too.Wouldn't be me if I still didn't find some thing nitty to pick over 😉
So I give you 'TOUGH GUYS' (1986).
One of my personal favourites and a great comedy also featuring the great Eli Wallach.These guys had style unlike the modern day brat packers and CIA whores of Clooney and co!
-- -- -
Meanwhile our Junta after the December coup in the UK gets it's ducks in order for our very own fascist state , with the the help of the dumb 'patriot' voters who bought into the Brexit lies aided and abetted by the media presstitutes of all shapes.
Dungroanin ,
Cheers for down tick always warms the heart knowing that truth is hurting!RobG ,
Dungroanin, the EU is over with. The French, Italians, Spanish and many of the rest won't be far behind the Brits.The revolt is all about neoliberalism, the 'name that is never mentioned'.
Do you really think that Europeans revolting against neoliberalism are going to embrace America.
Seriously?
Dungroanin ,
A neo-liberal EU along the lines if Thatcherite/Blairite/Cummingshite IS certainly over and Macron the Banker is over. And the Nato Atlantic Council gangster 2% fire-insurance is over.The 4 freedoms and Schengen one is doing perfectly fine and will only settle into its full glory without us in their tent pissing over all the furniture and in peoples food and faces.
We'll be begging to get back the moment we leave with our HARD brexit in less then a years time.
George Mc ,
And on the topic of pertinent scripts that probably wouldn't get past the cutting room nowadays, I always remember the following dialogue from the end of "Three Days of the Condor". Turner (Robert Redford) is a minor CIA analyst who finds his team assassinated and has to go on the run. He has this conversation with a CIA deputy director Higgins (Cliff Robertson):Turner: Do we have plans to invade the Middle East?
Higgins: Are you crazy?
Turner: Am I?
Higgins: Look, Turner
Turner: Do we have plans?
Higgins: No. Absolutely not. We have games. That's all. We play games. What if? How many men? What would it take? Is there a cheaper way to destabilize a regime? That's what we're paid to do.
Turner: So Atwood just took the games too seriously. He was really going to do it, wasn't he?
Higgins: A renegade operation. Atwood knew 54/12 would never authorize it, not with the heat on the company.
Turner: What if there hadn't been any heat? Suppose I hadn't stumbled on their plan?
Higgins: Different ballgame. Fact is, there was nothing wrong with the plan. Oh, the plan was all right, the plan would've worked.
Turner: Boy, what is it with you people? You think not getting caught in a lie is the same thing as telling the truth?
Higgins: No. It's simple economics. Today it's oil, right? In ten or fifteen years, food. Plutonium. And maybe even sooner. Now, what do you think the people are gonna want us to do then?
Turner: Ask them.
Higgins: Not now -- then! Ask 'em when they're running out. Ask 'em when there's no heat in their homes and they're cold. Ask 'em when their engines stop. Ask 'em when people who have never known hunger start going hungry. You wanna know something? They won't want us to ask 'em. They'll just want us to get it for 'em!
Turner: Boy, have you found a home. There were seven people killed, Higgins.
Higgins: The company didn't order it.
Turner: Atwood did. Atwood did. And who the hell is Atwood? He's you. He's all you guys. Seven people killed, and you play fucking games!
Higgins: Right. And the other side does, too. That's why we can't let you stay outside.Gall ,
One of the few movies made that was actually better than the book it was based on. One of my all time favorites. The book isn't so much but the script was written in a style very similar to Eric Ambler who like LeCarre didn't glorify the craft of intelligence unlike Fleming.Another movie that is better than the book is the Sum of All Fears which was made just before 9/11 but was rescheduled which is in many ways truer to actual events than that turkey United 93.
George Mc ,
Wasn't there a whole spate of movies based around Flight 93 i.e. the most evidence free part of 9/11? Who needs evidence when you have Hollywood to tell you what happened.Gall ,
As far as I know there was a TV miniseries or maybe two. Never saw them though watching the movie was bad enough but I subjected myself to it because I'm writing a book on 9/11. Believe me the suspension of disbelief required to watch it qualifies heroic measures. Most of it adheres to the official story thus the genre would be fantasy or maybe action fantasy.milosevic ,
Who needs evidence when you have Hollywood to tell you what happened. better yet, who needs evidence when you have Hollywood to tell you what WILL happen?https://www.youtube.com/embed/FcZ6HXIOmYE?version=3&rel=1&fs=1&autohide=2&showsearch=0&showinfo=1&iv_load_policy=1&wmode=transparent
Mucho ,
They did a nice job of telling us about 911 in Back To The Future. BACK TO THE FUTURE predicts 9/11
Yossi ,
Talking of Le Carre he seems to be going crazy. In his latest interview he referred to Corbyn as a Marxist/Leninist anti-semite.Gall ,
I think senile would be a better word. He actually writes better than he interviews. I've noticed ex-spooks make bad interviewees because you need a secret decoder ring to actually understand what they're saying.George Mc ,
Hacked emails from Sony pictures published on WikiLeaks provided a smoking gun when it was revealed that the Obama administration had courted Hollywood execs to the task of promoting films to "counter Russian narratives"This is how the propaganda always works. The shit they churn out is always "in response" to a phoney threat. Thus the US "combats" Soviet expansion by building American bases everywhere and then Lo and Behold! It's the US empire which has expanded.
vwbeetle ,
Try reading "Reel Bad Arabs" by Jack Shaheen about how Hollywood vilifies an entire race of people. I believe he also made a doco on the subject. Hollywood has always advanced the Zionist narrative because well, we know why.Gall ,
True. Black Monday is the epitome of such propaganda. So is True Lies and The Siege all written and directed by Zionist trash trying to spook Americans into believing that Arab Terrorism was an actual problem which is total BS according to actual stats:http://www.loonwatch.com/files/2010/01/not-all-terrorists-are-muslims/
Brian Harry ,
And goes some way to explain why Mel Gibson has to make his own movies now Another Australian actor in the '30's, 40's and fifties the Great, Errol Flynn used to show his contempt for Hollywood's elite, knowing full well that he was their greatest money maker, until his looks and his lifestyle faded away ..He's still a Legend today thoughmilosevic ,
Gall ,
Red Sparrow was totally unadulterated BS. First of all KGB called them "swallows" not sparrows. Obviously the writer must have been jerking off to an episode of Rocky and Bullwinkle featuring Boris and Natasha when he or she wrote it.One of the best depictions of Soviet penetration was the Americans. An excellent series that had you rooting for the Rooskies 🙂
lundiel ,
A British film that left a huge mark on me was " The long and the short and the tall" about the British campaign in Malaya during WWII. These days we only have propaganda like 1917.
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Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
James McCumiskey , Feb 12 2020 13:59 utc | 1
QANONDoes anyone have any thoughts ideas on the QANON phenomenon. I have swayed between outright scepticism and then hope that it might be true - that some former high-ranking US military personnel have hatched a plan and co-opted Trump, to drain the swamp, truth about 9-11 and prosecute all those involved, deal with Israel, End the Fed and restore proper money etc.
Is it true? Or is it absolute bullshit and if so why?
m , Feb 12 2020 15:04 utc | 11
Robert Snefjella , Feb 12 2020 15:13 utc | 12QAnon=hope porn for Trump supporters. There's a video from a little over a year ago by a couple of guys who make some good points about it:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3e_e5WI_mjg
Regardless of what one might think of the presenters, they have done their homework.QANONJayne , Feb 12 2020 16:17 utc | 24Is it true? Or is it absolute bullshit and if so why?
Posted by: James McCumiskey | Feb 12 2020 13:59 utc | 1
James, from my perspective Qanon's impact is far greater and more beneficial than indicated by the disparaging remarks that followed your question.
To be clear, I haven't paid a lot of attention to it, but have paid enough attention to understand that many tens of thousands of people have 'entered' and benefited from the QAnon 'school'.
Now this is not to pretend to know what the actual results will be or even what the actual intentions of Qanon are.
People who might be more or less in the process of waking up to, say, that we live in a kind of upside down world, have been given very many clues and crumbs to follow, to research. The process of waking up is a lifetime process, but it helps to begin at some point, to no longer just doze away through life.
Qanon begins with the observation that whereas pathological criminality on high gained power, became dominant over the vast majority of people, most people are more or less salt of the earth decent folks in their intentions.
But to 'unbrainwash' the brainwashed previously asleep requires a process of education. The Qanon process is somewhat reminiscent of a Socratic dialogue, whereby cryptic questions are posed, hints are given, but in the end, the spur is to 'go down the rabbit holes' and discover what's really going on.
Qanon suggests that the NSA and military include patriots who are trying to finesse a nonviolent transition away from the criminal pathology that has led the US to become an international vast organized crime organization, and purveyor of boundless atrocities.
Trump then is to be understood as a flawed but handy and workable temporary leadership means by which the system of tyranny can be decisively undermined.
Again, I'm not writing this as a fan of either Trump or Qanon, but am trying to answer your question beyond a reflexive jeer that appears common currency among the 'enlightened'.
Well! There is a rumor out there that Q is probably these guys:fnord , Feb 12 2020 16:28 utc | 25
https://www.breitbart.com/the-media/2015/11/17/breitbart-news-network-born-in-the-usa-conceived-in-israel/h/t: jtrue.com - I have an eclectic range on what I read... some I agree with ... some I don't... but things are getting so weird I 'don't throw the baby out with the bathwater'...
Interesting Bill Maher' take on Bannon... although coming across as 'the pot calling the kettle black...'
https://www.newswars.com/bill-maher-to-steve-bannon-i-wish-we-had-someone-on-our-side-as-evil-as-you/Also, interesting to note what issues Q never seems to touch.
gottlieb , Feb 12 2020 16:36 utc | 26Does anyone have any thoughts ideas on the QANON phenomenonNewly senile baby boomers and ideological conservatives psy-oping themselves. One of the myriad of mental gymnastics routines used by the conservative crowd to justify the continuation of the Obama presidency under Trump, which itself continued the Bush presidency, which continued the Clinton presidency... and on and on. A replacement for scientific social analysis by the equivalent of numerology and astrology, for people who don't know what science is and are probably distrustful of it to begin with. A good example: a friend of mine's dad is really hardcore into it. He's also a chiropractor. Not a coincidence. There's a certain type of cognitive style that will latch onto this kind of absurd shit and it's the duty of the scientifically minded to inoculate people against it.
Qanon is certainly a psyop. The question is whether it's a wishful thinking deep-state conspiracy theorist sitting in abasement with Cheetos and Dr. Pepper, or a disaffected rogue insider spreading crumbs of critical thinking to the dazed and confused mass of "Americans" who are victims of the greatest psyop in the history of the known universe; propagandized for 90 some years into the cult Baseball, Mom and Apple Pie.uncle tungsten , Feb 12 2020 18:01 utc | 37Whatever Qanon is it has allowed white nationalist fascists to believe they are freedom fighters on a grand quest to cleanse a swamp of corruption that is the true treason of the "American Dream."
The United States is two-party political monopoly, the two sides serving the same coin of 'the money power.' There is no more useful idiot than the raging stable genius who believes belligerence is wisdom, and money is love.
The United States is coming to a three-pronged fork in the road:
1. Collapse
2. Totalitarianism
3. RevolutionThe billionaires are preparing for collapse and turning to off-world escape. Bill Gates just ordered a ½ billion dollar hydrogen powered mega-yacht to ride it out in Waterworld.
Let those with ears hear.
QANON is a fraud. See Sessions, now Barr, Bolton, McCain. Frauds. So Q was needed right from thr beginning to divert people fom seing the Trump family business as usless.nietzsche1510 , Feb 12 2020 18:23 utc | 40The Trump WONT go after the greatest breaches of USA national security - Hillary and the unsecured email at her home cupboard or the Awan family spy/blackmail racket in the Dem congress members. QANON is cover for Trump family inaction.
QANON is useless for most but is a reference for those bloggers and YouTube commentators to fool people into thinkingthey are 'in the know', have deep information when all they have is tripe and hot air. So QANON is useful to fool fools, dupe dopes, and elevate the liar in chief.
How can it be that after three years as president Trump had Vinman and Ciaramela STILL on the NSC staff advising the White House? Then Bolton appointed was extreme blunder and then he betrayed Trump. QANON blows smoke over Trump family lightweights while they pick pocket the audience.
Rem , Feb 12 2020 19:02 utc | 46Bernie is not there to be president. his "community" job is to dog herd the progressive crowds to vote, as a lesser evil, for the Judeo-Zionist corporate candidate, the donors' choice, as he did servilely in 2016. ask him any question about foreign policy and you will note, on the spot, where he stands: he approved, as a Senator, the last 3 out of 4 major wars of the US empire. 95% of his domestic promises are undeliverable. we did love Obama, didn´t we? we will adore Bernie! for sure.
casey , Feb 12 2020 19:15 utc | 48Qanon is such garbage. Just look at what nietzshe1510 said about Bernie Sanders... The same crap is being pulled on people that follow Qanon. Its up to you to be the best person that you can be and make a difference in your family, one small group of people at a time, all over the planet. Like a tidal wave of good intentions. Never mind Bernie Sanders, Tulsi Gabbard or the media that support them. It is just a fu*kin gimmick.
Q = Unit 8200 (or one of its related agencies) to provide domestic cover for T as he vigorously pushes Zionist agenda.Joe , Feb 12 2020 20:05 utc | 55@1wyo , Feb 12 2020 20:14 utc | 56
Article about QAnon in Harper's Magazine. Takeaway seemed to be Qanon was conspiracy author building readership base for profit.
https://harpers.org/archive/2018/06/the-wizard-of-q/@1 "QUANON"HarryOrd , Feb 12 2020 20:38 utc | 60
Sounds like a fantasy from a Robert Heinlein novel; try "The Puppet Masters", or "Revolt in 2100". He also was a military officer, until he got invalided out.c1ue , Feb 12 2020 21:04 utc | 63The discussion about Qanon was enlightening. I voted for Trump but gave up on him after Seymour Hersh's article about the first Syria strikes was published in Germany(because, apparently, no U.S publisher wanted to touch it) I find myself drifting slowly back to the leftism of my youth since then. As for Bernie, his former comrade Michael Parenti implied in 2015 that Bernie is afraid of the National Security State crowd, and I think that makes sense. Bernie won't fight the Empire, which makes his domestic promises basically useless, regardless of his motives. Honestly, I think he mostly is in this for the campaign contributions, but who knows? He's a lot less relevant than a lot of people are willing to admit. The empire seems to be running out of steam on its own as far as I can see, as de-dollarization continues to gain momentum, particularly in Asia. Events in Iraq and places like the Philippines should be more interesting watch than this boring election
QAnon is nonsense.Parisian Guy , Feb 12 2020 23:47 utc | 88I looked into several of the more detailed predictions and comments - they were uniformly wrong, albeit loosely based on 1st level internet search results.
Fiction, not fact.Psyops? Anything is possible, but I personally don't see it. Trump does just fine handling Twitter himself.
My bet is that Qanon is simply Steve Bannon. Both have/had the same fake discourse and the same targets.
The revealing clue was for me when I saw his video clip "The great awakening".Who has ever peddled the Pizzagate without being himself a nuts? I only know Qanon and Bannon (by means of Cambridge Analytica)
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Feb 14, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
james , Feb 11 2020 20:13 utc | 13
thanks b...no shortage of hypocrisy in all this...regarding @ 4 mike r which @8 ian2 linked properly to, i enjoyed the last paragraph which i think sums it up well.. here it is..
"I continue to believe that the United States cannot effectively restrict the spread of a technology under Chinese leadership without offering a superior product of its own. The fact that the United States has attempted to suppress Huawei's market leadership in the absence of any American competitor in this field is one of the oddest occurrences in the history of US foreign policy. If the US were to announce something like a Manhattan Project for 5G broadband and solicit the cooperation of its European and Asian allies, it probably would get an enthusiastic response. As matters stand, America's efforts to stop Huawei have become an embarrassment."
Petri Krohn , Feb 11 2020 20:38 utc | 16
The reason European customers trust Huawei is because Huawei uses open-source software or at least makes their code available for inspection by customers.Piotr Berman , Feb 11 2020 23:04 utc | 25Closed-source software cannot provide secrecy or security. This was vividly demonstrated last month when NSA revealed a critical vulnerability in Windows 10 that rendered any cryptographic security worthless.
Critical Windows 10 vulnerability used to Rickroll the NSA and GithubRashid's simulated attack exploits CVE-2020-0601, the critical vulnerability that Microsoft patched on Tuesday after receiving a private tipoff from the NSA. As Ars reported, the flaw can completely break certificate validation for websites, software updates, VPNs, and other security-critical computer uses. It affects Windows 10 systems, including server versions Windows Server 2016 and Windows Server 2019. Other versions of Windows are unaffected.
The flaw involves the way the new versions of Windows check the validity of certificates that use elliptic-curve cryptography. While the vulnerable Windows versions check three ECC parameters, they fail to verify a fourth, crucial one, which is known as a base point generator and is often represented in algorithms as 'G.' This failure is a result of Microsoft's implementation of ECC rather than any flaw or weakness in the ECC algorithms themselves.
The attacker examines the specific ECC algorithm used to generate the root-certificate public key and proceeds to craft a private key that copies all of the certificate parameters for that algorithm except for the point generator. Because vulnerable Windows versions fail to check that parameter, they accept the private key as valid. With that, the attacker has spoofed a Windows-trusted root certificate that can be used to mint any individual certificate used for authentication of websites, software, and other sensitive properties.
I do not believe this vulnerability was a bug. It is more likely a backdoor intentionally left in the code for NSA to utilize. Whatever the case, NSA must have known about it for years. Why did they reveal it now? Most likely someone else had discovered the back door and may have been about to publish it.
(I commented on these same issues on Sputnik a few weeks ago.)
The other possible US objection is that Huawei will only let their customers spy, not third countries.Posted by: Paul Cockshott | Feb 11 2020 21:57 utc | 24
It reminds me a joke about Emperor Napoleon arriving in a town. The population, the notables and the mayor are greeting him, and the Emperor says "No gun salute, hm?". Mayor replies "Sire, we have twenty reasons. Fist, we have canons", "Enough", replied Napoleon.
Isn't the "other possible US objection" exactly "Enough"? Of course, USA is not a mere "third country", USA is the rule maker of rule based international order.
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.unz.com
Agent76 , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 7:06 pm GMT
Jan 14, 2020 The Dirty American Secret You're *NOT* Supposed to Know AboutDesert Fox , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 8:39 pm GMThttps://www.youtube.com/embed/02F5r2y9JU0?feature=oembed
December 3, 1993 The CIA Drug ConnectionIs as Old as the Agency
LONDON -- The Justice Department is investigating allegations that officers of a special Venezuelan anti-drug unit funded by the CIA smuggled more than 2,000 pounds of cocaine into the United States with the knowledge of CIA officials – despite protests by the Drug Enforcement Administration, the organization responsible for enforcing U.S. drug laws.
http://www.nytimes.com/1993/12/03/opinion/03iht-edlarry.html
@Agent76 Agree, the CIA and MI6 and the Mossad are the biggest drug runners in the world.
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.unz.com
SolontoCroesus , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 5:20 pm GMT
Z-man , says: Show Comment January 21, 2020 at 7:05 pm GMTThat Iraq is to say the least unstable is attributable to the ill-advised U.S. invasion of 2003.
Nothing to do with 9 years of sanctions on Iraq that killed a million Iraqis, "half of them children," and US control of Iraqi air space, after having killed Iraqi military in a turkey-shoot, for no really good reason other than George H W Bush seized the "unipolar moment" to become king of the world?
Maybe it's just stubbornness: I think Papa Bush is responsible for the "imperial pivot," in the Persian Gulf war aka Operation Desert Storm, 29 years and 4 days ago -- January 17, 1991.
According to Jeffrey Engel, Bush's biographer and director of the Bush library at Southern Methodist University, Gorbachev harassed Bush with phone calls, pleading with him not to go to war over Kuwait
https://www.c-span.org/video/?310832-1/into-desert-reflections-gulf-war
(It's worth noting that Dennis Ross was relatively new in his role on Jim Baker's staff when Baker, Brent Skowcroft, Larry Eagleburger & like minded urged Bush to take the Imperial Pivot.)
According to Vernon Loeb, who completed the writing of King's Counsel after Jack O'Connell died, Jordan's King Hussein, in consultation with retired CIA station chief O'Connell, parlayed with Arab leaders to resolve the conflict on their own, i.e. Arab-to-Arab terms, and also pleaded with Bush to stay out, and to let the Arabs solve their own problems. Bush refused.
https://www.c-span.org/video/?301361-6/kings-counselSee above: Bush was determined to "seize the unipolar moment."
Once again insist on entering into the record: George H Bush was present at the creation of the Global War on Terror, July 4, 1979, the Jerusalem Conference hosted by Benzion and Benjamin Netanyahu and heavily populated with Trotskyites – neocons.
International Terrorism: Challenge and Response, Benjamin Netanyahu, ed., 1981.
(Wurmser became Netanyahu's acolyte)@SolontoCroesusI think Papa Bush is responsible for the "imperial pivot," in the Persian Gulf war aka Operation Desert Storm, 29 years and 4 days ago -- January 17, 1991.
Yes I remember it well. I came back from a long trip & memorable vacation, alas I was a young man, to the television drama that was unfolding with Arthur Kent 'The Scud Stud' and others reporting from the safety of their hotel balconies filming aircaft and cruise missiles. It was surreal.
You are correct of course.
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Feb 04, 2020 | off-guardian.org
OK, let's assume Flynn was targeted for elimination. but why he behaved so stupidly ?
Gall ,
I was obvious that Flynn was targeted for elimination by what ludicrously calls itself the "resistance" right from the beginning using Hoover's G-boys and girls who have by the way been heavily infiltrated by CIA to get him.Many of the players involved in this act worked in CI which is closely connected to the CIA's own counter intelligence. In fact the connections are so incestuous that many of the FBI's "agents" are sheep dipped Agency officers.
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently seems obsessed by it.
Why? Probably because they are working on the same team as CIA, NSA, DIA, DHS and the other alphabet soup agencies who gain their power from what could be correctly called the War of Terror. Flynn being a threat because he was in agreement with Trump's proposed noninterventionist foreign policy.
The same one he promised his voters but has currently reneged on. Remember the "resistance" as they call themselves but are really the same ol' shit faction want America constantly embroiled in Foreign conflicts and the operation known as the "Purple Revolution"by the same group who likes to color code their regime changes was not only to take down Flynn but Trump as well. A soft coup in other words.
Now that Trump's playing ball they can go after his base and those on the left who oppose the usual that the so called "resistance' offers.
Seamus Padraig ,
One has to ask themselves why the FBI would be so interested in foreign policy? Hoover despite his many failings stayed out of the area of Foreign Intel yet the Bureau currently seems obsessed by it.
The FBI does have a counter-intelligence function, so that would give them some legitimate interest in the activities of foreign intelligence services, at least; but I suspect their obsession with Trump and Flynn goes far, far beyond any legitimate legal mandate.
Gall ,
True they've always had a CI function but it was more like a total Keystone Kops' operation. Still is probably when you consider that Hannssen worked in their CI for over two decades without being detected.Of there's CIA with James Jesus Angleton who was a good friend of Kim Philby who wrecked any CI capability both FBI and CIA had by being suspicious of any Russiaphile.
In fact this whole Russiaphobia and hoax is probably the resurrection of the ghost of Angleton.
Seamus Padraig ,
And the ghost of J. Edgar Hoover, too!Gall ,
True Hoover spent more time chasing Commie and creating the Red Scare than he did cross dressing and hanging out a Mob hangouts which he assured us didn't exist.
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Feb 01, 2020 | off-guardian.org
There is a kind of character in thy life, That to the observer doth thy history, fully unfold."
William ShakespeareOnce again we find ourselves in a situation of crisis, where the entire world holds its breath all at once and can only wait to see whether this volatile black cloud floating amongst us will breakout into a thunderstorm of nuclear war or harmlessly pass us by.
The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man. It is only normal then, that during such times of crisis, we find ourselves trying to analyze and predict the thoughts and motives of just this one person.
The assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani, a true hero for his fellow countrymen and undeniably an essential key figure in combating terrorism in Southwest Asia, was a terrible crime, an abhorrently repugnant provocation. It was meant to cause an apoplectic fervour, it was meant to make us who desire peace, lose our minds in indignation. And therefore, that is exactly what we should not do.
In order to assess such situations, we cannot lose sight of the whole picture, and righteous indignation, unfortunately, causes the opposite to occur. Our focus becomes narrower and narrower to the point where we can only see or react moment to moment with what is right in front of our face. We are reduced to an obsession of twitter feeds, news blips and the doublespeak of 'official government statements'.
Thus, before we may find firm ground to stand on regarding the situation of today, we must first have an understanding as to what caused the United States to enter into an endless campaign of regime-change warfare after WWII, or as former Chief of Special Operations for the Joint Chiefs of Staff Col. Prouty stated, three decades of the Indochina war.
An Internal Shifting of Chess Pieces in the ShadowsIt is interesting timing that on Sept 2, 1945, the very day that WWII ended, Ho Chi Minh would announce the independence of Indochina. That on the very day that one of the most destructive wars to ever occur in history ended, another long war was declared at its doorstep.
Churchill would announce his "Iron Curtain" against communism on March 5th, 1946, and there was no turning back at that point. The world had a mere 6 months to recover before it would be embroiled in another terrible war, except for the French, who would go to war against the Viet Minh opponents in French Indochina only days after WWII was over.
In a previous paper I wrote titled "On Churchill's Sinews of Peace" , I went over a major re-organisation of the American government and its foreign intelligence bureau on the onset of Truman's de facto presidency.
Recall that there was an attempted military coup d'état, which was exposed by General Butler in a public address in 1933 , against the Presidency of FDR who was only inaugurated that year. One could say that there was a very marked disapproval from shadowy corners for how Roosevelt would organise the government.
One key element to this reorganisation under Truman was the dismantling of the previously existing foreign intelligence bureau that was formed by FDR, the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) on Sept 20, 1945 only two weeks after WWII was officially declared over. The OSS would be replaced by the CIA officially on Sept 18, 1947, with two years of an American intelligence purge and the internal shifting of chess pieces in the shadows.
In addition, de-facto President Truman would also found the United States National Security Council on Sept 18, 1947, the same day he founded the CIA. The NSC was a council whose intended function was to serve as the President's principal arm for coordinating national security, foreign policies and policies among various government agencies.
In Col. Prouty's book he states:
In 1955, I was designated to establish an office of special operations in compliance with National Security Council (NSC) Directive #5412 of March 15, 1954. This NSC Directive for the first time in the history of the United States defined covert operations and assigned that role to the Central Intelligence Agency to perform such missions, provided they had been directed to do so by the NSC , and further ordered active-duty Armed Forces personnel to avoid such operations. At the same time, the Armed Forces were directed to "provide the military support of the clandestine operations of the CIA" as an official function .What this meant, was that there was to be an intermarriage of the foreign intelligence bureau with the military, and that the foreign intelligence bureau would act as top dog in the relationship, only taking orders from the NSC. Though the NSC includes the President, as we will see, the President is very far from being in the position of determining the NSC's policies.
An Inheritance of Secret WarsThere is no instance of a nation benefitting from prolonged warfare."
Sun TzuOn January 20th, 1961, John F. Kennedy was inaugurated as President of the United States. Along with inheriting the responsibility of the welfare of the country and its people, he was to also inherit a secret war with communist Cuba run by the CIA.
JFK was disliked from the onset by the CIA and certain corridors of the Pentagon, they knew where he stood on foreign matters and that it would be in direct conflict for what they had been working towards for nearly 15 years.
Kennedy would inherit the CIA secret operation against Cuba, which Prouty confirms in his book, was quietly upgraded by the CIA from the Eisenhower administration's March 1960 approval of a modest Cuban-exile support program (which included small air drop and over-the-beach operations) to a 3,000 man invasion brigade just before Kennedy entered office.
This was a massive change in plans that was determined by neither President Eisenhower, who warned at the end of his term of the military industrial complex as a loose cannon, nor President Kennedy, but rather the foreign intelligence bureau who has never been subject to election or judgement by the people.
It shows the level of hostility that Kennedy encountered as soon as he entered office, and the limitations of a President's power when he does not hold support from these intelligence and military quarters.
Within three months into JFK's term, Operation Bay of Pigs (April 17th to 20th 1961) was scheduled. As the popular revisionist history goes; JFK refused to provide air cover for the exiled Cuban brigade and the land invasion was a calamitous failure and a decisive victory for Castro's Cuba.
It was indeed an embarrassment for President Kennedy who had to take public responsibility for the failure, however, it was not an embarrassment because of his questionable competence as a leader. It was an embarrassment because, had he not taken public responsibility, he would have had to explain the real reason why it failed.
That the CIA and military were against him and that he did not have control over them.
If Kennedy were to admit such a thing, he would have lost all credibility as a President in his own country and internationally, and would have put the people of the United States in immediate danger amidst a Cold War.
What really occurred was that there was a cancellation of the essential pre-dawn airstrike, by the Cuban Exile Brigade bombers from Nicaragua, to destroy Castro's last three combat jets. This airstrike was ordered by Kennedy himself.
Kennedy was always against an American invasion of Cuba, and striking Castro's last jets by the Cuban Exile Brigade would have limited Castro's threat, without the U.S. directly supporting a regime change operation within Cuba. This went fully against the CIA's plan for Cuba.
Kennedy's order for the airstrike on Castro's jets would be cancelled by Special Assistant for National Security Affairs McGeorge Bundy, four hours before the Exile Brigade's B-26s were to take off from Nicaragua, Kennedy was not brought into this decision.
In addition, the Director of Central Intelligence Allen Dulles, the man in charge of the Bay of Pigs operation was unbelievably out of the country on the day of the landings.
Col. Prouty, who was Chief of Special Operations during this time, elaborates on this situation:
Everyone connected with the planning of the Bay of Pigs invasion knew that the policy dictated by NSC 5412, positively prohibited the utilization of active-duty military personnel in covert operations. At no time was an "air cover" position written into the official invasion plan The "air cover" story that has been created is incorrect."
As a result, JFK who well understood the source of this fiasco, set up a Cuban Study Group the day after and charged it with the responsibility of determining the cause for the failure of the operation. The study group, consisting of Allen Dulles, Gen. Maxwell Taylor, Adm. Arleigh Burke and Attorney General Robert Kennedy (the only member JFK could trust), concluded that the failure was due to Bundy's telephone call to General Cabell (who was also CIA Deputy Director) that cancelled the President's air strike order.
Kennedy had them.
Humiliatingly, CIA Director Allen Dulles was part of formulating the conclusion that the Bay of Pigs op was a failure because of the CIA's intervention into the President's orders. This allowed for Kennedy to issue the National Security Action Memorandum #55 on June 28th, 1961, which began the process of changing the responsibility from the CIA to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
As Prouty states, "When fully implemented, as Kennedy had planned, after his reelection in 1964, it would have taken the CIA out of the covert operation business. This proved to be one of the first nails in John F. Kennedy's coffin."
If this was not enough of a slap in the face to the CIA, Kennedy forced the resignation of CIA Director Allen Dulles, CIA Deputy Director for Plans Richard M. Bissell Jr. and CIA Deputy Director Charles Cabell.
In Oct 1962, Kennedy was informed that Cuba had offensive Soviet missiles 90 miles from American shores. Soviet ships with more missiles were on their way towards Cuba but ended up turning around last minute.
Rumours started to abound that JFK had cut a secret deal with Russian Premier Khrushchev, which was that the U.S. would not invade Cuba if the Soviets withdrew their missiles. Criticisms of JFK being soft on communism began to stir.
NSAM #263, closely overseen by Kennedy, was released on Oct 11th, 1963, and outlined a policy decision "to withdraw 1,000 military personnel [from Vietnam] by the end of 1963" and further stated that "It should be possible to withdraw the bulk of U.S. personnel [including the CIA and military] by 1965." The Armed Forces newspaper Stars and Stripes had the headline U.S. TROOPS SEEN OUT OF VIET BY '65. Kennedy was winning the game and the American people.
This was to be the final nail in Kennedy's coffin.
Kennedy was brutally shot down only one month later, on Nov, 22nd 1963. His death should not just be seen as a tragic loss but, more importantly, it should be recognised for the successful military coup d'état that it was and is. The CIA showed what lengths it was ready to go to if a President stood in its way. (For more information on this coup refer to District Attorney of New Orleans at the time, Jim Garrison's book . And the excellently researched Oliver Stone movie "JFK")
Through the Looking GlassOn Nov. 26th 1963, a full four days after Kennedy's murder, de facto President Johnson signed NSAM #273 to begin the change of Kennedy's policy under #263. And on March 4th, 1964, Johnson signed NSAM #288 that marked the full escalation of the Vietnam War and involved 2,709,918 Americans directly serving in Vietnam, with 9,087,000 serving with the U.S. Armed Forces during this period.
The Vietnam War, or more accurately the Indochina War, would continue for another 12 years after Kennedy's death, lasting a total of 20 years for Americans.
Scattered black ops wars continued, but the next large scale-never ending war that would involve the world would begin full force on Sept 11, 2001 under the laughable title War on Terror, which is basically another Iron Curtain, a continuation of a 74 year Cold War. A war that is not meant to end until the ultimate regime changes are accomplished and the world sees the toppling of Russia and China.
Iraq was destined for invasion long before the vague Gulf War of 1990 and even before Saddam Hussein was being backed by the Americans in the Iraq-Iran war in the 1980s. Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979.
It had been understood far in advance by the CIA and US military that the toppling of sovereignty in Iraq, Libya, Syria and Iran needed to occur before Russia and China could be taken over. Such war tactics were formulaic after 3 decades of counterinsurgency against the CIA fueled "communist-insurgency" of Indochina.
This is how today's terrorist-inspired insurgency functions, as a perfect CIA formula for an endless bloodbath.
Former CIA Deputy Director (2010-2013) Michael Morell, who was supporting Hillary Clinton during the presidential election campaign and vehemently against the election of Trump, whom he claimed was being manipulated by Putin, said in a 2016 interview with Charlie Rose that Russians and Iranians in Syria should be killed covertly to 'pay the price' .
Therefore, when a drone stroke occurs assassinating an Iranian Maj. Gen., even if the U.S. President takes onus on it, I would not be so quick as to believe that that is necessarily the case, or the full story.
Just as I would not take the statements of President Rouhani accepting responsibility for the Iranian military shooting down 'by accident' the Boeing 737-800 plane which contained 176 civilians, who were mostly Iranian, as something that can be relegated to criminal negligence, but rather that there is very likely something else going on here.
I would also not be quick to dismiss the timely release, or better described as leaked, draft letter from the US Command in Baghdad to the Iraqi government that suggests a removal of American forces from the country. Its timing certainly puts the President in a compromised situation. Though the decision to keep the American forces within Iraq or not is hardly a simple matter that the President alone can determine. In fact there is no reason why, after reviewing the case of JFK, we should think such a thing.
One could speculate that the President was set up, with the official designation of the IRGC as "terrorist" occurring in April 2019 by the US State Department, a decision that was strongly supported by both Bolton and Pompeo, who were both members of the NSC at the time.
This made it legal for a US military drone strike to occur against Soleimani under the 2001 AUMF, where the US military can attack any armed group deemed to be a terrorist threat. Both Bolton and Pompeo made no secret that they were overjoyed by Soleimani's assassination and Bolton went so far as to tweet "Hope this is the first step to regime change in Tehran." Bolton has also made it no secret that he is eager to testify against Trump in his possible impeachment trial.
Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently , but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating:
I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole. It was like we had entire training courses. (long pause) It reminds you of the glory of the American experiment."
Thus, it should be no surprise to anyone in the world at this point in history, that the CIA holds no allegiance to any country. And it can be hardly expected that a President, who is actively under attack from all sides within his own country, is in a position to hold the CIA accountable for its past and future crimes.
Originally published at Strategic CultureCynthia Chung is a lecturer, writer and co-founder and editor of the Rising Tide Foundation (Montreal, Canada).
Gerda Halvorsen ,
"Iran already suffered a CIA backed regime change in 1979." Ahem. Somehow I doubt the CIA had to do with THAT regime change 🙂 Try 1953?Doctortrinate ,
Is just another work of Theatre ..for all the world, a Staged play – along with legion of dramatic action to arouse spectator participation – its a merge inducing show – and each time the curtain falls, the crowd screams "more" so, extending its run.Hugh O'Neill ,
Reminiscent of Karl Rove's :"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 thats how things will sort out."George Cornell ,
Ah yes, the Roveing Lunatic.Doctortrinate ,
" We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do "Suskind/Rove.
and so it continues .. 🙂
Vierotchka ,
The actual quote:The aide said that guys like me [Suskind] 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." I nodded and murmured something about enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off. "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."
Charlotte Russe ,
It should be noted, that in 1963 shortly following JFK's assassination Truman stated in the Washington Post regret about establishing the CIA: "I think it has become necessary to take another look at the purpose and operations of our Central Intelligence Agency . For some time I have been disturbed by the way CIA has been diverted from its original assignment. It has become an operational and at times a policy-making arm of the Government. This has led to trouble and may have compounded our difficulties in several explosive areas."Well, NO president after Kennedy tried to put that Genie back in the bottle. In fact, the Genie has taken total control and has mushroomed into thousands of bottles planted throughout the planet hatching multiple schemes designed to undermine and overthrow numerous nation-states.
What many don't know is that "decades after World War II, the C.I.A. and other United States agencies employed at least a thousand Nazis as Cold War spies and informants (this was known as Operation Paperclip) ..At the height of the Cold War in the 1950s, law enforcement and intelligence leaders like J. Edgar Hoover at the F.B.I. and Allen Dulles at the C.I.A. aggressively recruited onetime Nazis of all ranks as secret, anti-Soviet "assets," declassified records show. They believed the ex-Nazis' intelligence value against the Russians outweighed what one official called "moral lapses" in their service to the Third Reich. The CIA hired one former SS officer as a spy in the 1950s, for instance, even after concluding he was probably guilty of minor war crimes.
And in 1994, a lawyer with the C.I.A. pressured prosecutors to drop an investigation into an ex-spy outside Boston implicated in the Nazis' massacre of tens of thousands of Jews in Lithuania, according to a government official."
Is there no wonder, the CIA is so proficient at torture techniques, they learned from the very best–the Nazis.
https://www.nytimes.com/2014/10/27/us/in-cold-war-us-spy-agencies-used-1000-nazis.html
Richard Le sarc ,
They 'hired' Klaus Barbie, a in no ways 'minor' war criminal. The US took over the surviving Nazi terror apparatus, lock, stock and barrel.nottheonly1 ,
The entire bureaucratic leadership of the Nazis. And it proved to be a smashing success – transforming the U.S. into the fourth Reich.paul ,
You just have to look at existing realities. There is a military budget of $1,134 billion, greater than the rest of the world combined. This is the true figure, not the bogus official one.There is a secret black budget of over $50 billion, with zero accountability to anyone.
$21 trillion, $21,000,000,000,000, has officially "gone missing" from the military budget. This sum is nearly as large as the official National Debt.
This represents a cornucopia of waste, graft, theft, corruption, and wholesale looting on an unimaginable scale.
A single screw can cost $500. You see the same price gouging in the drug and insurance monopolies. A gigantic slush fund to buy foreign and domestic politicians and journalists like so many street corner whores.
There is also a $100 billion "Intelligence" empire.
That is why Oceania will always be at war with Eastasia, and why that war will never be won. Wars are not intended to be won, just to carry on for ever, making more and more money and providing more and more opportunities for graft for the people who matter. Weapons are not intended to work, just to make money.
That's why flying turkeys like the F22 and F35 are produced. Like the cargo planes full of pallets of shrink wrapped $100 bills that were flown into Iraq that promptly disappeared.
Even with the best will in the world, even if all the people involved were persons of outstanding integrity, it would probably simply be impossible to control this vast sprawling octopus of mega arms corporations and competing military and spook and administrative fiefdoms. So you get different players and actors who are a law unto themselves, beyond any real control, pursuing their own agendas with little regard for their own government and its policies, and often blatantly opposing it.
Obama and Trump tried to make limited agreements with Russia over what was happening on the ground in Syria. These agreements were deliberately sabotaged by people like Ashton Carter in less than 24 hours. With complete impunity. Sensitive negotiations with North Korea were deliberately sabotaged by Bolton.
A great deal of the economic and military power of America is dissipated in this way. The same destructive turf wars between competing agencies were a characteristic feature of the Third Reich. A model of waste, corruption, muddle and inefficiency.
But JFK was not shot down like a dog in broad daylight with millions of people watching because he challenged these interests. It was because he was trying to stop the nuclear weapons programme of the Zionist Regime. That was what cost him his life.
Richard Le Sarc ,
JFK also wanted to end the control of the US economy of the Federal Reserve, a coalition of private banks, nearly all controlled by Jewish interests. He really wanted to be hit, that fella.paul ,
Yes, any goys who threaten Chosen interests would do well to steer clear of grassy knolls.
JFK, Bernadotte, Arafat, Gaddafi, Saddam Hussein, Chavez, Soleimani, it's all the same story.
Corbyn could well have gone the same way if rigging the election against him had failed.Antonym ,
Nice example of Richard Le Sarc's non-sensical anti Israelism: Here he writes that Lower Manhattan is run by Jews, while scrolling one page up he is telling that the US (=Fairfax county) took over the Nazi terror apparatus. Some combination!Both places are run mainly by ex-Christian/ secular Americans, with only money/power as their God.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Leading Zionassties like Jabotinsky ('We'll kill anyone who gets in our way')were outright fascists, an, in his case, admirers of Mussolini. Yitzhak Shamir (I have an image of Shamir in my mind when I read your contributions)offered Jewish 'fighters' to work with the Nazis. German Zionists actively worked with the Nazis to transfer Jews and German investment to Palestine. And the similarities hardly end there. The Zionassties and the German Nazis both see themselves as Herrenvolk. They both desire lebensraum for their people, at the expense of Slavic or Palestinian and other Arab untermenschen. Both hold International Law in open contempt. However, the Zionassties have far more political power than the German Nazis ever dreamed of. And the German Nazis never had nukes, or only very primitive ones.Harry Stotle ,
"The secret to understanding US foreign policy is that THERE IS NO SECRET. Principally, one must come to the realization that the United States strives to dominate the world, for which end it is prepared to use any means necessary. Once one understands that, much of the apparent confusion, contradiction, and ambiguity surrounding Washington's policies fades away. To express this striving for dominance numerically, one can consider that since the end of World War II the United States has:
1) Endeavored to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which were democratically elected;
2) Grossly interfered in democratic elections in at least 30 countries;
3) Attempted to assassinate more than 50 foreign leaders;
4) Dropped bombs on the people of more than 30 countries;
5) Attempted to suppress a populist or nationalist movement in 20 countries."
― William Blum, America's Deadliest Export: Democracy – The Truth About US Foreign Policy and Everything ElseBrian Harry ,
The older I get, the more I believe that it was the USA/CIA?MIC who made Australia's Prime Minister, Harold Holt, "disappear" in heavy surf off a Victorian beach on 17th, December 1967. His body was never found. I think he was getting "cold feet" about the "American War" in Vietnam as it was getting going, and possibly wanted 'out'.
It was said that a Chinese submarine took him, but, I don't think submarines are designed to operate in relatively shallow water and heavy surf.
Another Australian PM(Gough Whitlam) was "removed" in a Coup in 1975 which was heavily influenced by the British and American secret servicesRichard Le Sarc ,
And Kevin Rudd was offed by a gang of hard Right Labor rats, led by US 'protected source' (as outlined in the Wikileaks from Manning)Bill Shorten. Principal among Rudd's crimes was a lack of enthusiasm for the anti-China campaign (his successor, the Clinton-loving Julia Gillard, was very happy to join the Crusade)and changes to Australia's votes re. Occupied Palestine in the UN. And he expelled a MOSSAD agent from the Israeli 'Embassy', after the MOSSAD stole Australian passport identities for operations like the ritual killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai. They had done it before, and 'promised' not to do it again. Rudd was advised by our 'intelligence', stooges of the USA one and all, to do this, which I suspect was a set-up to mobilise the local Sabbat Goyim.Binra ,
Who is in control is the idea of Notional Security within a world of 'Threat' that is pre-emptively struck before it can speak – and analysed and engineered in all it is, does or says, for assets, allies, ammunition and narrative reinforcement. (Possession and control as marketising and weaponising – as the drive rising from fear of pain of loss).Insanity is given 'control' by the fear-threat of an unowned projected mind of intention. The devil is cast out in illusion that is then underpinned by shadow forces that operate 'negatively' as the illusion of victory in subjugation or eradication of evils – that simply change form within a limiting and limited narrative account. This short term override has become set as our long term default consciousness and given allegiance and identity as our source of self-protection.
Imagination is Creative – and fear-framed imagination is the attempt to control an 'evil' imagination CAST OUTSIDE a notional self exceptionalism.
There is a pattern here that CAN be recognised but that the invested identity under fear of pain of loss does NOT WANT to allow and so refuses and includes the revealing of heart-felt truth as THREAT to established or surviving order – hence its association and demonisation with fear, treachery, heresy and evil power that must be denied Voice at ANY cost – because 'survival' depends on NOT hearing the Voice for truth – when survival is equated with separated or split minds – set apart from the living and over them – while struggling within a hateful world that fails the judging imagination of a private self-gratification.
Fascination with evil and the 'dynamic' of conflict is the willing investment of identity in its frame – as if THIS TIME – a meaningful result will follow from insane premises. And THIS TIME is repeated over and over – through millennia.
The 'dynamic' of conflict is the device by which Peace or Wholeness of being is denied awareness. A polarised play of shifting mutually exclusive and contradictory 'meanings' as a 'doublethink' by which to COVER over lack of substance and SEEM to be in control. Reactive resistance and opposition provides 'proof' or reinforcement to the narrative frame of the control. Such is the manipulative power struggle for dominance over the other' subjection or loss.
A world of sock puppets enacts the script given them.
The living dead willingly give themselves to the specialness that excepts them from feared lack and loss of validity as the claim to moral outrage or alignment in compliance with its dictate.The realm of a phishing ruse is that of a mis-taken identity. At this level a simple error can set in motion the most complex deceit. Its signature is in the pride or self-inflation that sets up the 'fall' – and the fool.
Problems are set in forms that persist through apparent resolving. To truly resolve, heal or undo a problem, we have to go upstream to the level in which it was set up as a conflict-block – perhaps as an unseen consequence of a false sense of possession or attempt to control. At some point there will be no other option BUT to yield to truth – because there is a limit to our tolerance for pain of conflict, protected and worshipped as power over Life, and sustained as a bubble reality of exclusive and inverted 'meanings' while Infinity is all about you.
If a mistaken identity is the 'stealing of the mind of the king, and the realm and all it oversees, then the 'Naked Emperor' story is speaking to your ongoing and persistent loss of Sovereign will to a fear of being exposed invalid, revealed as without substance, and utterly undone of not only your self-presentations – but your right to be. IN the story it was visiting courtiers who insinuated a sense of lack in the Emperor's thought to then offer the means to cover over it with special and impressive presentation – as a masking that demanded sacrifice of truth in order to seem to be real.
This inversion operates from lack-based thinking that splits or disconnects from currently felt and shared presence to seek OUTSIDE itself for what it's thought frames it in being denied or deprived of.
How does one deal with a dissociated madman massively armed and beset with fears, grievance, betrayal, and a deep sense of being cornered with no where else to go?
This is our human predicament at this time.
For every instance of its manifestation will be a fear-framed narrative of struggle in ancient hate.Willingness to open to that we may be wrong, is the release of the assertion of belief as 'knowing' and the opportunity to re-evaluate the belief in the light of a current relational honesty. 'Acceptance of 'not knowing' is the condition in which an innocence of being spontaneously moves us to recognise and release error from its presenting as true.
A false idea of power is being played out as a world of the corruption of the true.
I met this on a random find for a search yesterday:
FIRST RAY:
Pure qualities:
Traditionally as the ray of power and will, yet from a deeper understanding the first ray represents the creative drive. This is the desire for self-expression, a willingness to experiment, even when the outcome of the experiment cannot be known ahead of time. Also a willingness to flow with life and learn from every experience. The first ray gives rise to the sense that everything matters, that life is exciting and that the individual truly can make a positive difference. The first ray is also the key to your willingness to work for raising the whole, instead of raising only yourself.Perversions:
The perversion of the creative will is a fear of the unknown, which is expressed as an ability to abuse power in order to control one's circumstances, including other people. There is a fear of engaging in activities where the outcome cannot be predicted or guaranteed, which obviously stifles creativity. People with perverted first ray qualities are often engaged in a variety of power games with other people, all based on the desire to control the outcome. This is an attempt to quell the very life force itself, which always points towards self-transcendence, and instead protect the separate self and what it thinks it can own in this world. This can lead to a sense of ownership over other people, which is one of the major sources of conflict on this planet. In milder cases, people have a fear of being creative and a sense of powerlessness, feeling that nothing really matters and that an individual cannot make a difference -- thus, why even bother trying.From
http://www.ascendedmasteranswers.com/teachings/676-an-overview-of-the-seven-rays
(I was checking a reminder on the seven primary qualities of being).
The idea of a pure intent and it corrupted or perverted distortion is real to me.I also like the pages opening three para:
Everything you do is done with the energy of one or several of the spiritual rays. The entire material world is made from the seven rays.
• Every limitation you face is created out of a perversion of one or more of the seven spiritual rays.
• The ONLY way to transcend a given limitation is to free yourself from a): the belief that created the limitation and b): the low-frequency energy that has been generated.
• The ONLY way to transform the low-frequency energy that is created by perverting a given ray is to invoke the pure energy of that ray. Any ray is the anti-dote to the perverted energy from that ray.George Cornell ,
Pompeo's epic statement "we lied we cheated we stole" will be be an American catchphrase or hashtag for the ages.
In most of the world it would be a confession. In the US it is a boast.wardropper ,
And after a short while it will no longer be considered to be worth a second thought.
Came, saw, conquered . . . might as well add lied, cheated, stole
Morality is stone dead in Washington. Might as well face it, then perhaps a serious search for ways of bringing it back to life can begin.Richard Le Sarc ,
Lying is now the lingua franca of all Western kakistocracies. Here in Australia, not long ago, to be caught lying ended a political career. Now it is ubiquitous, inescapable and attended by a smug arrogance that says, 'You can do NOTHING about my personal and group moral insanity. WE have the power, and we will use it ANY way we, and our Masters in Washington and Tel Aviv wish to!' It is best and most suicidally seen in this denialist regime's utter contempt for science and facts, as the country alternatively burns down, or is pummeled by giant hail-stones and violent tempests, or inundated by record, unprecedented, deluges.George Cornell ,
Sad but trueAntonym ,
Hear, hear!An expert on lying opens his mouth again, and again, and again, and again, ..
lundiel ,
Very interesting article.Hugh O'Neill ,
"Former CIA Director Mike Pompeo was recorded at an unknown conference recently, but judging from the gross laughter of the audience it consists of wannabe CIA agents, where he admits that though West Points' cadet motto is "You will not lie, cheat, or steal, or tolerate those who do.", his training under the CIA was the very opposite, stating: I was the CIA Director. We lied, we cheated, we stole".Cynthia. The "unknown conference" you refer to was an address to Texas A&M University, which had former CIA director Robert Gates as President. Another former CIA spook teaches espionage for wannabe spooks. These are scoundrel patriots, devoid of any moral compass, self awareness or intelligence. Academics need not apply but liars, thieves, cheats, torturers and assassins are welcome.
The CIA has a stranglehold upon the American psyche. The oft quoted Bill Casey "Our work will be complete when everything Americans believe is false" cannot bode well for the glory of the American Experiment. If fat mafiosi thugs like Pompeo and ghouls devoid of any humanity like Bolton, Clinton, Allbright run the show, then the question must be asked: how can such amoral stupidity hold the world to ransom? That the CIA were able to assassinate JFK, MLK, RFK in broad daylight, aided and abetted by the MSM, means their masks have long fallen and demons boldly walk among us.
"Who is in charge of the US Military?" Well it certainly isn't the president. There is no doubt that both the military and the CIA are controlled by unelected faceless money men, which presumably is the MIC that Eisenhower warned about (as did Teddy Roosevelt). Perhaps "skull and bones" is indeed a satanic cult?
Gall ,
Yes the National Security Act sent the nation to hell from purgatory. The most insidious and Orwellian bill ever passed until the oxymoronic "Patriot Act" that is.George Cornell ,
The West Point oath should be modified to " we will not lie, cheat or steal . as long as we have the CIA, the FBI, the Secretary of State, Congress, the MSM, and the DNC to do it for us. We're not stoopid."George Mc ,
The majority in the world seem to have the impression that this destructive fate totters back and forth at the whim of one man.
Yes this magical thinking is still pretty widespread – although it's difficult to figure out how many think this way. The MSM project this magical view themselves and thereby project the notion that everyone believes it. Nevertheless, going by the talk I have with others, a lot do swallow this. It's a bit like the world fundamentalist Bible believers live in.
Richard Le Sarc ,
The really salient feature of the murder of Soliemani was the sheer treachery of inviting him to Iraq on a peace mission, only to set him up for butchery. It has the Zionasties blood-soaked paw-prints all over it.Mike Ellwood ,
Ironically, it's the sort of stunt the Nazi's might have pulled, back in their day.Brian Harry ,
I have asked the same question on other platforms and no one seems to know the Answer. "Who are the CIA, and the Pentagon answerable to?" They seem to operate outside of the control of the American Government. The CIA seemingly involved in "False Flags" at any point around the globe, like the attack on the American Warship, in the gulf of Tonkin which was the excuse for "The American War, in Vietnam(as it is known to the Vietnamese).
And, of course, the attack on Iraq, because Sadam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction, which, to this day have never been found(whilst Hussein was hung) after being found guilty of 'something' by an American "military Court'.
The Pentagon has "lost TRILLIONS of dollars which it cannot account for, and nobody is even investigating the matter, seemingly the American President cannot demand it.
And, of course, the Israeli Airforce attack on the USS Liberty in the Mediterranean Sea in 1967, killing and wounding over 200 sailors, brought NO response whatsoever from the American Military.
President Eisenhower warned the USA(and the World) about the Military Industrial Complex when he left office, and it has been completely ignored.
It seems that Mossad("By deception, we will make War") are heavily involved in the CIA(and the MIC of course), so, WHO is in control of the USA?Antonym ,
Follow the money. The CIA – military have unlimited funds -> the FED can print unlimited paper dollars -> oil and gas are traded in US dollars only via the New York FED -> Sunni Arab royals own a lot of oil and gas reserves but need body guards -> Anglo- Arab oil dollar protection pact made long ago.
A similar deal was not possible with the USSR before or with Iran now. Canada is the US back garden as is Venezuela.The Israelis hitched on after 1974 and their job is to be punch ball to distract from the above in exchange for US & hidden Arab royals support.
So who are in charge of the US? A few dozen characters in Fairfax county, lower Manhattan and Riyadh with inputs from Caribbean tax heavens.
Richard Le Sarc ,
Silly stuff. The Zionasties and Judeofascists have taken charge in the USA since they bank-rolled Truman, got away with the USS Liberty atrocity and took over US politics through straight bribery. US Congress critters don't throw themselves to the floor in ecstasies of subservience, as they do for Bibi, when any Saudi potentate addresses the Congress. Come to think of it-has any Saudi ever had that 'honour'? Come to think of it, we'd better go back to 1913 when a coalition of private banks, nearly all Jewish-controlled took over the US economy as the so-called Federal Reserve.Antonym ,
Israeli sand vs Saudi/ Kuwaiti/ UAE oil & gas: easy choice for American predators.Richard Le Sarc ,
You keep forgetting the 'Binyamins', Antsie. What would you rather control-an inevitably diminishing pool of hydrocarbons, or the Federal Reserve that creates US dollars, ex nihilo, by the trillions?Richard Le Sarc ,
The CIA is the US ruling class, armed and in love with murder and destruction. The nature and extent of US global power is the pre-eminent cause of the global Holocaust that is about to consume humanity.Gal ,
What Fletcher Prouty mentioned in the above article called "Capitalism's Invisible Army".Norn ,
Here is a list of what the CIA include: The FIVE-EYES branches operate as CIA branches (I think this is undisputable). The FIVE-EYES is a White Christian Fundementalist organisation, and they share their intelligence (surveillance data) with the Israelis. Their Israelis set many actions on the FIVE-EYES agenda.
Murdoch's press operate as a CIA shopfront, and so many of (maybe all of them?) the NGOs scattered around third world countries. Evangelists fully support the CIA agenda. What is the hell South Korean Evangelists doing in Syria as the war rages on?
Many Jihadist groups as well as unhinged Muslim preachers/Imams serve the CIA agenda very very well and receive considerable support from both Saudi Arabia and the US. Remember, the first Jihadist posters were printed by the CIA?. Of course, now the posters would have their brainwashing digital equivalent. And of course, there are full-timers and part-timers.
That's what we know from just reading the news. There are definitely large amounts of unkowns to humble folks. Who else would you think, make part of the list? 50% of politicians in Western so-called Democracies?Barovsky ,
Outside the government? Are you that naive? This is a fantasy that was promoted as long ago as the time of Iran-Contra; the idea that the CIA is composed of a bunch of 'loose cannons', operating beyond the control of the capitalist state. Whilst it is true that the US security state has different tactics from different elements within it, the objectives are unvarying, achieving hegemony. What differs is the route chosen to achieve that end. Of course, competence (or otherwise) is involved, they're not omnipotent and quite obviously have no long term vision. I think the correct word is HUBRIS that leads them astray. We saw this in Vietnam; we see it Afghanistan; we see it in Syria.The US empire is no British Empire of yore. When the leaders of the two dominant Imperialist powers of the 19th century, the UK and the US met in the 1890s, they drew up a plan for the next 100 years, that between them they could conquer the world for capitalism using the UK's control of the oceans and the industrial might of the US economy.
Surely the fact that the US is now 'led' by an ignoramus reveals the bankrupt nature of late capitalism?
milosevic ,
WHO is in control of the USA?here's an informative article about that question:
Joël van der Reijden -- Four Establishment Model of western politics
also have a look at the rest of that website; it's rather eye-opening.
Vierotchka ,
There it this article too:https://worldbeyondwar.org/shadow-government-controls-america-notes/
Richard Le Sarc ,
The 'Deep State' IS the State. The surface pantomime is a puppet play, perhaps a shadow play, where the real rulers manipulate the political marionettes to do their bidding, NOT that of the 'useless eaters'. Under capitalism politics is the shadow cast on society by Big Business, as John Dewey observed.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
Every single solitary individual Central Intelligence Agency Civil Servant of the United States of America does indeed hold allegiance to the flag & country I assure you. Not only do they hold allegiance for their country but they most assuredly hold allegiance to their government paycheques too. Without their paycheques they would likely constitute further troubles systemically.Governments hire skilled personnel in Intel. They are by & large likely normal people that work for bad governance. The CIA is headed by Bloody Gina Haspel. Read Jane Mayer's _The Dark Side_ to get Haspel's role.
Haspel epitomizes allegiance to CIA secrecy.
She is a bot.
MOU
Brian Harry ,
"Every single solitary individual Central Intelligence Agency Civil Servant of the United States of America does indeed hold allegiance to the flag & country I assure you".You sound very naïve. How can you be so sure. There's no real evidence to back up your assurance. How can the Pentagon be allowed to get away with "losing" TRILLIONS of dollars, and no one's head has rolled? It is a ludicrous situation, and there's no investigation .WTF!
milosevic ,
How can you be so sure.personal experience?
Authoritative pronouncements of this sort are typical of the disinfo troll personae. Apparently, they're supposed to impress the audience, as evidence of direct knowledge and expertise, to preclude any further doubts or questions about the Official Story.
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
I'm an unemployed Social Assistance recipient and have not had a full time job since 1985. If I had two nickels to scrape together I would not even be on Internet, frankly.
If I worked Intel I would not be on Off-G at all.I guess life is more interesting for you when you fantasize about losers like moi being Intel operatives but I can assure you that I have never worked government Intel for even one hour in my lifetime.
When I applied to work Intel upon graduation I was flatly denied & turned down back in the late 90s. Today, I would have to get false teeth to be presentable for employment and as a welfare recipient I cannot afford dental work at all.
Stop being an accusatory jerk off, Milosevic.
MOU
George Cornell ,
Well I for one am saddened to hear of your circumstances. Your mind certainly seems sharp.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
I am a Marxist by circumstance. In CANADA Marxist proponents are marginalized by the state & corporatocracy to the extent of abject poverty.
My professors at university made sure I was blacklisted so that I would never get any money or employment because of my political ethos & cosmology. Instead of promoting my career advancement they chose to excommunicate my membership in the cartel.Being excluded from the work world & employment by the establishment is the reason why the establishment was taken down in 08. Excluding myself from employment & career opportunity only sufficed to annihilate the USA, EU, & Neoliberalism.
The end game is Zero Sum.
MOU
John Thatcher ,
Or in MoUs case ,a common or garden nutter.George Cornell ,
He sounds like he is down on his luck and you find it in your heart to call him crazy? Is this what they call subhuman empathy?milosevic ,
yes, down on his luck, and controlling the world:Being excluded from the work world & employment by the establishment is the reason why the establishment was taken down in 08. Excluding myself from employment & career opportunity only sufficed to annihilate the USA, EU, & Neoliberalism. -- MASTER OF UNIVE
common nutter, or disinfo persona?
MASTER OF UNIVE ,
I was raised by a Chartered Accountant Civil Servant. The Pentagon accountants were assassinated by their bosses in the Pentagon as a warning to any & all that want to forensically investigate their double sets of books. The GAO-General Accountability Office gets to do the forensic accounting from a distance now.No investigation is forthcoming because Congress has not initiated discovery yet.
MOU
Fair dinkum ,
'Who's in charge of the US military?' C'mon Cynthia, you know the answer to that. It's the owners, shareholders, directors and CEOs of the MIC. Nothing or no one, will stand in their way.MASTER OF UNIVE ,
The 08 Great Financial Crisis not only stood in the way of the USA MIC & NATO but it forced BREXIT, TARP, & end to the Fractional Reserve Banking empire of the Western world.Empiricism destroyed the USA & Capitalism hands down to leave it insolvent, destitute, & poised for global bankruptcy as the third world banana republic it really is helmed by a tin pot dictator like Trump stumping for Deutsche Bank so that his loans don't get called.
MOU
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Jan 30, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Update (4:55 p.m.): After getting snubbed by Chief Justice Roberts, Rand Paul read his question aloud.
Sen. @RandPaul : "My question made no reference to any whistleblower "
He then reads the question.
"I think this is an important question. One that deserves to be asked." pic.twitter.com/D2iafDrv4X
-- CSPAN (@cspan) January 30, 2020Update (1:45 p.m.): Paul was once again denied a question about whistleblower Eric Ciaramella by Chief Justice Roberts during Thursday's round of impeachment questions in the Senate.
He refused to read the question @RandPaul : "My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama NSC and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings." pic.twitter.com/8FIcu47PBl
-- ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) January 30, 2020Paul then took to Twitter - writing "My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings."
My question today is about whether or not individuals who were holdovers from the Obama National Security Council and Democrat partisans conspired with Schiff staffers to plot impeaching the President before there were formal House impeachment proceedings.
-- Senator Rand Paul (@RandPaul) January 30, 2020Here was Paul's exact question :
" Are you aware that House intelligence committee staffer Shawn Misko had a close relationship with Eric Ciaramella while at the National Security Council together and are you aware and how do you respond to reports that Ciaramella and Misko may have worked together to plot impeaching the President before there were formal house impeachment proceedings. "
***
Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) was spitting mad Wednesday night after Chief Justice John Roberts blocked his question concerning the CIA whistleblower at the heart of the impeachment of President Trump.
According to both Politico and The Hill , Roberts told Senators that he wouldn't read Paul's question, or any other question which would require him to publicly say the whistleblower's name or otherwise reveal his identity - which has been widely reported as CIA analyst Eric Ciaramella, who worked for the National Security Council under the Obama and Trump administrations - and who consulted with Rep. Adam Schiff's (D-CA) staff prior to filing the complaint.
Stunning that Adam Schiff lies to millions of Americans when he says he doesn't know the identity of the whistleblower.
He absolutely knows the identity of the whistleblower b/c he coordinated with the individual before the whistleblower's complaint! His staff helped write it!
-- Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) January 29, 2020A frustrated Paul was overheard expressing his frustration on the Senate floor during a break in Wednesday's proceedings - telling a Republican staffer " If I have to fight for recognition, I will. "
Roberts signaled to GOP senators on Tuesday that he wouldn't allow the whistleblower's name to be mentioned during the question-and-answer session that started the next day, the sources. Roberts was allowed to screen senators' questions before they were submitted for reading on the Senate floor, the sources noted.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and other top Republicans are also discouraging disclosure of the whistleblower's identity as well . Paul has submitted at least one question with the name of a person believed to be the whistleblower, although it was rejected. Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah) composed and asked a question regarding the whistleblower earlier Wednesday that tiptoed around identifying the source who essentially sparked the House impeachment drive. - Politico
"We've got members who, as you have already determined I think, have an interest in questions related to the whistleblower," said Senate Majority Whip John Thune (R-SD), adding "But I suspect that won't happen. I don't think that happens. And I guess I would hope it doesn't."
That said, Paul says he's not giving up - telling reporters "It's still an ongoing process, it may happen tomorrow."
Does Ciaramella deserve 'anonymity'?
Of note, Roberts did not offer any legal argument for hiding the whistleblower's identity - which leads to an interesting argument from Constitutional law expert and impeachment witness Johnathan Turley concerning whistleblower anonymity.
Via Jonathan Turley (emphasis ours)
Federal law does not guarantee anonymity of such whistleblowers in Congress -- only protection from retaliation . Conversely, the presiding officer rarely stands in the path of senators seeking clarification or information from the legal teams. Paul could name the whistleblower on the floor without violation federal law. Moreover, the Justice Department offered a compelling analysis that the whistleblower complaint was not in fact covered by the intelligence law (the reason for the delay in reporting the matter to Congress). The Justice Department's Office of Legal Counsel found that the complaint did not meet the legal definition of "urgent" because it treated the call between Trump and a head of state was if the president were an employee of the intelligence community. The OLC found that the call "does not relate to 'the funding administration, or operation of an intelligence activity' under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence . . . As a result, the statute does not require the Director to transmit the complaint to the congressional intelligence committees. " The Council of the Inspectors General on Integrity and EfficiencyCouncil strongly disagree with that reading.
Regardless of the merits of this dispute, Roberts felt that his position allows him to curtail such questions and answers as a matter of general decorum and conduct. It is certainly true that all judges are given some leeway in maintaining basic rules concerning the conduct and comments of participants in such "courts."
This could lead to a confrontation over the right of senators to seek answers to lawful questions and the authority of the presiding office to maintain basic rules of fairness and decorum . It is not clear what the basis of the Chief Justice's ruling would be in barring references to the name of the whistleblower if his status as a whistleblower is contested and federal law does not protect his name. Yet, there are many things that are not prohibited by law but still proscribed by courts. This issue however goes to the fact-finding interests of a senator who must cast a vote on impeachment. Unless Majority Leader Mitch McConnell can defuse the situation, this afternoon could force Roberts into a formal decision with considerable importance for this and future trials.
MartinG , 13 minutes ago link
Walter Melon , 10 minutes ago linkTechnically he's not a Whistleblower, he's an Informant. To be a whistleblower Ciaramella would have to inform on the CIA. Because that's who he worked for.
Forest43 , 4 minutes ago linkSo far you're the only one who gets this.
DEDA CVETKO , 17 minutes ago linkIf the Senate is truly the Chief Justices Court the Chief Justice can modify the rules case by case. In this case he made the wrong decision and Senator Paul is concerned I agree with Senator Paul.
moonmac , 17 minutes ago linkFunny that the guy who ruled in favor of mandatory Obamacare (Roberts) would be caught carrying water for the deep state. How so shocking!
Yog Soggoth , 15 minutes ago linkRand is taking it on the chin by leftist MSM.
God Bless Dr. Paul's bravery!
GoldRulesPaperDrools , 6 minutes ago linkAlready has some broken ribs for mowing his lawn.
winston84 , 5 minutes ago linkI'd have double-tapped that ****** and pissed in his face while he bled to death. And I'd have been a little bit "slow" to dial 911 after I'd dialed 9MM.
JLee2027 , 21 minutes ago linkThe attack on Rand, is a good example of why we should always be packing protection. Too many crazies among us now, to be caught off guard.
winston84 , 18 minutes ago linkJohn Roberts, apparently, is in Epsteins flight logs, according to people on Twitter.
Boris Badenov , 4 minutes ago linkNothing is surprising anymore
PN7 , 28 minutes ago linkInteresting how Trump does not need to make any more appointments to SCOTUS. I figure RBG is not long for the court, but Roberts might beat her to it. Either way, the majority strengthens by subtraction.
arthgallo , 25 minutes ago linkCalling witnesses can backfire. Ya gotta be careful. You might call Hunter Biden, and he might begin answering questions in Ukranian.
Boris Badenov , 49 seconds ago linkhe doesn't know Ukranian!
CIARAMELLA probably does though.............................and he's boinking Schiff's daughter
Gringo Viejo , 34 minutes ago linkPoor lad. Total lack of judgment.
MrAToZ , 36 minutes ago linkRoberts has show again and again that he's nothing but a deep state bought and paid for shill.
The only thing he's worthy of judging would be a wet T shirt contest.
ChickaBoom , 45 minutes ago linkSo we are to know nothing about an accuser, his history, his motives, his loyalties? It seems that servants of the deep state are to be believed and protected without question...
Death2Fiat , 46 minutes ago linkLet's be clear ~ Whistleblower/CIA who started this plan in January 2016... probably mentored by Brennan.
MCLoweDallas , 42 minutes ago linkThe Deep State agents must be protected at all costs, including obstruction of justice and failing to allow relevant information to be submitted without reference to a whistleblower.
The chief justice will not allow CIA agents who conspire and plan a coup to overthrow the president to be revealed for it would destroy any sliver of credibility they have left.
Summers Eve , 50 minutes ago linkI think it's hilarious that they actually believe they can remove a President based on nothing but hidden "evidence" and that we will all just accept that! These people are the Alpha and Omega of stupid!
AnMonist275 , 19 minutes ago linkI do believe Roberts just violated his oath!
Anderson Coopers Gerbil , 51 minutes ago linkThe problem is, there seems to be no court to try him. Actually SCOTUS would be that court, but it's questionable, if the Conservative bench at SCOTUS would dare to take that case, even though they would be in majority, since „Chief Judge" Roberts would - as party in the case - not be allowed to vote in that matter
realitybiter , 52 minutes ago linkThe way Roberts bent over backwards for O care is all you need to know about his ethics.
GoldHermit , 52 minutes ago linkThe problem with all these compromised a-holes, like Roberts is they are slaves to the state. Their oath to office needs to be rewritten, with hand placed on an enormous money vault.
John Hansen , 46 minutes ago linkI had little respect for Roberts leading up to this, now I have none.
Why call someone clearly guilty of sedition a whistle blower?
This whole impeachment is sham much like the Russian investigation, it is clear just from the actions that we all have witnessed that the US intelligence agencies are guilty of attempting to overthrow the elected government.
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Jan 24, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,
Amidst all the anti-Russia brouhaha that has enveloped our nation , we shouldn't forget that the U.S. national-security establishment -- specifically the Pentagon, CIA, and FBI -- was convinced that Martin Luther King Jr. was a communist agent who was spearheading a communist takeover of the United States.
This occurred during the Cold War, when Americans were made to believe that there was a gigantic international communist conspiracy to take over the United States and the rest of the world. The conspiracy, they said, was centered in Moscow, Russia. Yes, that Russia!
That was, in fact, the justification for converting the federal government to a national-security state type of governmental structure after the end of World War II. The argument was that a limited-government republic type of governmental structure, which was the national's founding governmental system, was insufficient to prevent a communist takeover of the United States. To prevail over the communists in what was being called a cold War, a it would be necessary for the federal government, they said, to become a national-security state so that it could wield the same type of sordid, dark-side, totalitarian-like practices that the communists themselves wielded and exercised.
The conviction that the communists were coming to get us became so predominant, primarily through official propaganda and indoctrination, especially in the national's public (i.e., government) schools, that the matter evolved into mass paranoia. Millions of Americans became convinced that there were communists everywhere. Americans were exhorted to keep a careful watch on everyone else, including their neighbors, and report any suspicious activity, much as Americans today are exhorted to do the same thing with respect to terrorists.
Some Americans would even look under their beds for communists. Others searched for communists in Congress and within the federal bureaucracies, even the Army, and Hollywood as well. One rightwing group became convinced that even President Eisenhower was an agent of the Soviet government.
In the midst of all this national paranoia, the FBI, the Pentagon, and the CIA became convinced that King was a communist agent. When King began criticizing U.S. interventionism in Vietnam, that solidified their belief that he was a communist agent. After all, they maintained, wouldn't any true-blue American patriot rally to his government in time of war, not criticize or condemn it? Only a communist, they believed, would oppose his government when it was committed to killing communists in Vietnam.
Moreover, when King began advocating for civil rights, especially in the South, that constituted additional evidence, as far as the FBI, CIA, and Pentagon were concerned, that he was, in fact, a communist agent, one whose mission was to foment civil strife in America as a prelude to a communist takeover of America . How else to explain why a black man would be fighting for equal rights for blacks in nation that purported to be free?
The website kingcenter.org points out:
After four weeks of testimony and over 70 witnesses in a civil trial in Memphis, Tennessee, twelve jurors reached a unanimous verdict on December 8, 1999 after about an hour of deliberations that Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated as a result of a conspiracy. Mrs. Coretta Scott King welcomed the verdict saying, there is abundant evidence of a major high level conspiracy in the assassination of my husband Martin Luther King Jr. The jury was clearly convinced by the extensive evidence that was presented during the trial that, in addition to Mr. Jowers, the conspiracy of the Mafia, local, state and federal governments were deeply involved in the assassination of my husband.”
And why not? Isn't it the duty of the U.S. national-security state to eradicate threats to national security? What bigger threat to national security than a person who is supposedly serving as an agent for the communists and also as a spearhead for an international communist conspiracy to take over the United States?
State-sponsored assassinations to protect national security were among the dark-side practices that began to be utilized after the federal government was converted into a national-security state . As early as 1953, the CIA was developing a formal assassination manual that trained its agents in the art of assassination and, equally important, in the art of concealing the CIA's role in state-sponsored assassinations.
In 1954, the CIA targeted the democratically elected president of Guatemala for assassination because he was reaching out to Russia in a spirt of peace, friendship, and mutual co-existence. In 1960-61, the CIA conspired to assassinate Patrice Lumumba, the head of the Congo because he was perceived to be a threat to U.S. national security. In the early 1960s, the CIA , in partnership with the Mafia, the world's premier criminal organization, conspired to assassinate Fidel Castro, the leader of Cuba, a country that never attacked or invaded the United States. In 1973, the U.S. national-security state orchestrated a coup in Chile, where its counterparts in the Chilean national-security establishment conspired to assassinate the democratically elected president of the country, Salvador Allende, by firing missiles at his position in the national palace.
The mountain of circumstantial evidence that has accumulated since November 1963 has established that foreign officials weren't the only ones who got targeted as threats to national security. As James W. Douglas documents so well in his remarkable and profound book JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters , the U.S. national-security establishment also targeted President John F. Kennedy for a state-sponsored assassination as well.
Why did they target Kennedy? For the same reason they targeted all those other people for assassination -- they concluded that Kennedy had become a grave threat to national security and, they believed, it was their job to eliminate threats to national security.
After the Cuban Missile Crisis, Kennedy achieved a breakthrough that enabled him to recognize that the Cold War was just one great big racket for the national-security establishment and its army of defense contractors and sub-contractors.
That's when JFK announced an end to the Cold War and began reaching out to the Soviets and the Cubans in a spirit of peace, friendship, and mutual coexistence. Kennedy's Peace Speech at American University on June 10, 1963, where he announced his intent to end the Cold War and normalize relations with the communist world, sealed President Kennedy's fate.
Thet's also what had sealed the fate of President Arbenz in Guatemala and what would seal the fate of President Allende in Chile. (See FFF's bestselling book JFK's War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas P. Horne, who served on the Assassination Records Review Board in the 1990s. Also see FFF's bestselling book The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger and his recently published The Kennedy Autopsy 2 .”)
But what many people often forget is that one day after his Peace Speech at American University, Kennedy delivered a major televised address to the nation defending the civil rights movement, the movement that King was leading.
What better proof of a threat to national security than that " reaching out to the communist world in peace and friendship and then, one day later, defending a movement that the U.S. national-security establishment was convinced was a spearhead for the communist takeover of the United States?
The loss of both Kennedy and King constituted conclusive confirmation that the worst mistake in U.S. history was to abandon a limited-government republic type of governmental system in favor of a totalitarian governmental structure known as a national-security state. A free nation does not fight communism with communist tactics and an omnipotent government. A free nation fights communism with freedom and limited government.
There is no doubt what both John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. would have thought about a type of totalitarian-like governmental structure that has led our nation in the direction of state-sponsored assassinations, torture, invasions, occupations, wars of aggression, coups, alliances with dictatorial regimes, sanctions, embargoes, regime-change operations, and massive death, suffering, and destruction, not to mention the loss of liberty and privacy here at home.
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Jan 24, 2020 | caucus99percent.com
le="View user profile." href="https://caucus99percent.com/users/ggersh">ggersh
ggersh on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 9:37am https://www.moonofalabama.org/2020/01/associated-press-sees-hundreds-whe...
At 10:01 UTC today the Associated Press tweeted that "hundreds" gather in central Baghdad to demand that American troops leave the country.
Thirty eight minutes earlier CNN had already reported that "hundreds of thousands" are protesting in Baghdad against the U.S. troop presence in Iraq.
When AP sent the misleading tweet the commander of the Iraqi Federal Police Forces Jaffar al-Batat had already announced that the number of demonstrators exceeds one million.
That number may well be correct. Reports said that the column of protesters was already eight kilometers long even while many were still arriving.
From the comments
https://twitter.com/passenger_to/status/1220620900166520833Reminiscent of underreported antiwar crowds in 03entrepreneur on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 11:43amSame media, same MO. The mockingbird is a long-lived species.
I noticed that AP attributed it to only supporters of a "Radicalhumphrey on Fri, 01/24/2020 - 1:21pmShiite Cleric".
What assholes they are.
Pompeo offered a healthy serving of BS earlier.Pic on the left of @SecPompeo promoting 12 Iraqis who danced after US assassination of Iranian general
Pic on the right of hundreds of thousands of Iraqis demanding US occupational forces leave Iraq (today)
The schizophrenia of US foreign policy pic.twitter.com/HXtlNHDg1m
-- Bassem (@BBassem7) January 24, 2020
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Jan 22, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Arch Mangle , Jan 21 2020 14:04 utc | 3
The Wikipedia article on the Douma attack makes no mention of the recent OPCW leaks:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Douma_chemical_attack
It's clear to me that Wikipedia is nothing but a tool for the concealment of truth.
somebody , Jan 22 2020 12:39 utc | 96
Posted by: Walter | Jan 22 2020 12:30 utc | 95Of course. Intelligence services wordwide and their governments knew this as soon as they saw the image.
But Western main stream media does not report on it.
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.rt.com
George Galloway was a member of the British Parliament for nearly 30 years. He presents TV and radio shows (including on RT). He is a film-maker, writer and a renowned orator.
Whoever replaces outgoing BBC Director General Tony Hall, be sure that establishment interests will be in safe hands. But multiple scandals the broadcaster has been involved in damaged it quite possibly beyond repair.
... ... ...
Corbyn had to be destroyed at almost ANY cost. Their news and current affairs output (and appointments) over the Corbyn era of 2015-2019 was as crude, and crudely effective, as any screaming, screeching Rupert Murdoch tabloid. Perhaps they were worried the ghost of Sir Alasdair Milne would return to haunt them in the form of his son Seumas Milne, Corbyn's director of communications and strategy and right-hand man. The junior Milne – also Winchester and Oxford – is a considerably harder nut to crack than anyone the BBC had ever had to deal with before
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.rt.com
If you were making a documentary on fake news and wanted to get journalists involved behind the scenes, there are a few people you may want to avoid. One of those is CNN host Brian Stelter. The HBO network is rightly being mocked for putting Stelter – the host of a CNN show ironically named 'Reliable Sources' – on the team for an upcoming documentary on fake news.
According to Stelter himself, the documentary will investigate "disinformation and the cost of fake news." The film, for which Stelter was executive producer, will dive into "how post-truth culture has become an increasingly dangerous part of the global information environment," according to WarnerMedia.
HBO just announced something I've been working on for a couple of years: A documentary titled "AFTER TRUTH: DISINFORMATION AND THE COST OF FAKE NEWS." The film will premiere on TV and online this March. Directed by @a_rossi !
-- Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) January 15, 2020To say Stelter's involvement in the documentary attracted mockery online would be an understatement. "This is like Harvey Weinstein doing a documentary on sexual assault," lawyer and journalist Rogan O'Handley wrote.
"HBO has hired Brian Stelter to do a documentary on Fake News. That's like hiring Bernie Madoff to teach accounting. Like hiring Michael Moore to host a fashion show. Not to mention [Stelter] is the dullest human ever on television," radio host Mark Simone added.
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Jan 21, 2020 | www.strategic-culture.org
Daniel Lazare
January 20, 2020 © Photo: Wikimedia The New York Times caused a mini-commotion last week with a front-page story suggesting that Russian intelligence had hacked a Ukrainian energy firm known as Burisma Holdings in order to get dirt on Joe Biden and help Donald Trump win re-election.
But the article was flimsy even by Russiagate standards, and so certain questions inevitably arise. What was it really about? Who's behind it? Who's the real target?
Here's a quick answer. It was about boosting Joe Biden, and its real target was his chief rival, Bernie Sanders. And poor, inept Bernie walked straight into the trap.
The article was flimsy because rather than saying straight out that Russian intelligence hacked Burisma, the company notorious for hiring Biden's son, Hunter, for $50,000 a month job, reporters Nicole Perlroth and Matthew Rosenberg had to rely on unnamed "security experts" to say it for them. While suggesting that the hackers were looking for dirt, they didn't quite say that as well. Instead, they admitted that "it is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for."
So we have no idea what they were up to, if anything at all. But the Times then quoted "experts" to the effect that "the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens – the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his impeachment." Since Trump and the Russians are seeking the same information, they must be in cahoots, which is what Democrats have been saying from the moment Trump took office. Given the lack of evidence, this was meaningless as well.
But then came the kicker: two full paragraphs in which a Biden campaign spokesman was permitted to expound on the notion that the Russians hacked Burisma because Biden is the candidate that they and Trump fear the most.
"Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can't beat the vice president," the spokesman, Andrew Bates, said. "Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe Biden as a threat. Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our elections."
If Biden is the number-one threat, then Sanders is not, presumably because the Times sees him as soft on Moscow. If so, it means that he could be in for the same neo-McCarthyism that antiwar candidate Tulsi Gabbard encountered last October when Hillary Clinton blasted her as "the favorite of the Russians." Gabbard had the good sense to blast her right back.
"Thank you @Hillary Clinton. You, the queen of warmongers, embodiment of corruption, and personification of the rot that has sickened the Democratic Party for so long, have finally come out from behind the curtain. From the day I announced my candidacy, there has been a concerted campaign to destroy my reputation. We wondered who was behind it and why. Now we know – it was always you, through your proxies and powerful allies in the corporate media and war machine ."
If only Sanders did the same. But instead he put out a statement filled with the usual anti-Russian clichés:
"The 2020 election is likely to be the most consequential election in modern American history, and I am alarmed by new reports that Russia recently hacked into the Ukrainian gas company at the center of the impeachment trial, as well as Russia's plans to once again meddle in our elections and in our democracy. After our intelligence agencies unanimously agreed that Russia interfered in the 2016 election, including with thousands of paid ads on Facebook, the New York Times now reports that Russia likely represents the biggest threat of election meddle in 2020, including through disinformation campaigns, promoting hatred, hacking into voting systems, and by exploiting the political divisions sewn [sic] by Donald Trump ."
And so on for another 250 words. Not only did the statement put him in bed with the intelligence agencies, but it makes him party to the big lie that the Kremlin was responsible for putting Trump over the top in 2016.
Let's get one thing straight. Yes, Russian intelligence may have hacked the Democratic National Committee. But cybersecurity was so lax that others may have been rummaging about as well. (CrowdStrike, the company called in to investigate the hack, says it found not one but two cyber-intruders.) Notwithstanding the Mueller report, all the available evidence indicates that Russia did not then pass along thousands of DNC emails that Wikileaks published in July 2016. (Julian Assange's statement six months later that "our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party" remains uncontroverted.) Similarly, there's no evidence that the Kremlin had anything to do with the $45,000 worth of Facebook ads purchased by a St. Petersburg company known as the Internet Research Agency – Robert Mueller's 2018 indictment of the IRA was completely silent on the subject of a Kremlin connection – and no evidence that the ads, which were politically all over the map, had a remotely significant impact on the 2016 election.
All the rest is a classic CIA disinformation campaign aimed at drumming up anti-Russian hysteria and delegitimizing anyone who fails to go along. And now Bernie Sanders is trying to cover his derrière by hopping on board.
It won't work. Sanders will find himself having to take one loyalty oath after another as the anti-Russia campaign flares anew. But it will never be enough, and he'll only wind up looking tired and weak. Voters will opt for the supposedly more formidable Biden, who will end up as a bug splat on the windshield of Donald Trump's speeding election campaign. With impeachment no longer an issue, he'll be free to behave as dictatorially as he wishes as he settles into his second term.
After inveighing against billionaire's wars, he'll find himself ensnared by the same billionaire war machine. The trouble with Sanders is that he thinks he can win by playing by the rules. But he can't because the rules are stacked against him. He'd know that if his outlook was more radical. His problem is not that he's too much of a socialist. Rather, it's that he's not enough.
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Jan 18, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
Sasha , Jan 18 2020 18:41 utc | 158
From those muds...these mires...
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Jan 04, 2020 | consortiumnews.com
Former DNI James Clapper had his own words read back to him by Ray McGovern, exposing his role in justifying the Iraq invasion based on fraudulent intelligence.
... ... ...
Clapper was appointed Director of National Intelligence by President Barack Obama in June 2010, almost certainly at the prompting of Obama's intelligence confidant and Clapper friend John Brennan, later director of the CIA. Despite Clapper's performance on Iraq, he was confirmed unanimously by the Senate. Obama even allowed Clapper to keep his job for three and a half more years after he admitted that he had lied under oath to that same Senate about the extent of eavesdropping on Americans by the National Security Agency (NSA). He is now a security analyst for CNN.
In his book, Clapper finally places the blame for the consequential fraud (he calls it "the failure") to find the (non-existent) WMD "where it belongs -- squarely on the shoulders of the administration members who were pushing a narrative of a rogue WMD program in Iraq and on the intelligence officers, including me, who were so eager to help that we found what wasn't really there." ( emphasis added ) .
So at the event on Tuesday I stood up and asked him about that. It was easy, given the background Clapper himself provides in his book, such as:
"The White House aimed to justify why an invasion of and regime change in Iraq were necessary, with a public narrative that condemned its continued development of weapons of mass destruction [and] its support to al-Qaida (for which the Intelligence Community had no evidence)."
What Clapper chokes on -- and avoids saying -- is that U.S. intelligence had no evidence of WMD either. Indeed, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld had put him in charge of the agency responsible for analyzing imagery of all kinds -- photographic, radar, infrared, and multispectral -- precisely so that the absence of evidence from our multi-billion-dollar intelligence collection satellites could be hidden, in order not to impede the planned attack on Iraq. That's why, as Clapper now admits, he had to find "what wasn't really there."
Members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) who have employed Clapper under contract, or otherwise known his work, caution that he is not the sharpest knife in the drawer. So, to be fair, there is an outside chance that Rumsfeld persuaded him to be guided by the (in)famous Rumsfeld dictum: "The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence."
But the consequences are the same: a war of aggression with millions dead and wounded; continuing bedlam in the area; and no one -- high or low -- held accountable. Hold your breath and add Joe Biden awarding the "Liberty Medal" to George W. Bush on Veteran's Day.
' Shocked'
Protection Racquet , November 17, 2018 at 02:46
When did this perjurer before Congress have any credibility? The guys a professional liar.
Mild -ly Facetious , November 18, 2018 at 17:27
The guy is a professional liar,and
a member of The Establishment
"The Anglo-American Establishment"
Copyright 1981/ Books in Focus, Inc,
Vallejo D , November 19, 2018 at 21:15
No shit. I saw the video of Clapper perjuring himself to the US Congress on national television, bald-face lying about the NSA clocking our emails.
I wouldn't believe Clapper if he the sky is blue and grass is green. EPIC liar.
PS: Erstwhile national security state "friend" actually had the nerve to claim that "Clapper lied to protect you." As if. My bet is that ONLY people on the planet who didn't know about the NSA's grotesque criminal were the American taxpayers.
Mild -ly Facetious , November 20, 2018 at 12:38
RECALL THIS EXTRAORDINARY STATEMENT -- from the GW Bush administration
There was, however, one valuable insight. In a soon-to-be-infamous passage, the writer, Ron Suskind, recounted a conversation between himself and an unnamed senior adviser to the president:
The aide said that 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 discernable reality."
I nodded and murmured something about Enlightenment principles and empiricism. He cut me off.
"That's not the way the world really works anymore," he continued. "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create reality. And while you are 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."
Anonymot , November 16, 2018 at 20:56
Mild -ly - Facetious , November 18, 2018 at 19:33
Anonymot , Yes!
Here Is A Sequence of books for those who reside in chosen darkness:
"The Lessons of History" by Will & Edith Durant – c. 1968
"The Anglo-American Establishment" by Carroll Quigley – c. 1981
"Understanding Special Operations" by David T. Ratcliffe – c. 1989 / 99
" The Secret War Against The Jews" by John Loftus and Mark Aarons c. 1994
Douglas Baker , November 16, 2018 at 19:42
Thanks Ray. The clap merry-go-round in Washington, D.C., with V.D. assaulting brain integrity has been long playing there with James Clapper another hand in, in favor of the continuation of those that direct the United States' war on world from Afghanistan to Syria, staying the course of firing up the world as though Northern California's Camp fire sooting up much of the state with air borne particulate matter and leaving death and destruction in its wake.
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:29
All this is fine, except it dares not touch the still taboo subject among these "professionals" of how all of this started getting justified in the first place when America attacked itself on September 11, 2001 in New York City and Washington in the most sophisticated and flawed false flag attack in history, murdering thousands of its own citizens Operation Northwoods style, blaming it on 19 Saudi hijackers with box cutters, the most grandiose of all conspiracy theory, the official 911 story.
The incriminating evidence of what happened that day in 2001 is now absolutely overwhelming, but still too incredible and controversial for even these esteemed folks to come to grips with. If we're going to take a shower and clean all this excrement off ourselves, let's do it thoroughly.
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:46
In fact, wait! Let's ask the really important question of Clapper.
What was he doing and where was he on 9/11, the "New Pearl Harbor," and what was his role in the coverup and transformation of the CIA in the ensuing years?
Why doesn't Ray ask him about that?
GKJames , November 16, 2018 at 06:46
(1) One needn't be a Clapper fan to say that he was merely a cog in a body politic that (a) lives and breathes using military force to "solve" geopolitical problems; and (b) has always been driven by the national myth of American exceptionalism and the American love of war. The only issue ever is the story Americans tell themselves as to why a particular assault on some benighted country that can't meaningfully shoot back is justified. But for that, there are countless clever people in the corridors of power and the Infotainment Complex always eager to spread mendacity for fun and profit. Sure, hang Clapper, but if justice is what you're after, you'd quickly run out of rope and wood.
(2) What doesn't compute: Clapper is quoted as saying that he and cohort "were so eager to help that [they] found what wasn't really there". That's followed by: "Rumsfeld put him in charge so that the absence of evidence could be hidden . Clapper now admits [that] he had to find 'what wasn't really there'". While Rumsfeld's intent was exactly that, i.e., to prevent a narrative that he and Cheney had contrived, that's not the same as Rumsfeld's explicitly instructing Clapper et al to do that. Further, it mischaracterizes Clapper's admission. He doesn't admit that "he had to find" what wasn't there (which would suggest prior intent). What he does admit is that the eagerness to please the chain of command resulted in "finding" what didn't exist. One is fraud, the other group-think; two very different propositions. The latter, of course, has been the hallmark of US foreign policy for decades, though the polite (but accurate) word for it is "consensus". Everybody's in on it: the public, Congress, the press, and even the judiciary. By and large, it's who Americans are.
(3) Does this really equate the WMD fiasco with the alleged "desperate [attempt] to blame Trump's victory on Russian interference"? Yes, Clapper was present in 2003 and 2016. But that's a thin reed. First, no reasonable person says that Russian interference was the only reason that Clinton lost. Second, to focus on what was said in January 2017 ignores the US government's notifying various state officials DURING THE CAMPAIGN in 2016, of Russian hacking attempts. If, as is commonly said, the Administration was convinced that Clinton would win, how could hacking alerts to the states have been part of an effort to explain away an election defeat that hadn't happened yet, and which wasn't ever expected to happen? And, third, as with WMDs, Clapper wasn't out there on his own. While there were, unsurprisingly, different views among intelligence officials as to the extent of the Russian role, there was broad agreement that there had been one. Once again, fraud vs. group-think.
Skip Scott , November 16, 2018 at 13:46
I think there is a big difference between "group think" and inventing and cherry picking intelligence to fit policy objectives. I believe there is ample evidence of fraud. The "dodgy dossier" and the yellow cake uranium that led to Plame being exposed as a CIA operative are two examples that come immediately to mind. "Sexed up" intelligence is beyond groupthink. It is the promoting of lies and the deliberate elimination of any counter narrative in order to justify an unjust war.
The same could be said of the "all 17 intelligence agencies" statement about RussiaGate that was completely debunked but remained the propaganda line. It was way more than "groupthink". It was a lie. It is part of "full spectrum dominance".
I do agree that "Clapper wasn't out there on his own". He is part of a team with an agenda, and in a just world they'd all be in prison.
It wasn't "mistaken" intelligence, or "groupthink". You are trying to put lipstick on a pig.
GKJames , November 17, 2018 at 07:21
Fraud is easy to allege, hard to prove. In the case of Iraq, it's important to accept that virtually everyone -- the Administration, the press, the public, security agencies in multiple countries, and even UN inspectors (before the inspections, obviously) -- ASSUMED that Saddam had WMDs. That assumption wasn't irrational; it was based on Saddam's prior behavior. No question, the Administration wanted to invade Iraq and the presumed-to-exist WMDs were the rationale. It was only when evidence appeared that the case for it wasn't rock-solid that Cheney et al went to work. (The open question is whether they began to have their own doubts or whether it never occurred to them, given their obsession.) But there is zero evidence that anyone was asked to conclude that Saddam had WMDs even though the Americans KNEW that there weren't any. That's where the group-think and weak-kneed obeisance to political brawlers like Cheney come in. All he had to do was bark, and everyone fell in line, not because they knew there were no WMDs, but because they weren't sure but the boss certainly was.
In that environment, what we saw from Clapper and his analysts wasn't fraud but weakness of character, not to mention poor-quality analysis. And maybe that gets to the bigger question to which there appears to be an allergy: Shouting Fraud! effectively shuts down the conversation. After all, once you've done that, there's not much else to say; these guys all lied and death and destruction followed. But what if the answer is just as likely that the national security state created by Truman has grown into something uncontrollable, beyond legitimate oversight by the people it's supposed to serve? What if the people in that business aren't all that clever, let alone principled? After all, the CIA is headed by a torture aficionada and we haven't heard peep from the employee base, let alone the Congress that confirmed her. That entire ecosystem has been permitted to flourish without adult supervision for decades. Whenever someone asks, "that's classified". What do you do when Americans as a whole are perfectly fine with that?
Sam F , November 18, 2018 at 08:17
But fraud from the top was shown very well by Bamford in his book Pretext For War. Where discredited evidence was retained by intel agencies, as in the Iraq War II case, traitors like the zionist Wolfowitz simply installed known zionist warmongers Perl, Feith, and Wurmser into "stovepipe" offices at CIA, DIA, NSA to send the known-bad "evidence" to Rumsfeld & Cheney.
Skip Scott , November 18, 2018 at 09:27
They seem to conveniently classify anything that could prove illegality such as fraud, or in the case of the JFK assassination, something much worse. They use tools such as redaction and classification not only to protect "national security", but to cover up their crimes.
"But what if the answer is just as likely that the national security state created by Truman has grown into something uncontrollable, beyond legitimate oversight by the people it's supposed to serve?"
I believe this is very much the case, but that doesn't preclude fraud as part of their toolkit. The people at the top of the illegalities are clever enough to use those less sharp (like Clapper) for their evil purposes, and if necessary, to play the fall guy. And although the Intelligence Agencies are supposed to serve "We the People", they are actually serving unfettered Global Capitalism and the .1% that are trying to rule the world. This has been the case from its onset.
Furthermore, I am an American, and I am definitely NOT FINE with the misuse of classification and redaction to cover up crimes. The way to fix the "entire ecosystem" is to start to demand it by prosecuting known liars like James Clapper, and to break up the MSM monopoly so people get REAL news again, and wake people up until they refuse to support the two party system.
GKJames , November 19, 2018 at 10:20
(1) Assuming you could find a DOJ willing to prosecute and a specific statute on which to bring charges, the chance of conviction is zero because the required fraudulent intent can't be proved beyond reasonable doubt. All the defendant would have to say is, We thought WMDs were there but it turned out we were wrong. Besides, the lawyers said it's all legal. And if you went after Clapper only, he'd argue (successfully) that it was a highly selective prosecution. (2) If you're going to create a whole new category of criminal liability for incompetence and/or toadyism and careerism, Langley corridors would quickly empty. It's certainly one way to reduce the federal workforce. (3) The intelligence agencies ARE serving "We the People". There isn't anything they do that doesn't have the blessing of duly elected representatives in Congress. (4) That you, yourself, are "NOT FINE" overlooks the reality that your perspective gets routinely outvoted, though not because of "evil" or "fraud". A Clapper behind bars would do zero to change that. Why? Because most Americans ARE fine with the status quo. That's not a function of news (fake or real); Americans are drowning in information. Like all good service providers, the media are giving their customers exactly what they want to hear.
Skip Scott , November 19, 2018 at 11:25
GK-
(1) It is you who is "assuming" that fraud could not be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. What if evidence was presented that showed that they didn't really think there were WMD's, but were consciously lying to justify an invasion. I agree that it would be nearly impossible to find a DOJ willing to prosecute within our corrupted government, but if we could get a 3rd party president to sign on to the ICC, we could ship a bunch of evil warmongers off to the Hague. (2) As already discussed, I don't buy the representation of their actions as mere "toadyism". (3) As shown by many studies, our duly elected representatives serve lobbyists and the .1%, not "We the People". Here's one from Princeton: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tu32CCA_Ig (4) From your earlier post: "What do you do when Americans as a whole are perfectly fine with that?" Since I am part of the "whole", your statement is obviously false. And Americans are drowning in MISinformation from our MSM, and that is a big part of the problem. And please provide evidence that most Americans are fine with the status quo. Stating that I get routinely outvoted when many Americans see their choice as between a lesser of two evils, and our MSM keeps exposure of third party viewpoints to a minimum, is an obvious obfuscation.
Sam F , November 16, 2018 at 21:01
I will second Skip on that.
The groupthink of careerists is not "who Americans are."
"Broad agreement" on an obvious fraud is a group lie.
Tom Hall , November 17, 2018 at 10:49
What Clapper did was fraud. What went on in his head was group-think. The two are by no means incompatible. The man admits to outright fabrication-
"my team also produced computer-generated images of trucks fitted out as 'mobile production facilities used to make biological agents.' Those images, possibly more than any other substantiation he presented, carried the day with the international community and Americans alike."
He knew exactly what he was doing.
wootendw , November 15, 2018 at 22:41
"Retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, head of the National Imagery and Mapping Agency, said vehicle traffic photographed by U.S. spy satellites indicated that material and documents related to the arms programs were shipped to Syria "
Syria and Iraq became bitter enemies in 1982 when Syria backed Iran during the Iran-Iraq War. Syria even sent troops to fight AGAINST Saddam during the first Iraq War. Syria and Iraq did not restore diplomatic relations until after Saddam was captured. The idea that Saddam would send WMDs (if he had them) to Syria is ludicrous.
Zhu , November 15, 2018 at 20:54
Cheney wanted to steal the oil. Bush wanted to fulfill prophecy & make Jesus Rapture him away from his problems. Neither plan worked.
Zhu , November 15, 2018 at 20:50
Our big shots never suffer for their crimes against humanity. Occasionally a Lt. Calley will get a year in jail for a massacre, but that's it.
bostonblackie , November 16, 2018 at 13:54
Calley was placed under house arrest at Fort Benning, where he served three and a half years.
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:16
That's like less than 2.5 days served per each defenseless My Lai villager slaughtered, massacred, in cold blood.
What kind of justice is that? Who gets away with murder that way?
Helen Marshall , November 15, 2018 at 17:41
While serving in an embassy in 2003, the junior officer in my office was chatting with the long-time local employee, after viewing the Powell Shuck and Jive. One said to the other, "the US calls North Korea part of the 'Axis of Evil' but doesn't attack it because there is clear evidence that it has WMD including nukes." And the other said "yes, and that's why the US is going to invade Iraq because we know they don't." QED
John Flanagan , November 16, 2018 at 22:25
Love this comment!
Taras 77 , November 15, 2018 at 16:36
Thanks, Ray, for an excellent article!
You are one of few who are calling out these treasonous bastards. I am still .waiting for at least some of them to do the perp walk, maybe in the presence of war widows, their children, and maimed war veterans.
Chris Fogarty , November 15, 2018 at 12:27
Clapper played the central role in deceiving America into abandoning the republic and becoming the genocidal empire now terrorizing Planet Earth. If it is too late; if the criminals have permanent control of our government, there won't be a cleansing Nuremberg Tribunal, and our once-great USA will continue along its course of death and destruction until it destroys itself.
Where are our patriots? If any exist, now is the time for a new Nuremberg.
Zhu , November 15, 2018 at 20:56
The genocidal empire goes back to 1950 the Korean War.
bostonblackie , November 16, 2018 at 13:58
How about 1945 and the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
JRGJRG , November 16, 2018 at 19:08
Keep going. Further back than that.
How about the Spanish American War, justified by the false flag blowing up of the Maine in Havana Harbor, which led to the four-year genocidal war against Filipino rebels and the war against the Cubans?
How about the 19th Century genocide of Native Americans? What was that justified by, except for lust for conquest of territory and racism?
How about America's role with other western colonial powers in the 1900 Boxer Rebellion in China.
The list of American violations of international law is too long to restate here, in the hundreds.
The only way out of this moral dilemma is to turn a new page in history in a new administration, hold our war criminals in the dock, and make amends under international law, and keep them, somehow without sacrificing national jurisdiction or security. America has to be reformed as an honest broker of peace instead of the world's leading pariah terrorist state.
bostonblackie , November 17, 2018 at 16:29
How about slavery? America was founded on genocide and slavery!
Skip Scott , November 15, 2018 at 09:44
I think Ray is being a little overly optimistic about Clapper being travel restricted. Universal Jurisdiction is for the small fry. Even with Bush and Rumsfeld, their changing travel plans was probably more about possible "bad press" than actual prosecution. Maybe down the road, when the USA collapse is more obvious to our "vassals" and they start to go their own way, such a thing could happen. Even then, we've got tons of armaments, and a notoriously itchy trigger finger.
My hope is that the two party system collapses and a Green Party candidate gets elected president. He or she could then sign us on to the ICC, and let the prosecutions begin. I know it's delusional, but a guy's gotta dream.
Robert Emmett , November 15, 2018 at 08:52
It occurs to me that even given Cheney's infamous 1% doctrine, these no-goodniks couldn't even scratch together enough of a true story to pass that low bar. So they invented, to put it mildly, plausible scenarios, cranked-up the catapults of propaganda and flung them in our faces via the self-absorbed, self-induced, money grubbing fake patriots of mass media.
But, geez, Ray, it's not as if we didn't already know about fixing facts around the policy, resignations of career operatives because of politicizing intelligence, reports of Scott Ritter, plus the smarmy lying faces & voices of all the main actors in the Cheney-Rumsfeld generated mass hysteria. I doubt these types of reveals, though appreciatively confirming what we already know, will change very many minds now. After all, the most effective war this cabal has managed to wage has been against their own people.
Perhaps when these highfalutin traitors, treasonous to their oaths to protect the founding principles they swore to preserve, at last shuffle off their mortal coils, future generations will gain the necessary perspective to dismiss these infamous liars with the contempt they deserve. But that's just wishful thinking because by then the incidents that cranked-up this never-ending war likely will be the least of their worries.
In the meantime, the fact that this boiled egghead continues to spew his Claptrap on a major media channel tells you all you need to know about how deeply the poison of the Bush-Cheney era has seeped into the body politic and continues to eat away at what remains of the foundations while the military-media-government-corporate complex metastasizes.
Sam F , November 15, 2018 at 21:03
Ray knows that the well-informed know much of the story, and likely writes to bring us the Clapper memoir confession and summarize for the less informed.
JOHN CHUCKMAN , November 15, 2018 at 07:11
I am always glad to see confirmation in such matters, however, for people who work to inform themselves and think critically, there are no real surprises to be discovered about the invasion of Iraq.
It could be clearly seen as a fraud at the time because there were a number of experts, experts not working for the American government, who in effect told us then that it was a fraud.
What the whole experience with Iraq reveals is a couple of profound truths about imperial America, truths that are quite unpleasant and yet seem to remain lost to the general public.
One, lying and manipulation are virtually work-a-day activities in Washington. They go on at all levels of the government, from the President through all of the various experts and agency heads who in theory hold their jobs to inform the President and others of the truth in making decisions.
Indeed, these experts and agency heads actually work more like party members from George Orwell's Oceania in 1984, party members whose job it is to constantly rewrite history, making adjustments in the words and pictures of old periodicals and books to conform with the Big Brother's latest pronouncements and turns in policy.
America has an entire industry devoted to manufacturing truth, something the rather feeble term "fake news" weakly tries to capture.
The public's reaction to officials and agencies in Washington ought to be quite different than it generally is. It should be a presumption that they are not telling the truth, that they are tailoring a story to fit a policy. It sounds extreme to say so, but it truly is not in view of recent history.
We are all watching actors in a costly play used to support already-determined destructive policies.
Two, the press lies, and it lies almost constantly in support of government's decided policies. You simply cannot trust the American press on such matters, and the biggest names in the press – the New York Times or Washington Post or CBS or NBC – are the biggest liars because they put the weight of their general prestige into the balance to tip it.
Their fortunes and interests are too closely bound to government to be in the least trusted for objective journalism. Journalism just does not exist in America on the big stuff.
This support is not just done on special occasions like the run-up to the illegal invasion of Iraq but consistently in the affairs of state. We see it today in everything from "Russia-gate" to the Western-induced horrors of Syria. Russia-gate is almost laughable, although few Americans laugh, but a matter like Syria, with more than half a million dead and terrible privations, isn't laughable, yet no effort is made to explain the truth and bring this monstrous project – the work equally of Republicans and Democrats – to an end.
Three, while virtually all informed people know that Israel's influence in Washington is inordinate and inappropriate, many still do not realize that the entire horror of Iraq, just like the horror today of Syria, reflects the interests and demands of Israel.
George Bush made a rarely-noticed, when Ariel Sharon was lobbying him to attack other Middle Eastern countries following the Iraq invasion, along the lines of, "Geez, what does the guy want? I invaded Iraq for him, didn't I?"
Well, today, pretty much all of the countries that Sharon thought should be attacked have indeed been attacked by the United States and its associates in one fashion or another – covertly, as in Syria, or overtly, as in Libya. And we are all witnessing the ground being prepared for Iran.
It has been a genuinely terrifying period, the last decade and a half or so. War after war with huge numbers of innocents killed, vast damages inflicted, and armies of unfortunate refugees created. All of it completely unnecessary. All of it devoid of ethics or principles beyond the principle of "might makes right."
It simply cannot be distinguished, except by order of magnitude, from the grisly work of Europe's fascist governments of the 1930s and '40s.
All the discussions we read or see from America about truth in journalism, about truth in government, and about founding principles are pretty much distraction and noise, meaningless noise. The realities of what America is doing in the world make it so.
Sam F , November 15, 2018 at 20:56
Very true.
tpmco , November 16, 2018 at 02:48
Great comment.
john Wilson , November 15, 2018 at 04:47
It seems to me that showing up the blatant lies of the Iraq affair, while laudable, doesn't really get us anywhere. The guilty are never and will never be brought to account for their heinous crimes and some of the past villains are still lying, scheming, and brining about war, terror and horror today.
If the white helmets in Syria, the lies about Libya, the West engineered coupé in The Ukraine, Yemen, etc, aren't all tactics from the same play book used by the criminal cabals of the Iraq time, then we are blind. These days, the liars in the deep state, an expression which encapsulates everything from Intel to think tanks, don't even try to tell plausible lies, they just say anything and MSM cheers them on. Anyone challenging the MSM/government/deep state etc are just ridiculed and called conspiracy theorists, no matter how obvious and ludicrous the lies are.
Sam F , November 15, 2018 at 06:26
In fact "showing up the blatant lies of the Iraq affair" informs others, to whom the MSM can no longer cheer on liars, nor ridicule truth. Truth telling, like contemplation, is essential before the point of action.
Randal , November 15, 2018 at 02:38
I remember a woman reporter saying the reason we invaded Iraq was because Sadam Husien had put a bounty on the Bush family for running him out of qwait. This was a personal revenge to take out Husien before he had a chance at the Bush's. Any way the reporter was silenced very quickly. I personally believe the allegation.
Gary Weglarz , November 15, 2018 at 01:54
You have my complete and total respect Mr. McGovern. That was beautiful! Thank you.
F. G. Sanford , November 15, 2018 at 01:33
"We drew on all of NIMA's skill sets and it was all wrong."
Every time I hear the term, "skill sets", I recall a military colleague who observed, "We say skill sets so we don't have to say morons." They used to say, "The military doesn't pay you to think." Now they say, "We have skill sets." It's a euphemism for robotized automatons who perform specific standardized tasks based on idealized training requirements which evolve from whatever the latest abstract military doctrine happens to be. And, they come up with new ones all the time.
"The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence." This is a phrase Rumsfeld borrowed directly – and I'm not making this up – from the UFO community. It was apparently first uttered by Carl Sagan, and then co-opted by people like Stanton Friedman. He's the guy who claims we recovered alien bodies from flying saucers at Roswell, New Mexico. The scientific antidote to the "absence of evidence" argument is, of course, "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof." Simply put, absence of evidence really just means "no evidence". A hypothesis based on "no evidence" constitutes magical thinking.
It's probably worth going to Youtube and looking up a clip called "Stephen Gets a Straight Answer Out of Donald Rumsfeld". He admits to Colbert that, "If it was true, we wouldn't call it intelligence." Frankly, Clapper's gravest sin is heading up a science-based agency like NIMA, but failing to come to the same conclusion as General Albert Stubblebine. People who analyze reconnaissance imagery are supposed to be able to distinguish explosive ordnance damage from other factors. But, I guess Newtonian Physics is "old school" to this new generation of magical thinkers and avant-garde intelligence analysts.
Sam F , November 16, 2018 at 10:44
Part of the problem of "intelligence" is its reliance upon images that show a lot of detail but without any definite meaning, and upon guesses to keep managers and politicians happy. So "expert assessments" that milk trucks in aerial photos might be WMD labs became agency "confidence" and then politician certainties, never verified.
When suspect evidence was retained by intel agencies, as in the Iraq War II case, traitors like the zionist Wolfowitz simply installed known zionist warmongers Perl, Feith, and Wurmser into "stovepipe" offices at CIA, DIA, NSA to send the non-evidence to Rumsfeld. See Bamford's Pretext For War.
Gen Dau , November 14, 2018 at 22:20
Thank you, Ray, for a very good article that treats Clapper objectively and not as a demi-god, as most of the MSM and the Democratic establishment does. It is totally unacceptable for a government official, current or former, to answer "I don't know." That is the hideout of irresponsible scoundrels. Questioners should be allowed to ask follow-up questions such as, "If you didn't know, did you try to think about why the President's opinion on this very important question was different from yours? Is simply not knowing acceptable for an intel officer, especially one in a leadership position?" I look forward to your further reports and analyses.
Thanks also to the editors for returning at least the main text to a readable font. But why not go whole hog and make reading everything a pleasure again? Putting the headlines in a hard-to-read and distracting font is especially unfortunate, since some casual visitors to Consortium News may be turned off by the headlines and skip reading the very important articles attached to the headlines.
Daniel , November 15, 2018 at 03:13
You are right, my friend.
Mark A Goldman , November 14, 2018 at 22:17
According to my calculations (admittedly simplistic), the world has past the point of peak oil and in aggregate cannot produce enogh oil to meet present and future demand and that may very well be why the US is doing its best to destroy or damage as many economies in the world as it can even if it has to go to war to do it. Once it becomes well established that we are past peak oil no telling what our financial markets will look like. Would appreciate hearing from someone who has more expertise than I have. https://www.gpln.com
anon4d2s , November 14, 2018 at 22:23
Why are you trying to change the subject? Please desist.
Mark A. Goldman , November 15, 2018 at 13:01
I'm offering you the, or a, motive of why the deep state is pursuing the agendas we see unfolding, which is to say, the crimes, the lies, the treason that the likes of Clapper, Bush, Obama, Clinton and others are pursuing to cover up their reaction to their own fears. Of course 9/11, the false flag coup and smoking gun that proves my point is still the big elephant in the room and will eventually bring us down if the truth is never released from its chains.
Mark A. Goldman , November 15, 2018 at 14:43
I didn't change the subject. I'm offering you an answer as to the motive of why so many officials are willing to trash the Constitution in order to accomplish their insane agendas. It's all about money and power and the terrified Deep State fear of facing the blowback from the lies that have been propagated by the government and media regarding just about everything. Here's another place you might want to look in addition to my website: https://youtu.be/CDpE-30ilBY It's not just about oil. But this is where the rubber's going to meet the road. This is about what's going to hit the fan at any moment and in the absence of the Truth, we are all going to face this unprepared. 9/11 is still the smoking gun. It not just a few liars and cheats we're talking about.
Mark A. Goldman , November 15, 2018 at 23:58
I didn't change the subject. The purpose of the search for WMD was to misdirect the public's attention away from the real purpose of the invasion which was to gain control of Iraq's oil reserves primarily. Misdirection is primary skill used by those in power and very effectively.
Mark A Goldman , November 14, 2018 at 23:23
On my website you might want to review what I wrote here: "Why the Economy Can't Recover" https://www.gpln.com/audacityofhope.htm
Skip Edwards , November 14, 2018 at 22:10
Thanks, as always, go out to Ray for his continued bravery in speaking truth to power. I remember years ago when David McMichaels, Ex-CIA, gave a talk at Ft Lewis College in Durango, CO, about Ronnie Reagan's corruption in what the US was doing to the elected government in Nicaragua. Thanks to both of these men for trying to inform us all about the corruption so rampant in our government. This is further proof that Trump is only a small pimple on top of the infectous boil that is our government.
Sam F , November 14, 2018 at 21:52
Hurray for Ray McGovern! A beautiful and superbly-planned confrontation. We are lucky that Clapper admitted these things in his memoir, but we needed you to bring that out in public with full and well-selected information. You are truly a gem, whom I hope someday to meet.
Sam F , November 14, 2018 at 22:19
An astounding revelation of systematic delusion in secret agencies.
But until now my best source on the Iraq fake WMD has been Bamford's Pretext For War, in which he establishes that zionist DefSec Wolfowitz appointed three known zionist operatives Perl, Wurmser, and Feith to "stovepipe" known-bad info to Rumsfeld et al. Does the memoir shed any light there, and does your information agree?
mike k , November 14, 2018 at 19:58
Spies lie constantly, they have no respect for the truth. To trust a spy is a sign of dangerous gullibility. Spies are simply criminals for hire.
Gen Dau , November 14, 2018 at 22:30
Yes, I also hope our replies will be in a more civil and less reader-hostile font. The same font as the article text would be fine.
dfnslblty , November 15, 2018 at 09:59
I would offer that spies do not lie ~ they gather information.
Spy masters do lie ~ they prevaricate to fit the needs of their masters.
Tomonthebeach , November 15, 2018 at 23:48
To paraphrase in a way that emphasizes the deja vu. Trump lies constantly, he has no respect for the truth. To trust Trump is a sign of dangerous gullibility. Trump is simply a crook for hire, and it would seem that Putin writes the checks.
anon4d2s , November 16, 2018 at 10:48
Gosh, you fooled everyone so easily with standard Dem zionist drivel!
Why not admit that every US politician is bought, including Dems?
Don't forget to supply your unique evidence of Russian tampering.
Mild-ly - Facetious , November 18, 2018 at 16:44
"Clapper's Credibility Collapses"
as does Colin Powell's U.N.BULL Spit Yellow Cake propaganda/
all that's required is a Sales Pitch to everyday striving citizens into
how a brutal strain of aristocrat have come to rule america
and how you must delve into the Back-Stories of, for example,
GHW Bush CIA connection and his presents in Dallas, 1963
credibility collapses abound under weight of 'what really happened'
after Chaney convened summit of oil executives just PRIOR to 9/11?
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Jan 03, 2020 | www.unz.com
Brabantian , says: Show Comment January 2, 2020 at 6:56 am GMT
Intelligence agencies recruit pornographers to lead their disinformation operations, apparently because porn purveyors are so lacking in ethics they will tell public lies about anythingThe alleged 'founder' of Wikipedia ... Wales was 'selected' for this role after being in the pornography-selling business
EU police agencies and the European Commission, have a detailed report on how Wikipedia is a criminally-involved tool for intelligence agencies, using 'Twenty major techniques of CIA – Wikipedia deception'
EU Police Agency and Prosecutor Report on Wikipedia, an Intel Agency Fraud
http://pastebin.com/BeppgiMJAnother famous ex-pornographer recruited as a CIA propagandist is Glenn Greenwald. When the intel agencies began running the hoax of 'Edward Snowden', he first 'leaked' to the biographer of Bush Vice President Dick Cheney at the CIA's Washington Post
After realising this was too stupid to hold up, the intel agencies switched the front-man role to Rothschild employee & gay ex-pornography-seller Glenn Greenwald of 'hairystuds', Greenwald now funded by CIA billionaire Pierre Omidyar
For those who don't know, even Putin in Russia has hinted out loud he knows Snowden is fake, Putin just playing along in the long string of mutual Russia-USA back-door favours to each other
http://www.veteranstoday.com/2016/09/21/russia-govt-report-snowden-greenwald-are-cia-frauds/ https://www.henrymakow.com/2018/11/assange-snowden-rat-traps.html
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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/
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Oct 25, 2019 | www.youtube.com
Forrest LeMay , 2 hours ago (edited)"patriotism isn't about the loyalty to government. Patriotism isn't a loyalty to anything. Patriotism is constant effort to do good for the people of your country"
Free Ryder , 3 hours ago"People talk about the deep state like it's a conspiracy theory of lizard people, it's not, its something much simpler, the deep state is the career government." - Edward Snowden
Fuzzy Gaming , 2 hours ago"I'd be working on umm economic takeover of Guatemala for example" Lol CIA's bread and butter
Khonh lo , 2 hours ago div class=1:57:00 Snowden talks about how the Intelligence agencies can stonewall you and sabotage your presidency... Exactly what President Trump has been saying for years.
postedhere9 , 1 hour agoWhat I really got out of this episode is realization that companies and the government can now track where I have been on a particular date at a particular time forever. Its crazy what a time we live in.
Imagine kids born in 2006 or so until they expire. They government or companies can pull up data of their entire life timeline at any point in their lives. Example where were they on 2/15/2010 at 2:15 PM.
Someone born in 1965 can only recall memories of their pass experiences that only they know or the people around can remember whereas now days and beyond, they can pull that information out depending on how specific the query you want to obtain. This is not including all the other data such as relationship they have had, where they had lived, where they had eaten, what they had buy, etc...
Rasikh Ali , 3 hours agoPelosi's involvement in the impeachment sounds oddly familiar to her involvement in this scandal... hmm
Mar Z , 1 hour agoMainstream media is only focusing on the alien comment. Scum of the earth.. smh 🤦🏽♂️
Christopher Mulvey , 1 hour ago38:00 . CIA and FBI competing for clout . I'm sorry I know this is serious but just imagined them as annoying social media acc trying to get the most likes. But seriously, thanks Joe, you let your guest talk and it was so incredibly insightful!!
M Somogyi , 2 hours agoWhen this Edward Snowden thing first happened, the first thing I thought was wow this is a very very smart man but not smart enough to realize how stupid people are and how powerful mainstream media is when it comes to the general public's perception.
The general public doesn't realize that the mainstream news has nowhere near 5million views in 3 days but if it's not talked about on main stream news for a week or if the president does not acknowledge something then it does not exist. That's the truth.
Flash Harry , 4 hours agoSnowden tries to advertise his book the whole time Rogan asks him a simple question.. Okay, I get it you go into details in the book... Just answer the question. "Oh yeah, let me give you a fast version....". 1 hr later - He still hasn't answered.
Joe Rogan is one patient ass man. Thanks for having such interesting and awesome content on your podcast! :)
Wowbagger , 3 hours ago (edited)"> My obsevation is that if I was in charge of keeping our "They Live" clandestine alien government's secret, then I wouldn't allow that information wrote down on paper in a room with a computer even in it , let alone have it in a computer document.
Not many people should even be aware of the information and When they are they stick to analogue pens and paper other than when they are reverse engineering anything, When specialist use hardware/software it is in TOTAL contained environment .
And that dudes is how ya keeps a secret . Oh and the moon he is wrong with that and you can use the same reasoning, what did they do for example with all of the film tape recordings of all the footage of Apollo landing. Yes they taped over it, all of it. If you have ever seen moon landing footage it's a recording of a recording to hide multitudes of oversights. x
JC Stuart , 1 day ago09:45 Sounds more like escalating the surveillance of the general population was the main goal from the start. A slow subversion made palatable by a perceived threat.
Tim Leniston , 2 hours ago"when we become fearful we become vulnerable, to anyone who promises to make things better, even if they will actively make things worse."
HyperActive7 , 3 hours agoWe need to stand up to this somehow. Just think of the chilling effect on anyone who might want to do a public service but fears exposure of some detail in their private life or their explorations or communications which could be used to silence or embarrass them. Bastards!
Stacy Starnes , 3 hours agoI can barely keep my eyes open with Snowden. You'd think to yourself, how come such a sleepy personality individual be so dangerous to the government elite?
Well, the proof is in what he's saying and it is the truth that 9/11 was a mass conspiracy aimed to change America and ruin The Will of The American people. I was his age when all this crap went down and I believed all of it like he and many of my generation did because we didn't have the Alex Jones of the world waking us up to this sick reality which is our government is treasonous against its own people.
Benjamin Wright , 1 day agoI guess that what Schumer meant when he said that the intelligence community has a million and one ways to get you. "Drain the swamp".
GoogleSearch TheEsseneGospelOfPeace.#JesusGang , 1 day ago"The FBI has joined the chat"
Reegan O'Hara , 4 hours agoJoe: Google searching "free proxy servers" before this interview
Destinyxos , 4 hours agoHe was given the same speech training as Obama. Same cadence, same pauses, same use of "uhh", "right" and "Look...". The repeating of certain words quickly before finishing the main point is particularly noticeable, i.e. "th- the.." "th- that", "whe- when..."
m1force , 1 hour agoI feel like lack of communication is so the reason for a lot occupational struggles as well as in the government structures. It makes me sad to see that sharing and informing is just so hard for some people. And that negative energy rubs of on everyone else and I feel like it's a huge spiraling butterfly affect.
But I'm glad to see someone talking about the issues with our society so intensely and so carefully and so factually and I honestly love it. I feel included because of this video and for that, I am great full!
chilakil , 1 hour agoWhile I'm not saying Snowden is wrong, it's important to realize that this is "his side of the story." This is why fair trials are important.. He complains about the D.C. circuit and perhaps for good reason; I say fine, bring him to the 8th circuit and let's put all the cards on the table.
FatalFinality , 1 day agoI completely believe after following Rogan for a couple of Months that joe is complete controlled opposition
Tom Hol , 2 hours agoWell, this is definitely one of those mornings when being unemployed is convenient.
Raul Montes , 4 hours agoHonestly don't know how so many can be shocked by these claims. Did you really think that your government sweetheart is trying to protect you? They collectively have an agenda to keep people asleep.
To keep them in their routines so that they don't ask questions. Also throw them a bone every now and then so that they feel as if they are getting rewarded while we extort them, spy on them and use them and then throw them away.
ck black , 33 minutes agoThis was longest plug for a book ever...
Mar Z , 35 minutes agoSnowden is a D.S. Cutout. Period. Disinfo Personified. He didn't get out of Hong Kong W/O HELP This is pure Agregis B.S.
Guillermo Baltazar , 3 hours ago"The public is not partnered with government. The public does not hold the leash to government. We are subject to them. Subordinate to government" " National security does not equal to public safety. National security is the safety of the state"
Nicco Sanchez , 1 hour ago44:20 he kinda dis Obama
Erma4ella Eu , 5 minutes agoIs anybody else kinda thrown off by how condescending and patronizing Snowden is towards Joe? He seems to be throwing low key shade/jabs about his preconceived notions about Joe based off his avatar.
I mean he could have spoken on his initial impression as a little anecdotal segway into how this interview came to fruition, but he seems arrogant to me. Like he feels the average layman is beneath him or of lessor intellectualism. Great interview nonetheless, but I just think Snowden comes off a little uppity (for lack of a better term)😒
Jakob , 1 day agoIt wasn't Joe Rogan's podcast. It was a Snowden's podcast
Carlo Anardu , 1 day agoSnowden made a "FBI has joined the chat" meme hahahaah
Scott what , 2 hours agoI can't believe NSA and CIA hired someone that talks that much...
John B , 4 hours agoSo every politician I disagree with is a dictator or fascist. Seems someone hasn't learned much
Scarack Truther , 4 hours agoIt was the Russian government that took him in, the alternative would be rotting in a dark off shore CIA prison. I would not bite the hand that saved me. Snowden is a good guy but i think he needs to learn gratitude.
Szimba Zsununnu , 5 hours agoIf this video is trending, this mean Snowden is a puppet to the NWO. NO WAY THEY WILL ALLOW A VIDEO LIKE THIS TO EVER TREND IN YOUTUBE OR ANY WHERE.
Grasshopper , 4 hours agoEd, you made one mistake: Americans are not "afraid"! US citizens did NOT vote for DT out of fear. They voted out of CONCERN. The average American? Goes to McD's once a month (they're lovin' it), buys their daughter an ice cream at Dairy Queen (or equivalent ice cream place in town), anticipates when is the most convenient day to schedule an oil change, etc. "Fear", "scared", "fearmonger"?
These are nonsensical words the other side likes to spew. Americans are c-o-n-c-e-r-n-e-d about their country. The British (and I speak on behalf of all Americans, British, and so forth - thank you, thank you) opted out of the EU because of CONCERN for their future. Not fear. You're a smart guy Ed, and this interview is very telling, (and we the people think you're gonna get your ass assassinated for speaking so freely like this), and although I only had the patience to sit through the first hour, this is a good video, and a memorable interview.
But just understand -- aside from North Koreans and maybe a Syrian here and there, citizens are not afraid. We are instead courageous. We CARE about the now. We care about the future. We support those that care as well. We're concerned, kiddo. Not fearful. Boris, Donald, Orban, that green-faced Putin opponent Alexei Navalny guy, Nigel, Milo, Geert, PJW, Brigitte Bardot, August Sabbe, Romas Kalanta, Joan of Arc (and countless others) - at risk of their safety / public standing / status quo / whatever - CARE.
Those are the leaders (ASS KICKERS) that we support and vote for. We are members of the human race. We are not afraid.
Z.A.C. , 1 day ago (edited)#1 if people didn't realize this was going on before 2013, then I don't know where your brain was. #2 this guy may correct, but he's an opportunist.
He's spent a lot of time putting this story together. How can he say there are no bodies laying around when Obama was sending up drones that fired missles at cell phones? I worked in the telecom industry starting in the 90s... I was tracking calls on 9/11. I knew who was calling who, and the FBI didn't ask permission to see where the calls were going or coming from.
Reuben Handel , 4 hours ago (edited)He's had John McAfee, Rhonda Patrick, Mike Tyson, Graham Hancock, Neil Degrasse Tyson, Lance Armstrong, Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Jay Leno, Anthony Bourdain, David Goggins, Ron White, Jordan Peterson, Everlast, Immortal Technique, Bernie Sanders, Ben Shapiro, George St.Pierre, Elon Musk, Alex Jones, and now Edward Snowden. Just to name a few.
Trey Wilson , 1 minute ago div clBut there were numerous people warned not to fly/go to wtc on 911. Willie Brown, Salmon Rushdie, Israeli citizens, apparently the French knew as well... But Snowden says they didn't know
Invincible Osprey , 4 hours ago"Give me one good reason the government would have committed 9/11." - steel beams don't melt jet fuel, also watch this podcast and you'll wish you still lived in the matrix
J. Copache , 34 minutes ago (edited)Ed Snowden is creepily still playing his role for the same people behind 9/11 and other False Flags...
Alek Kelly , 22 minutes agoRight now, Chile, my home country, is going through a very difficult and delicate process of civil unrest that has been met with relentless repression at the hands of a government that works in favor of private interests and has been confirmed to commit several and systematic human rights violations, including torture, murder, rape, state terrorism, and the list goes on. Listening to this podcast right now really puts in perspective the extent to wich a State can manipulate, hide and forge information in order to limit civil rights with the excuse of protecting the people.
We NEED guys like Snowden to come forth and show governments around the world that any measures taken to protect order and national interests should always be second to the well-being, civil and human rights of the people that constitute the very foundation of what a country is.
People from the US are lucky to have true patriots like Snowden, willing to go against the rotten systems so deeply ingrained in their institutional complexes in order to uphold the ideals that gave birth to their country in the first place. We need help, and we need clarity. If y'all can, please get informed and divulge what you learn about our situation right now. Get people talking and get people acting.
No government that - literally- fires against its people should be left unchecked. Information is a tool, the greatest one we've got in this day and age, and we the people are more capable than ever of using it in our advantage.
Joseph Edward , 5 hours ago (edited)At 14:15 , he says he went to journalists with the information and gave them conditions on how that information could be published. Was this a trust or legal based transaction? If it was trust, would Snowden still be as confident in doing it that way in today's media climate?
Brian Houck , 6 hours ago34:50 . Our founding fathers are turning in their graves.
Joseph Edward , 6 hours agoSo James Clapper just straight-up lied to Congress under oath and there were no repercussions, yet they did their best to hunt down Ed Snowden and treat him like a dirty dog? What is wrong with this picture? Besides everything, I mean.
therealjoelsalazar , 6 hours agoAround 30:00 Snowden said that the highest members of our government have the lowest loyalty. (The ones at the top are the ones selling us out.)
words wpns , 7 hours agoThe scary thing is, is that while Snowden is telling us what happened in the past, the government is actively abusing powers while looking for new ways to violate our rights. We need to really look at ourselves as citizens and make sure the people we vote for are actually serving the public no matter what party or tak they're on.
With all do respect to snowden , 9 11 was an inside job The whole event was controlled. Controlled demolition , controlled airlines to launch them in to the towers. All orchestrated by elements of the CIA , FBI , and NSA
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Jan 01, 2020 | www.zerohedge.com
https://www.dianomi.com/smartads.epl?id=4777 DiGenova: Comey And Brennan Were 'Coup Leaders' by Tyler Durden Wed, 01/01/2020 - 19:30 0 SHARES
Former US Attorney Joe diGenova told OANN 's John Hines that former FBI Director James Comey and former CIA Director John Brennan were "coup leaders" in an attempt to reverse the outcome of the 2016 US election.
DiGenova says the Obama Justice Department was corrupted under Attorneys General Eric Holder and Loretta Lynch, "with the authority and knowledge of then-president" Obama, and that a 'stupid and arrogant' Susan Rice was dumb enough to document his knowledge in a January 20th, 2017 email.
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the book.
I want to thank Susan Rice for being so stupid and so arrogant to write that email on January 20th because that's exhibit A for Barack Obama - who knew all about this from start to finish, and was more than happy to have the civil rights of a massive number of Americans violated so he could get Donald Trump." -Joe diGenova
Moreover, diGenova says that after "all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn," anyone who couldn't see that the "corrupt investigative process of the FBI and DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état" is an idiot.
"This was not hard. If you're a good prosecutor you look at the facts in the Trump case, and the Page case, the Flynn case. There's only one conclusion you can come to; none of this makes any sense. None of these people were evil. None of them. They were framed , and the whole process was playing out, and you knew it on July 5th 2016, when James Comey announced - usurping the functions of the Attorney General, that no reasonable prosecutor would bring a case against Hillary Clinton. That was ludicrous! She destroyed 30,000 emails that were under subpoena. If you or I did that, we would be in prison today . She got a break because she was Hillary Clinton, and James Comey was trying to kiss her fanny because he wanted something from her when she became president of the United States.
All of these people who watched that news conference and didn't think that it was a disgrace for the FBI. And then subsequently, watched all this stuff involving Trump and Page and Papadopoulos and Michael Flynn - and couldn't see that the corrupt investigative process of the FBI and the DOJ was basically being used to conduct a coup d'état . I mean you have to be an idiot. Any first year assistant US attorney would look at all these facts and say 'there's a coup underway. There's a conspiracy.'
But for those of us thought that, the Washington Post, the New York Times. We were 'conspiracy theorists.' You know what? Pretty damn good theory, it appears today.
" To what extent is the CIA involved in this? " asked Hines.
" Well there's no doubt that John Brennan was the primogenitor of the entire counterintelligence investigation, " replied diGenova. "It was John Brennan who went to James Comey and basically pummeled him into starting a counterintelligence investigation against Trump. Brennan's at the heart of this. He went around the world. He enlisted the help of foreign intelligence services. He's responsible for Joseph Mifsud and other people."
" People do not have even the beginning of an understanding of the role that John Brennan played in this . He is a monstrously important person, and I underscore monstrously important person. He has done more damage to the Central Intelligence Agency - it's equal to what James Comey has done to the FBI. It's pretty clear that James Comey will go down in history as the single worst FBI director in history, regardless of how Mr. Durham treats him."
gold_silver_as_money , 23 minutes ago link
Leguran , 24 minutes ago linkBrennan was just the puppet. The real question is who the power brokers were behind the scenes pulling strings and giving all the government officials cover. That's probably what Durham is/needs to get to the bottom of. Hillary is untouchable until those guys get the book thrown at them. My guess is the Queen is involved, probably the Vatican and Mossad as well.
Schroedingers Cat , 48 minutes ago linkFull agreement with Joe DiGenova. In addition, I believe President Obama was an instigator of this coup d'état. It could only happen in the intelligence field with his consent. His whole persona is based on his willingness to calculate political gain and he had no qualms or ethics. He was hailed as the first "black" President. His role in this coup was made possible by all the people who thought black people were inferior and needed an opportunity to get ahead. Depending upon how you look at that, that picture is in tatters. Black folks are incredibly fortunate to have President Trump who will not blame black folks for the travesties and destruction wrought by another black man. Would a died in the wool radical like Hillary Clinton think that way?
Dumpster Elite , 51 minutes ago linkThe good men of the agencies should punish Comey and Brennan. They have "six ways 'til Tuesday to get even." Why not teach them a lesson from the inside? Many MANY people in the agency have been insulted by this and they deserve justice against Comey and Brennan.
Md4 , 52 minutes ago linkGotta give it to the OAN network. They're not dumb. If this actually DID pan out (indictments and such, as a result of this investigative stuff, with no help whatsoever from Barr, etc.), then OAN will be the lead network covering this.
Needless to say, it speaks VOLUMES upon VOLUMES, that Fox News isn't covering this (other than Hannity).
"And you'll never forget, I'm sure, that famous Susan Rice email on inauguration day of Donald Trump, where she sends an email to the file memorializing that there had been a meeting on January 5th with the president of the United States, all senior law enforcement and intelligence officials, where they reviewed the status of Crossfire Hurricane and the president announced - President Obama - that he was sure that everything had been done by the book."
Now... let's, for a moment, imagine this scene.
We've already had a Watergate in our history, involving the spying of one party on another during a presidential campaign season.
These people know how that turned out.
Most of them are lawyers, and at least one is a supposed Constitutional scholar and professor of Constitutional law.
That's Blo.
Does Rice really expect us to believe they didn't know Crossfire Hurricane was based on Clinton Campaign-paid for ********?
Wouldn't a law professor president wanna know the basis, and the veracity of the details, of such a risky operation before authorizing it?
Or are we to believe he merely accepted the assembled "assurances" in this meeting?
Were there presidential meetings about spying on Trump that occurred well before this one?
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Jan 01, 2020 | www.moonofalabama.org
james , Dec 29 2019 21:41 utc | 22
"Trump and his allies repeatedly promoted conspiracy theories asserting that the Crossfire Hurricane investigation was opened on false pretenses for political purposes." that is a quote from propaganda site wikipedia.. it amazes me how wikipedia is able to print this type of stuff based off a link to a politico.com article! i got to looking at this thanks ew's latest article - "Fact Witness:" How Rod Rosenstein Got DOJ IG To Land a Plane on Bruce Ohrit continues to amaze me how in lock step these folks are with the basic story line they have been given - trump is in putins back pocket and drivel like that... one can say what they want about trump, but does it always have to blur every other aspect of reality once you have gone bonkers from him?? it appears that way.. i guess that is why they call it tds... oh, and i am using that term, not as a trump supporter, but a reality supporter, lol..
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